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This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again
- intopieces 14y agoThis man never wants to take a solid shit again.
- drdaeman 14y agoI'm not a doctor, but I suspect his digestive system won't be happy in a long term.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- drdaeman 14y agoJust 5 grams of fibers, from what I've read. AFAIK, dietary fibers are required to properly properly expel wastes and to maintain a healthy gut flora (which is not only used for digestion, but cooperates with immune system). And from what I've read, a normal amount is considered somewhere between 20-35g (daily).
- drdaeman 14y agoWonder why the downvotes. Did I wrote something irrelevant to discussion or obviously factually incorrect?
- intopieces 14y agoThis man never wants to take a solid shit again.
- intopieces 14y agoThis man never wants to take a solid shit again.
- mortenjorck 14y agoThis is the kind of idea that will probably go nowhere, but could change the world. My first reaction, being an ardent lover of many ethnic cuisines, was "of course I'd never use something like that" but then I got to this line: Eating to me is a leisure activity, like going to the movies, but I don't want to go to the movies three times a day. Suddenly, I'm imagining "A DVR for eating." You have a steady intake of Soylent (the name absolutely must change), and when you have time to prepare a nice meal or go out to a restaurant, you adjust your intake ahead of time so your hunger level is appropriate. Crazy, but now I have another ingredient for my sci-fi universe.
- tresta 14y agoI prefer the name Bachelor Chow myself, though I'd try Soylent as well. I wouldn't want to eat it for every meal but every once in a while I'm in such a hurry that it would be practical to do this for a period.
- Zimahl 14y agoI'm glad I'm not the only one who instantly thought of Futurama. This does seem like a food product for people who are too lazy to make even a simple meal and clean afterwards.
- jinushaun 14y agoIt's not a matter of being lazy. Cooking and eating consumes hours in my day. At least four hours a day, and typically six hrs a day if I get fancy with cooking.
- lucaspiller 14y agoWow, you need to optimise! I spent less than an hour today cooking and eating a healthy breakfast in the morning, and a healthy dinner (with leftovers) this evening. I bought prepared food for lunch, but it wouldn't have taken me three hours to cook and eat something else...
- 14y ago
- rayiner 14y agoThis is basically what my infant does.
- qompiler 14y agoBaby formula is too expensive, you would need to eat a half week worth every day!
- crapshoot101 14y agoI think this is one of those "Whatever floats your boat" kind of things. For me, as with others, eating is something I enjoy, not a chore, and I look forward to food. Also, I'm not sure how one's social interactions work in this world, especially since so much that is tied around food.
- xauronx 14y agoI look forward to food, but not paying $8 a day to eat lunch from one of two crappy places I can easily get to from work. Nor the weight gain that comes from them. Obviously I could pack a lunch, but I hate that shit. If this could actually sustain me I would consider it for breakfast/lunch with a real dinner. Clearly I could probably get away with an off the shelf replacement for those meals though...
- crapshoot101 14y agoEh, see, I don't mind that, and I actually enjoy cooking and experimenting in my spare time. Its not something that I want to replace, you know?
- lost_name 14y agoPrevious discussion on the creator's blog: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5215223 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5215223 Generally accepted ad a hoax or ruse of some kind. My opinion: Food is good. I don't want to replace food.
- abstractbill 14y agoI don't think it's a hoax - he's sending me a batch and I can't wait to try it. I enjoy food occasionally, but most of the time it's just a giant pain in the ass.
- lost_name 14y agoIf I had to hazard a guess at why the gut reaction is to call it a joke, it would be that (1) meal replacement shakes have been around for at least two decades and (2) it's not a weight loss suggestion (although he mentions it may be useful for that).
- locopati 14y agoLet's see how well he's doing after a year of living off the stuff. There's probably more complexity to food than breaking it up into vitamins, minerals, and calories.
- VLM 14y ago"There's probably more complexity to food than breaking it up into vitamins, minerals, and calories." A picture perfect display of modern belief in vitalism theory. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitalism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitalism A fairly stereotypical way to being an organic chemistry class is to start out with traditional vitalism and pivot into the historical first complete synthesis of urea, of all things...
- locopati 14y agoI wasn't referring to vitalism so much as our ability to capture all of the components of food (given that we don't fully understand the effects of micro-levels of nutrients in our body) and determine exactly what we need (given that people vary and not everyone needs the same things in the same proportions). So, instead of saying the complexity of food, I should have said the complexity of the entire system. There's a certain arrogance within scientific/rational thinking that everything can be broken up in to parts and understood that way. Life is more complex than that.
- impostervt 14y ago"So what’s in Soylent, exactly? Everything the body needs – that we know of, anyway..." ...and that's when it falls apart.
- rwbt 14y agoExactly. I was thinking the same.
- goostavos 14y agoI don't think that's where is "falls apart" at all! To quote Edison, "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." He's out there trying something, seeing what works. If it turns out that there is some essential nutrient missing? Well? We found something out. And that's pretty cool. Personally, I think it'd be worth setting up a study around this kind of thing. If we could cheaply produce a human chow of sorts, a lot of good could come of it. Personally, I'd be down with it. I'm a bit of a weekend warrior foodie, I love making big meals on the weekends, or every once and awhile during the week. However, for the most part, day to day eating is just kind of rote. It takes too much time to make something decent, and so I usually end up eating a sandwhich, or maybe fast food, or perhaps some microwavable thing. If I could supplement 80% of my eating with a nutrient rich drink, I'd be pretty happy to do so. Finite control over calories would be a big plus, as well.
- ebiester 14y agoA link to his blog: http://robrhinehart.com/ http://robrhinehart.com/
- jbaudanza 14y agoI read a textbook on physiological chemistry and took to the internet to see if I could find every known essential nutrient. The danger is that there are far more essential nutrients that we don't know about, than nutrients that we do. And the only way to get these nutrients is to eat a well balanced diet. That being said, this would be amazing if it works and I applaud him for trying.
- graeme 14y agoYes, food is complex and we can't pretend to understand how it it used by our bodies. A whole food diet is still surely healther in ways we can't quantify. And if it was it would be very hard to prove affirmatively. That said, almost no one eats a whole food diet these days. I imagine this would be a step up over 70% of the diets in modern America.
- SoftwareMaven 14y agoThis was exactly my thought, and I don't know how you mitigate the risk effectively. The problem with missing nutrients is the effects are often subtle, may not show up for a long time, and may be catastrophic. Of course, the rebuttal is "eat food occasionally", but that may just postpone the outcome, making it even harder to know if it is safe.
- tlarkworthy 14y agoyeah but if we switch to that we will probably start noticing the holes quicker
- Kim_Bruning 14y agoOne of the comments on his blog remarks about him being a one man experiment to discover new vitamins. He acknowledges that this is likely. :-P
- recuter 14y agoI have Crohn's and as a result had periods in my life where I was on a liquid diet of something called Modulen for weeks and months at a time. http://www.nestlehealthscience.com/products/modulen_ibd http://www.nestlehealthscience.com/products/modulen_ibd A similar, more familiar product: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ensure http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ensure Pretty terrible experience. I had to drink close to a dozen cups of the stuff a day and it didn't go down easy. The stuff worked however and I went back into remission. Defecating while on this became a very rare occurrence but otherwise almost normal if I recall correctly. And another interesting twist: while I was very weak, I gained some noticeable muscle mass - I imagine because this is essentially taking protein powder consumption to an extreme. It seems like this perhaps guy created a better version than Nestle on account of it actually tasting good and not needing a dozen cups a day - it is not a good lifestyle for healthy people but is very interesting as a supplement. Drinking one can of something a day to insure you get all the nutrients necessary, including the rare ones, is a lot easier than adhering religiously to a very balanced diet. Sort of like a multivitamin that actually works.
- papsosouid 14y ago>It seems like this perhaps guy created a better version than Nestle on account of it actually tasting good I just want to point out that it doesn't actually taste good. He says it does, but try mixing whey powder, olive oil, and maltodextrin in water and drink it. It tastes fucking awful.
- MrUnderhill 14y agoThanks for this post! I too have Crohn's (and ankylosing spondylitis), but I had not heard of Modulen before. I also very much share the sentiments of the article author, so I'm a bit bummed to hear you found it to be a terrible experience.
- skore 14y ago> It seems like this perhaps guy created a better version than Nestle on account of it actually tasting good and not needing a dozen cups a day [...] Just speculating here, but the limiting factor for Nestle might be to get the same stuff that he is using into a product that you can deliver as a ready-made "just add water" mixture. He specifically wrote that he has to make it fresh every day, so that could be the difference.
- dxbydt 14y agoIf he's a true programmer, he'd code up an iphone app that controls an arduino that mixes up the precise amounts of amino acids, boron, saccharides, glucose and polyphenols for the perfect Soylent to start his day. Maybe even post his objective C on github so I can issue a pull request with 200% more boron. You know, here in the bay area, we have plants that tweet when they run out of water. I can rig up a tweetbot so his body tweets whenever he is dehydrated, and Amazon can intercept that tweet to dropship amino acids to his kitchen where the arduino mixes up the next batch of Soylent. I should stop watching scifi.
- Kluny 14y ago"plants that tweet when they run out of water." Get off my damn lawn.
- randomchars 14y agoBut I was only trying to water your lawn! It sent me a DM!
- ph0rque 14y ago"randomchars, you gotta help me... Kluny has blocked me on twitter, and I'm like literally dying without water here!"
- zanny 14y agoIf you took it to production you could just distribute a mixer that has compartments for independent ingredients, maybe even go so far as to standardize cartage sizes of them to use as a fixed insert, have them delivered regularly, and plug them in to make your nutrient sludge once a day. Then just go a step further, have it delivered by automated transport, brew itself, and you just go grab a cup of juice to keep you alive and get on with your day.
- dxbydt 14y ago>standardize cartage sizes...have them delivered regularly When I first arrived in the USA in 1995 as a CS student, I was surprised to see these identical Walmarts. They were all the same - same aisles, same items in those aisles, same prices, same senior citizens manning the checkout counters.. So I asked the gent at the checkout counter - Sir, instead of me coming to your Walmart every weekend to buy groceries, why doesn't Walmart standardize on groceries & deliver them weekly to all American citizens ? Huge savings on driving costs, shopping time,... He looked at me and said - Son, that's called communism.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- Erwin 14y agoLooks like Scott Adam's Dilberito returns: «With the mantra “We Make it Easy to Eat,” Scott Adams Food, Inc. condenses the gastronomy, convenience, and economy (the would-be price in 2008, adjusted to inflation, is $3.31) into one object, eliminating the need for contemplation and decision.» http://dankbuilders.blogspot.dk/2008/03/dilberito.html http://dankbuilders.blogspot.dk/2008/03/dilberito.html Like Dilbert, the animated series (second season wasn't actually that bad), Dilberito has not caught on.
- zck 14y ago>Soylent contains all of the nutritive components of a balanced diet, but with just a third of the calories... This worries me. It's not a misquote, either. From his blog^0 : >...I get all the nutrition and energy I need with about 1/3 the calories the average American consumes... The average American consumes 2,757 calories^2 . There's a term called the Basal Metabolic Rate. It is the amount of calories your body needs just to keep living, without thinking about movement^2 . A sample man's basal metabolic rate is over 1800 calories^3 . So thinking you can drop that down to 900 is suspect, especially in the long term. [0]http://robrhinehart.com/?p=298 http://robrhinehart.com/?p=298 [1]http://www.livestrong.com/article/347737-the-average-american-daily-caloric-intake/ http://www.livestrong.com/article/347737-the-average-america... [2]http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/metabolism/WT00006 http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/metabolism/WT00006 [3]http://www.bmi-calculator.net/bmr-calculator/ http://www.bmi-calculator.net/bmr-calculator/ for a 5'10", 175 lbs, 30 years old, inactive man
- grecy 14y agoI wonder if it's an efficiency thing. Maybe the human body is not efficient when eating heavy, processed things like bread, steak, etc. etc. Is it possible that by eating only what is essential, and in the right balances, the body is more efficient and can extract more useable energy from what goes in? And obviously the mix is different for every person / body type / activity level etc. You can't do this kind of thing and not watch your weight, blood content, etc. carefully.
- youngerdryas 14y agoHow is steak processed?
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- drewsears 14y agoIf I were still single, I would be all over this.
- jacoblyles 14y agoCall me superstitious, but I believe there are unknown unknowns in our understanding of nutrition. The human body evolved eating various fibrous things. I'm not going to run that kind of experiment on myself.
- DanHulton 14y agoMany, many people already do far, far worse to themselves with a steady diet of fast food and other trash. I don't think we're as delicate as you're worrying. Heck, for those people, this is probably an easy step up.
- john_b 14y agoWhile I think his idea is promising, I'm inclined to agree. Simply something a subtle as pooping less for a year might wreak havoc on the bacteria in the colon. As far as I know, the precedents for powder-based nutrition are all supplements, and did not displace a regular diet entirely for a significant period of time. I think it's something that should be tested in a scientifically rigorous way. Trying to hack your body like this is bold but if it fails it will fail in a very public way that might tarnish the idea for a long time.
- thejsjunky 14y ago> because "soylent" is the name of a wafer made out of human flesh and fed Bit of nerd pedantry: this is incorrect. "Soylent" is the name of a type of processed food. There are different kinds made from various things. "soylent green" is a new variety introduced in this category that is supposedly made from kelp (or something like that) but is famously made from something else entirely. It's actually a pretty apt name.
- ellyagg 14y agoIt may be apt, but it's a stupid name from a marketing perspective because of the associations it brings to mind. I noticed how eager he was to correct the record about the term "soylent", demonstrating a common blind spot among technical people. He should be focused on persuasion but is wasting attentional resources on pedantry and ego stroking.
- Hairy_Sandwich 14y agoThis reminds me of the guy that ate monkey chow http://www.angryman.ca/monkey.html http://www.angryman.ca/monkey.html
- InclinedPlane 14y agoGenerally speaking, one can always be correct in saying "I never have to eat again in my life."
- nickik 14y agoMhh I could try this with Guinness, on second thougth ... its still a good idea.
- christkv 14y agoThis guy just reminds me of the book by Claude Lévi-Strauss called the culture code. The US (and northern european) code for food is fuel, while in southern Europe it's pleasure. The fact that he looks at drinking soylent as a way to save hundreds of dollars a month in food and energy probably means he views food as a fuel and an inconvenience instead of pleasurable highlight of the day. I find it amusing but not for me. I for one consider food pleasure and even bigger pleasure when eaten with friends and family.
- GhotiFish 14y agoOne question I have is where he acquires these materials, if not through some form of agriculture. I mean, harvesting wheat isn't exactly what I would call "inefficient"
- ebbv 14y ago> I started wondering why something as simple and important as food was still so inefficient, given how streamlined and optimised other modern things are. Things must be really different in Atlanta.... EDIT: Downvotes? Really? On a site presumably full of hackers, you are gonna tell me "modern things" are really streamlined and efficient? Software for the most part isn't. Cars aren't. Houses, apartments, restaurants, workplaces, none of it is. Come on. It's a pretty absurd statement.
- SoftwareMaven 14y agoFrom the "recipe"[1]: This mechanism can also metabolize protein and fat, but the brain can only use Glucose for energy. In fact, the brain uses 25% of the body's glucose, though it accounts for only 2% of its weight. This would have me concerned if I were considering this. While 100% true, it neglects the entire ketone metabolic pathway[2], which the brain will use fine instead of glucose. If this something big like this has been missed (it's the foundation of many very-low carb diets, treatments for epilepsy and other brain disorders, etc), what subtle things have been missed? 1. http://robrhinehart.com/ http://robrhinehart.com/ 2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketone_bodies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketone_bodies
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- duskwuff 14y agoKetone metabolism works, but it's treated as if it's some kind of fallback -- it's only used when no other source of energy has been available for a few days. While it does seem like it's helpful in some situations, the way it's treated leads me to suspect it's probably harmful in the long run for otherwise healthy individuals.
- SoftwareMaven 14y agoI look at it just the opposite. Alcohol, in too much quantity, is essentially poisonous to your body, so it processes it out first. Glucose, in too much quantity, is also poisonous to your body, so it processes it out second. Ketones, on the other hand, are produced[1] by the body, so can stick around as needed. 1. Trust me, I know everything produced by the body is not good. It's just that, when comparing ketones to glucose and alcohol, I think ketones win hands down.
- papsosouid 14y agoThose low carb diets are also diets that reduce your ability to engage in strenuous activities, and cause muscle wasting. The idea is to be healthy, not to lose weight or treat epilepsy.
- auctiontheory 14y agoHis approach assumes (among other things) that we know absolutely EVERYTHING there is to know about nutrition. I'm fairly confident that that's not a good assumption. And that a long-term diet of his soylent will lead to some nasty deficiency. (Of course, if he's willing to be the research guinea pig for the rest of us, more power to him.)
- jakebellacera 14y agoI'm skeptical, too. Without any variety in your food intake, it's an all-or-nothing approach which seems pretty risky. You'd need to keep a close watch on your vitals to ensure you're not missing out on specific nutrients. Something like this would need to be tailored to each person's needs depending on their lifestyle, which can also change depending on various factors like climate, age and so on.
- VLM 14y ago"I'm fairly confident that that's not a good assumption." Consider the diet of livestock and pets. Not unusual for multiple generations to eat the same product. If livestock and pets were generally scrawny and sickly you would have a point, but they generally seem to live much longer and healthier than in the wild, usually by a pretty large multiple. I've often wondered if I'd be willing to drink "ensure" for 240 years, much as serving meow mix to a cat seems to result in a extremely long feline lifetime. It might be boring... but 240 years might make it worthwhile. Binary thinking always strikes HN pretty hard. This is a tar baby or minefield for startup thinkers. It doesn't have to beat the best possible diet definable, for all people in the entire world... it merely needs to be better than J6Packs average diet. And that's a very low metric to achieve. Sad to say that Meow Mix probably would be better than the average american diet... And this is before we go 3rd world and compare to the average Somalian. I think its not very controversial that the average inner city kid would probably be better off with soylent than a big mac or a school lunch. That brings up the interesting point that we live in a nearly completely centrally controlled economy WRT food production as opposed to an actual free market and lots of people make a lot of money selling vastly inferior product, and they're not going to be too happy about this.
- tocomment 14y agoI'd be really curious to learn how his teeth and gums are doing. If you can find a way to eat without ever having food touch your teeth or gums, I'd imagine you'd have incredible oral health. Thoughts?
- praptak 14y agoGoing from short-chain carbs to polysaccharides alone should help a lot.
- mjmahone17 14y agoAlternatively, it might weaken your teeth, in a similar way as being in space weakens your bones, while running helps build bone mass.
- tocomment 14y agoYou could still chew gum to make sure your teeth and jaw get exercised. In fact you probably should?
- Thrall 14y agoThis was my first thought. If you don't have to chew your food, your jaw muscles will atrophy (and I believe teeth and gums may also suffer from lack of use). If you have to chew gum to make up for this, you're starting to lose the simplicity which was one of the idea's main selling points. A bit like switching from cycling to work to driving to work to save 10 minutes, then having to spend an hour in the gym to make up for the lack of exercise. I can't help thinking there will turn out to be many more subtle effects to compensate for. Yes, I am a sceptic.
- qompiler 14y agoHaha, I love this reply. It's how ingenious people (engineers) think, patching and ducktape will solve all your problems! :-D
- hawleyal 14y agoUse em or lose em.
- kscaldef 14y agoSetting aside the question of whether the subject is actually feeding his body everything he needs (a question that he appears to readily acknowledge as "good skepticism"), I have to wonder about the consistency of statements like these: we'll have to give up many traditional foodstuffs like fresh fruits and veggies, which are incompatible with food processing and scale. Soylent can largely be produced from the products of local agriculture If local agriculture suffices to produce Soylent, why not just eat food? What concerns me is that it's somewhat unclear what's actually involved in producing the constituent ingredients, whether there are limitations on how much of them you can easily produce, and what the byproducts of the production process are.
- planckscnst 14y agoThe "fresh" part comes into play here. We can be more efficient if we can immediately process the agriculture to render the ingredients of Soylent, then store those ingredients for a longer time or in more forgiving conditions.
- checker 14y agoFreeze-drying does this, and the end result better resembles the original food.
- rplacd 14y agoI think the second point's moot, anyway, considering the fact that the the leader photo implies that as it is the only way you're going to whip some up is with non-ubiquitous-and-therefore-processed ingredients.
- grecy 14y agoEating to me is a leisure activity, like going to the movies, but I don't want to go to the movies three times a day. For anyone that doesn't understand that statement, I recommend taking a few years off work, where you spend your time getting up early every day, doing something all day (hiking, walking, gardening, building, whatever) and go to bed late in the evening (i.e. Full days of activities you want to be doing). I spent 2 years doing this, and I was shocked how much time is wasted buying, cooking, and eating food three times a day. It's really a huge chunk of time you can't spend doing what you want. Now I'm back in the 9-5 routine, and it's not so obvious - partly I think because taking time away from my desk to eat is actually nice, as-is dinner with my girlfriend and others. When you've got other things you'd rather be doing, eating is a time-consuming PITA.
- smalter 14y agoOddly enough, for me, playing The Sims taught me how much time is spent eating, defecating, and sleeping.
- petermlm 14y agoIn The Sims that effect sometimes happens because time in that game is so much faster. It's like "The ride for work will arrive in one hour." -> Well I'll just make my Sim eat breakfasts. Suddenly, The Sim arrives at the kitchen after crossing the house to get there and two hours passe.
- bnegreve 14y ago> For anyone that doesn't understand that statement, I recommend taking a few years off work, I really don't, how do you define what is a waste of time and what isn't? Why eating is a waste of time and working isn't?
- criley 14y agoIf you could not work but still get all of the benefits that work gives you (salary, stability, etc), would you continue to work? Would you decide, maybe I'll work just once a week? No one is saying that eating is a waste of time. The OP says it like: Eating is a leisure activity for him like going to the movies. But he doesn't want to go to the movies 3 times a day for the rest of his life.
- jzilla 14y agoHow is this any different from other methods of meal replacement? Maybe his is formulated better, but this is pretty much what Slim-Fast/Ensure is.
- baak 14y ago>> " I read a textbook on physiological chemistry" >> "I'd been reading a lot of books on biology" Well award this man a degree already. Am I the only one who doesn't trust these kinds of qualifications? A software engineer who is a hobbyist bio-chemist is telling me about a system that "costs 150 a month, cures skin diseases in 9 days, will get you in the best shape of your life, and tastes great." (per his blog) Really? I mean... really, really? If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. And in this case, it's probably very dangerous as well.
- JoeAltmaier 14y agoMaybe not as dangerous as a stead diet of McD's. See it in persepective. He's at least trying, not just stuffing his mouthhole with salt-sugar-fat crap.
- baak 14y agoNobody is claiming steady McD's is healthy. There are actually people on the OP link and this thread who are posting that they want to try his system. That's what is scary. This paragraph from his blog: "I feel like the six million dollar man. My physique has noticeably improved, my skin is clearer, my teeth whiter, my hair thicker and my dandruff gone. My resting heart rate is lower, I haven't felt the least bit sickly, rare for me this time of year. I've had a common skin condition called Keratosis Pilaris since birth. That was gone by day 9. I used to run less than a mile at the gym, now I can run 7. I have more energy than I know what to do with. On day 4 I caught myself balancing on the curb and jumping on and off the sidewalk when crossing the street like I used to do when I was a kid. People gave me strange looks but I just smiled back. Even my scars look better." Do you really trust this? Sensationalist at best. He's claiming that the diet helped him read a geometry book in one weekend and a string theory book in one sitting and a bunch of other mental heroics. How on Earth do people not see this as too good to be true?
- trentlott 14y agoBeing that he didn't actually tell us what was in his formula, I smell an amateur (or not-so) marketing campaign.
- manglav 14y agoI've always wanted to do this, and actually have talked to some GI's making this happen. They always said you can do it for a couple of months, but the stomach is designed to handle solid food. I definitely plan to become a beta tester for him though. For a college student, this is a dream.
- iamdev 14y agoOne thing experiments like this often seem to forget is that our bodies have evolved to eat. Even something as simple as your stomach physically expanding to hold large quantities of less nutrient-dense whole foods has been shown to have an effect on the body and brain.
- aethertap 14y agoIf this is real, I hope he keeps a very detailed log of his experiences. Since I doubt very much that we know everything about human nutrition, this could be a valuable data source for finding more gaps in our knowledge. It would also be interesting to see the effect of this on gut microbes, which are seem to be increasing in importance in the formula of overall health [1,2]. I wish him the best of luck, but it's not something I'll be doing. [1] http://www.nature.com/ismej/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ismej2012153a.html http://www.nature.com/ismej/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ismej... [2] http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120815174902.htm http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120815174902.ht...
- saidajigumi 14y ago> a 24-year-old software engineer > ... > Soylent contains all of the nutritive components of a balanced diet What utter bollocks. We're (as in, scientists studying nutrition and how utterly wrong food industry has gotten that in the 20th and early 21st century) finally starting to get our collective heads around the benefits of whole foods vs. highly processed foods, and just how badly our bodies deal with the latter. It may be theoretically possible to create some processed food that's on par with the nutrition of whole foods, but I doubt that anyone alive today knows how to do it. He may see "good" results on some metrics due to a lack of any desire to go hypercaloric -- i.e. there's probably no artificially boosted food reward[1] mechanisms in his glop. But that won't make up for the glop's likely deficiencies. So an impatient _software engineer_ comes along and claims to have whipped up a drink that eliminates all that. A task that specialists have so far failed at. > "I read a textbook on physiological chemistry and took to the internet to see if I could find every known essential nutrient." I've seen this enough to be sick of it; it seems to be form of the software "everything is just an [easy] problem" mindset gone badly wrong. The supplement and meal replacement powder/drink industry is a multi-billion dollar market. First sanity check: _no_ staff scientists for any of these companies thought to go look at a textbook and the intertubes and do the same thing? DOH! Egg's on them! Another example of this failure: when software/CS types wander off to do experimental science (e.g. human subjects) without _any_ training in how to do experiment design, data collection, or analysis. "Just ask 'em some questions!" The general form of the problem seems to be a blindness to the depths of domain knowledge required to be effective in other disciplines.
- jgj 14y agoFirst off, thanks for dampening the enthusiasm I was feeling after reading the OP. I would love to hear your thoughts on what, specifically, his formula is/may be missing. I can think of nothing more amazing than to consume a magic glass of nutrition a day and be done, and your post has given me pause.
- CapitalistCartr 14y agoThe biggest problem isn't what he's clearly missing; its what he's missing that we don't know about, and won't suffer any consequences for years. Saidajigumi's comment about whole foods is appropriate: whole foods have better results than any manufactured powder or drink made, but its not clear why. And how long will it take before he experiences the results?
- asadi 14y agoHere's the story in his own words: http://robrhinehart.com/?p=298 http://robrhinehart.com/?p=298
- crusso 14y agoI think this is absolutely fascinating. I'm surprised that many think that this type of eating is some sort of dangerous experiment. People eat crap diets all the time. In my bachelor days, I knew several people who ate only fast food, microwave burritos, frozen pizza, etc. Literally, these people would almost never eat fruit and their vegetables were mostly just the beans in their Taco Bell. Myself, I eat almost exclusively low carb. Salads, chicken, various low carb veggies, eggs, cheese, etc. I supplement with a lot of protein shakes to increase muscle mass from working out. I feel fantastic, I have very little body fat, and my mind stays much clearer than when I'm carbing. I think the whole low-carb trend showed us that the dogma surrounding foods and diet has been a load of crap. There are lots of approaches to eating that can work, and many are far superior to the "food pyramid" nonsense that has practically ruined the health of America. Experiments like this one in eating (er, not eating) may show us things about our metabolisms that we never realized. I, for one, would love to get rid of most food preparation, save money, and maybe even be healthier. Kudos to Rob Rhinehart for looking for a new approach to the problem of sustenance.
- tn13 14y agoDoesn't make sense to me at all. Yes, it is really good thing to be really busy with something in life. But are you really that busy that you dont have time to enjoy a good healthy meal? What abut sex ? What about girlfriend or wife ? Hey and is sleeping is also waste of time ? Well, there are always pathological cases like this particular man in question but I dont think anyone else should even try this sort of stuff. Secondly, our body has evolved not just to digest nutrients but also normal food which may contain many other essential things science is not yet fully aware of. So this sort of artificial diet is risky and it might cut your life by few years. Is it worth it ?
- randomchars 14y agoYou don't need sex to stay alive. As for sleeping there are attempts to hack that too. [0] Not everyone thinks that spending 30 minutes or more to prepare a meal is worth their time so they time to minimize it: from take-outs to microwave food. As many already said in this thread, this would be a step-up for many. You can't blame him for trying. That's more than most of us are doing. There are also many people who would try this, including me. We don't know what we don't know and this might be a way to find out. Is cutting your life by a few years worth prolonging the lifes of billions of others? [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphasic_sleep https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphasic_sleep
- tn13 14y agoYou are missing my point. My problem with this approach is that he thinks that food is only for "staying alive". Like many others here, even I love my work and I too constantly figure out ways to make myself lot more productive. But giving up a regular meal for a formula sounds like over optimization for me.
- prodigal_erik 14y agoI got fat, unattractive, and out of shape by overeating. Food is a visceral experience that it's not healthy for me to be too attached to, and I'm more than willing to sacrifice it in return for more of all the others. I'm already alternating between small meals and protein shakes (plus fiber) to dull my carb cravings and lose weight.
- shiven 14y agoOverhyped synthetic-milk or what. Another misguided 'engineer' thinking he can 'hack' a system, which modern science is still figuring out, and that too without any controls or rigorous monitoring... I'll check back in 5 years and see how healthy he is, assuming he sticks solely to Soylent without problems till then.
- jfb 14y agoHe's a child. He's allowed to be dumb.
- amalag 14y ago"Young man discovers meal replacement powders and thinks he never has to eat again." - The Onion
- fusiongyro 14y ago> Mental performance is harder to quantify, but I feel much sharper. A friend of mine frequently goes on crash diets and fasts and always reports that he feels sharper in the beginning. I'd guess (unscientifically) this is actually evidence that he is missing a few important nutrients.
- Glyptodon 14y agoThis kind of thing can't make it to market as an actual product fast enough. As a lazy bachelor I constantly feel thwarted by the amount of effort required to eat a health balanced diet without it taking up several hours a day.
- glenntzke 14y agoI am a 27 year old software engineer and am glad to see a peer researching alternate nutrition (and it truly is just that) that doesn't boil down to [Agent X] is EVIL or [Agent Y] is MIRACULOUS. I have a negative appetite in the morning and used to forego breakfast. Last year I opted for a protein and fruit shake as soon as possible after waking and began a low-carb low-sugar diet. I highly recommend it for a lifestyle that unavoidably includes sitting far too long in front of a computer. His idea is taking that to an extreme - but I'm certainly interested in trying that extreme.
- Uncompetative 14y agoPlease don't use this as an excuse to let the world's population hit eleven digits. Stop fucking, for fuck's sake!
- dhughes 14y agoInteresting an I've seen it discussed a lot in sci-fi and on reddit too. But I wonder if his throat will start to constrict from lack of bulk going down it, he probably needs some bulk or at least the option of liquid and solid. Plus his teeth and gums will probably suffer from lack of stimulation.
- nickheer 14y agoI (half-Swiss) like efficiency as much as the next HN reader, but at a certain point, efficiency must be weighed against enjoyability. I can't imagine not eating a delicious roasted vegetable strudel with a balsamic vinegar reduction, or potatoes with crème fraîche and chives in puff pastry. I delight in the delicacy required to prepare these items, and enjoy eating them even more. Cooking is (obviously) an activity that is not enjoyed by everyone, but it's an enormous leap to call it "a waste of time". Imagine, if you will, that someone has invented a speedy way of deodorizing yourself without water and soap, as showering is as much a waste of time. Sounds great, until you realize that there is a reason for these rituals. It takes me away from code, writing, and working, and offers me a moment to clear my head. What does your morning shower take you away from? What does preparing your breakfast, a cup of coffee, or dinner take you away from? Not everything needs to be optimized for efficiency. If you've ever been to France, you'll know that many people spend an hour or more at breakfast. It slows people down, and provides them a chance to think, contemplate, and relax. Sometimes, the very act of something being inefficient can be beneficial in its own right.
- Uncompetative 14y agoMore vegetarian recipe ideas, please... those sound great!
- shmageggy 14y agoI'm surprised at how many people are pointing out objective, scientific issues with the product instead of the subjective component. Even if this stuff worked perfectly as advertised (highly doubtful) I wouldn't buy it because I don't share the same viewpoint as its creator. To me and you, eating isn't an annoyance that needs to be optimized away, it's a one of the fundamental joys of being alive. You mentioned strudels and potatoes, and one could extend your list ad nauseum with all of the magnificent culinary fare, all of the diverse textures and smells, the sublime human sensory experiences that can only be shared over a fine meal. To trade all of this for some homogeneous slop would be like adopting artificial insemination in order to avoid having to waste time with all of that inefficient sexual intercourse.
- 14y ago
- rosser 14y agoThis seems like an appropriate place to quote Knuth. "Premature optimization is the root of all evil."
- tantalor 14y agoThe field of food preparation has been around for tens if not hundreds of millennia. We've been trying to optimize it for a long time. See also: Invention of Fire.
- rosser 14y agoThis optimization is premature in that he's trying to optimize for time and effort when we haven't yet nailed — in terms of fully understanding — the whole "optimal nutrition" thing. Optimizing for performance before you have a fully working implementation is exactly what Knuth was decrying.
- jessaustin 14y agoThis optimization is premature in that he's trying to optimize for time and effort when we haven't yet nailed — in terms of fully understanding — the whole "optimal nutrition" thing. Yet every single chef in every single restaurant and every single cook in every single home also optimizes for performance, although not quite as exclusively as Soylent Dude. I think you haven't articulated your actual complaint here.
- DanBC 14y ago> Yet every single chef in every single restaurant and every single cook in every single home also optimizes for performance, No they don't - they often optimise for taste. Some people accidentally get adequate nutrition because they eat so much food, and some of that food is fortified with micronutrients.
- jessaustin 14y agooptimise for taste ...and texture, and price, and familiarity, and ethical sourcing, and religious approval, and cetera, and cetera. Maybe you don't care about halal or free-range, but some people do. Like I said, Soylent Dude is more exclusive in his optimization, but I still contradict the proposition that, "This optimization is premature..." How could it be premature when every human food preparer has been doing it since the invention of fire?
- Shorel 14y agoIf this guy is phony, there's no harm in reading a couple articles and laughing at it. The problem starts if he is right. We could be reading about the food of the future. Normal food will be a luxury reserved for a few.
- irahul 14y ago> We could be reading about the food of the future. Normal food will be a luxury reserved for a few. I doubt it. We have somewhat accurate idea of what's good for the body, and what's not good for the body. That "what's not" is widely in circulation. People haven't dropped their french fries for the salads; for sure they aren't going to ditch them for a monotonous diet of shakes.
- JakeSc 14y agoEspecially striking and inspiring was how he thinks of food as an "old technology": > I don't miss the rotary telephone and I don't miss food.
- kafkaesque 14y agoWhen consuming all vitamins and minerals together, some cancel each other out. I tried Googling some articles to back up what I'm saying. Unfortunately, there is nothing presented in a pretty pre-packaged form. So go with this. e.g.: CTRL + F "vitamin C supplements can destroy dietary vitamin B12" and "Potassium" here: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/druginfo/natural/926.html http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/druginfo/natural/926.html He may not be absorbing all the nutrients. Talking about absorption, through my own experience, I believe a body absorbs naturally occurring things like protein, carbs, and fat better than when it is isolated. Again, I couldn't find some quick hard scientific evidence, but found very general malabsorption of nutrients info here: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000299.htm http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000299.htm Generally, it is thought that loose stools means you are not absorbing nutrients properly. So, joking aside, I am interested to know what type of stools this man has. I'm sure we can gain some interesting insights, albeit from one single person, if he tracks his experience/diet properly.
- colept 14y agoWhile I too have heard that nutrients absorb better when isolated, it makes me wonder if his body is going to adapt to the shakes and start absorbing the nutrients it needs first until saturated. While the reaction you mentioned above may happen, maybe the adaptation will absorb the specific nutrients and neutralize the already saturated nutrients.
- VLM 14y ago"I believe a body absorbs naturally occurring things like protein, carbs, and fat better than when it is isolated" I will ask my farmer great-uncle to ask his cow owning friends about this, and one of my wedding guests is/was a veterinarian and he'll likely have a lot to say. I will say based on evidence that humans Might be the only animal who require nutrition isolation, because I am unaware of any practice like this with livestock or pet nutrition. Now I do have personal experience that some farmers "mix their own" a cup of this to a sack of that to a spoon of this and shake it up, but others just use premix, and as far as I've personally seen even the home-mixer livestock farmers might custom mix but they then feed the same stuff every day. I'm intentionally excluding mammals drinking milk, I've read this guys blog and I think we can safely assume he's a young human but well past weaning. I don't know anyone raising pets with nutritional segregation, and I've never heard of them accused of animal cruelty and never seen malnourished housecats because they've eaten the same food for many years.
- rsl7 14y agoHe'll be fine as long as he drinks that in addition to eating steamed kale and sweet potatoes, broccoli, brown rice and a variety of beans and sprouts.
- smiddereens 14y agoBased on his recipe I don't see how this is being perceived as novel or revolutionary. Surely many HNers have endeavored to make "bachelor chow" (or more appropriately slurry) in the past.
- DanBC 14y agoI don't get it. There are plenty of liquid feeds already in existence. These contain fibre and all the other nutrients you need to survive, and they come in a variety of flavours. And you can have a naso-gastric tube fitted, to eat while you're doing just about anything else.
- therandomguy 14y agoI don't know how effective his particular recipe is, but this is a pretty important concept (and not a new one). He nails it when he says that eating is a social activity like going to the movies, but you might not want to do it 3 times a day. People are resisting it now because it doesn't sound "natural" but it will definitely be the new normal. If we do end up developing a meal substitute it could also provide a solution to world hunger. I remember reading about a gel that is distributed to Africa in cans which was helping the food problem there (can't find it via Google now).
- gosukiwi 14y agoAs a hardcore gamer I'm interested, but... it would be too bad x_x
- vacri 14y agoWater bills are lower. Wow, how much is he spending on water for this to be a tangible benefit?
- klinquist 14y agoI wonder how it tastes with rum?
- brohee 14y agoNot innovative at all... Plenty of product like that already, e.g. http://nestlehealthscience.us/products/Pages/RESOURCE%C2%AE-2-0.aspx http://nestlehealthscience.us/products/Pages/RESOURCE%C2%AE-... usually consumed in a medical setting. No one will take that for long unless unable to do otherwise thought. Not that the taste is unbearable, but eating is more that nutrition, it's also fulfilling desire... Not even speaking of the social aspect...
- janezhu 14y agoWhy are people are having such a visceral reaction to this idea? Finding alternatives to solid, "fresh" food is an issue we will have address in the near future, if not right now. With forecasts about population growth rapidly rising (We said it would reach 10 billion by 2100. It only took 13 years to jump from 6-7 billion.) This could be implemented not only for hunger in impoverished nations, but for world overpopulation and depletion of resources including livestock and agriculture. People are commenting this guy is crazy. But in the next few decades I'd rather there was 100 crazy guys trying this for every McDonald's junkie.
- jessaustin 14y agoYou're right, but sadly this innovation, if it works, has the potential to make the problem worse. Human population, like any population of any organism, will grow logistically approaching some limiting factor. If we don't like a world in which 10B people are limited by agricultural capacity, we'd like a world in which 100B people are limited by something else even less. The solution is to find cultural limits lower than our agricultural limits. It's possible that we've already done this, and we won't know it until all of Africa undergoes the demographic transition. (Please note: by cultural limits I mean things like changing family norms rather than forced sterilization, resource-motivated warfare, and other such monstrous practices.)
- ballstothewalls 14y agoWhere have I heard this before? Oh that is right! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Robert_Malthus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Robert_Malthus Anyway, world hunger right now is not a problem of there not being enough food, it is a problem of food distribution. There is enough arable land in the Democratic Republic of Congo to feed all of Africa, but wars, greed, and other things stop it from happening.
- papsosouid 14y agoI love how all the arm chair biochemists here jump on this as being so dangerous because in theory there could be something he needs and isn't getting. Yet most of them are eating a diet that is deficient in things we know you need. This guy's gross sludge is a hell of a lot healthier than what most people are eating, go bitch at them instead.
- MSM 14y agoI agree with you, but I think the main sentiment is that after just 6 weeks you can't come to any conclusions. For example smoking is probably one of the worst things you can do for your health long term. I can smoke two packs a day and have absolutely no issues after only six weeks. Eating crap food is bad for you, and it might kill you after 40 or 50 years. Looking at some of the issues he has having (heart racing) due to lack of iron. What if the symptoms weren't as obvious? He'd have never looked to see why he was experiencing them. It's really hard to get excited about something when he's only been doing it for such a short time and it's fairly obvious he doesn't really know what he's doing.
- arbuge 14y agoWhen you get tired of food, wine, women/men/{other object of attraction}, song, and sleep, you are tired of life.
- shanev 14y agoThe solving world hunger aspect of this post is laughable. This highly processed shake can be made from local agriculture. Great! Why not just eat the local agriculture itself? You wouldn't have to build the infrastructure to process real food down into a powder. You also benefit from all the nutrients we haven't discovered yet. We're just at the tip of the iceberg in terms of what we know about nutrition. So far we know a lot about nutrients in isolation, not as whole foods. Maybe that's why this seems like a good idea to this guy. I'm glad he's doing at least two real meals a week. That should keep him alive.
- crististm 14y agoSomeone should tell him there is a reason babies and cubs don't drink milk when they grow up. He probably discovered milk, but it seems to me that milk tastes better.
- antman 14y agoWell he will soon find out that these things interact and you can't take them all together. Example: Calcium against iron http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/1600930/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/1600930/ It will take him 2.5 months. At least that's how much it took me to find out.
- AaronBBrown 14y agoIf it were possible to remain healthy long term, I'd totally sign up for a pill or drink that took a minute or two to consume and contained everything that we need to survive. I might not do it every day because there are some foods that I really like, but generally I don't enjoy eating and find it irritating that I have to spend so much of my life doing it.
- pippy 14y agoEveryone in this thread is looking at this the wrong way. I'm surprised HN is reacting in such a negative way. If his diet is unbalanced, it's an issue with the official daily requirements being wrong. If he's planing on marketing his innovative product, it's a failure of marketing. Either way he's not very liable of failure.
- taproot 14y ago> Revolutionizes eating > Doesn't let anyone know ingredients Besides the disturbing nature of this guy, I always like the idea of the matrix glop food. Someone should really open source working on this, I understand it is a hard thing to get right but enough people working on this and using strictly whole foods as base ingredients would probably lessen any negative outcomes. And really, it can't be much worse than my nightly chow down on fast food.
- kyllo 14y agoThe merit of this experiment depends highly on whether he's actually captured all his nutritive and caloric needs within his recipe. There are a lot of vitamins and minerals that we need, but that aren't found in that many things. We get them through diversity of diet. Vitamin B12 is a good example--it's found in meat and some types of seaweed and not much else, so vegetarians and vegans are usually deficient in it without supplementation. Whenever you restrict your diet consistently over time like that, you run the risk of deficiency. So if you take it to the extreme of eating the exact same thing for every meal, you had better make sure that that one meal really does contain everything your body needs, or else you are going to develop a deficiency very quickly.
- caycep 14y ago"I was a little worried it was going to kill me, but decided it was for science and quickly downed the whole thing." sounds familiar ;)
- jpwagner 14y agoEating is not only for sustenance. Here's a book recommendation: http://www.amazon.com/Never-Eat-Alone-Relationship-ebook/dp/B000FCJZ4K/ http://www.amazon.com/Never-Eat-Alone-Relationship-ebook/dp/...
- scotty79 14y agoI was wondering why while there is "dog food" there's no "people food". Only reason I came up with that if they got anything wrong and person who would eat only "people food" had anything wrong with his health he would sue the company for millions.
- shell0x 14y agoA bit of topic, but is it really required to have _that_ much tracking scripts on your site? Ghostery is showing up 14 blocked trackers, which is a way too much I think.
- InTheDark 14y agoThis guy is getting a boat load of attention for doing something mildly interesting at best. He's using whey protein, olive oil, and some kind of starch. That's food. Nothing more, nothing less. You can't just suck down CHON and call it good, or all we'd have to do is breathe.
- josephjrobison 14y agoI think this will work just fine temporarily, and should be looked into for widespread distribution during emergency situations like famines. But doctors first recommended the amazing powdered baby formula in the 50's and 60's and then switched their recommendations back to mothers' milk for most of the population in the 90s. Of course we should continue to experiment and understand nutrition, and powders, potions, and pills can supplement a diet, but I don't think it's anywhere near or ever will be a complete substitute for real food. Real food being healthy, whole foods.
- ddoolin 14y agoThis idea would probably be better when given to children who are just getting over formula or breastmilk, albeit with proper modifications are they grow. Babies do just fine on a liquid diet with breastmilk essentially just containing the necessary nutrients. Assuming they kept this liquid-nutrition diet (adjustingly accordingly), it sounds more viable. However, a grown man whose body is used to solid foods probably won't be able to adapt so easily, similar to what happens to long-time vegetarians who go back to eating meat again. I'm a little confused as to why people are so quick to turn this down. Even if nutrition interaction is complex, there's probably still a solution to make this work (different drinks at different times, etc).
- jtheory 14y agoSpeaking of breastmilk -- I don't know about this guy's particular formula, but I can chip in that my daughter was solely breastfed for 9 months or so, and it was pretty clearly extremely efficiently processed. I wasn't eager for her to start eating solid foods, actually, because I did most of the diaper changes, and while she was still on a breastmilk-only diet (and once her digestive system was developed enough, after 6 months or so), she wasn't constipated, but would simply only poop once or twice a week (and it wasn't even unpleasant-smelling). I haven't researched the subject, but anecdotally other parents who nursed their children for more than a few months have similar accounts. My concerns about a similar diet for adults, though, is that it's a serious tangent from the eating habits humans have evolved with. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that people switching to a liquid-only diet like this saw a jump in colon cancer, or something like that.
- l0c0b0x 14y agoA few months ago, I had the realization that on most days I only ate because I HAD TO. I find it extremely frustrating having to spend lots of time thinking about what to eat e.v.e.r.y.d.a.y. On average, I might like only 20-40% of what I eat. Mainly because good/tasty food is expensive, hard to find, and/or prone to change in taste due to various elements. I really believe if there was balanced nutritious drink out there that gives me what my body needs, tastes ok, and costs relatively cheap, I would be one happy customer. I'm keeping my eye on news like these from now on.
- Eva_Peron 14y agoThey will take the soylent from his cold, dead hands! :-)
- axelf 14y agoI don't understand why everyone on this thread is making it seem like this impossible. I feed my dog the same food and portion every single day. He is lean, muscular, and full of energy all day. We're both mammals, how different could it be?
- doctorstupid 14y ago> I started wondering why something as simple and important as food was still so inefficient It's inefficient because it's important. The production and consumption of food is one of the most ritualized aspects of humanity, and most cultures define themselves in no small part by their culinary traditions. To humans, food is far, far more than simply the output of some nutritional optimization technique.
- mamoswined 14y agoI'm kind of the opposite of this guy, in that I'm probably a "foodie", I'm a member of slow food, etc. But I have thought about something like this. The thing is that I love food and eating, but I don't get a lot of enjoyment from meals that I eat alone at home, which are usually breakfast and lunch. I would love to just not think about them at all and that would also free up additional money for better meals and drinks with friends and dates. I don't think the liquid approach he is going for a good one though from a mechanical anatomical view. Bulk provides important functions, especially in the colon. Not having it in the diet could mean if he did end up with a girlfriend, that first date could be spent in the bathroom. I think my approach would be more along the lines of a porridge with some supplements added in.
- mbubb 14y agoFascinating. The discussion as well. Surprised at how few comments there were about the culture of eating. Part of the reason Soylent makes sense is that we are already eating 'food-like substances' (to paraphrase Michael Pollen) much of the time. He is just doing it in a controlled instrumental way. When I go to the datacenter (5 miles from the Lincoln tunnel in the godforsaken New Jersey Meadowlands). I generally pack the same food. kefir, beef jerky and an almond cranberry mix. Purely functional food so I can stay there and concentrate. Is it balanced and nutritional? probably not really. I am American and the soylent thing feels very American to me. Which is not a bad thing. I love food and good eating but when I compare my relationship with food and eating with my wife's it is totally different. I was raised on frozen stringbeans with a sauce made of canned mushroom soup next to pot roast cooked to medium well... My wife is Korean and food is totally different - more like what I would associate with someone from Italy or the south of France, etc. Ingredients and process. Her kimchi or the way she cooks rice (6 kinds of grains) - the innumerable side dishes all complementing one another, table grilled meat. Friends, wine. Strong coffee afterwards. I could not imagine life without that - even though much of the preparation is time consuming. When she roasts seaweed over an open fire it takes hours. My boys seem to eat it in minutes... Homemade dumplings involves the whole family and flour all over the place and a few hours of work to make about a gross of dumplings... All of that is not something I would like to replace. However - how often do you have a meal like that? 10 - 20 times a year. What happens the rest of the time? There is an element of drudgery to daily eating. I use a hand grinder and a moka stovetop pot for my coffee. A pain in the ass - but I am addicted to the result. Maybe a routine where you ate soylent for the instrumental times and had festive meals when desired (or when you really craved something).
- notdrunkatall 14y agoNo matter what you think of this guy or his product, you have to give him props for being his own guinea pig. I, for one, hope that he proves everyone wrong, and a year from now, I'm mixing up my own Soylent, because though I do love a good meal, I'm a busy person, and I often find myself eating simply to sate hunger. If I could replace that footlong sub with a glass of soylent, I'd do it in a heartbeat.
- d0c5 14y agoI'm on this. I'm not even going to read any comments pertaining. All my life I prayed for this day.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- gandalf1 14y agoNah, the point is that he doesn't bring any new knowledge to the table. Even if we assume that most people are lazy idiots, one can hardly think that no one has yet collected the available scientific knowledge about nutrition and tried to produce a replacement drink from that. Because that's what he does. No one says it's not possible, but when he says he read extensive about the subject he's either lying or ignoring the fact, that there is almost not certainty about what the body needs in which quantity, with great effort, because no reputable source claims otherwise.
- MichaelReed 14y agoI would love to see how he does lifting some weight on this diet vs. just sitting in front of a computer.
- Syssiphus 14y agoAccording to his blog he is running on a regular basis.
- nickelnerve 14y agoThis diet already exists. It is called by many names: elemental diet, space diet, astronaut diet. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1410941/pdf/gut00494-0076.pdf http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1410941/pdf/gut0... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elemental_diet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elemental_diet Some hospitals may serve this to very ill patients. It has been the subject of much study. It is customized based on the needs of an individual. Most can't stand the taste. It generally works well in the short term, although I am not aware of any long term studies that have been done. I too am interested in this. Have they determined that animals live longer or shorter lives on this diet? It could be rather easy to determine this: considering the relatively short life span of earthworms or fruit flies. Anyone who is interested in this topic: email me at: nickelnerve@gmail.com
- solarbunny 14y agoI am surprised how no one here references space research. Tons of money and talent spent on astronaut diets and space diet optimization in general. However, regarding the evolution of space diets, soylent type foods from tubes are a thing of a past! Today we send best organic products for people in orbit to eat and enjoy.
- kumarski 14y agoRob is also a YC alum. He has dropped noticeable weight.
- 5partan 14y agoHe is lately experimenting with nootropics? Choline, which is the de facto number number one nootropic, is an essential nutritient, and essential for your brain to function. this could explain his train of thoughts :) Also he mentions soylent from a book made from lentins and soy which contain lectins. soy contains also pythoestrogen, not good for your prostate. i'm pretty sure his omega6 amount is also too high, and there is some oxidation as he uses olive oil. the ratio of the nutrients is wrong as its based on the FDA, and is different for different ethnic groups. its very naive of him to think that his soylent is toxic free, as his ingredients are highly processed nutritients, adding new toxins to this mix. No details about monitoring his blood, so i supose he only checked the bare minimum, also not relevant after such a short time. also i think some nutritient are not ment to be consumed together because they bind to each other and create new chemical compounds, which are probably toxic. I think he should read a few more books.
- 5partan 14y agoOh yes i almost forgot, DEPENDENCY! Imagine a world with no seeds (google terminator seeds), and genetically modified and patented animals which don't breed. At best, everybody should cultivate and farm his own food. If you don't have the time to prepare a meal, you don't have time to live. I hope there is strong demand in real and natural food as long as i live.
- davdavid 14y agoHe is "dead wrong" about fruits and vegetables. The phytonutrients in fresh food are the building blocks of our cellular infrastructure and immune systems. There are at least 30 detailed medical studies about how taking fruit and vegetable concentrate increases all sorts of markers of health, from lower stress hormones, to increased cell performance, to reduced damage to DNA, to less days of missed work (2 different studies: one on law students, one on special forces soldiers). There isn't anything else that's ever been clinically proven to reduce damage to DNA except for fruits and vegetables (specifically JuicePlus concentrate) but the finding should generalize to fruits and vegetables. Source: http://corsonwellness.com http://corsonwellness.com (See 30+ medical studies, videos, etc) The most researched food supplement is just simple fruit and vegetables juiced down and concentrated. This guy might be on to something with macronutrients, but it's not a recipe for good health, which requires micro-nutrients. All 10,000 different plant nutrients found in an Apple, not just one like Vitamin C. Maybe if you add the two together, that would be a balanced diet.
- nsxwolf 14y agoLinkbait. Indeed, he eats. It's just really awful food. I am glad I still have the freedom to eat what I choose. I hope that never changes.
- hakaaaaak 14y agoFrom what I've read, it is better to get calcium from milk, vegetables like Spinach, Kale, Okra, Collards, or Soy or White beans, or some fish rather CaCO3. The Mayo clinic suggests taking CaCO3 with food, because stomach acid helps with the absorption: http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/calcium-supplements/AN01428 http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/calcium-supplements/AN01428 Otherwise, Calcium Citrate may be a better choice. The thing that worries me most about this diet is that, while in some ways it may be of great benefit in energy, etc., some of the side effects may not be seen for months, years, or perhaps a few decades. It is an interesting experiment, but I think it would be a good idea if it were controlled and monitored by a doctor. Also he said, "This is one case and it's only been a month". I ate almonds, peanuts, cheese, meat, and veggies for a few months, lost 15 lbs. But, since I've gained it all back and then some. One month at a new diet something hardly makes one an expert.
- jckt 14y ago"No groceries, dishes, deciding what to eat, no endless conversations weighing the relative merits of gluten-free, keto, paleo or vegan." Is this a predominantly American thing? I've never even heard of these things used to describe food before I came to the USA.
- contingencies 14y agoThere's no evidence organic food is healthier than conventional food Isn't it well known that chemical fertilizers, pesticides, preservatives, heavy metals and other nasties do affect foods supplies through the conventional food chain? I think people who enjoy naturally grown food do so with the knowledge that they are avoiding all of this. Sure, it's not going to make a great difference over a few meals, but if you spend your life eating well rounded meals grown naturally your body is certainly going to benefit. Secondly, I am currently under the impression that evidence of bioavailability for many supplements is pathetic to zero. Finally, the damage that extracting, packing, shipping, storing, ordering and measuring these artificial food replacements causes to the environment (ie. the real ecosystems they are ultimately sourced from) is vastly greater than that of simply plucking a fresh tomato from the vine.
- znmeb 14y agoI think the technical term for what Rob Rhinehart has is "eating disorder". He will get sick eventually, as all people who do stuff like this do, and if he's lucky, the damage he is doing to his health will be reversible because he's young.
- palidanx 14y agoI think what makes me the most sad is that this method removes the joy and cultural bonds when one cooks and breaks bread with others. Eating a meal and talking about life with others are things I consdier the most precious of them all.
- rsaarelm 14y agoAren't a lot of people already doing exactly this because they have a disease or disability that makes them unable to chew and swallow food? Roger Ebert hasn't been able to eat solid food in years and is still kicking, so what's in the stuff that's keeping him alive?
- shurcooL 14y agoI would be _so_ interested in something like this.
- luckystarr 14y agoIt intrigues me that he said he would poop a lot less. Most of the mass in poop is actually dead bacteria living off of the food that you can't process (and whose waste we reabsorb at times). We know from studies that the intestinal flora varies quickly depending on what you eat. I also know that my mood swings depending on what I eat. So his account of mood change (he said he felt very energetic) is very plausible. It looks to me that he reduced the numbers of intestinal bacteria by a dramatic amount with his diet. I wonder what potential side effects (good or bad) this could have. Scientist studying the intestine here? Something to look into I guess. :)
- gcatalfamo 14y agoLet's say he is right. Maybe, right? Am I the only one who likes to eat? Eating actually gives me a break from other things.
- stef25 14y agoLIfe being reduced to 1's and 0's, this is the worst thing I've read in a long time. Eating fresh tasty food is one of the joys of life, why on earth would you want to cut that out of your life. What's next, a way of reproducing without having to have sex? What's better than a home made burger, English breakfast, pasta with sauce from fresh tomatoes and basil, seafood fried rice?
- elisehein 14y agoDiscussions about how to save time on eating and cooking -- essentially the ultimate life hacking -- always make me think about early man and his lifestyle that must have consisted mostly of hunting trips that may well have taken up days at a time, and then returning home with the prey and enjoying every bit of the reward. I wonder if they ever contemplated on how they could minimise all this time they spent on keeping themselves alive to make room for .. ehm, what else was there to do anyway?
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- ctdonath 14y agoAs I blog about cheap meals, I'm wondering what the per-meal price is for this concoction. Any ideas?
- ctdonath 14y agoA buried quote worth repeating on Pi Day: * this day I ran 3.14 miles non-stop. This is an irrational improvement
- jalayr 14y agoHe's going to poop liquid for the rest of his life.
- worldimperator 14y agoHere's a good food idea: Don't eat sugar, any fruits which don't have a Greek or Hebrew name or any liquid which is less than 1,000 years old. (Taleb) ;-)
- andybak 14y agoWhat bizarre, emotionally-stunted, inner life must one possess to want to eradicate one of life's most reliable pleasures. I as deep a distrust of people that don't love food as I do of people that don't love music.
- mtitus16 14y agoThis is disgusting, and this man-boy is obviously mentally unstable.
- ufmace 14y agoWhat makes me a bit skeptical about this is that this guy is apparently 24 and was in generally good health before he did all of this. I think most of us have experienced that when you're that young, you can eat pretty much whatever you want without much adverse consequences. There's plenty of college students only a little younger in basically good health whose diet is mostly alcohol and fast food. What happens when you feed this stuff to an overweight 45-year old?
- mesozoic 14y agoWasn't this shown to be a hoax a while back?
- ronaldx 14y agoReading this guy's blog reminded me very much of personal experiences of people suffering a significantly damaging eating disorder (ED) such as anorexia - ED sufferers also report euphoria, and a keen focus on key metrics such as weight loss and exercise allows them to ignore negative health effects. I would suggest this guy's experience is textbook typical of very low calorie diets (VLCD). That doesn't mean it will be healthy in the long-term - according to wikipedia, he might expect gallstones.