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Soylent Closes $50M Series B Round Led by GV

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Re: Soylent Closes $50M Series B Round Led by GV

#611

Post by bunderbunder »

johnfn wrote: post #598
bunderbunder wrote: post #563

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spirulina is far from a good health choice. It got popular because it contains a molecule that's similar to B12, but it turns out that it's not B12. But it does bind to B12 intrinsic factor, which is a problem because intrinsic factor production, not B12 consumption, is frequently the limiting factor in how much of the nutrient you can get into your system. Or, to put it more succinctly - spirulina : B12 :: CO : O2.…

To be honest, I take my data from examine.com, which does a survey of the literature and backs me up on this (sorry, on mobile so I'm not going to pull out the URL, but google finds it easily). It specifically says spirulina is one of the few "superfoods" that is in fact good for you. Unless you've done a similar review of the literature and have comparable credentials, I'm probably not going to trust you on this one…

Not interested in getting into an Internet argument over credentialism, but I will say that I did some looking at examine.com's treatment on spirulina, and found it to be less than compelling.

It still commits the same fundamental mistake made by any other popular sources that covers supplements: it doesn't really give study quality adequate attention. Instead, it just accepts all published findings as probably being valid. What with the replicability rate for medical research papers being somewhere around 20%, that's an approach that will lead you astray 4 times out of 5.

As a concrete example, the support they give for the first item in the table of results, lipid peroxidation, is three papers with n=37, n=16 and n=9. All of them throw some flags that make me suspect p-hacking may have occurred, with the n=37 one being the most worrisome in that department.

Re: Soylent Closes $50M Series B Round Led by GV

#612

Post by sheepmullet »

rhblake wrote: post #337
BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1g/pound is an old bodybuilder myth according to this article Except that every time I've ever seen/heard it from bodybuilders it has always been 1g per lean pound which fits pretty well with your 0.82 figure accounting for typical bodyfat percentages. So your article is arguing a strawman and they've been right all along.

You're right, I forgot about that. My main point was that parent is probably overdoing it (even if he/she were a bodybuilder), and this seems to be quite common.

What do you mean by overdoing it?

It's hard, although possible, to have too much protein.

Re: Soylent Closes $50M Series B Round Led by GV

#613

Post by delecti »

dxhdr wrote: post #535
delecti wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering how far removed from its "natural" source much of our food is, I don't think Soylent should be looked at with much skepticism. Additionally: > Calcium carbonate is the most common and least expensive calcium supplement. It should be taken with food, and depends on low pH levels (acidic) for proper absorption in the intestine.[26] Some studies suggests that the absorption of calcium from calcium carbonate…

> Considering how far removed from its "natural" source much of our food is, I don't think Soylent should be looked at with much skepticism. 1 in 3 Americans are obese and the next 1 in 3 are overweight. We have no idea how to feed ourselves. Skepticism seems appropriate.

Hmm, perhaps I made my point poorly. I don't think Soylent should be looked at with so much more skepticism than other modern processed foods. Nobody would ask if Pop Tarts "are even food" the same way I often see with Soylent.

Re: Soylent Closes $50M Series B Round Led by GV

#614

Post by rubber_duck »

lambdadmitry wrote: post #597
rubber_duck wrote: post #586

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You went from 55kg to 90kg (I'm assuming those numbers are lbs beacuse I highly doubt someone eating 20% protein can bench 200kg) ? That's just your CNS learning how to activate the muscles with intensity - you probably gained very little lean mass. For comparison I made a bigger jump in first 3 months of training on a 500 kcal deficit - but I plateaued after that because I just wasn't getting enough calories and pro…

You know, there is a world of difference between each of those things: > good luck with that if you do any physical activity > close to a competitive > on recreational level (how is this is even a thing? "competitive on a recreational level"?) > you won't look like you lift You've just substituted "any physical activity" for the "do you even lift bro" culture. Please don't do this and try to understand that the major…

btw. competitive on a recreational level means you aren't a professional athlete (you don't make money from it/do it full time) but you still want to compete in amateur categories.

Re: Soylent Closes $50M Series B Round Led by GV

#615

Post by m_mueller »

mtempm wrote: post #538
oatmealsnap wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1/4 the price, but how much extra time does that take? Not saying that's a bad option, just different.

Realistically, I need to go to Costco anyways, and I can buy these products in bulk as they have long shelf lives. Perhaps I spend 5-10mins extra at the store every 2 months, and another 5mins pouring everything in a large container together, once a month. So perhaps 10 minutes a month to save, say, 3$ a day, or 90$ a mo, works out to $360/hr tax free value creation rate without including the value of eating healthie…

I like your idea. Certainly sounds way better taste wise.

Re: Soylent Closes $50M Series B Round Led by GV

#616

Post by vidarh »

sumeno wrote: post #437
vidarh wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Estimates like 2400kcal might work if you have a physically demanding job 40 hours a week. Running 30 miles a week and spending 2+ hours a week rock climbing will lift cause you to expend only maybe 500kcal a day extra on average, but if you spend the rest of that time being sedentary, you're still unlikely to end up at any more than 2000-2200kcal. Overall I think the typical old advice of 2500kcal for men and 2000 f…

2500 isn't an unreasonable maintenance estimate for someone that is 6'5 and 220lbs. Obviously if the op was gaining weight at 2000 calories it was a bad estimate for him (or he was eating more than he thought, which is often the case), but it isn't a crazy estimate or anything.

It is an unreasonable maintenance estimate for someone who isn't engaged in a lot of physical activity as far as I can tell.

The problem is not the estimate per se, it is that people don't understand what terms like sedentary and active implies, and tend to overestimate how active they are.

E.g. the vast majority of people who work office jobs are sedentary, whether or not they think that their out-of-office activities makes them "active". An hour of activity here and there in the evening does not get anywhere near compensating for 8 hours in a chair.

Re: Soylent Closes $50M Series B Round Led by GV

#617

Post by johnfn »

maverick_iceman wrote: post #163
johnfn wrote: post #5

Soylent gets a lot of hate (I'm looking forward to skipping out on this thread before the inevitable negative comments from people who assume that Soylent consumers will eat nothing but Soylent for the rest of their lives), but to me, it's solved a large problem in my life: what to eat when I'm hungry but I don't have enough time to prepare a full meal. It can happen every now and then when I'm rushing around, and so…

Can't you keep some fruits like strawberry or bananas handy?

I do! But strawberries, bananas, apples, even nuts don't feel like a full meal. I always feel oddly and uncomfortably unsaturated after eating them.

The closest I ever got was avocado. Avocado is delicious and satiating. Takes a bit to prepare, but that's okay.

Avocado: the true Soylent competitor?

(Probably not. :))

Re: Soylent Closes $50M Series B Round Led by GV

#618

Post by vidarh »

cptskippy wrote: post #376
vidarh wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Estimates like 2400kcal might work if you have a physically demanding job 40 hours a week. Running 30 miles a week and spending 2+ hours a week rock climbing will lift cause you to expend only maybe 500kcal a day extra on average, but if you spend the rest of that time being sedentary, you're still unlikely to end up at any more than 2000-2200kcal. Overall I think the typical old advice of 2500kcal for men and 2000 f…

Source?

Anecdotes not being data and all that, both you and I had the same experience of that number being too high for us to lose weight. I don't have time to look for actual research on what the right averages should be, but the mor important point is that the averages are relatively unimportant:

What matters is not what the average burn rate for your build is, but what you burn. And you yourself is the source for that calorie intake being too high for you.

The averages matters for generc advice and as a starting point, but they can never be as good as measuring and adjusting.

And I think that is part of the problem with this advice. Too many people seem to influence their intake by it but then get surprised and dejected when they don't get the result they expect, instead of using their result to tweak their intake accordingly.

Re: Soylent Closes $50M Series B Round Led by GV

#619

Post by vidarh »

cptskippy wrote: post #358
vidarh wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Despite the fact that I was only consuming 2000 calories, 500 less than recommended for my size/weight/age/sex, I managed to gain weight. 2500kcal is only suitable for people living a very active lifestyle or exercising a lot. Note that going to the gym for 45minutes 3 times a week is not being active. When I spent an hour lifting heavy weights 5 times a week, my weight was stable at around 2500kcal. The reality is…

Every source I've found indicates that my maintenance caloric intake should be 2400+ calories. Where do you get your information from?

A steady stream of accounts like yours of "it says my intake should be X, but when I ate X I added weight".

In your own case you've yourself proven that the sources you've found are wrong or at least have a ridiculous error margin, given that you've measured that your maintenance intake is much lower than your sources claim it should be.

Meanwhile it's exceedingly rare to see the opposite.

One of the big issues appears to be that people take advice based on a belief they are more active than they are. E.g. as I mentioned elsewhere, pretty much anyone in an office job is sedentary by default, even if they spend most of their spare time being active.

Re: Soylent Closes $50M Series B Round Led by GV

#620

Post by vidarh »

enraged_camel wrote: post #489
cptskippy wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source?

Um, you were eating (or claiming to be eating) X calories a day and you were gaining weight. That should be the only "source" you need.

> or claiming to be eating

This, to me, is another reason why employing a feedback cycle and only relying on those estimates as a first approximation makes most sense.

The estimates won't take into account how dilligent you are: do you estimate how many meatballs there is per 100 calories, or do you guesstimate based on measuring once? do you count the calories in your sugar free chewing gum (it's certainly not calorie free)? do you measure out the amount of ketchup you put on your food and count the calories? And so on.

With a feedback cycle hopefully you're roughly consistent, and if you adjust on a weekly basis based on how you're doing you'll hopefully also counter-act your own self-sabotage (e.g. it's oh-so-easy to subconsciously take more of anything you've decided doesn't need measuring, like the above mentioned ketchup, or find yourself suddenly chewing 10x as much chewing gum...)

(at the same time, one of the benefits of these shakes certainly is that if you adhere strictly at least for periods, you take dilligence out of the picture; though you still need a feedback cycle, as e.g. differences in how much energy you have can easily affect your activity levels and so change your rate)

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