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These claims are not easily substantiated - that curious 45 year old report notwithstanding. The short wikipedia article on Elemental diets, summarizes a handf

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.
    - strainer 8y ago
      I read the description "fully synthetic" here as practically specifying a product which can be created by manufacturing process from elements - as the clinical term "elemental diet" also accidentally suggests. Such a product is also what the lead comment supposed was possible as an alternative to agricultural production of food. To me this is the context of "synthetic foods" which we replied under. From intuition and lack of ever coming across news of an alternative capabilty, I strongly suspect that besides salts and water most of the materials found in medical "elemental" diets ( carbohydrates, fats, vitamins, amino acids, etc) are refined and processed extracts of natural, oops.. grown;) ingredients. This product guide partially confirms my intuition [1] : >" Modified cornstarch and maltodextrin derived from corn are two commonly used ingredients in elemental diets. Physicians’ Elemental Diet instead contains tapioca maltodextrin and no modified cornstarch. " [1] http://data.integrativepro.com/product-literature/info/physicians-elemental-diet.pdf http://data.integrativepro.com/product-literature/info/physi... ... >I think human extinction is super important to worry about and not enough people do it. Not enough influential people do for sure, or of less absolute but much less unlikely threats. Oh well, we made it this far, not all bad, at least there is much room for improvement.
      - jessriedel 8y ago
        Sure, that's a fine criticism to keep in mind. However, I believe the idea is that although the ingredients come from agricultural sources, they have been purified to such a degree that it doesn't matter; they're chemically identical to synthetic ones. (The key question was whether truly synthetic diets are nutritially satisfactory, not whether they are economically efficient to produce now...which they are not.) Of course, it's still conceivable that some secret molecule is needed by the body in minute quantities that was insufficiently filtered from the agricultural sources, but at some level of effective purification that worry starts to bleed into homeopathy.
        SalMonella 8y ago
        Nathaniel. I can see what your saying... Paul`s remark is neat, on thursday I got a top of the range Nissan GT-R: after making $6612 this last four weeks and just a little over ten-k last munth. this is certainly the easiest work Ive had. I started this five months/ago and almost straight away began to make more than $71 per-hour. I work through this website, www.Mesalary.com

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.
  - strainer 8y ago
    I read the description "fully synthetic" here as practically specifying a product which can be created by manufacturing process from elements - as the clinical term "elemental diet" also accidentally suggests. Such a product is also what the lead comment supposed was possible as an alternative to agricultural production of food. To me this is the context of "synthetic foods" which we replied under. From intuition and lack of ever coming across news of an alternative capabilty, I strongly suspect that besides salts and water most of the materials found in medical "elemental" diets ( carbohydrates, fats, vitamins, amino acids, etc) are refined and processed extracts of natural, oops.. grown;) ingredients. This product guide partially confirms my intuition [1] : >" Modified cornstarch and maltodextrin derived from corn are two commonly used ingredients in elemental diets. Physicians’ Elemental Diet instead contains tapioca maltodextrin and no modified cornstarch. " [1] http://data.integrativepro.com/product-literature/info/physicians-elemental-diet.pdf http://data.integrativepro.com/product-literature/info/physi... ... >I think human extinction is super important to worry about and not enough people do it. Not enough influential people do for sure, or of less absolute but much less unlikely threats. Oh well, we made it this far, not all bad, at least there is much room for improvement.
    - jessriedel 8y ago
      Sure, that's a fine criticism to keep in mind. However, I believe the idea is that although the ingredients come from agricultural sources, they have been purified to such a degree that it doesn't matter; they're chemically identical to synthetic ones. (The key question was whether truly synthetic diets are nutritially satisfactory, not whether they are economically efficient to produce now...which they are not.) Of course, it's still conceivable that some secret molecule is needed by the body in minute quantities that was insufficiently filtered from the agricultural sources, but at some level of effective purification that worry starts to bleed into homeopathy.
      - SalMonella 8y ago
        Nathaniel. I can see what your saying... Paul`s remark is neat, on thursday I got a top of the range Nissan GT-R: after making $6612 this last four weeks and just a little over ten-k last munth. this is certainly the easiest work Ive had. I started this five months/ago and almost straight away began to make more than $71 per-hour. I work through this website, www.Mesalary.com