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This is drivel. It is nothing but anecdote and conjecture. > When I was in college, I had a room-mate who lived on nothing but pizza, mac and cheese and mariju

This is drivel. It is nothing but anecdote and conjecture. > When I was in college, I had a room-mate who lived on nothing but pizza, mac and cheese and marijuana for a year. Aside from being thin, pale, and subject to periodic, inexplicable bouts of coughing, he “felt fine”, too. There are people in the third world who would kill for a daily diet of pizza and macaroni-n-cheese. The author fails to address that his roommate ("stupid pothead! lolz") was eating food and that Soylent is not food, rather being synthesized raw nutrients. That is the key issue at hand, not the question of variety in a diet.

kevingadd 13y ago
I don't know if you can just claim that variety in diet is unimportant. The body's needs change on a regular basis; do you really think dietary needs don't change? I thought his point with the anecdote was not 'this anecdote proves x', but rather 'we all do stupid things and get away with them when we're young'. He's trying to discourage the kind of one-size-fits-all thinking that leads a guy to leap from 'this meal replacement works good for me' to 'this meal replacement will work good for everyone'.
- oinksoft 13y ago
  Be it in prison camps or the "Big Mac" guy, we have so many case studies of people living, and remaining able persons, for long periods of time with an utterly static diet. A varied diet may be key for optimal health or for perceived quality of life, but the human body is surprisingly adaptive and resilient. The frightening thing about Soylent (to me) is that I am not sure if it constitutes a "diet" any more than the mud patties and other non-food yet objectively nutritional foodstuffs consumed amongst the poorest of the poor in Africa.
- drharris 13y ago
  The body's needs only change because you're not getting everything you need with every meal. Soylent gives you everything you need all at once. I don't see why people in the 21st century still believe there's something magic about the food we eat.
  - kevingadd 13y ago
    That's blatantly ignorant. To give a few obvious examples: Changes in metabolism, bigger life changes like puberty and menopause, obviously pregnancy - these all change your dietary needs.
    - drharris 13y ago
      > The body's needs change on a regular basis > Changes in metabolism, bigger life changes like puberty and menopause, obviously pregnancy I do not think these things happen on a regular basis.
      - kevingadd 13y ago
        They happen to everyone at least twice in their life! Some people dozens of times! How common do they need to be for you to believe that messing up nutrition is problematic? It can literally kill people! If you're going to argue that all the nutritional changes can be accounted for, I won't disagree with you. But to argue that people's dietary needs don't change is just uninformed.
  - jacques_chester 13y ago
    > Soylent gives you everything you need all at once. It probably doesn't. Some people can't metabolise certain forms of B-group vitamins. Unless Soylent includes all the different forms, those people are going to develop a serious deficiency. That's just one micronutrient, out hundreds that are currently known about. More worrying is the consistent pattern of being dismissive of feedback from the people who study this subject as their primary concern.

kevingadd 13y ago

I don't know if you can just claim that variety in diet is unimportant. The body's needs change on a regular basis; do you really think dietary needs don't change? I thought his point with the anecdote was not 'this anecdote proves x', but rather 'we all do stupid things and get away with them when we're young'. He's trying to discourage the kind of one-size-fits-all thinking that leads a guy to leap from 'this meal replacement works good for me' to 'this meal replacement will work good for everyone'.

oinksoft 13y ago
Be it in prison camps or the "Big Mac" guy, we have so many case studies of people living, and remaining able persons, for long periods of time with an utterly static diet. A varied diet may be key for optimal health or for perceived quality of life, but the human body is surprisingly adaptive and resilient. The frightening thing about Soylent (to me) is that I am not sure if it constitutes a "diet" any more than the mud patties and other non-food yet objectively nutritional foodstuffs consumed amongst the poorest of the poor in Africa.
drharris 13y ago
The body's needs only change because you're not getting everything you need with every meal. Soylent gives you everything you need all at once. I don't see why people in the 21st century still believe there's something magic about the food we eat.
- kevingadd 13y ago
  That's blatantly ignorant. To give a few obvious examples: Changes in metabolism, bigger life changes like puberty and menopause, obviously pregnancy - these all change your dietary needs.
  - drharris 13y ago
    > The body's needs change on a regular basis > Changes in metabolism, bigger life changes like puberty and menopause, obviously pregnancy I do not think these things happen on a regular basis.
    - kevingadd 13y ago
      They happen to everyone at least twice in their life! Some people dozens of times! How common do they need to be for you to believe that messing up nutrition is problematic? It can literally kill people! If you're going to argue that all the nutritional changes can be accounted for, I won't disagree with you. But to argue that people's dietary needs don't change is just uninformed.
- jacques_chester 13y ago
  > Soylent gives you everything you need all at once. It probably doesn't. Some people can't metabolise certain forms of B-group vitamins. Unless Soylent includes all the different forms, those people are going to develop a serious deficiency. That's just one micronutrient, out hundreds that are currently known about. More worrying is the consistent pattern of being dismissive of feedback from the people who study this subject as their primary concern.