Actually it isn't. If you are trying to design something that is supposed to be a total replacement for all other forms of nutrition having some actual expertise in the area of human nutrition and diet is step one.
That is an actual valid criticism and its not a "foodie" thing, its a common sense thing. I am not a foodie anyways.
Soylent and its designer/supporters falls at the first post: Does this guy know what the fuck he talking about? No.
It is a food product in the same standing as any other food product which can be commercially sold (and they do in fact, meet the various guidelines, as well as have several food scientists working for them).
You might as well bitch and moan about any of the myriad of people who will happily offer up their thoughts on dietary advice randomly on the internet, who also do not have such qualifications. You are under no obligation to believe them. But unless you can actually argue specific details or concerns, you're not bringing anything to the conversation - you know, evidence.
So again: actual criticisms of ingredients, methods or results? You have some? No?
It sounds essentially like you want to rant about something else which is offending you about this concept.
No, its seems like you are the one being offended here. You are being very defensive over this.
Soylent is a food product that claims to contain all the dietary needs of the human body.
That is a claim beyond french fries and burgers sold at McDonalds.
Asking if the person that made the claim has any expertise in making this claim isn't being aggressive. Its asking the first obvious question that should come to anyone's mind.
And no, claiming to have consulted professionals is not a valid substitute. We have no idea if they are actual professionals or as you say random guys on the internet.
Kipling217 on
The sky was full of stars, every star an exploding ship. One of ours.
Healthy food you can pick up and eat as quickly as junk food:
Salad in its many and varied forms.
A sandwich that maybe contains some vegetables and isn't covered in melted cheese.
Fruit. So many different fruit.
This is not hard.
When I read your post I thought "like what? Fruit and salad I guess"
When you expand beyond that it gets trickier, stuff that needs preparation.
And the big trap with junkfood is that oftentimes people are choosing what to eat at a time they're already experiencing willpower depletion, so while its easy from a cold rational perspective to say "look! A Healthy meal can be cooked in 20 minutes or less" it doesent always pan out like that.
Also you've got a weirdly condescending tone about this.
I've got a weirdly condescending tone because the phrase 'healthy food is a real time sink' is so ridiculous it deserves nothing but condescension. It's also the only thing I've been talking about. I've expressed no opinions on Soylent.
I will now though! Something that claims to able to replace all other nutrition in your diet is a medical claim and as such needs suitable expert scrutiny to avoid the risk that the people making it are wrong and customer's health is harmed.
The counter arguments about other foods/supplements requiring less scrutiny are invalid as none of those items is making the same extreme claim that you need to eat nothing else at all and will stay healthy.
If it does do as it claims, then sure, I have no problems with the product existing if there's a market for it.
I personally wouldn't touch it with a 10ft barge pole though. Eating is one of the greatest primal pleasures in life. To sacrifice that in the name of time efficiency is something akin to modern existential horror in my mind.
I would switch to Soylent now, if there were not a 4-5 month wait.
What irks me about conversations and articles related to Soylent is how quickly they get off topic by addressing the experience of eating, or social gatherings, or flavor and novelty, or bla bla bla.
Question: If a human being consumes only Soylent, will that human being maintain life functions until such a time as it dies from issues related to something other than nutrition?
Yes.
No.
That's it. Finding objective answers to that question, not surrounded by irrelevant nonsense, has been very difficult. But I suppose it is to be expected, since so many people surround "consuming nutrients" with irrelevant nonsense.
Healthy food you can pick up and eat as quickly as junk food:
Salad in its many and varied forms.
A sandwich that maybe contains some vegetables and isn't covered in melted cheese.
Fruit. So many different fruit.
This is not hard.
When I read your post I thought "like what? Fruit and salad I guess"
When you expand beyond that it gets trickier, stuff that needs preparation.
And the big trap with junkfood is that oftentimes people are choosing what to eat at a time they're already experiencing willpower depletion, so while its easy from a cold rational perspective to say "look! A Healthy meal can be cooked in 20 minutes or less" it doesent always pan out like that.
Also you've got a weirdly condescending tone about this.
I've got a weirdly condescending tone because the phrase 'healthy food is a real time sink' is so ridiculous it deserves nothing but condescension. It's also the only thing I've been talking about. I've expressed no opinions on Soylent.
Im ambivalent about wether soylent is what it claims, the whole "healthy food is so easy I literally cannot conceive that anyone could be so dumb as to find it difficult" thing is what i'm taking issue with.
Like, there are reasons why obesity levels in first world countries are heavily linked to poverty.
Actually it isn't. If you are trying to design something that is supposed to be a total replacement for all other forms of nutrition having some actual expertise in the area of human nutrition and diet is step one.
That is an actual valid criticism and its not a "foodie" thing, its a common sense thing. I am not a foodie anyways.
Soylent and its designer/supporters falls at the first post: Does this guy know what the fuck he talking about? No.
It is a food product in the same standing as any other food product which can be commercially sold (and they do in fact, meet the various guidelines, as well as have several food scientists working for them).
You might as well bitch and moan about any of the myriad of people who will happily offer up their thoughts on dietary advice randomly on the internet, who also do not have such qualifications. You are under no obligation to believe them. But unless you can actually argue specific details or concerns, you're not bringing anything to the conversation - you know, evidence.
So again: actual criticisms of ingredients, methods or results? You have some? No?
It sounds essentially like you want to rant about something else which is offending you about this concept.
No, its seems like you are the one being offended here. You are being very defensive over this.
Soylent is a food product that claims to contain all the dietary needs of the human body.
That is a claim beyond french fries and burgers sold at McDonalds.
Asking if the person that made the claim has any expertise in making this claim isn't being aggressive. Its asking the first obvious question that should come to anyone's mind.
And no, claiming to have consulted professionals is not a valid substitute. We have no idea if they are actual professionals or as you say random guys on the internet.
Thus continuing your insistence on not producing concrete criticisms.
Because most of the criticism of soylent seems to come from non-protected term -isionists and people on the internet like you.
Academia, doctors etc. have all expressed caution of the "it's a difficult, but not scientifically impossible" challenge variety.
See, whether or not the guy has the qualifications is actually completely irrelevant if you're not hiring him and he can produce evidence. Which, he can. He and the product team are not dead. Of course they might be lying. But then again so might actual scientists sometimes.
The question of whether the product works, like every other diet in the history of mankind, is whether people remain healthy while consuming it. Since they're not actually synthesizing novel compounds, merely combining readily available foodstuffs, we hardly arrive at an unanswerable question because they're also not trying something weird. This isn't the all-meat diet experiment, which actually was highly experimental.
Might it not work? Sure. But there's no obvious reason that nutritional science can point to that it can't beyond the issue that nutritional science itself is a pretty fluid field. They're hardly cagey about what they're doing though.
I'm actually concerned it contains no cholesterol, though. It's not totally uncommon for your body to overproduce its own cholesterol if you're not consuming any at all.
I made a game! Hotline Maui. Requires mouse and keyboard.
I would switch to Soylent now, if there were not a 4-5 month wait.
So many people surround "consuming nutrients" with irrelevant nonsense.
Pleasure is not 'irrelevant nonsense'.
Also lol I knew you would be all in for this stuff.
It is not 'irrelevant nonsense' within the larger context of life. It is irrelevant when the question is, "Will this thing keep me alive until I die from something not related to nutritional intake?"
Player-A: Will eating only this thing kill me?
Nutritionist: I can't imagine not eating chocolate!
soylent is energy dense and doesn't expire easily, so I can see the benefit
I doubt it will go anywhere though
no matter what they do it'll be way more expensive than rice and grain
Though also more nutritious.
I definitely wouldn't replace all of my meals with this but it would probably be pretty convenient for lunch when I'm usually at my desk anyway and not really enjoying my food.
Also, Kipling
Real diet Shakes cost $200 a month because they are made by people that know what the fuck they are doing.
This is simply unsupported. Meal replacements aren't regulated by the FDA. They all make various unsupported claims and cost as much as they do because marketing. Not because someone worked really hard to make a diet shake.
Healthy food you can pick up and eat as quickly as junk food:
Salad in its many and varied forms.
A sandwich that maybe contains some vegetables and isn't covered in melted cheese.
Fruit. So many different fruit.
This is not hard.
When I read your post I thought "like what? Fruit and salad I guess"
When you expand beyond that it gets trickier, stuff that needs preparation.
And the big trap with junkfood is that oftentimes people are choosing what to eat at a time they're already experiencing willpower depletion, so while its easy from a cold rational perspective to say "look! A Healthy meal can be cooked in 20 minutes or less" it doesent always pan out like that.
Also you've got a weirdly condescending tone about this.
I've got a weirdly condescending tone because the phrase 'healthy food is a real time sink' is so ridiculous it deserves nothing but condescension. It's also the only thing I've been talking about. I've expressed no opinions on Soylent.
Im ambivalent about wether soylent is what it claims, the whole "healthy food is so easy I literally cannot conceive that anyone could be so dumb as to find it difficult" thing is what i'm taking issue with.
Like, there are reasons why obesity levels in first world countries are heavily linked to poverty.
Indeed. I suspect mainly to do with education.
Junk food is arguably tastier than healthy food.
Junk food is aggressively marketed in comparison to healthy food.
Junk food can be cheaper than equivalently convenient healthy food.
Junk food is pretty much chemically addictive once regularly incorparated into your life style.
But I maintain junk food is not significantly more time efficient than healthier alternatives. This is the one claim I have been arguing against.
I'm actually concerned it contains no cholesterol, though. It's not totally uncommon for your body to overproduce its own cholesterol if you're not consuming any at all.
Right. That is a relevant question that deserves an answer.
A problem I find is the larger issue of supplements. Is there actually a difference between a supplement and a "whole food"? And what, exactly, is a phytochemical?
Usually when I start googling these questions I get frustrated because, apparently, we, as a species, ultimately have no idea how food works.
Because it's exactly the kind of thing that would appear on Hacker News I first read about Soylent when it was in it's early stages. The things the creator said about it were ludicrous that made him seem like a bufoon. I can't find it in the internet archive but there was the ridiculous statements about how he was defying nature by consuming lots of calories yet losing weight on Soylent - it turned out that he was consuming only 1600 calories a day.
I'm actually concerned it contains no cholesterol, though. It's not totally uncommon for your body to overproduce its own cholesterol if you're not consuming any at all.
Right. That is a relevant question that deserves an answer.
A problem I find is the larger issue of supplements. Is there actually a difference between a supplement and a "whole food"? And what, exactly, is a phytochemical?
Usually when I start googling these questions I get frustrated because, apparently, we, as a species, ultimately have no idea how food works.
You're on the money that nutrition is interesting and something that bizarrely we don't understand. I just don't think that this product has any bearing on that as it's just one guy throwing together some bits and pieces based on dubious understanding (as he seems to admit in that blog post).
It would be nice if there was some science in this area, however, this is not going to be it.
Homogeneous distribution of your varieties of amuse-gueule
I'm actually concerned it contains no cholesterol, though. It's not totally uncommon for your body to overproduce its own cholesterol if you're not consuming any at all.
Right. That is a relevant question that deserves an answer.
A problem I find is the larger issue of supplements. Is there actually a difference between a supplement and a "whole food"? And what, exactly, is a phytochemical?
Usually when I start googling these questions I get frustrated because, apparently, we, as a species, ultimately have no idea how food works.
You're on the money that nutrition is interesting and something that bizarrely we don't understand. I just don't think that this product has any bearing on that as it's just one guy throwing together some bits and pieces based on dubious understanding (as he seems to admit in that blog post).
It would be nice if there was some science in this area, however, this is not going to be it.
I agree with this much.
That said it definitely doesn't appear to be any worse than what's currently available on the market and might even be better. If they ever get their ordering issues sorted I'd probably give it a try to replace the occasional meal.
I'm actually concerned it contains no cholesterol, though. It's not totally uncommon for your body to overproduce its own cholesterol if you're not consuming any at all.
Right. That is a relevant question that deserves an answer.
A problem I find is the larger issue of supplements. Is there actually a difference between a supplement and a "whole food"? And what, exactly, is a phytochemical?
Usually when I start googling these questions I get frustrated because, apparently, we, as a species, ultimately have no idea how food works.
You're on the money that nutrition is interesting and something that bizarrely we don't understand. I just don't think that this product has any bearing on that as it's just one guy throwing together some bits and pieces based on dubious understanding (as he seems to admit in that blog post).
It would be nice if there was some science in this area, however, this is not going to be it.
Yeah.
From what I can tell, obtaining a degree in nutrition means only that you are allowed to shrug with slightly more authority than other people, when asked how food works.
I'm actually concerned it contains no cholesterol, though. It's not totally uncommon for your body to overproduce its own cholesterol if you're not consuming any at all.
Right. That is a relevant question that deserves an answer.
A problem I find is the larger issue of supplements. Is there actually a difference between a supplement and a "whole food"? And what, exactly, is a phytochemical?
Usually when I start googling these questions I get frustrated because, apparently, we, as a species, ultimately have no idea how food works.
There's no meaningful difference between getting a chemical out of a supplement or from a fruit or vegetable. The human body is a little less efficient at extracting chemicals from supplements, but it's all the same once it's in your body. Phytochemicals are just the chemicals in fruits and vegetables that contain vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, whatever.
Nutrition is kind of super simple. Eat the enzyme inputs you can't manufacture internally, eat certain vitamins and minerals that tend to be color-coded naturally by fruits and vegetables. If you eat rice, beans, and 3-4 differently colored fruits or vegetables per day then you are probably meeting your body's needs.
kedinik on
I made a game! Hotline Maui. Requires mouse and keyboard.
I'm actually concerned it contains no cholesterol, though. It's not totally uncommon for your body to overproduce its own cholesterol if you're not consuming any at all.
Right. That is a relevant question that deserves an answer.
A problem I find is the larger issue of supplements. Is there actually a difference between a supplement and a "whole food"? And what, exactly, is a phytochemical?
Usually when I start googling these questions I get frustrated because, apparently, we, as a species, ultimately have no idea how food works.
There's no meaningful difference between getting a chemical out of a supplement or from a fruit or vegetable. The human body is a little less efficient at extracting chemicals from supplements, but it's all the same once it's in your body. Phytochemicals are just the chemicals in fruits and vegetables that contain vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, whatever.
Nutrition is kind of super simple. If you eat rice, beans, and 3-4 differently colored fruits or vegetables per day then you are probably meeting your body's needs.
I'm actually concerned it contains no cholesterol, though. It's not totally uncommon for your body to overproduce its own cholesterol if you're not consuming any at all.
Right. That is a relevant question that deserves an answer.
A problem I find is the larger issue of supplements. Is there actually a difference between a supplement and a "whole food"? And what, exactly, is a phytochemical?
Usually when I start googling these questions I get frustrated because, apparently, we, as a species, ultimately have no idea how food works.
There's no meaningful difference between getting a chemical out of a supplement or from a fruit or vegetable. The human body is a little less efficient at extracting chemicals from supplements, but it's all the same once it's in your body. Phytochemicals are just the chemicals in fruits and vegetables that contain vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, whatever.
Nutrition is kind of super simple. If you eat rice, beans, and 3-4 differently colored fruits or vegetables per day then you are probably meeting your body's needs.
That 'probably' is the troubling part.
The 'probably' is, well ok, maybe you need more than rice and beans with a few random plants on the side because you have some kind of wasting disease or rare genetic abnormality.
kedinik on
I made a game! Hotline Maui. Requires mouse and keyboard.
In a related topic of synthetic foodstuffs, everyone should find out about MuuFri.
It's bio-engineered milk.
And it's awesome: literally the genes from cows which produce milk, spliced into yeast and grown up in fermentation chambers, resulting in something which is chemically milk but never involves cows at all (and is also sterile and lactose-free as a basic property of its production).
The second you buy it commercially I am 100% switching to it. To hell with the dairy industry.
In a related topic of synthetic foodstuffs, everyone should find out about MuuFri.
It's bio-engineered milk.
And it's awesome: literally the genes from cows which produce milk, spliced into yeast and grown up in fermentation chambers, resulting in something which is chemically milk but never involves cows at all (and is also sterile and lactose-free as a basic property of its production).
The second you buy it commercially I am 100% switching to it. To hell with the dairy industry.
Now this is future food addressing a real efficiency problem!
I wonder how similar the end product will be? Much as they can say they have the essential six proteins and eight fatty acids to make up milk, in nature nothing is ever that simple and trace amounts of the many other things that will be in real milk could have a big impact on flavour or the chemical properties relevant to cooking.
So OK, first of all I'll get the subjective part out of the way:
-People considering eating a hassle and a waste of time is fucking horrible for me in general. And it's bad enough for society to be at the point where eating is considered a waste of perfectly good time you could spend producing for your corporate overlords, but it's even worse that people are apparently willing to pay a reasonable price for their own dystopia, it's like straight out a Futurama episode.
Now come more specific concerns:
-What does this thing have in it? Can't find anything on the webpage except it seems to have oils and contain GM organisms. I suspect, in accordance to my "follow the nitrogen" approach to any miracle diet, that they are using transgenic soja beans with some added supplements. Maybe it's harmless enough, but before I completely substitute my diet for a slurry that some guy sold me over the internet I would REALLY like to know how exactly it's done. For all we now it's actually made of people.
-Now, if you people want to feed on Soylent and survive then more power to you but the claim that this could help world hunger in any way is absolutely hilarious. A product developed by a private party that contains several ingredients that must be imported and that costs 3 dollars a meal (which is nuts, BTW) is as far from a solution to anything as anyone can get.
-Last but not least, and a word of caution. Malnourishment symptoms take a lot of time to appear. Some people are in a vegetarian diet for years until suddenly they fall sick because they were lacking something key. If you guys want to try it and have it at lunchtime fine, but I don't recommend trying to survive on it for any long period of time. My biggest fear is that sooner or later this will result in some crazies trying to raise their kid on Soylent and it will go horribly wrong.
Actually it isn't. If you are trying to design something that is supposed to be a total replacement for all other forms of nutrition having some actual expertise in the area of human nutrition and diet is step one.
That is an actual valid criticism and its not a "foodie" thing, its a common sense thing. I am not a foodie anyways.
Soylent and its designer/supporters falls at the first post: Does this guy know what the fuck he talking about? No.
It is a food product in the same standing as any other food product which can be commercially sold (and they do in fact, meet the various guidelines, as well as have several food scientists working for them).
You might as well bitch and moan about any of the myriad of people who will happily offer up their thoughts on dietary advice randomly on the internet, who also do not have such qualifications. You are under no obligation to believe them. But unless you can actually argue specific details or concerns, you're not bringing anything to the conversation - you know, evidence.
So again: actual criticisms of ingredients, methods or results? You have some? No?
It sounds essentially like you want to rant about something else which is offending you about this concept.
No, its seems like you are the one being offended here. You are being very defensive over this.
Soylent is a food product that claims to contain all the dietary needs of the human body.
That is a claim beyond french fries and burgers sold at McDonalds.
Asking if the person that made the claim has any expertise in making this claim isn't being aggressive. Its asking the first obvious question that should come to anyone's mind.
And no, claiming to have consulted professionals is not a valid substitute. We have no idea if they are actual professionals or as you say random guys on the internet.
Thus continuing your insistence on not producing concrete criticisms.
Because most of the criticism of soylent seems to come from non-protected term -isionists and people on the internet like you.
Academia, doctors etc. have all expressed caution of the "it's a difficult, but not scientifically impossible" challenge variety.
See, whether or not the guy has the qualifications is actually completely irrelevant if you're not hiring him and he can produce evidence. Which, he can. He and the product team are not dead. Of course they might be lying. But then again so might actual scientists sometimes.
The question of whether the product works, like every other diet in the history of mankind, is whether people remain healthy while consuming it. Since they're not actually synthesizing novel compounds, merely combining readily available foodstuffs, we hardly arrive at an unanswerable question because they're also not trying something weird. This isn't the all-meat diet experiment, which actually was highly experimental.
Might it not work? Sure. But there's no obvious reason that nutritional science can point to that it can't beyond the issue that nutritional science itself is a pretty fluid field. They're hardly cagey about what they're doing though.
Wow, you are being passive aggressive about this. Are you on soylent or something? Have we suddenly started criticizing your dinner?
I am pointing out that for a guy making a medical claim, he has no relevant expertise in making such a claim. He claims that Soylent is healthy and nutritious.
Pointing out that the person claiming a certain claim has no standing to make said claim is the very the most basic concrete criticism of soylent you can make.
In the same way that pointing out that some random stranger giving you medical advice on the internet is not a doctor. There are professionals and there are amateurs.
And the fact that he hasn't died yet isn't a positive claim. You can eat only happy meals without dying immediately too. You can even smoke 40 a day for 20 years without dying if you want. Neither action would be considered healthy by a real professional. Which the creator of Soylent isn't. Which renders his claims less then credible.
Kipling217 on
The sky was full of stars, every star an exploding ship. One of ours.
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Mojo_JojoWe are only now beginning to understand the full power and ramifications of sexual intercourseRegistered Userregular
In a related topic of synthetic foodstuffs, everyone should find out about MuuFri.
It's bio-engineered milk.
And it's awesome: literally the genes from cows which produce milk, spliced into yeast and grown up in fermentation chambers, resulting in something which is chemically milk but never involves cows at all (and is also sterile and lactose-free as a basic property of its production).
The second you buy it commercially I am 100% switching to it. To hell with the dairy industry.
See now that is bitching.
I can blag through their three questions on their current job ad, but I just don't have the biochem chops for it really I might send them an email anyway. I've done medical emulsion stuff.
Homogeneous distribution of your varieties of amuse-gueule
Beans and rice would be lacking in quite a few nutrients and vitamins this purportedly has.
Also there's very little that's easier than pouring something in to a glass.
Yeah I mean, it's certainly a thing.
I don't know, I'm sure it'll be about Segway successful. It will fail to change the world even though it seems futuristic and isn't intrinsically flawed in any major way, just too dorky to catch on.
TraceGNU Terry Pratchett; GNU Gus; GNU Carrie Fisher; GNU Adam WeRegistered Userregular
Look I'm just going to assume the guy making Soylent isn't a hack and isn't trying to rip anyone off and actually wants to make a beverage that can satisfy all of your nutritional needs cheaply and with less actual energy expanded making it than bringing those nutrients from the plant/animal all the way to your mouth.
Beans and rice would be lacking in quite a few nutrients and vitamins this purportedly has.
Also there's very little that's easier than pouring something in to a glass.
Yeah I mean, it's certainly a thing.
I don't know, I'm sure it'll be about Segway successful. It will fail to change the world even though it seems futuristic and isn't intrinsically flawed in any major way, just too dorky to catch on.
I imagine it'll be approximately as successful as any other diet shake.
Definitely not replacing entire diets for anyone but those who absolutely dislike eating.
Look I'm just going to assume the guy making Soylent isn't a hack and isn't trying to rip anyone off and actually wants to make a beverage that can satisfy all of your nutritional needs cheaply and with less actual energy expanded making it than bringing those nutrients from the plant/animal all the way to your mouth.
What is the actual problem there?
(1) Good intentions are no indication of competence.
(2) When you stand to make money from a claim that claim should always be taken warily.
A request for independent verification of this kind of claim isn't any kind of accusation of wrong doing. It's simple due diligence.
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TraceGNU Terry Pratchett; GNU Gus; GNU Carrie Fisher; GNU Adam WeRegistered Userregular
Look I'm just going to assume the guy making Soylent isn't a hack and isn't trying to rip anyone off and actually wants to make a beverage that can satisfy all of your nutritional needs cheaply and with less actual energy expanded making it than bringing those nutrients from the plant/animal all the way to your mouth.
What is the actual problem there?
(1) Good intentions are no indication of competence.
(2) When you stand to make money from a claim that claim should always be taken warily.
A request for independent verification of this kind of claim isn't any kind of accusation of wrong doing. It's simple due diligence.
1.) Good intentions aren't any indication of incompetence either.
2.) I haven't given him any money, I don't know if you have.
So lets say the due diligence is done and everything checks out.
Look I'm just going to assume the guy making Soylent isn't a hack and isn't trying to rip anyone off and actually wants to make a beverage that can satisfy all of your nutritional needs cheaply and with less actual energy expanded making it than bringing those nutrients from the plant/animal all the way to your mouth.
What is the actual problem there?
Less actual energy expended by YOU. Just so we make it clear. It's the same as buying cooked food, only cheaper (maybe?).
And of course you can assume the guy is not a hack and not trying to rip anyone off, same thing as with the guy selling you homeopathic medicine that uses exactly the same technique: "pah, professionals don't know shit, I made this in my garage and it's much more effective and I proved it works because my friend here took it for a week and worked for him".
I'm just leery of people selling miracle products. NASA and the military would have already been using a product like that if it boiled down to mashing together soja beans and fish oil. They actually did and it exists today in the form of energy bars and space food sticks.
Someone who invents something like this that can sustain a human being indefinitely gets rich instead of selling the product shoddily over the internet.
Australopitenico on
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TraceGNU Terry Pratchett; GNU Gus; GNU Carrie Fisher; GNU Adam WeRegistered Userregular
Look I'm just going to assume the guy making Soylent isn't a hack and isn't trying to rip anyone off and actually wants to make a beverage that can satisfy all of your nutritional needs cheaply and with less actual energy expanded making it than bringing those nutrients from the plant/animal all the way to your mouth.
What is the actual problem there?
Less actual energy expended by YOU. Just so we make it clear. It's the same as buying cooked food, only cheaper (maybe?).
And of course you can assume the guy is not a hack and not trying to rip anyone off, same thing as with the guy selling you homeopathic medicine that uses exactly the same technique: "pah, professionals don't know shit, I made this in my garage and it's much more effective and I proved it works because my friend here took it for a week and worked for him".
I'm just leery of people selling miracle products. NASA and the military would have already been using a product like that if it boiled down to mashing together soja beans and fish oil. They actually did and it exists today in the form of energy bars and space food sticks.
Someone who invents something like this that can sustain a human being indefinitely gets rich instead of selling the product shoddily over the internet.
So he -can't- be altruistic because...
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TraceGNU Terry Pratchett; GNU Gus; GNU Carrie Fisher; GNU Adam WeRegistered Userregular
He also wanted his customers to be able to ‘hack’ Soylent—to add fruits, vitamins, nootropic drugs, alcohol, or whatever they wanted. Sure enough, a robust DIY community has sprung up around Soylent; they frequent the subReddit r/Soylent and the Soylent Discourse site that Rob set up, where they share pointers and recipes. Soylent is essentially a diet inspired by an open-source operating system.
I also feel like that passage got passed over quite readily by some of you.
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ZampanovYou May Not Go HomeUntil Tonight Has Been MagicalRegistered Userregular
I would probably replace like 70-90% of my breakfasts and lunches with soylent if I were sure it was doing what it claimed to do
Because right now if I even eat breakfast, I eat cereal, which probably has too much sugar. And for lunch, I always plan to put something together the night before but either I can't decide what to do when I'm at the grocery store or straight forget to do it the night before and this results in almost every lunch being macdonalds.
I would absolutely not replace every meal because I do love to eat real food. I would want to use it to replace meals I typically make poor decisions about. So basically every time I'm like 'fuck it I'll get fast food' I just drink a quick shake thing that has a bunch of vitamins and amino acids etc etc? Why the fuck would I not do that if it worked like it's supposed to?
Look I'm just going to assume the guy making Soylent isn't a hack and isn't trying to rip anyone off and actually wants to make a beverage that can satisfy all of your nutritional needs cheaply and with less actual energy expanded making it than bringing those nutrients from the plant/animal all the way to your mouth.
What is the actual problem there?
Less actual energy expended by YOU. Just so we make it clear. It's the same as buying cooked food, only cheaper (maybe?).
And of course you can assume the guy is not a hack and not trying to rip anyone off, same thing as with the guy selling you homeopathic medicine that uses exactly the same technique: "pah, professionals don't know shit, I made this in my garage and it's much more effective and I proved it works because my friend here took it for a week and worked for him".
I'm just leery of people selling miracle products. NASA and the military would have already been using a product like that if it boiled down to mashing together soja beans and fish oil. They actually did and it exists today in the form of energy bars and space food sticks.
Someone who invents something like this that can sustain a human being indefinitely gets rich instead of selling the product shoddily over the internet.
So he -can't- be altruistic because...
If he is altruistic why is he selling it to you and not disclosing how it's done?
Altruistic people with a product that works give it away.
Non-altruistic people with a product that works get rich.
Snake oil salesmen rely on anecdotal evidence and unsupported claims to sell a product over the internet in small quantities.
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ZampanovYou May Not Go HomeUntil Tonight Has Been MagicalRegistered Userregular
Look I'm just going to assume the guy making Soylent isn't a hack and isn't trying to rip anyone off and actually wants to make a beverage that can satisfy all of your nutritional needs cheaply and with less actual energy expanded making it than bringing those nutrients from the plant/animal all the way to your mouth.
What is the actual problem there?
Less actual energy expended by YOU. Just so we make it clear. It's the same as buying cooked food, only cheaper (maybe?).
And of course you can assume the guy is not a hack and not trying to rip anyone off, same thing as with the guy selling you homeopathic medicine that uses exactly the same technique: "pah, professionals don't know shit, I made this in my garage and it's much more effective and I proved it works because my friend here took it for a week and worked for him".
I'm just leery of people selling miracle products. NASA and the military would have already been using a product like that if it boiled down to mashing together soja beans and fish oil. They actually did and it exists today in the form of energy bars and space food sticks.
Someone who invents something like this that can sustain a human being indefinitely gets rich instead of selling the product shoddily over the internet.
So he -can't- be altruistic because...
If he is altruistic why is he selling it to you and not disclosing how it's done?
Altruistic people with a product that works give it away.
Non-altruistic people with a product that works get rich.
Snake oil salesmen rely on anecdotal evidence and unsupported claims to sell a product over the internet in small quantities.
I thought they put the recipe out as open source
like a bunch of people are ordering their own ingredients and making their own versions
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which is the same claim as everything on the store shelf makes
We don't know if it's true, I don't have any evidence one way or the other
No, its seems like you are the one being offended here. You are being very defensive over this.
Soylent is a food product that claims to contain all the dietary needs of the human body.
That is a claim beyond french fries and burgers sold at McDonalds.
Asking if the person that made the claim has any expertise in making this claim isn't being aggressive. Its asking the first obvious question that should come to anyone's mind.
And no, claiming to have consulted professionals is not a valid substitute. We have no idea if they are actual professionals or as you say random guys on the internet.
I've got a weirdly condescending tone because the phrase 'healthy food is a real time sink' is so ridiculous it deserves nothing but condescension. It's also the only thing I've been talking about. I've expressed no opinions on Soylent.
I will now though! Something that claims to able to replace all other nutrition in your diet is a medical claim and as such needs suitable expert scrutiny to avoid the risk that the people making it are wrong and customer's health is harmed.
The counter arguments about other foods/supplements requiring less scrutiny are invalid as none of those items is making the same extreme claim that you need to eat nothing else at all and will stay healthy.
If it does do as it claims, then sure, I have no problems with the product existing if there's a market for it.
I personally wouldn't touch it with a 10ft barge pole though. Eating is one of the greatest primal pleasures in life. To sacrifice that in the name of time efficiency is something akin to modern existential horror in my mind.
What irks me about conversations and articles related to Soylent is how quickly they get off topic by addressing the experience of eating, or social gatherings, or flavor and novelty, or bla bla bla.
Question: If a human being consumes only Soylent, will that human being maintain life functions until such a time as it dies from issues related to something other than nutrition?
That's it. Finding objective answers to that question, not surrounded by irrelevant nonsense, has been very difficult. But I suppose it is to be expected, since so many people surround "consuming nutrients" with irrelevant nonsense.
Im ambivalent about wether soylent is what it claims, the whole "healthy food is so easy I literally cannot conceive that anyone could be so dumb as to find it difficult" thing is what i'm taking issue with.
Like, there are reasons why obesity levels in first world countries are heavily linked to poverty.
Thus continuing your insistence on not producing concrete criticisms.
Because most of the criticism of soylent seems to come from non-protected term -isionists and people on the internet like you.
Academia, doctors etc. have all expressed caution of the "it's a difficult, but not scientifically impossible" challenge variety.
See, whether or not the guy has the qualifications is actually completely irrelevant if you're not hiring him and he can produce evidence. Which, he can. He and the product team are not dead. Of course they might be lying. But then again so might actual scientists sometimes.
The question of whether the product works, like every other diet in the history of mankind, is whether people remain healthy while consuming it. Since they're not actually synthesizing novel compounds, merely combining readily available foodstuffs, we hardly arrive at an unanswerable question because they're also not trying something weird. This isn't the all-meat diet experiment, which actually was highly experimental.
Might it not work? Sure. But there's no obvious reason that nutritional science can point to that it can't beyond the issue that nutritional science itself is a pretty fluid field. They're hardly cagey about what they're doing though.
Pleasure is not 'irrelevant nonsense'.
Also lol I knew you would be all in for this stuff.
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I'm actually concerned it contains no cholesterol, though. It's not totally uncommon for your body to overproduce its own cholesterol if you're not consuming any at all.
It is not 'irrelevant nonsense' within the larger context of life. It is irrelevant when the question is, "Will this thing keep me alive until I die from something not related to nutritional intake?"
Player-A: Will eating only this thing kill me?
Nutritionist: I can't imagine not eating chocolate!
Player-A: That...that is not a helpful answer.
Though also more nutritious.
I definitely wouldn't replace all of my meals with this but it would probably be pretty convenient for lunch when I'm usually at my desk anyway and not really enjoying my food.
Also, Kipling
This is simply unsupported. Meal replacements aren't regulated by the FDA. They all make various unsupported claims and cost as much as they do because marketing. Not because someone worked really hard to make a diet shake.
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Indeed. I suspect mainly to do with education.
Junk food is arguably tastier than healthy food.
Junk food is aggressively marketed in comparison to healthy food.
Junk food can be cheaper than equivalently convenient healthy food.
Junk food is pretty much chemically addictive once regularly incorparated into your life style.
But I maintain junk food is not significantly more time efficient than healthier alternatives. This is the one claim I have been arguing against.
Right. That is a relevant question that deserves an answer.
A problem I find is the larger issue of supplements. Is there actually a difference between a supplement and a "whole food"? And what, exactly, is a phytochemical?
Usually when I start googling these questions I get frustrated because, apparently, we, as a species, ultimately have no idea how food works.
I made a game, it has penguins in it. It's pay what you like on Gumroad.
Currently Ebaying Nothing at all but I might do in the future.
You're on the money that nutrition is interesting and something that bizarrely we don't understand. I just don't think that this product has any bearing on that as it's just one guy throwing together some bits and pieces based on dubious understanding (as he seems to admit in that blog post).
It would be nice if there was some science in this area, however, this is not going to be it.
I agree with this much.
That said it definitely doesn't appear to be any worse than what's currently available on the market and might even be better. If they ever get their ordering issues sorted I'd probably give it a try to replace the occasional meal.
Yeah.
From what I can tell, obtaining a degree in nutrition means only that you are allowed to shrug with slightly more authority than other people, when asked how food works.
There's no meaningful difference between getting a chemical out of a supplement or from a fruit or vegetable. The human body is a little less efficient at extracting chemicals from supplements, but it's all the same once it's in your body. Phytochemicals are just the chemicals in fruits and vegetables that contain vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, whatever.
Nutrition is kind of super simple. Eat the enzyme inputs you can't manufacture internally, eat certain vitamins and minerals that tend to be color-coded naturally by fruits and vegetables. If you eat rice, beans, and 3-4 differently colored fruits or vegetables per day then you are probably meeting your body's needs.
That 'probably' is the troubling part.
The 'probably' is, well ok, maybe you need more than rice and beans with a few random plants on the side because you have some kind of wasting disease or rare genetic abnormality.
It's bio-engineered milk.
And it's awesome: literally the genes from cows which produce milk, spliced into yeast and grown up in fermentation chambers, resulting in something which is chemically milk but never involves cows at all (and is also sterile and lactose-free as a basic property of its production).
The second you buy it commercially I am 100% switching to it. To hell with the dairy industry.
Now this is future food addressing a real efficiency problem!
I wonder how similar the end product will be? Much as they can say they have the essential six proteins and eight fatty acids to make up milk, in nature nothing is ever that simple and trace amounts of the many other things that will be in real milk could have a big impact on flavour or the chemical properties relevant to cooking.
Also anti-GM nuts to go ballistic but screw them.
-People considering eating a hassle and a waste of time is fucking horrible for me in general. And it's bad enough for society to be at the point where eating is considered a waste of perfectly good time you could spend producing for your corporate overlords, but it's even worse that people are apparently willing to pay a reasonable price for their own dystopia, it's like straight out a Futurama episode.
Now come more specific concerns:
-What does this thing have in it? Can't find anything on the webpage except it seems to have oils and contain GM organisms. I suspect, in accordance to my "follow the nitrogen" approach to any miracle diet, that they are using transgenic soja beans with some added supplements. Maybe it's harmless enough, but before I completely substitute my diet for a slurry that some guy sold me over the internet I would REALLY like to know how exactly it's done. For all we now it's actually made of people.
-Now, if you people want to feed on Soylent and survive then more power to you but the claim that this could help world hunger in any way is absolutely hilarious. A product developed by a private party that contains several ingredients that must be imported and that costs 3 dollars a meal (which is nuts, BTW) is as far from a solution to anything as anyone can get.
-Last but not least, and a word of caution. Malnourishment symptoms take a lot of time to appear. Some people are in a vegetarian diet for years until suddenly they fall sick because they were lacking something key. If you guys want to try it and have it at lunchtime fine, but I don't recommend trying to survive on it for any long period of time. My biggest fear is that sooner or later this will result in some crazies trying to raise their kid on Soylent and it will go horribly wrong.
Also there's very little that's easier than pouring something in to a glass.
Wow, you are being passive aggressive about this. Are you on soylent or something? Have we suddenly started criticizing your dinner?
I am pointing out that for a guy making a medical claim, he has no relevant expertise in making such a claim. He claims that Soylent is healthy and nutritious.
Pointing out that the person claiming a certain claim has no standing to make said claim is the very the most basic concrete criticism of soylent you can make.
In the same way that pointing out that some random stranger giving you medical advice on the internet is not a doctor. There are professionals and there are amateurs.
And the fact that he hasn't died yet isn't a positive claim. You can eat only happy meals without dying immediately too. You can even smoke 40 a day for 20 years without dying if you want. Neither action would be considered healthy by a real professional. Which the creator of Soylent isn't. Which renders his claims less then credible.
See now that is bitching.
I can blag through their three questions on their current job ad, but I just don't have the biochem chops for it really
Yeah I mean, it's certainly a thing.
I don't know, I'm sure it'll be about Segway successful. It will fail to change the world even though it seems futuristic and isn't intrinsically flawed in any major way, just too dorky to catch on.
What is the actual problem there?
I imagine it'll be approximately as successful as any other diet shake.
Definitely not replacing entire diets for anyone but those who absolutely dislike eating.
(1) Good intentions are no indication of competence.
(2) When you stand to make money from a claim that claim should always be taken warily.
A request for independent verification of this kind of claim isn't any kind of accusation of wrong doing. It's simple due diligence.
1.) Good intentions aren't any indication of incompetence either.
2.) I haven't given him any money, I don't know if you have.
So lets say the due diligence is done and everything checks out.
What's the problem?
Less actual energy expended by YOU. Just so we make it clear. It's the same as buying cooked food, only cheaper (maybe?).
And of course you can assume the guy is not a hack and not trying to rip anyone off, same thing as with the guy selling you homeopathic medicine that uses exactly the same technique: "pah, professionals don't know shit, I made this in my garage and it's much more effective and I proved it works because my friend here took it for a week and worked for him".
I'm just leery of people selling miracle products. NASA and the military would have already been using a product like that if it boiled down to mashing together soja beans and fish oil. They actually did and it exists today in the form of energy bars and space food sticks.
Someone who invents something like this that can sustain a human being indefinitely gets rich instead of selling the product shoddily over the internet.
So he -can't- be altruistic because...
I also feel like that passage got passed over quite readily by some of you.
Because right now if I even eat breakfast, I eat cereal, which probably has too much sugar. And for lunch, I always plan to put something together the night before but either I can't decide what to do when I'm at the grocery store or straight forget to do it the night before and this results in almost every lunch being macdonalds.
I would absolutely not replace every meal because I do love to eat real food. I would want to use it to replace meals I typically make poor decisions about. So basically every time I'm like 'fuck it I'll get fast food' I just drink a quick shake thing that has a bunch of vitamins and amino acids etc etc? Why the fuck would I not do that if it worked like it's supposed to?
PSN/XBL: Zampanov -- Steam: Zampanov
If he is altruistic why is he selling it to you and not disclosing how it's done?
Altruistic people with a product that works give it away.
Non-altruistic people with a product that works get rich.
Snake oil salesmen rely on anecdotal evidence and unsupported claims to sell a product over the internet in small quantities.
I thought they put the recipe out as open source
like a bunch of people are ordering their own ingredients and making their own versions
PSN/XBL: Zampanov -- Steam: Zampanov