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Why would anyone want to live on Soylent?

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Re: Why would anyone want to live on Soylent?

#51

Post by cperciva »

arg01 wrote: post #40
cperciva wrote: post #34

I'm seriously considering it, at least as an experiment. I have type 1 diabetes, so I'm constantly trying to figure out how much insulin to take -- and I don't always get it right. This is mostly a matter of judging the food I'm consuming, but not completely; there's also endocrine issues which affect blood glucose levels (usually pushing them up), and exercise usually pulls blood glucose levels down. I think having…

You'll know how to manage your condition better than others but I'll point out that there is talk about a rather high GI for soylent thanks to the maltodextrin. Which could possibly mean it's not suited for you (or rather you might have to have a lot of smaller meals). Alternatively you could lookup DIY soylent and roll your own more appropriate recipe.

rather high GI for soylent thanks to the maltodextrin

That's certainly a concern, although I think the GI has dropped since the initial version thanks to the introduction of oat flour.

But for the purpose of figuring out how all the variables interact, it doesn't really matter if Soylent is good T1D food or bad T1D food... as long as it's consistent. I certainly wouldn't switch to Soylent long-term without seeing how it affects my A1Cs, but as a short-term experiment it might be worth having worse numbers in order to learn how to get better numbers.

Re: Why would anyone want to live on Soylent?

#52

Post by ThatGeoGuy »

People keep going on and on about the nutritional value of the drink overall, but I'm somewhat curious to the effects it might have on the digestive tract.

For example, if you ate soylent for a full year, and then went straight back to regular food, would your body have trouble digesting solid food now that it hasn't had to do so for a long period of time? What if we extend this time period to 5 years, or 10? I think we can maybe pull some insight from astronauts in this regard, as we should have some information about the change from tube-food to solid food from extended space missions.

I can see soylent being a fantastic replacement in some respects, particularly with regards to coeliac's disease or with dairy allergies, but I'm still partially skeptical about the kinds of change that soylent will introduce in the future. One of the great parts about food nowadays is that you can basically grow and manufacture it anywhere, with the obvious caveat that not all food is available everywhere at once. On the other hand, with soylent, our food is almost "centralized" in a sense, since it is likely more difficult to create soylent than it is to throw seeds in the ground, or hunt and scavenge. This is sort of the reason why I'm curious to how the human body will react to such an abrupt change in diet. If humans just eat liquid food for an extended period of time, or their whole life, will they eventually lose / have difficulties with eating solid, more traditional food? Should a crisis arise (something akin to great floods or an earthquake), will it be possible to produce / ship enough soylent fast enough to fulfill the dietary needs of the population in need of aid?

Of course, these sorts of questions assume that soylent will become a dietary replacement, rather than an occasional meal replacement, but I get the feeling, at least from this article, that replacing the diet is the plan of Rhinehart et al. I won't personally test soylent out, I love fancy food and flavours too much to bother, but in some sense I will follow the product and see what happens with it. I don't think something on this scale has ever been attempted before with regards to dietary / meal replacements, so it should be interesting (not necessarily good or bad, just interesting) to see what kinds of disasters / utopias unfold thanks to a full dietary replacement.

Re: Why would anyone want to live on Soylent?

#53

Post by cperciva »

meisterbrendan wrote: post #35

Can folks in the Bay Area pick up Soylent sooner than the 10-12 weeks it takes to ship to new customers? I'd totally be willing to drive to pick up a shipment--I want to try this life hack out NOW (or as close to now as possible).

Aside from "know someone who knows someone" hacks, I don't think so -- the 12 week delay is due to production constraints, not shipping constraints.

Re: Why would anyone want to live on Soylent?

#54

Post by yaketysax »

corysama wrote: post #42

The explicitly stated purpose of Soylent is NOT to live on. NOT to "End Food". It is to be a better occasional meal replacement. It's a nice improvement on many boring products that preceded it (Ensure, etc). But, that doesn't make for good linkbait headlines nor revenue-generating eyeballs on sidewall ads. This is yet another in a long series of manufactured-controversy articles propping up Soylent as either the Sav…

"The explicitly stated purpose of Soylent is NOT to live on."

That's an odd thing to say considering Rhinehart initially got all this attention because he was LIVING OFF OF IT. It's almost like he was trying to make a statement. Hmm...

Re: Why would anyone want to live on Soylent?

#55

Post by hueving »

JacobJans wrote: post #27

I'm someone who loves food. I enjoy cooking wonderful meals. Almost every day I spend twenty to thirty minutes making lunch. It's not uncommon for me to spend an hour or two making dinner. Generally, I'm pretty confident that my diet is "healthy." But, when thinking about Soylent, people seem to be comparing it to perfection. Why not compare it to some other things. For example, would it be healthier to have a burger…

>Maybe someday Soylent will put fast food out of business. The benefits would be obvious.

Not as long as fast food continues to taste as good as it does. While soylent covers the nutritional portion, it doesn't have the flavors that are in fast food. People like to complain that fast food tastes like crap, but there is a huge chunk of the population (including me) that loves the flavors of burgers, fries, pizza, wings, etc. I rarely choose fast food because of the speed/convenience. Microwavable meals already beat them in that regard.

Re: Why would anyone want to live on Soylent?

#56

Post by Flenser »

corysama wrote: post #42

The explicitly stated purpose of Soylent is NOT to live on. NOT to "End Food". It is to be a better occasional meal replacement. It's a nice improvement on many boring products that preceded it (Ensure, etc). But, that doesn't make for good linkbait headlines nor revenue-generating eyeballs on sidewall ads. This is yet another in a long series of manufactured-controversy articles propping up Soylent as either the Sav…

> I need to lose a bit of weight. I know that for me, the best way to do that is to significantly change my "generally good but occasionally indulgent" diet. I know from experience that I can't willpower that into happening.

I had the same problem. The way I increased my willpower was by:

   1) Weighing myself every day (always at the same time if I could)
   2) Writing it down.
   3) Graphing it in Excel
I found that seeing how my behaviour over the previous days had affected my weight gave me the willpower to eat smaller portions and forgo snacks. And having a short feedback loop allowed me to correct if I started slipping. I still ate plenty, and had snacks/biscuits etc. between meals, (I didn't feel like I was starving myself) but I found that a small change in daily intake was enough to gradually make the weight come off.

Re: Why would anyone want to live on Soylent?

#57

Post by whazor »

Flenser wrote: post #56
corysama wrote: post #42

The explicitly stated purpose of Soylent is NOT to live on. NOT to "End Food". It is to be a better occasional meal replacement. It's a nice improvement on many boring products that preceded it (Ensure, etc). But, that doesn't make for good linkbait headlines nor revenue-generating eyeballs on sidewall ads. This is yet another in a long series of manufactured-controversy articles propping up Soylent as either the Sav…

> I need to lose a bit of weight. I know that for me, the best way to do that is to significantly change my "generally good but occasionally indulgent" diet. I know from experience that I can't willpower that into happening. I had the same problem. The way I increased my willpower was by: 1) Weighing myself every day (always at the same time if I could) 2) Writing it down. 3) Graphing it in Excel I found that seeing…

Calculate how much calories you eat. You can find online the max amount of calories to lose weight.

Re: Why would anyone want to live on Soylent?

#58

Post by aianus »

canjobear wrote: post #6
muhuk wrote: post #3

From the article: Rhinehart is well aware of the fact that Soylent isn’t the first beverage designed to replace meals. He considered using Ensure for his initial no-eating experiment, but found it much too expensive, too sugary, too unpalatable, and sub-optimal in its ingredient make-up. The differentiating factor seems to be in the intended purpose. Meal-replacement shakes have never been presented as a food — somet…

I hope that the companies making the existing Soylent-like products (though I have yet to find one that is unflavored and isn't targeted to dieting people or to bodybuilders...) take the hype around Soylent as a cue to market their stuff this way. I trust their nutritionists more than I trust the Soylent guys' knowledge, which (as I think I read somewhere) comes from just reading some nutrition textbooks.

Well, how do you think nutritionists are trained?

Re: Why would anyone want to live on Soylent?

#59

Post by JoeAltmaier »

sciguy77 wrote: post #14

My uncle, who admittedly is pretty weird, used to only eat Costco pasta and peanut butter for 95% of his meals. The other 5% of the time he had lavish dinners with friends and family, and felt free to spend quite a bit. His logic was "I would rather have one amazing meal every now and again instead of a bunch of mediocre meals spread out." This may or may not be insane to you in terms of philosophy, but the biggest f…

Almost everyones' eating habits are strange. Unless you pay close attention to what you eat (which a subculture does, but that's the vast minority) then you're eating randomly. Soylent beats that for nutrition.

Re: Why would anyone want to live on Soylent?

#60

Post by JoeAltmaier »

jes5199 wrote: post #38
muhuk wrote: post #3

From the article: Rhinehart is well aware of the fact that Soylent isn’t the first beverage designed to replace meals. He considered using Ensure for his initial no-eating experiment, but found it much too expensive, too sugary, too unpalatable, and sub-optimal in its ingredient make-up. The differentiating factor seems to be in the intended purpose. Meal-replacement shakes have never been presented as a food — somet…

Yeah. I have trouble remembering to eat meals regularly - I guess I sort of just don't really like eating? - and Ensure is available at the drug store. It's perfect for that "oh crap I haven't eaten in 24 hours and my problem-solving skills are too compromised by low blood-sugar to figure out how to prepare or buy something that isn't garbage" state that I get into periodically. I'll try Soylent, but I don't see what…

They address that - Ensure is absolutely not meant as a food replacement. Its just a supplement. Its too sugary and unbalanced to live on for any length of time.
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