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Soylent: What Happened When I Stopped Eating For 2 Weeks

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Re: Soylent: What Happened When I Stopped Eating For 2 Weeks

#81

Post by nbouscal »

Volpe wrote: post #54
md224 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll just say this: I hate cooking, and ordering delivery every night, while easy, isn't ideal (cost, etc.). Eating delicious, real food every once in a while is a great treat, but why the hell do I have to put so much energy into this ritual of choosing/preparing/acquiring meals every single day of my life ? Sometimes I just don't want to be hungry, and I don't really care how I get not-hungry. I'm withholding judge…

But that problem you are describing is solved. There are meal replacement shakes on the market already. There is fast food (cheap!) there are hot dog stands...

None of your three solutions are healthy, generally speaking. There are a few meal replacement products that are reasonable, but most of them are full of sugar and don't provide many nutrients, because they expect you to only replace one meal. Fast food and hot dog stands are exactly the kind of food that Soylent is a good replacement for.

Re: Soylent: What Happened When I Stopped Eating For 2 Weeks

#82

Post by columbo »

md224 wrote: post #38
bsbechtel wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That’s not a good reason to not try to innovate. Innovation only really works if you're solving a problem. I don't really see much of a problem with our food/nutrition system as is. Yes, there are parts of the world where people are starving, so maybe there is an application for this there, but if the aim is to test this product out in the Bay Area, I don't really see it going anywhere. I could be wrong, but that's…

I'll just say this: I hate cooking, and ordering delivery every night, while easy, isn't ideal (cost, etc.). Eating delicious, real food every once in a while is a great treat, but why the hell do I have to put so much energy into this ritual of choosing/preparing/acquiring meals every single day of my life ? Sometimes I just don't want to be hungry, and I don't really care how I get not-hungry. I'm withholding judge…

Why wait for soylent?

Bag of flaxmeal, Bananas ,Oats ,Yogurt

Mixed Nuts, Raisins, Power bar

Blend & drink the first four, munch on the nuts & raisins during the day, have the occasional power bar, take a multivitamin and toss in a nice diverse meal once a week to catch anything else and... profit?

Re: Soylent: What Happened When I Stopped Eating For 2 Weeks

#83

Post by nbouscal »

jacques_chester wrote: post #55
mparlane wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of things were invented for "lazy" people so they could save time to do other more important things. Like my electric razor, I have my safety razor too, but it's so much faster to use my electric. A coworker has a beard so he can save 5 minutes in the morning, is it lazy to want time to do other things?

> A lot of things were invented for "lazy" people so they could save time to do other more important things. Those things were invented to avoid displeasure . Most people find eating pleasurable , it's something they actively seek to do. It's like saying "guys, I've invented a way to have children without that boring orgasm nonsense". For some small segment of the population, that is the best news ever . But I don't…

No, it's more like if you were forced to have sex three times a day every single day, and most of those times it was with someone you weren't attracted to. Every time I eat fast food or takeout because I'm either too tired from work to cook or don't have enough time to, I feel terrible, I spend too much money, and I damage my body. If I can replace that experience with something reasonably healthful, affordable, and fast, that's a huge win for me. Yes, home-cooked healthful meals are fantastic, and I enjoy cooking and eating them. But be honest, how many people do you know that eat home-cooked healthful meals for every one of their meals? How about for even half of their meals? Some people have that privilege, but I'm not one of them. Soylent is a fantastic alternative.

Re: Soylent: What Happened When I Stopped Eating For 2 Weeks

#84

Post by marze »

alphaoverlord wrote: post #9

I'm all for people having the freedom to eat whatever they want and I really like the quantified self aspect of seeing how diet affects how they feel and metrics of health, but I have to say the author grossly does not understand the medical tests he had done and misinterprets the data. I'm not going to comment on the drink, but rather on his misunderstanding of medicine. First, EGFR is not "Epidermal Growth Factor R…

Nice job missing the forest but spotting a few trees. I see some promising initial signs given the short duration of the trial.

Imagine if there was a new drug that gave the mental benefits the guy reported after two weeks of use and saved you money too. It would be front page news.

The guy doesn't claim to be a medical expert, he just did his best to report the results of a bunch of miscellaneous tests that were suggested to him.

With a drug for which if you took 40x the daily dose you might die, or a drug that might cause significant harmful side effects at normal dose, you need careful studies to prove a benefit and quantify risks. With a dietary change, the risks are orders of magnitude lower. I'd be surprised if the average American wouldn't improve their nutritional status doing this for a while, with an existing diet likely low in magnesium, copper, zinc, vitamin c and d and probably more.

The need for careful studies is greatly reduced for a food product like this one. People can try it, report how they feel. If other think is worth trying, they can see exactly how it works for them by giving it a try. That is the power of self experimentation.

Re: Soylent: What Happened When I Stopped Eating For 2 Weeks

#85

Post by scarecrowbob »

smacktoward wrote: post #61
jacques_chester wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funnily enough, that's the whole pitch for Soylent. "I'm just a smart guy with a fresh pair of eyes who spent a few weekends reading undergrad textbooks and skimming pubmed". Not: "we're a large company with deeply-interested professionals who've made this their life's work, our own multi-million dollar labs and decades of accumulated experience in the development, testing, validation and manufacture of temporary foo…

But can your computertalk run in the cloud? Please advise.

FWIW this is an analysis of the rhetoric, not the science. As such, I think it's pretty accurate. It's like noting that with Rush Limbaugh advertising you get appeals to what he personally does or enjoys using, whereas on NPR advertising you get vague references to strange sounding companies....

you don't need to know about dietary supplements or supply chain management to understand the rhetorical distinctions.

Re: Soylent: What Happened When I Stopped Eating For 2 Weeks

#86

Post by jlgreco »

jacques_chester wrote: post #51
w1ntermute wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the best parts about this whole Soylent debacle is getting to watch well-known people make complete fools of themselves by commenting on things that they clearly know absolutely nothing about, but still feel like they have the right to make authoritative statements on.

Funnily enough, that's the whole pitch for Soylent. "I'm just a smart guy with a fresh pair of eyes who spent a few weekends reading undergrad textbooks and skimming pubmed". Not: "we're a large company with deeply-interested professionals who've made this their life's work, our own multi-million dollar labs and decades of accumulated experience in the development, testing, validation and manufacture of temporary foo…

This Soylent thing is literally the SV techie equivalent of those "This School Teacher(tm) found one weird trick to [BLANK]... [BLANKERS] hate her!" advertisements that we all like to make fun of.

Why do those ads use "school teachers"? Because it is relatable to the target audience and sufficiently anti-authoritarian that they don't question the credentials.

Re: Soylent: What Happened When I Stopped Eating For 2 Weeks

#87

Post by jlgreco »

md224 wrote: post #38
bsbechtel wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That’s not a good reason to not try to innovate. Innovation only really works if you're solving a problem. I don't really see much of a problem with our food/nutrition system as is. Yes, there are parts of the world where people are starving, so maybe there is an application for this there, but if the aim is to test this product out in the Bay Area, I don't really see it going anywhere. I could be wrong, but that's…

I'll just say this: I hate cooking, and ordering delivery every night, while easy, isn't ideal (cost, etc.). Eating delicious, real food every once in a while is a great treat, but why the hell do I have to put so much energy into this ritual of choosing/preparing/acquiring meals every single day of my life ? Sometimes I just don't want to be hungry, and I don't really care how I get not-hungry. I'm withholding judge…

Buy a crate of MREs.

Re: Soylent: What Happened When I Stopped Eating For 2 Weeks

#88

Post by mynameishere »

malbs wrote: post #35

The guy claim himself to be a "mildly out of shape 28 year old", and then state: "I consider myself a pretty health-conscious person. No alcohol. No meat. Slow-carbs when possible. Run three miles, three times a week. Pull-ups, push-ups on the days I don’t run" which indicates he's more active than 90% of the population (I just made that stat up) I was irritated from that point on-wards.

You stopped too late. The whole post is a farce. Take the title When I Stopped Eating For 2 Weeks. I've actually done this. I mean, stopped eating aside from water for weeks, and it's really no big deal. The body is designed for that kind of privation. He's just some yuppie going for page views without a discernible reason, unless he's marketing for blah-blah-blah health tonic.

Re: Soylent: What Happened When I Stopped Eating For 2 Weeks

#89

Post by hcarvalhoalves »

cup wrote: post #6

Soylent aside, im amazed at how terrible his traditional normal days meal is? I mean hes eating a processed breakfast subsitute in the morning, take away mexican food with a soft drink for lunch and more take away for dinner. You don't need to be a nutritionist to know thats going to have a terrible impact on his life later down the track. Postnote: Now that Ive read the whole article, I wonder if all the benefits he…

> Soylent aside, im amazed at how terrible his traditional normal days meal is?

I wasn't able to take the post too seriously after that since Soylent, as simples as it is, apparently is still better than his previous diet.

Re: Soylent: What Happened When I Stopped Eating For 2 Weeks

#90

Post by applecore »

graeme wrote: post #2

I just posted this to Tim's Blog: --------------------- It seems probable that soylent is better than much of the manufactured food on the market. It also seems unlikely that soylent is better than quality whole food. I take Nassim Taleb's approach. We don’t know what we don’t know about food. I’d like to address two of Shane’s points. I'm listing the objections Shane raises, then his reply: Shane's first point: Obje…

> We have thousands of years of history of humans doing well on whole foods, and zero evidence that the human body can do as well on artificial foods.

We had thousands of years of history of humans doing well on earth, and zero evidence that the human body could survive in space. How do you find out without testing?

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