6 ms·

This sounds good in theory, but I don't think it would work given our limited knowledge of food and nutrition. Nutritional scientists have been wrong many times

This sounds good in theory, but I don't think it would work given our limited knowledge of food and nutrition. Nutritional scientists have been wrong many times in the past--who's to say a rollout of synthetic "food" couldn't wipe out the human population in the future? I'd cite the Precautionary Principle (http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/pp2.pdf http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/pp2.pdf) when dealing with global ruin problems.

jessriedel 8y ago
1. Any transition to synthetic foods would be gradual. 2. People have already subsisted on fully synthetic diets (aka elemental diets) in the past as part of things like space-travel research and treatments for gastrointestinal disorders. They do fine. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1410941/?page=1 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1410941/?page=1
- LonelyContext 8y ago
  It’s all way easier than this. Eating vegan prevents all of this as it’s basic food-web biology that as you go up the food chain you lose energy by a factor of 10. Yeah an artificial leaf is technically more efficient than a plant at making energy from sunlight but plants already operate at 1-2% so unless you plan on making a synthetic system better than 10-20% at making biomass (hint: you don’t) then just cutting meat farm subsidies and introducing a meat tax alone already puts you way ahead of decades of scientific funding at perfecting multilayer amorphous silicon to where it’s less than $1000/cm^2. Edit: It’s also not clear that the synthetic foods considered in your post are those which are less energy intensive to produce, I should note.
  - brownbat 8y ago
    > just cutting meat farm subsidies Most farm subsidies do not go directly to meat. In fact, current subsidies probably shift some land away from pastures and grazing to oversupplied field crops: https://www.downsizinggovernment.org/agriculture/subsidies https://www.downsizinggovernment.org/agriculture/subsidies You can absolutely be both against the farm bill and simultaneously in favor of reducing American meat consumption... But you're probably looking at corn and soy subsidies that in turn make cheaper feed, rather than something as simple and direct as cutting a meat subsidy.
    - aaronblohowiak 8y ago
      Where do you think most of that corn goes?
      - brownbat 8y ago
        Feed, like I acknowledged in my original comment. > ...corn and soy subsidies that in turn make cheaper feed...
      - agsdfgsd 8y ago
        Most of it doesn't go to any single use. Only 36% of US corn production goes to livestock feed. 40% to ethanol production. And while people like to complain about the caloric inefficiency of animals vs plants, the reality is that chicken being fed corn produces 5 million calories per acre, the same calories per acre as wheat. Almost all plant crops produce fewer calories per acre than that. For some reason nobody seems to be demanding that we stop eating wheat, nevermind things like lettuce, spinach, broccoli, onions, tomatoes, etc, that produce far fewer calories per acre.
- strainer 8y ago
  These claims are not easily substantiated - that curious 45 year old report notwithstanding. The short wikipedia article on Elemental diets, summarizes a handfull from more recent years: > Many patients are unable to tolerate the taste, even if the diet is flavoured, and choose to receive it through intragastric administration.[2] Possible nausea and diarrhea can result from the high sugar content which can also complicate hyperglycaemia in patients with pre-existing diabetes.[2] As a result of suppression of healthy bacteria, via a loss of bacterial food source, prolonged use of an elemental diet elevates the risk of developing clostridium difficile infection/colonisation.[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elemental_diet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elemental_diet
  - jessriedel 8y ago
    The question wasn't whether a synthetic diet has side effects compared to a natural one, the question was whether we could accidentally "wipe out the human population".
    - strainer 8y ago
      I was replying to your own claims, but I dont think it actually is ridiculous to worry if novel food products could "wipe out the human population". Its just an unnecessarily extreme phrase for catastrophe, but it is possible. Disease can wipe out a population and novel material exposures can cause novel diseases like Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Food safety should not be presumed on theoretical basis, only a long history of consumption can reliably evidence it.
      - jessriedel 8y ago
        > I was replying to your own claims, My claim was "they do fine" which, in the context of the question, doesn't mean "there are no side effects". When a family friend had to have his spleen removed, it put him at somewhat higher risk of infection for the rest of their life, but in the context of him having emergency surgery for a ruptured spleen everyone knew what "he's going to be fine" meant. > I dont think it actually is ridiculous to worry if novel food products could "wipe out the human population". I don't think it's ridiculous to worry about in principle. If fact, I think human extinction is super important to worry about and not enough people do it. But I do think it's basically ridiculous to worry about any particular disease or diet doing it (except possibly maliciously engineered diseases). Diseases and diet changes just never have the extreme mortality rates you'd need to threaten the species.

jessriedel 8y ago

1. Any transition to synthetic foods would be gradual. 2. People have already subsisted on fully synthetic diets (aka elemental diets) in the past as part of things like space-travel research and treatments for gastrointestinal disorders. They do fine. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1410941/?page=1 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1410941/?page=1

LonelyContext 8y ago
It’s all way easier than this. Eating vegan prevents all of this as it’s basic food-web biology that as you go up the food chain you lose energy by a factor of 10. Yeah an artificial leaf is technically more efficient than a plant at making energy from sunlight but plants already operate at 1-2% so unless you plan on making a synthetic system better than 10-20% at making biomass (hint: you don’t) then just cutting meat farm subsidies and introducing a meat tax alone already puts you way ahead of decades of scientific funding at perfecting multilayer amorphous silicon to where it’s less than $1000/cm^2. Edit: It’s also not clear that the synthetic foods considered in your post are those which are less energy intensive to produce, I should note.
- brownbat 8y ago
  > just cutting meat farm subsidies Most farm subsidies do not go directly to meat. In fact, current subsidies probably shift some land away from pastures and grazing to oversupplied field crops: https://www.downsizinggovernment.org/agriculture/subsidies https://www.downsizinggovernment.org/agriculture/subsidies You can absolutely be both against the farm bill and simultaneously in favor of reducing American meat consumption... But you're probably looking at corn and soy subsidies that in turn make cheaper feed, rather than something as simple and direct as cutting a meat subsidy.
  - aaronblohowiak 8y ago
    Where do you think most of that corn goes?
    - brownbat 8y ago
      Feed, like I acknowledged in my original comment. > ...corn and soy subsidies that in turn make cheaper feed...
    - agsdfgsd 8y ago
      Most of it doesn't go to any single use. Only 36% of US corn production goes to livestock feed. 40% to ethanol production. And while people like to complain about the caloric inefficiency of animals vs plants, the reality is that chicken being fed corn produces 5 million calories per acre, the same calories per acre as wheat. Almost all plant crops produce fewer calories per acre than that. For some reason nobody seems to be demanding that we stop eating wheat, nevermind things like lettuce, spinach, broccoli, onions, tomatoes, etc, that produce far fewer calories per acre.
strainer 8y ago
These claims are not easily substantiated - that curious 45 year old report notwithstanding. The short wikipedia article on Elemental diets, summarizes a handfull from more recent years: > Many patients are unable to tolerate the taste, even if the diet is flavoured, and choose to receive it through intragastric administration.[2] Possible nausea and diarrhea can result from the high sugar content which can also complicate hyperglycaemia in patients with pre-existing diabetes.[2] As a result of suppression of healthy bacteria, via a loss of bacterial food source, prolonged use of an elemental diet elevates the risk of developing clostridium difficile infection/colonisation.[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elemental_diet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elemental_diet
- jessriedel 8y ago
  The question wasn't whether a synthetic diet has side effects compared to a natural one, the question was whether we could accidentally "wipe out the human population".
  - strainer 8y ago
    I was replying to your own claims, but I dont think it actually is ridiculous to worry if novel food products could "wipe out the human population". Its just an unnecessarily extreme phrase for catastrophe, but it is possible. Disease can wipe out a population and novel material exposures can cause novel diseases like Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Food safety should not be presumed on theoretical basis, only a long history of consumption can reliably evidence it.
    - jessriedel 8y ago
      > I was replying to your own claims, My claim was "they do fine" which, in the context of the question, doesn't mean "there are no side effects". When a family friend had to have his spleen removed, it put him at somewhat higher risk of infection for the rest of their life, but in the context of him having emergency surgery for a ruptured spleen everyone knew what "he's going to be fine" meant. > I dont think it actually is ridiculous to worry if novel food products could "wipe out the human population". I don't think it's ridiculous to worry about in principle. If fact, I think human extinction is super important to worry about and not enough people do it. But I do think it's basically ridiculous to worry about any particular disease or diet doing it (except possibly maliciously engineered diseases). Diseases and diet changes just never have the extreme mortality rates you'd need to threaten the species.