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Hacker School Soylent

cookingfor20.com

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Re: Hacker School Soylent

#91

Post by zachalexander »

eclipxe wrote: post #23
jack-r-abbit wrote: post #11

This is the first I'm hearing that "soylent" is "an open-source food movement". I thought is was one guy that tried some stuff and now is starting to build a start-up around it. It also seems weird that what is labeled as the flagship “distro” of this so-called open-source movement is not actually open-source. So now I'm confused. Is this just a wording issue I'm confused about? Are we using "open-source" for everyth…

Just 20-somethings with too much time on their hands and no clue trying to be 'food hackers' in the midst of a gigantic bubble. Nothing to see here. Move along.

I'm actually 30 : ) And I actually have zero time on my hands because I'm in school (as stated in the post).

Re: Hacker School Soylent

#92

Post by zachalexander »

adregan wrote: post #18
zhemao wrote: post #12

I really don't understand Soylent. Do people really hate eating so much? Eating is one of the greatest joys of human existence. I understand that people have other things to do, but are you really so busy you can't sit down to enjoy a good meal?

It seems as though the time it takes to engineer Soylent could be used to cook and freeze a bunch of food.

Engineer? Yes. It's been a huge timesink for me personally this past few months. But I find it intrinsically interesting, so I haven't minded.

In the long-run, I think it will save me time, and more importantly, improve the quality of my time. To the extent that I'm trading time spent standing in line at a food truck on lunch break in SOMA for time spent researching nutrition, I think that's a good trade.

Re: Hacker School Soylent

#93

Post by zachalexander »

Slimbo wrote: post #16
zhemao wrote: post #12

I really don't understand Soylent. Do people really hate eating so much? Eating is one of the greatest joys of human existence. I understand that people have other things to do, but are you really so busy you can't sit down to enjoy a good meal?

Meal replacement shakes can be useful when you're trying to control your calories while still getting what you need. Particularly good when per iodising your training, so you might still need measured amounts of protein and carbs but you're trying to lose fat after building muscle. Very easy to measure out 1,500 calories worth of powder a day vs guessing calorific content of food. Having said that, I don't get why th…

Because I would rather (a) make my own soylent or (b) buy some from an open-source distro like Rob's than (c) buy some from a cheesy corporation like whoever makes Ensure.

Re: Hacker School Soylent

#94

Post by zachalexander »

breadbox wrote: post #28
zhemao wrote: post #12

I really don't understand Soylent. Do people really hate eating so much? Eating is one of the greatest joys of human existence. I understand that people have other things to do, but are you really so busy you can't sit down to enjoy a good meal?

This is missing the point so far it's almost a non sequitur. Reading, talking with friends, playing computer games. I enjoy these all at least as much as I enjoy eating. But I still wouldn't want to be required to do any one of them every single day for the rest of my life. It's nice to have options.

This. (OP here.)

I love food. But I hate being forced to partake of it 3x/day.

Re: Hacker School Soylent

#95

Post by zachalexander »

speeder wrote: post #15

I see the guy dismissing the dangers of Soy hormones... Well, beside making chickens get ready to be killed much faster (a farmer I talked claimed that with normal rations his chicken took 4 months to be able to be killed, with soy rations, you could sell them to be killed after 40 days), I DO tested avoiding Soy like the plague, and see if it had any effect, and it had (including I did some testosterone blood testin…

>dismissing the dangers of Soy hormones...

...by citing a scientific review article. Do you have a paper of comparable quality to rebut it with?

Re: Hacker School Soylent

#96

Post by zachalexander »

DanBC wrote: post #53
camdykeman wrote: post #19

This mix is completely devoid of BCAAs. Soy protein has no branch chain amino acids - meaning it completely lacks THE fundamental building blocks used in building all bodily tissue. Look more into different kinds of protein. You might also want to do this for your carbs. Suggesting that brown sugar is a good way to "top up" our carb load is terrible advice - all cane sugars are simple sugars, meaning they jack up you…

> At least Rhinehart’s project is presented as an experiment Wait, what? Have you read the crowd funding page for Rhinehart's project? ( http://www.soylent.me/ ) It's terrible. It claims it's safe, and puts you in optimum health, and etc etc. > Theres an ethical responsibility involved in projects like this that the OP is blatently neglecting. I agree. I think these are terrible ideas.

>>Theres an ethical responsibility ... that the OP is blatently neglecting

Did you not see the "I am not a doctor" disclaimer?

I'm serious. I personally talked about this to my doctor – the same guy who told me a year ago that the best thing I could do to be healthy is eat a varied, vegetable-rich, meat-low, Pollanesque diet – and he thought it was a good idea. And I recommend people do the same thing.

Re: Hacker School Soylent

#97

Post by zachalexander »

camdykeman wrote: post #66
axb wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Soy is a complete protein. It contains all three BCAAs: leucine, isoleucine, and valine.

Yeah, I tried to edit the "completely" out of my phrasing almost immediately but comments had already been left so I couldn't. To clarify, soy is a complete protein. What I meant was that the levels of BCAAs in soy are relatively low - especially when only taking in ~80g of total protein / day as the recipe suggests. This is why many longterm vegetarians/vegans often still have to supplement, dispite a high-soy diet.…

So you said something that was completely wrong, and now you're backtracking in a way that also seems wrong.

Soy protein is 19% BCAAs, not very far from whey (the gold standard in protein quality IMHO) at 22%. And 85 g is significantly higher than nutritional bodies tend to recommend; the IOM recommends 0.8 g protein per kg bodyweight, for example, which works out to less than 85 g for most people.

If you work out, you probably want more than 0.8 g/kg, and probably more even than 85 g. I would actually agree with that, and plan to increase the brotein on the next mix I make. But this one was designed with ordinary people in mind, many of whom will find 85 g quite high.

Re: Hacker School Soylent

#98

Post by zachalexander »

run4yourlives wrote: post #27

I really don't understand this Soylent nonsense: 1. I like food. The smell, experience and taste. Why in god's name would I eat powder to save myself the "hassle" of eating food? That's like promoting adoption as a method of avoiding the "hassle" of having sex. 2. Why the hell would you associate the brand of a product that you believe is healthy with a movie that is about feeding dead people back to us? That's the f…

OP here.

> I like food. The smell, experience and taste.

So do I. I cooked food for a living for two years, and am planning a dinner party this weekend.

> Why in god's name would I eat powder to save myself the "hassle" of eating food? That's like promoting adoption as a method of avoiding the "hassle" of having sex.

That is a poor analogy. A better one is this:

Imagine you were forced by biology to have sex three times a day. Personally I'm a fan of sex, but anything would get old if you were forced to do it 3x/day, every day. ("Really? Now? I have to go to work, I don't have time for this.")

I love food, and soylent lets me enjoy food on my own terms.

Re: Hacker School Soylent

#99

Post by [deleted] »

zachalexander wrote: post #97
camdykeman wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I tried to edit the "completely" out of my phrasing almost immediately but comments had already been left so I couldn't. To clarify, soy is a complete protein. What I meant was that the levels of BCAAs in soy are relatively low - especially when only taking in ~80g of total protein / day as the recipe suggests. This is why many longterm vegetarians/vegans often still have to supplement, dispite a high-soy diet.…

So you said something that was completely wrong, and now you're backtracking in a way that also seems wrong. Soy protein is 19% BCAAs, not very far from whey (the gold standard in protein quality IMHO) at 22%. And 85 g is significantly higher than nutritional bodies tend to recommend; the IOM recommends 0.8 g protein per kg bodyweight, for example, which works out to less than 85 g for most people. If you work out, y…

[deleted]

Re: Hacker School Soylent

#100

Post by jonathanjaeger »

DanBC wrote: post #59
jonathanjaeger wrote: post #37

"...soon I wouldn’t be in Boston to benefit from the group’s joint purchases of 50-pound sacks of maltodextrin." Everybody seems to be harping on the issue that they like eating food, so why replace it. I'd love to have a great on-the-go shake that's better than meal replacement alternatives, however all this emphasis on maltodextrin as the main carb source makes me reconsider ever buying these Soylent, or similar, p…

> I'd love to have a great on-the-go shake that's better than meal replacement alternatives, What are meal replacement alternatives? (Things like Ensure or slimfast? or something else?) What would make Soylent or OSSoylent better than meal replacement alternatives?

Well best case scenario I would go to the trouble to get out a blender and make a shake with ingredients that I think are optimal: oats, banana, natural peanut butter, whey protein, or a number of other ingredients that cover my nutritional needs in "shake" form. If I'm in a hurry I've picked up meal replacements from the store, but most have sugar alcohols, sugar, or other processed ingredients that are fine once but you don't want all your meals like that.
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