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Soylent Month Three

robrhinehart.com

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Re: Soylent Month Three

#41

Post by jasallen »

tolmasky wrote: post #26
TheCapn wrote: post #22

"surely we can make food that is tastier, cheaper, and more nutritious than anything that exists naturally." This premise assumes we understand, with no uncertainty, how the human body functions and utilizes nutrients. Since this is still a huge mystery to science (and much of what we "know" currently is just guesswork) any 100% simulated food diet will only prove to be "better" by a stroke of luck. We've seen his po…

So the way I look at this critique is that most people in the US are running a parallel experiment with their bodies, only instead of the input being Soylent, it's garbage like fast food. It's true, we don't understand how the human body operates - whether you're eating McDonald's, or organic, or Soylent. So given that the baseline seems to be an equally untested and probably more detrimental food choice, this comple…

I think for this parallel to be valid he'd have to be eating McDonalds or what-have-you every day. The point is variety (mostly) ensures we get everything we need from somewhere. I think it's almost assured that in the long run 100% (or so) soylent will turn out to be more detrimental than even the 'average diets' out there. BTW, I'm kinduva healthy eating nut myself, but this just isn't 'healthy eating'.

Re: Soylent Month Three

#42

Post by shaufler »

thangalin wrote: post #4

"If people had more self-control obesity would take care of itself." Obesity might be partly genetic. http://www.cdc.gov/genomics/resources/diseases/obesity/

Self-control, also, might be partly genetic[1]. Regardless, both obesity and self-control are influenced by environmental factors, so it's a noble effort that Rob is trying to do something about it.

[1]http://cjb.sagepub.com/content/36/1/41.short

Re: Soylent Month Three

#44

Post by nemo1618 »

Soylent is certainly polarizing on HN, and pretty much everywhere else as well. This will only be resolved once it's widely available and people can confirm/contest Rob's results.

Personally, I'm very curious to give it a trial run. It certainly can't be any worse than what I eat now. Rob said it best:

>I'm touched so many people are concerned about my intake of possible unknown essential nutrients. No one seemed to worry about me when I lived on burritos and ramen and actually was deficient of many known essential nutrients.

Re: Soylent Month Three

#45

Post by jaggederest »

DanielStraight wrote: post #33
TheCapn wrote: post #22

"surely we can make food that is tastier, cheaper, and more nutritious than anything that exists naturally." This premise assumes we understand, with no uncertainty, how the human body functions and utilizes nutrients. Since this is still a huge mystery to science (and much of what we "know" currently is just guesswork) any 100% simulated food diet will only prove to be "better" by a stroke of luck. We've seen his po…

Indeed. To sum up some of the basic issues with his research so far: Sample size is 1. He's still eating, just much less often. Some nutrients are only required in very small amounts, which he may still be getting from his occasional meal. Three months is a very short time frame on which to evaluate a diet. Even something as simple and well-understood as scurvy can take three months to develop. In other words, he cou…

> In other words, he could have forgotten something as basic as Vitamin C and still lived this long.

Survived, yes, but he'd have had bleeding gums and a host of other serious issues. Just fwiw.

You're right about many nutritional deficiencies, though, for example lack of niacin causes pellagra which takes longer than 3 months to appear.

Re: Soylent Month Three

#46

Post by rafski »

I'm amazed with how much response this guy gets. This is nothing new. My mother used Herbalife protein powder back in the 90's and it was packed with nutrients, minerals and vitamins. It was advertised for weight loss but could also be your nutrition base depending on dosage.

I am sure they weren't the only company to offer something like this, there must be plenty.

Re: Soylent Month Three

#47

Post by jere »

>We don’t live anything like our ancestors. We don’t work like them, talk like them, think like them, travel like them, or fight like them. Why on earth would we want to eat like them?

>After three months I should be finding deficiencies, and I did. I started having joint pain and found I fit the symptoms of a sulfur deficiency.

I like the doublethink here. Reductionism works fine except when it doesn't. And surely the only important components of food are the ones I've identified after a few months of experimentation.

You know, we should eat like our ancestors because that's what we're adapted to. When you try to invent your own environment to live in, there's a good chance you won't be well adapted to that environment. Rhinehart's logic is like asking "why should we want the same gravity as our ancestors? Wouldn't life be better without the hassle of gravity?" Actually, no. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-does-sp...

>If we can make transistors that are cheap, fast, and low power, surely we can make food that is tastier, cheaper, and more nutritious than anything that exists naturally.

This highlights the confusion. Does anyone think for a moment that a manmade device like a transistor is anywhere close to the complexity of a biological one such as a cell? This is laughable. A transistor is literally a device with THREE terminals.

Re: Soylent Month Three

#48

Post by scott_s »

abstractbill wrote: post #10
theyshookhands wrote: post #3

> No one in the United States plows fields or hammers steel. Wow. Talk about being disconnected from reality.

The implicit "by hand" was pretty obvious to me, fwiw. I don't think that assertion is disconnected from reality at all.

There are many people in the US for who "work" necessarily means physical work. From NPR (through the programs Planet Money and This American Life) on how so many Americans are on disability (http://apps.npr.org/unfit-for-work/):

Over and over again, I'd listen to someone's story of how back pain meant they could no longer work, or how a shoulder injury had put them out of a job. Then I would ask: What about a job where you don't have to lift things, or a job where you don't have to use your shoulder, or a job where you can sit down? They would look at me as if I were asking, "How come you didn't consider becoming an astronaut?"

Re: Soylent Month Three

#49

Post by tunesmith »

webbruce wrote: post #14

"We no longer need big biceps". Well true, unless you want to attract women.

Honestly, odds are that if you're not a big bicep type of guy, you're probably not going to like being involved with the women that like big bicep types of guys.

Re: Soylent Month Three

#50

Post by tolmasky »

jasallen wrote: post #41
tolmasky wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the way I look at this critique is that most people in the US are running a parallel experiment with their bodies, only instead of the input being Soylent, it's garbage like fast food. It's true, we don't understand how the human body operates - whether you're eating McDonald's, or organic, or Soylent. So given that the baseline seems to be an equally untested and probably more detrimental food choice, this comple…

I think for this parallel to be valid he'd have to be eating McDonalds or what-have-you every day. The point is variety (mostly) ensures we get everything we need from somewhere . I think it's almost assured that in the long run 100% (or so) soylent will turn out to be more detrimental than even the 'average diets' out there. BTW, I'm kinduva healthy eating nut myself, but this just isn't 'healthy eating'.

Right, thats precisely my point: I think you underestimate how many people eat McDonalds or what-have-you every day. The interesting thing about this phenomenon is that I think it takes place all over the spectrum: the poor do it as well as the rich. Perhaps you do not see this as much because you are a self-described health nut (and thus this diet probably isn't for you, the same way an Alienware computer isn't for someone who knows how to build a PC), but in my developer circle I see eating trash food every day for all meals quite often. And what I've found is often the problem is that you forget about food and then are starving and make a bad decision so you can keep working, not necessarily because you love pizza or whatever. If Soylent can deliver on immediateness, then it has a chance of competing with this lifestyle. And, if the end result is people thinking more about what they eat, it may be a win either way.
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