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Soylent Subterfuge: When a Bad Joke Turns into a Business
- Meai 13y agoThe appeal of Soylent is cost and convenience. This advice to do bulk cooking instead is not helping in that regard.
- aimatt 13y agoBuying food in bulk = cheap Cooking food in bulk = convenient
- count 13y agoCooking food in bulk is anything but convenient. Where the hell do I put all of it? How do I track if it's still good to eat, etc.
- Guvante 13y agoTo be fair to Soylent, a lot of the subterfuge against this is "We don't understand the human body enough to do that yet", wouldn't the best way to find out is to try? My biggest complaint about Soylent is that they turned their marketing to 11 and failed to mention the fact that long term studies haven't been done so be extra careful, however if people are willing to experiment then power to them. As a final note while complete meal replacement is possibly out of our reach, partial replacement is already done extensively.
- notatoad 13y agoNo, the best way to find out is not to try. The best way to find out is to study, on a meaningful sample size and with a well documented process and at least a modicum of scientific rigour.
- dreen 13y agoThis. FFS your body is not a car and you can't (well, not yet) replace parts of it if you fuck it up. You can't stop people from trying but I don't think most of them fully realise the danger they're putting themselves in.
- IgorPartola 13y agoSeconded. Playing with nutrition is the same as playing with any other chemical you do not understand very well. You can certainly do it, but chances are you will do the wrong thing and mess up. The way I see the "we do not understand nutrition" argument is that we can tell some types of very bad nutrition: lack of vitamin C, lack of amino acids, etc. but we cannot design good nutrition. Soylent is bad. We can see that. However, if it was better, if it included all the known macro- and micronutrients int the ideal proportions, from some wholesome looking sources we could not tell whether it was actually good. I am starting to come to the realization that all good kills us eventually, and all we are really trying to do is to find a diet that kills us the slowest.
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- whiddershins 13y agoInteresting the assertion that 80g of protein is paltry. I happen to agree, as do many people I respect. But many, many people (esp vegans) argue the opposite. The FDA, after years of avoiding an opinion, finally settled on 34-56g/day RDA for protein.
- theboss 13y agoAs a powerlifter I consume 200g of protein per day. One thing you won't see is any IFBB pros or ANYONE with muscles drinking soylent... Here's a good URL to read with lots of science. http://examine.com/faq/how-much-protein-do-i-need-every-day.html http://examine.com/faq/how-much-protein-do-i-need-every-day....
- hamsternipples 13y agoeveryone's body is different. there was an article earlier today about losing weight with the same premise. soylent should be sorta like those the soda machines at the fast food places, cept instead of mixing dr pepper and coke, you could get an extra dose of chicken squirt instead of soy squeeze
- bradleyjoyce 13y agoI appreciate the vocal skepticism as I feel it's important, especially when it comes to this topic. Proper studies should be done, but if people want to take on the risk themselves to consume soylent then more power too them, so long as they know the risks.
- ekianjo 13y agoI hope they don't start asking for the Healthcare insurance to pay for all the long term effects they may get from this. Wanna live off Soylent? Good. You're on your own.
- gscott 13y agoThis girl was able to get by on only McNuggets so what could possibly be more harmful? http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2092071/Stacey-Irvine-17-collapses-eating-McDonalds-chicken-nuggets-age-2.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2092071/Stacey-Irv...
- namlem 13y agoYou could say that about almost anything though. A Soylent diet is significantly better for you than what many people currently eat. Should we deny people healthcare because they eat too much fast food as well? The chance of soylent incurring any meaningful healthcare cost is basically nil.
- ekianjo 13y ago> A Soylent diet is significantly better for you than what many people currently eat. Zero evidence. Good job on the comment.
- hamsternipples 13y agowhen I was younger and lived in the USA, I had a diet of virtually only mcdonalds (and burritos). I survived. this has got to be, at least slightly more nutritious. LOL, what's the big deal? I'm also like 100% sure this is better than what the starving africans are eating. why doesn't he just provide some constructive improvements instead of a graphically enhanced rant, with the assumption that the entire world eats a balanced nutritional diet? oh yea, the various arguments against the man (and other fallacies), are nice touches too... seriously, who cares dude? if he's such a super experienced nutritionist, why doesn't he make his own soylent v2.0? disclaimer: never tried soylent, nor care to try it, but soylent did inspire me to make my own version of easily reproduced "food". it's still in experimentation, but ironically this article was informative. it's given me a few new ideas to improve my own blend (which uses almond butter instead of soy as a base). thanks!
- chasing 13y agoI love the "it's sure healthier than eating a pile of rocks mixed in with cow shit" argument. Yes, and hitting yourself across the face with rebar sure is healthier than driving it straight into your eye socket.
- hamsternipples 13y agowell, I didn't mean it like that. IMO, the author of the article went way out of his way to try and prove soylent to be something... I'm not sure what he was trying to prove actually -- it seemed like he was generally kinda being negative. what bothered me is that he's spending so much energy to try and belittle something which is cheaper and probably healthier to eat than most fast food. why didn't he just give constructive criticism? EDIT: what I would like to see is some sort of concerted effort to try and make a cheap, inexpensive food, which isn't perishable. that's all. I'm sorry for being negative myself. I think such a product could go a long way for improvement of all humanity
- healsdata 13y agoMcDonald's food contains a larger variety of foods and nutrients than Soylent. For example, a Big Mac has all of the following: Beef, Salt, Black Pepper, Bleached Wheat Flour, Malted Barley Flour, Canola Oil, Soybean Oil, Pickles, Egg Yolks, Onion Powder, Mustard Seed, Vegetable Protein, Turmeric, Lettuce, Onions It's also loaded with HFCS and a laundry list of preservatives and additives. I'm not saying it's the healthiest food, but given a choice between the two, I'd choose the one that at least has a few real food components. And before you mention Supersize Me and the effects it had on his health, remember that it was an n=1 study and The Fathead Movie did the same experiment and his health improved.
- deftnerd 13y agoTo me, the appeal of soylent is that it's such a compact food delivery system. I eat healthy food, but my portion control is all out of whack. My hope is that a month of Soylent will help my stomach shrink and learn the proper signals telling me that I've had enough to eat.
- IgorPartola 13y agoHave you tried drinking lots of water with your meals? Especially carbonated water/Seltzer water? That tends to curb appetite very effectively for some people.
- gamegoblin 13y agoYou should get a kitchen scale and measure the foods you eat. It's pretty simple to keep track of calories and portion sizes this way. i.e. I had 150g of pork loin for lunch. I can type "pork calories" into google and some clever google app tells me that 100g of pork loin is about 200 calories. So I had a 300 calorie lunch. I lost 10 lbs in 3 weeks keeping a strict 1500 calorie a day diet and it's just as simple as taking a minute or two to measure your meals.
- sachingulaya 13y agoRead my comment above. Soylent is very filling
- IgorPartola 13y agoThe first time I heard of Soylent and this guy I thought "here is a guy who is literally being killed by his own stupidity and does not know it". I can see people buying into this scam and it sucks. The problem is that Rob is a skinny, healthy looking guy. This diet, if it really is his full time source of nutrition, is going to have its effect on him sooner or later, but chances are that one of his clients, perhaps someone twice his age and weight, will suffer the consequences first.
- jackmoore 13y agoWhen his story was originally shared on HN, I believe it made a point that his diet wasn't entirely Soylent and that he consumed normal meals once a week. I wouldn't be surprised if that combination could carry him for a long time.
- autarch 13y agoSoylent is definitely suspect. The idea that human nutrition can be boiled down to a minimal list of ingredients that are the only things you should eat is nonsense. That said, there's no reason to think this article is any better. Honestly, I didn't finish it, because as soon as it said that you might crave animal protein heavy products because of a protein deficiency I knew that the author was as full of it as what he or she is criticizing. The citations look good until you start digging. One of them cites a naturalnews.com article (not a peer-reviewed journal) that in turn cites the Weston A. Price Foundation site, a towering bastion of pseudoscientific nonsense. I wonder how many of actual scientific articles cited even support the points the author cites them for. In summary, the nutrition science in this article is about as poor as the nutrition science behind Soylent.
- jowiar 13y ago> The idea that human nutrition can be boiled down to a minimal list of ingredients that are the only things you should eat is nonsense. It's perfectly sensible that there is a mathematically minimum sufficient diet, or mathematically optimal diet, with the caveat that: 1. There's a high probability that this varies for each definition of "you", and for different times of day / month / year / within a lifetime 2. Soylent is, with almost perfect certainty, not it. But there is a nonzero chance that a purely soylent diet is healthier than the current median human diet. Will we get there someday? Probably. I"d say there's a better than 50% chance it happens within the next century. Whether we want to get there is another story. FWIW, our bodies aren't really a whole lot more complex than feline or canine bodies, and we've managed to come up with a sufficiently nutritious kitty kibble (or at least, we think we have). Remember, deciding what to eat is a decidedly modern problem, as is looking at food as a combination of nutrients. For the vast majority of human existence, nutrition consisted of avoiding starvation. When deciding between options, the proper answer was "all of the above".
- epmatsw 13y agoThis is my exact outlook on it. You have a very fair chance of Soylent being significantly healthier than your current diet (as an American). At the very least, it provides the nutrients that a hundred years of studying dietary deficiencies have proved necessary and will possibly give some indication of necessary nutrients that we have overlooked.
- mitchi 13y agoIt really comes down to this : - The guy is not a career nutritionist. - He's basically recreating the food they eat in Matrix (the second movie I believe) - He's making money off it. #1 and #3 are pissing people off. I'm actually glad many people are offering to be guinea pigs for this because all-in-one fast food is a good tech to unlock.
- chasing 13y agoDoesn't Ensure already exist?
- mitchi 13y agono fat in Ensure! It can't be a complete food without fat right?
- cwzwarich 13y agoEnsure has 20% of its calories from fat.
- GhotiFish 13y agoThis is something that concerns me about soylent. Ensure is basically the same thing, already mass produced, and Ensure is freaking crazy expensive. Crazy crazy expensive. I'm not willing to spend that much money to not have to prepare food. I'd make more money if I just take an hour off work every day and make my food. How can soylent be cheaper? Is Ensure just gouging?
- aimatt 13y agoI wouldn't eat the tasteless crap and this guy is spot on. However, some of these comments stating eating only this stuff vs eating all processed food isn't too far off. At the very least, I would not use a fast carb like dextrose/glucose, I would say use a longer burning carb to reduce energy spikes and dips.
- ericcumbee 13y agoI am still waiting to learn that they are just trolling with the name Soylent and have another name picked out for it.
- yareally 13y agoPerhaps I assume too much, but if nutrition and what one should eat were really as simple as what Soylent is trying to do, wouldn't NASA or the Soviet Space Program devised a solution like this for the Astronauts and Cosmonauts? Each program spent tons on researching anything and everything needed to go into space and at some point, I would presume their scientists would have proposed or tested an idea like this. Edit: I mean that more as a statement of curiosity as to if they did any research and the results of it than as an argument (since there's flaws to it like the argument of variety and morale in long missions). I would guess the Soviets if not NASA would at least be interested in it due to the tight budget of their space program and the ideology of the government (perception of avoiding extravagance).
- bryans 13y agoMy memory could be mistaken, but I seem to recall that they have tested this and do have options similar to Soylent, and the reason they use "regular" foods is more for psychological reasons than technical ones.
- GhotiFish 13y agoI suspect NASA has safety a higher priority than efficiency. They might go that route, but why take the risk?
- Moto7451 13y agoIn the Mercury program, food looked like this (mmm Soylent-y) : http://airandspace.si.edu/exhibitions/apollo-to-the-moon/online/food.1.html http://airandspace.si.edu/exhibitions/apollo-to-the-moon/onl... Problem was that it wasn't particularly enjoyable. During Gemini/Apollo food looked like this: http://www.space1.com/Artifacts/Apollo_Artifacts/Apollo_Food/apollo_food.html http://www.space1.com/Artifacts/Apollo_Artifacts/Apollo_Food... Anyone up for Catfood? Probably tasted a lot better than Mercury Tube food but not quite the same as mom's. Today food looks like this: http://www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/presskits/spacefood/gallery_jsc2003e63872.html http://www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/presskits/spacefood/ga... And well.. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/70/AstronautsEatingBurgers.jpg/800px-AstronautsEatingBurgers.jpg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/70/Ast... Kinds like it does on Earth. Some other fun tidbits: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_food#Apollo_program_.281968-1975.29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_food#Apollo_program_.2819... I think NASA and other space entities could come up with a super Soylent like substance for sustenance in space, but the trend towards normal food is apparent. I think it's safe to say that Astronauts are well disciplined and dedicated... and if they're not willing to put up with eating goop in a tube... Well I think it goes to show that people by large, even under extreme and alien circumstances, enjoy presentation and variety more than Mr. Rhinehart may believe (or like to suggest to us).
- Causalien 13y agoI am all for this since I rarely have time to enjoy food. However, I also understand that some of the nutrients probably can't be absorbed by the human body in that form, so for me, it'll be treated as a supplement. If they can do one thing that'll make me buy this. It'll be to change it into a cookie. I mean c'mon, that gruel looks disgusting and the thing already tasts disgusting.
- mrtimo 13y agoExcellent write-up! I'd love to see a similar write up for the popular medi-fast diet!
- monkeypizza 13y agoWhy is everybody so negative about this? He's doing something weird, but he is still leaving himself open to scientific evidence, which is better than the average mystical / religious diet recommendation (chinese medicine, hinduism, vegetarianism) which mostly do not accept scientific evidence, and instead do their diets for unassailable moral/mystical reasons (balancing "qi", balancing hot/cold foods, purity obsessions, etc.) People survive on life rafts eating flying fish and drinking rain water, for months at a time. Most people using soylent will not eat it for all their meals, and they will almost always be surrounded by other food they can eat if they start feeling bad. So I don't think it's a big deal, let him do what he wants!
- grogenaut 13y agoYes, they live on the rafts. Then they spend a month in the hospital when they get picked up.
- callinyouin 13y agoSo, a vegetarian diet is without science on its side despite plenty of evidence to the contrary (not listing any sources, there's plenty of information available on the subject), yet someone marketing a nutrient goo with obvious nutritional deficiencies as a complete food replacement is totally okay. That's some odd logic, pal.
- microcolonel 13y agoThe immaturity and uselessness of this article(written by somebody in a competing market) doesn't support any fear, uncertainty, or doubt for me. I vouch that if there continues to be market interest, and a lack of forceful interference(from say, a government); Soylent will become what it needs to be in order to succeed(safe, complete, and vetted).
- GhotiFish 13y agoIn short, knocking your body out of its natural equilibrium state of ingesting/digesting/synthesizing /excreting cholesterol may swing the pendulum too far in the opposite direction. End of story: while your body might get along with cholesterol-free Soylent, the “gut decision” to disinclude a vital compound may prove to be short- sighted sometime down the road. The words "End of story" and "may prove to be" do not belong in the same sentence, paragraph, thought, or visible on the same screen. This is a hyper aggressive article that fails to impress.
- SCAQTony 13y agoI think the most minimalistic, food, product execution that has proven to sustain life, pass on immunities and provide superior nutrition is breast milk. Of course we can't attach "vacuum suckers" to lactating women but the "old" 'soylent green' "....is made [by] people" and cow milk is probably a close second.
- adrusi 13y agoI agree with the article on the "If food is too hard… you’re doing it wrong" section. I don't think that this means Soylent is worthless though, on the contrary, I think it's what makes it viable. While I would never choose to live on just (or mostly) Soylent, as I enjoy food too much, I think it would be very useful to keep around. Instead of something to replace food entirely, it could be reserved for when you're in a rush. I'm sure that Soylent for breakfast Mon-Fri is much better than nothing. If you're out of the house and need to grab lunch, I'm sure Soylent is healthier than McDonalds. All the criticism of soylent I've seen is the completely reasonable (and almost certainly correct) assertion that it's not sustainable as the exclusive food source in the very long term. Like everything it should be done in moderation.
- defen 13y agoFrom reading the comments here and on other articles about Soylent, the argument seems to break down into two camps: Harmful until proven safe, or safe until proven harmful. And I really don't understand the mindset of the "safe until proven harmful" people.
- chebert 13y agoWhat do people think about soylent just replacing like 1-2 meals a day? And then you have your full course chicken breast and brown rice meal for dinner or something. It seems like that might be a good compromise for people who are scared of their bones deteriorating, their kidneys waning, or their tissues slowly inflaming. No one says you must eat only soylent day-in and day-out. But it sure seems like a nice way to save time and money on, say, a dozen meals per week.
- namlem 13y agoWhile I am highly dubious of Soylent as a product, Rinehart's approach seem solid enough. The problem with Soylent, as I see it, is that no one formula is applicable to very many people. RR himself had regular blood work done and tweaked the formula heavily based on his body's response. Given that it's been several months and he is alive and seemingly healthy, I see no reason why this approach couldn't work for anyone else. As long as you throw in a couple meals of varied real food in every week for good measure, this really seems pretty safe.
- qq66 13y agoRegardless of the health aspects, do that many people WANt to drink liquefied meals? I like eating food.