371–380 of 608 posts
Is soylent vegan available yet? Not yet. This first run will be the regular vegetarian soylent, but it is lactose free, kosher, halal, and absent of all known allergens I believe soy is an allergy to some people. What does "absent of all known allergens" mean then?
They use a whey protein - I don't believe the formula contains soy.
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Yep, I thought it was a joke at first, too. Since the term soylent is widely understood to mean human remains masquerading as food, the name suggests pretense. He wrote: Before I rarely had enough energy to go to the gym, but this day I had plenty so I decided to put the diet to the test. I'd been running off and on for several months, never able to do more than a mile straight, but this day I ran 3.14 miles non-stop…
Also notable is that he ran exactly pi miles. e: AND called that an "irrational improvement." That must be a joke or something...
Edit: Okay, you beat me to it :P
Edit 2: Are we the same person?
Would be nice if you put nutrition facts on the campaign page. I wouldn't buy without seeing those. Here is what I found ("What's In Soylent?"): http://robrhinehart.com/?p=424 The macronutrient breakdown based on calories per gram is 50% carbs, 13% protein, 37% fat, if I'm not mistaken. I'd rather have a bit more protein and a bit less fat, personally.
I still don't see an ingredients list. I believe one will be required to sell this in the U.S. http://www.fda.gov/downloads/Food/GuidanceRegulation/UCM2654...
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It may yet not be there for most (not necessarily because of inherent nutrient-biology issues but because of lack of long term testing) but it will be a damn good alternative for a few hundred million across the world: http://southasia.oneworld.net/news/food-shortage-forcing-chi...
Do you really think this is some revolutionary, new idea? Do you?! Do you think of all the thousands of students who go to University for 4-7 years to learn about one subject - Food - haven't thought "hey? why don't we just mix the basic chemicals together and solve the world's food crisis?". This is pure hubris! This idea has been pursued for decades by people who have dedicated themselves to scientific rigour. I'll…
Surely you are intelligent enough to realize that this is not a serious attempt at fixing anybody's "food crisis", and rather it's a convenience product aimed at affluent Westerners? I mean, disregarding that $65/week is higher than the average income in many parts of the world -- and far more than roughly 50% of the world's population can afford -- they're marketing this through the Internet! It costs nearly as much as my grocery bill, and I'm white and live in America!
This isn't in the category of "feed the world" products, which is why academia has had and will continue to have little interest in something like this. In fact, many people have through the years done similar things in a more ad-hoc fashion: a cousin of mine ate a diet consisting almost entirely of yogurt when he had no cooking equipment beyond a yogurt maker, and there's a rather infamous tale of some dude who lived entirely on raw beef:
http://www.rawpaleodiet.com/testimonials/lex-rooker-usa/
He's still doing it, by the way. It seems to work.
And yet it would take a doctorate in insanity to think that any of these propositions could "feed the world", when we have trouble distributing enough simple dry rice to meet everyone's basic calorie requirements.
As long as Soylent makes up less than 75% of your diet, and you still eat some vegetables, I'd give you a roughly 100% chance of being just fine. Even if you really go whole hog on the stuff, it probably won't be that bad -- people have eaten worse diets. Much worse.
For me, the central discovery here is not that a monotone food product is possible -- that's easy, just take some reasonably healthy foods and stick them in a blender -- but that people actually like to live this way. If you'd asked me before this all began, I'd have bet they'd all get bored in a month.
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I read his blog posts leading up to this and liked the idea. So, I decided to try it myself. After many revisions, I finally figured out a good way of doing it and it ended up being more expensive than just eating regular grilled chicken, sweet potatoes, etc. He is using Maltodextrin for carbs. It likely contains Glutamic Acid and has a horrible glycemic index. You might as well eat sugar. I don't know what he is usi…
You can get all the right vitamins and minerals. On that note, don't use calcium carbonate like he does unless you want kidney stones; use calcium citrate.
You can get high quality CFM whey protein assuming you're okay with getting all your protein from whey (grilled chicken is still a better idea for other reasons).
However, the carbs take up a lot of volume. You can use steel cut oats, potatoes, sweet potatoes, white rice... (brown rice has arsenic) You will find that it doesn't fit well in the shake. It's easier to eat it as food. My experience so far anyway...
Yes, because a handful of smiley tech nerd kids know nutrition better than professional researchers with decades of experience, backed by hundreds of millions of dollars annually.
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Are you hearing what you are saying? One person with a vested interest said it works...therefore it must be good? Do you buy stuff from infomercials?
There's no reason why it wouldn't work. If a multivitamin works then this works too.
Think about "junk dna", and the underlying culture that end up creating it as an idea: "this does not appear to do anything, must be junk". The key take away for me is that we simply are underestimating what we do not know about the world, dislike labeling things as unknown, and can financially benefit from applying simplifying assumptions on an industrial scale.
So I'd take these formidable claims with a huge grain of salt.
More importantly, I fail to see what's new with the idea of powder / shake food. This shit has been around.
I'm extremely interested in this...concept. But for someone trying to hack nutrition this way, you would think they would open the ingredients, or at least offer research sources. Knowing the contents of Soylent isn't going to stop anyone from buying it (convenience), but it would allow people to understand some of these bold claims.
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> trust the Soylent folks more than I trust myself purchasing frozen meals in a grocery store. That's a strawman. You're ignoring the fact that those frozen meals are made by companies who have more experience in the food industry than these 4 clowns combined a million times over. I am MUCH more afraid of the Soylent guys' sheer ignorance than I am of any profit-motivated negligence on the part of large frozen meal c…
Ad Hominem attacks don't strengthen your argument. From what I can tell, the Soylent team appears to be pursuing their goals in an admirably scientific fashion. Although there's quite a bit of work to do, I recall an article from a couple of days ago on HN that was talking about the wonderful work the big guys are doing. This quote from General Mills is priceless: >In a public comment posted on the FTC website, our f…
Let me point you to a randomly chosen scientific study: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20856266
Now you point me to something similar for this new wonder food.
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Your only argument is an argument from authority. Sorry, I'm just not impressed at all.
"Maybe Soylent is okay. Maybe. But there are well established, scientific methods to evaluate these claims. I know it tempting to want to believe the claims in the video, but they have done NONE of this!" That sounds like a pretty reasonable argument to me. Pointing out that the soylent proponent's "evidence" does not stand up to scientific scrutiny does not sound like "argument from authority".