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I've had this vision of a set of tiny robots that live in your stomach and perform some amount of pre-processing of the foods you eat. They would do things lik

I've had this vision of a set of tiny robots that live in your stomach and perform some amount of pre-processing of the foods you eat. They would do things like cut food into smaller pieces using small crab-like arms, digest and render inert sugars that are well beyond what your body needs and detect if you've eaten something that is rotten.

tyingq 6y ago
"digest and render inert sugars that are well beyond what your body needs" I wonder what the ethical discussion for that looks like, though I guess we already have Orlistat to flush out ingested fat.
- bredren 6y ago
  It sure doesn't reflect well on self-restraint. One way to look at it is as taking the conveniences that promote "quality of life" further along the path toward some yet-to-be-determined limit. If people could eat and not only worry less about the consequences, but also experience less of the consequences the majority would. That said, these "stombots" wouldn't only be for people who want to eat double-ice cream sundays occasionally. If enough sugars could be broken down in the stomach--before they enter the blood stream, it could help manage type 2 diabetes upstream.
InitialLastName 6y ago
I'm not sure that "Our digestive systems are too inefficient" is the most important health problem to solve. If anything, in general our digestive systems appear to be too efficient to optimize the health outcomes of diets in the developed world.
- MisterBastahrd 6y ago
  Our digestive systems? They suck. Part of the problem of our intelligence is that we adapted our environments to us instead of the other way around. Cats can eat an all-meat diet. Dogs can do fine on rice and meat. Why? It's because their bodies produce the vitamins they need to survive. We created agriculture and had such rich diets that when we lost our ability to create certain vitamins in our own bodies, we never even noticed. The genes are still there, they're just broken. "Fixing" that issue would be one of the greatest feats in the history of humanity. If mankind ever wants to leave this rock and colonize other worlds, they better figure out how to fix that problem. Would suck to have a starship travelling for hundreds of years only to land on a planet suitable for colonization and realize you ran out of Vitamin C so everyone is going to die of scurvy.
  - thaumasiotes 6y ago
    Guinea pigs also lost the ability to manufacture Vitamin C; it's hard to blame that on their development of agriculture. It's also not necessary to eat a rich diet to maintain levels of Vitamin C. Everything alive contains it. (Even the guinea pigs.) The things that suppress it are probably things you would associate with "rich food", like cooking and long storage periods. Eat one onion and you'll get far more Vitamin C than you need.
  - wbc 6y ago
    Are you saying agriculture cause humans to lose the ability to create vitamins (specifically C)? I don't think that is true, at least according to Nature: https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/the-mystery-of-vitamin-c-14167861/ https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/the-mystery-of-vit... The article posits the loss of Vitamin C to be much earlier: Notably, not only all humans, but also gorillas, chimps, orangutans, and some monkeys have this inborn genetic flaw, meaning that the loss of vitamin C biosynthesis must have occurred first in one of our primate ancestors.
  - ben_w 6y ago
    > Why? None of that. Cats are obligate carnivores, their bodies don’t produce taurine. And all animals need to eat something because none of us are photovores. And some plants are carnivores. If we colonise other worlds, rather than O’Neill habitats or mind uploads, we’re almost certainly taking the farms with us for the trip, not rely on local stuff.
    - BitwiseFool 6y ago
      And, our metabolism depends on Vitamin B12, which is ONLY made by bacteria. Every plant and animal that needs B12 has to get it by eating something else with B12 in it, or having the bacteria responsible in it's digestive tract. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_B12 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_B12
      - alexmingoia 6y ago
        It’s far from being fully understood. The Wikipedia article isn’t accurate. Many animals including humans have been found to have B12 producing bacteria in the small intestine. B12 producing bacteria has been found in human small intestine as far back as 1980: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7354869/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7354869/
mhh__ 6y ago
This is something I wonder about quite a lot. If we had a way of eating food but knowing it was basically just culinary masturbation so to speak (i.e. no nutrients beyond what is safe or thin), would we still eat like we do - I'm not particularly prone to comfort eating, but the psychology behind these things is fascinating and I would wager the answer is probably no (and would probably be deeply immoral given that some people starve)
lowdanie 6y ago
In some sense you have described our microbiome :)

tyingq 6y ago

"digest and render inert sugars that are well beyond what your body needs" I wonder what the ethical discussion for that looks like, though I guess we already have Orlistat to flush out ingested fat.

bredren 6y ago
It sure doesn't reflect well on self-restraint. One way to look at it is as taking the conveniences that promote "quality of life" further along the path toward some yet-to-be-determined limit. If people could eat and not only worry less about the consequences, but also experience less of the consequences the majority would. That said, these "stombots" wouldn't only be for people who want to eat double-ice cream sundays occasionally. If enough sugars could be broken down in the stomach--before they enter the blood stream, it could help manage type 2 diabetes upstream.

InitialLastName 6y ago

I'm not sure that "Our digestive systems are too inefficient" is the most important health problem to solve. If anything, in general our digestive systems appear to be too efficient to optimize the health outcomes of diets in the developed world.

MisterBastahrd 6y ago
Our digestive systems? They suck. Part of the problem of our intelligence is that we adapted our environments to us instead of the other way around. Cats can eat an all-meat diet. Dogs can do fine on rice and meat. Why? It's because their bodies produce the vitamins they need to survive. We created agriculture and had such rich diets that when we lost our ability to create certain vitamins in our own bodies, we never even noticed. The genes are still there, they're just broken. "Fixing" that issue would be one of the greatest feats in the history of humanity. If mankind ever wants to leave this rock and colonize other worlds, they better figure out how to fix that problem. Would suck to have a starship travelling for hundreds of years only to land on a planet suitable for colonization and realize you ran out of Vitamin C so everyone is going to die of scurvy.
- thaumasiotes 6y ago
  Guinea pigs also lost the ability to manufacture Vitamin C; it's hard to blame that on their development of agriculture. It's also not necessary to eat a rich diet to maintain levels of Vitamin C. Everything alive contains it. (Even the guinea pigs.) The things that suppress it are probably things you would associate with "rich food", like cooking and long storage periods. Eat one onion and you'll get far more Vitamin C than you need.
- wbc 6y ago
  Are you saying agriculture cause humans to lose the ability to create vitamins (specifically C)? I don't think that is true, at least according to Nature: https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/the-mystery-of-vitamin-c-14167861/ https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/the-mystery-of-vit... The article posits the loss of Vitamin C to be much earlier: Notably, not only all humans, but also gorillas, chimps, orangutans, and some monkeys have this inborn genetic flaw, meaning that the loss of vitamin C biosynthesis must have occurred first in one of our primate ancestors.
- ben_w 6y ago
  > Why? None of that. Cats are obligate carnivores, their bodies don’t produce taurine. And all animals need to eat something because none of us are photovores. And some plants are carnivores. If we colonise other worlds, rather than O’Neill habitats or mind uploads, we’re almost certainly taking the farms with us for the trip, not rely on local stuff.
  - BitwiseFool 6y ago
    And, our metabolism depends on Vitamin B12, which is ONLY made by bacteria. Every plant and animal that needs B12 has to get it by eating something else with B12 in it, or having the bacteria responsible in it's digestive tract. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_B12 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_B12
    - alexmingoia 6y ago
      It’s far from being fully understood. The Wikipedia article isn’t accurate. Many animals including humans have been found to have B12 producing bacteria in the small intestine. B12 producing bacteria has been found in human small intestine as far back as 1980: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7354869/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7354869/

mhh__ 6y ago

This is something I wonder about quite a lot. If we had a way of eating food but knowing it was basically just culinary masturbation so to speak (i.e. no nutrients beyond what is safe or thin), would we still eat like we do - I'm not particularly prone to comfort eating, but the psychology behind these things is fascinating and I would wager the answer is probably no (and would probably be deeply immoral given that some people starve)

lowdanie 6y ago

In some sense you have described our microbiome :)