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Once again, Soylent's team is relatively behind the curve in terms of supplementation, quality, and "dietary trends" (some of us just call them fads). But one

Once again, Soylent's team is relatively behind the curve in terms of supplementation, quality, and "dietary trends" (some of us just call them fads). But one thing they sure get right is how to market to a niche: all you guys and readers of tech news sites. It'll be successful, but let's not make it out to be something pioneering, because it's most definitely not. Anyone who's doing full-Soylent really needs to read this massive meta-analysis: http://www.bmj.com/content/349/bmj.g4490 http://www.bmj.com/content/349/bmj.g4490

danielvinson 10y ago
I don't understand what that study has anything to do with this. Their conclusion was that fruit and vegetable consumption reduces risk of death and does not mention anything about the why the fruits and vegetables reduce risk OR that said benefits are not reproducible through other nutritional systems.
- MicroBerto 10y ago
  Because we don't know why. Just like we didn't understand omega fatty ratios a couple decades ago. So this has everything to do with it. There's more to diet than numbers, yet if you're on a pure Soylent diet, you're clearly not getting some relatively-unknown things that are almost conclusively beneficial to your body. Absence of proof is not proof of absence. Eat your fruits and vegetables or, statistically speaking, your cardiovascular system will eventually suffer. Soylent's marketing puts a lot of otherwise smart people at serious long-term health risk.
  - kbd 10y ago
    > yet if you're on a pure Soylent diet... Soylent's marketing puts... people at serious long-term health risk. Even Rosa Labs doesn't recommend a pure Soylent diet. I liked Soylentconor's comment on reddit the other day, pointing out that the right way to look at Soylent is that it's "just food"[1] I'm obviously not arguing Soylent is perfect, but it's almost certainly better than what most people eat most of the time, and humanity got here subsisting on, on average, much worse. > Eat your fruits and vegetables or, statistically speaking, your cardiovascular system will eventually suffer. You seem awfully certain given that you can't say what "relatively unknown [but] conclusively beneficial" things Soylent is missing. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/soylent/comments/4wowtp/why_is_that_other_soylent_like_products_dont/d68rbrm https://www.reddit.com/r/soylent/comments/4wowtp/why_is_that...
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - xenihn 10y ago
      >Even Rosa Labs doesn't recommend a pure Soylent diet. When did they stop marketing it as a full meal replacement?
      - hatsunearu 10y ago
        Since when did meal mean your entire diet?
    - MicroBerto 10y ago
      > You seem awfully certain given that you can't say what "relatively unknown [but] conclusively beneficial" things Soylent is missing. Some ideas proposed with several sources cited: * Antioxidants and polyphenols from fruits and vegetables – like Vitamin C, carotenoids, and flavonoids – have been linked to lower cardiovascular disease rates. They’re known to prevent cholesterol and other lipids from oxidizing in the arteries.[14] * Concentrations of another group of antioxidants, alpha carotene and beta carotene, are also elevated when eating fruits and vegetables[15,16] * Fruits and vegetables slightly decrease blood pressure[16,17] * Fruits and vegetables typically contain good doses of magnesium and potassium, both already linked to lower mortality rates[18,19,20] * Vitamin C, carotenoids, lycopene, and other phytochemicals/phytonutrients (likely some that we haven’t yet discovered) were explained as the success from one mortality study[21] (https://blog.priceplow.com/vegetables https://blog.priceplow.com/vegetables) Lots of that stuff is not in Soylent. It's not very difficult to be awfully certain in my confidence in eating fruits and vegetables. Again. Soylent's marketing has been extremely dangerous, and your link reinforces that point. Their haphazard marketing yielded unintended consequences, and they shouldn't be rewarded for it.
      - kbd 10y ago
        Your argument seems to be "vegetables have things your body needs. Soylent is not vegetables, therefore Soylent doesn't have these things". I am far from a nutrition expert, but from some googling it sounds like a lot of what you bring up, carotenoids, flavonoids, etc. are converted by the body to vitamin A, which Soylent includes. It also includes magnesium, potassium, vitamin C, and so on.

danielvinson 10y ago

I don't understand what that study has anything to do with this. Their conclusion was that fruit and vegetable consumption reduces risk of death and does not mention anything about the why the fruits and vegetables reduce risk OR that said benefits are not reproducible through other nutritional systems.

MicroBerto 10y ago
Because we don't know why. Just like we didn't understand omega fatty ratios a couple decades ago. So this has everything to do with it. There's more to diet than numbers, yet if you're on a pure Soylent diet, you're clearly not getting some relatively-unknown things that are almost conclusively beneficial to your body. Absence of proof is not proof of absence. Eat your fruits and vegetables or, statistically speaking, your cardiovascular system will eventually suffer. Soylent's marketing puts a lot of otherwise smart people at serious long-term health risk.
- kbd 10y ago
  > yet if you're on a pure Soylent diet... Soylent's marketing puts... people at serious long-term health risk. Even Rosa Labs doesn't recommend a pure Soylent diet. I liked Soylentconor's comment on reddit the other day, pointing out that the right way to look at Soylent is that it's "just food"[1] I'm obviously not arguing Soylent is perfect, but it's almost certainly better than what most people eat most of the time, and humanity got here subsisting on, on average, much worse. > Eat your fruits and vegetables or, statistically speaking, your cardiovascular system will eventually suffer. You seem awfully certain given that you can't say what "relatively unknown [but] conclusively beneficial" things Soylent is missing. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/soylent/comments/4wowtp/why_is_that_other_soylent_like_products_dont/d68rbrm https://www.reddit.com/r/soylent/comments/4wowtp/why_is_that...
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - xenihn 10y ago
    >Even Rosa Labs doesn't recommend a pure Soylent diet. When did they stop marketing it as a full meal replacement?
    - hatsunearu 10y ago
      Since when did meal mean your entire diet?
  - MicroBerto 10y ago
    > You seem awfully certain given that you can't say what "relatively unknown [but] conclusively beneficial" things Soylent is missing. Some ideas proposed with several sources cited: * Antioxidants and polyphenols from fruits and vegetables – like Vitamin C, carotenoids, and flavonoids – have been linked to lower cardiovascular disease rates. They’re known to prevent cholesterol and other lipids from oxidizing in the arteries.[14] * Concentrations of another group of antioxidants, alpha carotene and beta carotene, are also elevated when eating fruits and vegetables[15,16] * Fruits and vegetables slightly decrease blood pressure[16,17] * Fruits and vegetables typically contain good doses of magnesium and potassium, both already linked to lower mortality rates[18,19,20] * Vitamin C, carotenoids, lycopene, and other phytochemicals/phytonutrients (likely some that we haven’t yet discovered) were explained as the success from one mortality study[21] (https://blog.priceplow.com/vegetables https://blog.priceplow.com/vegetables) Lots of that stuff is not in Soylent. It's not very difficult to be awfully certain in my confidence in eating fruits and vegetables. Again. Soylent's marketing has been extremely dangerous, and your link reinforces that point. Their haphazard marketing yielded unintended consequences, and they shouldn't be rewarded for it.
    - kbd 10y ago
      Your argument seems to be "vegetables have things your body needs. Soylent is not vegetables, therefore Soylent doesn't have these things". I am far from a nutrition expert, but from some googling it sounds like a lot of what you bring up, carotenoids, flavonoids, etc. are converted by the body to vitamin A, which Soylent includes. It also includes magnesium, potassium, vitamin C, and so on.