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> 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 sensibl
by 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.
- DanBC 13y ago> Whether we want to get there is another story. NASA could probably have come up with a Soylent-like product by now, but they haven't. I guess that being stuck in a small can in space means that nice food becomes important. So, on the ground, there are two hurdles. i) Portion control, ii) Choice. Some people will not eat two scoops of ice cream. They will eat a pint of ice cream. They won't eat 2 cookies, they'll eat the packet of cookies. Some people will smear the cookies with peanut butter, and crumble them over the pint of ice cream. Will Soylent help these people? What happens if someone eats double the recommended daily amount of Soylent? Or triple? Or quadruple? Some people will walk into a supermarket, walk past all the fruit and vegetables, and into the doughnut aisle. Then they'll walk past the meat and fish and into the crisp / chip aisle. Then they'll go to the weird salt / sugar / fat / slop instant meal aisle and buy bizarre "food". I have no idea how Soylent will help them.
- jowiar 13y agoAs far as I can figure out NASA's original solution to space food WAS a Soylent-like product. Astronauts responded by smuggling a corned beef sandwich into space. [1] The point of Soylent is to separate the pleasure from eating. Rather than being a emotional, sensory activity, treat eating with has all the excitement of popping a pill - insert nutrients into body. What do I eat? Soylent. How much? The amount it tells me to. The questions of "Do I eat the broccoli or the ice cream?" or "Do I have seconds?" are taken off the table. I wss in the hospital for the better part of a week a year ago. They had me on the "nothing by mouth" diet for a couple days - simply an IV drip for nutrition, then a liquid diet for two more. When my friends came to visit, the first thing I said was something along the lines of "As soon as I get out of here we're getting the best cheeseburger in this city." Could that desire be trained away? I'm not sure. [1]: http://history.nasa.gov/Apollo204/zorn/grissom.htm http://history.nasa.gov/Apollo204/zorn/grissom.htm