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The real question seems easy: Why should one start to "eat" in a way that our body was never made for? For how long has humanity been eating natural and solid

The real question seems easy: Why should one start to "eat" in a way that our body was never made for? For how long has humanity been eating natural and solid things again?

davidcollantes 13y ago
What do you mean, "to eat in a way that our body was never made for"? You real question is non-sensical. Pre-humans and humans have eaten in many different ways throughout, and will continue to do so.
- lclarkmichalek 13y ago
  Sure our diets have changed over time. But I don't think we've ever lived on one food alone?
- northwest 13y ago
  Just one more point: the colon depends on solid material in order to push things through (it's how it works). Get rid of solid food in there and its muscles won't create any real transit.
  - dsego 13y ago
    How about that one guy recently on HN that didn't eat anything for over a year and lived off his body fat? He defecated once in a month or so.
    - king_jester 13y ago
      The vast majority of "person doesn't eat and still lives" stories are fakes or the person in question actually does eat and drink, sometimes secretly.
      - dsego 13y ago
        I think this was under medical supervision and the guy was extremely overweight in the beginning.
      - glenra 13y ago
        If you start out weighing ~450 pounds, the math on living without eating is pretty straightforward. The person in question did a medically supervised fast. He consumed water, a multivitamin and a small amount of yeast. (Also potassium tablets for a few months) His weight went from 456 to 180 pounds over the period of the fast; he regained about 15 pounds in the following 5 years. He apparently defecated every 40-50 days. (Though the stories about this are pretty recent, the event being described happened in 1965.) http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2012/07/24/3549931.htm http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2012/07/24/3549931.ht...
  - mcv 13y ago
    This is my only real worry about Soylent. Most of the argument people make against it make little sense (including this article). The only thing I can imagine being a problem is the fact that our digestive tract is made to extract nutrients from stuff and poop out the remains. If we only get the nutrients without the crap to poop out, much of our digestive tract has little to do. And physiology tends to revolve around "use it or lose it". Astronauts living weightless for a significant time lose muscle and bone mass because they don't need it. If you eat nothing but Soylent for a year, will you still be able to handle normal food? That's really the only significant problem I can think of with the Soylent approach to eating. And it could be a serious one, though I suspect it's easy to mitigate by mixing the occasional real meal into the mix.
IanCal 13y ago
We inject things that make us live longer and replace body parts with mechanics. For how long has humanity been not inserting pacemakers or giving vaccinations. I don't particularly like the idea of soylent, but coming at it from a "but it's not natural" is just ridiculous. You know what's natural? Dying in horrifying ways, with no hope or understanding of what's happening. Fuck natural. Remember natural smallpox? Not a single person in the world has it. How many people die during childbirth now compared to 150 years ago? > a way that our body was never made for? We weren't made for anything. We're a loosely connected series of insane reactions that just about doesn't die. We put load on non-load bearing structures (hi, spine), we have our optic nerve running through the centre of our retina giving us a blind spot, our body can decide that peanuts = a threat so bad we should stop breathing and occasionally some of our cells will rebel and try and kill us. We don't even produce vitamin C thanks to a single error, something we need to live and could easily produce. We weren't made for anything, we just are.
- bluedino 13y ago
  >> We weren't made for anything. No, but our bodies have been fine-tuned through evolution over the last million years, up until probably the last 20,000 or so. Your digestive tract is different from a cow, snake, or wolf for a reason.
  - IanCal 13y ago
    Fine tuned maybe, but with the goal of "stay alive just about long enough to be useful", we're pretty awfully constructed. For example, we need ultraviolet light to not get rickets but it can also give us cancer. Our fine-tuned digestive tract contains an organ which occasionally bursts. My wisdom teeth have decided that they'd rather grow forwards than up. Evolution gets you to functional, it doesn't get you to "good". To suggest that what we've been doing in the past is optimal seems ridiculous to me. I'm not saying I think this gruel is a good idea, but the argument "it's not natural" holds no weight.
dsego 13y ago
Should I ambush a wild cow and bite down on it's neck until it bleeds to death? And then the rest of the family joins the feast, sinking our teeth into the raw flesh?
- zimpenfish 13y ago
  Yes. Also please video this and put it on YouTube. Would make an interesting "how far a person can get trying to bite a wild cow in the neck before being trampled to death" case study.

The real question seems easy: Why should one start to "eat" in a way that our body was never made for? For how long has humanity been eating natural and solid things again?

davidcollantes 13y ago

What do you mean, "to eat in a way that our body was never made for"? You real question is non-sensical. Pre-humans and humans have eaten in many different ways throughout, and will continue to do so.

lclarkmichalek 13y ago
Sure our diets have changed over time. But I don't think we've ever lived on one food alone?
northwest 13y ago
Just one more point: the colon depends on solid material in order to push things through (it's how it works). Get rid of solid food in there and its muscles won't create any real transit.
- dsego 13y ago
  How about that one guy recently on HN that didn't eat anything for over a year and lived off his body fat? He defecated once in a month or so.
  - king_jester 13y ago
    The vast majority of "person doesn't eat and still lives" stories are fakes or the person in question actually does eat and drink, sometimes secretly.
    - dsego 13y ago
      I think this was under medical supervision and the guy was extremely overweight in the beginning.
    - glenra 13y ago
      If you start out weighing ~450 pounds, the math on living without eating is pretty straightforward. The person in question did a medically supervised fast. He consumed water, a multivitamin and a small amount of yeast. (Also potassium tablets for a few months) His weight went from 456 to 180 pounds over the period of the fast; he regained about 15 pounds in the following 5 years. He apparently defecated every 40-50 days. (Though the stories about this are pretty recent, the event being described happened in 1965.) http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2012/07/24/3549931.htm http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2012/07/24/3549931.ht...
- mcv 13y ago
  This is my only real worry about Soylent. Most of the argument people make against it make little sense (including this article). The only thing I can imagine being a problem is the fact that our digestive tract is made to extract nutrients from stuff and poop out the remains. If we only get the nutrients without the crap to poop out, much of our digestive tract has little to do. And physiology tends to revolve around "use it or lose it". Astronauts living weightless for a significant time lose muscle and bone mass because they don't need it. If you eat nothing but Soylent for a year, will you still be able to handle normal food? That's really the only significant problem I can think of with the Soylent approach to eating. And it could be a serious one, though I suspect it's easy to mitigate by mixing the occasional real meal into the mix.

IanCal 13y ago

We inject things that make us live longer and replace body parts with mechanics. For how long has humanity been not inserting pacemakers or giving vaccinations. I don't particularly like the idea of soylent, but coming at it from a "but it's not natural" is just ridiculous. You know what's natural? Dying in horrifying ways, with no hope or understanding of what's happening. Fuck natural. Remember natural smallpox? Not a single person in the world has it. How many people die during childbirth now compared to 150 years ago? > a way that our body was never made for? We weren't made for anything. We're a loosely connected series of insane reactions that just about doesn't die. We put load on non-load bearing structures (hi, spine), we have our optic nerve running through the centre of our retina giving us a blind spot, our body can decide that peanuts = a threat so bad we should stop breathing and occasionally some of our cells will rebel and try and kill us. We don't even produce vitamin C thanks to a single error, something we need to live and could easily produce. We weren't made for anything, we just are.

bluedino 13y ago
>> We weren't made for anything. No, but our bodies have been fine-tuned through evolution over the last million years, up until probably the last 20,000 or so. Your digestive tract is different from a cow, snake, or wolf for a reason.
- IanCal 13y ago
  Fine tuned maybe, but with the goal of "stay alive just about long enough to be useful", we're pretty awfully constructed. For example, we need ultraviolet light to not get rickets but it can also give us cancer. Our fine-tuned digestive tract contains an organ which occasionally bursts. My wisdom teeth have decided that they'd rather grow forwards than up. Evolution gets you to functional, it doesn't get you to "good". To suggest that what we've been doing in the past is optimal seems ridiculous to me. I'm not saying I think this gruel is a good idea, but the argument "it's not natural" holds no weight.

dsego 13y ago

Should I ambush a wild cow and bite down on it's neck until it bleeds to death? And then the rest of the family joins the feast, sinking our teeth into the raw flesh?

zimpenfish 13y ago
Yes. Also please video this and put it on YouTube. Would make an interesting "how far a person can get trying to bite a wild cow in the neck before being trampled to death" case study.