7 ms·

Soylent aside, im amazed at how terrible his traditional normal days meal is? I mean hes eating a processed breakfast subsitute in the morning, take away mexica

• tocomment 13y ago
  Is a protien shake for breakfast really that bad? I have not been able to find a breakfast food that's quick, tastes ok, and isn't high in carbs.
  • oftenwrong 13y ago
    Is your definition of "breakfast food" too narrow? Any food can be a breakfast food.
  • joering2 13y ago
    This is a good summary from someone credible (IMO): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExyNf3u7iQg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExyNf3u7iQg
  • katbyte 13y ago
    I for a while had this http://myvega.com/product/vega-one-nutritional-shake/ http://myvega.com/product/vega-one-nutritional-shake/ every morning for a while and i rather enjoyed the berry flavor after a few days. However it isn't exactly cheap.
  • jimbokun 13y ago
    How about a banana?
    • foobarbazqux 13y ago
      Bananas are mostly carbs. In Africa, plantains and bananas provide over 25% of carbohydrate requirements for 70 million people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plantain_%28cooking%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plantain_%28cooking%29
  • jfb 13y ago
    Eggs don't take very long.
  • __--__ 13y ago
    Steak and eggs. Quick, tasty, high in protein, low in carbs. Considered a traditional breakfast.
    • gnaritas 13y ago
      Requires cooking, not quick.
      • foobarbazqux 13y ago
        When is it ever healthy to rush preparing and eating your meals on a regular basis?
        • gnaritas 13y ago
          That's rather the point of people wanting something like Soilent to begin with, people often don't want to take the time necessary to make proper healthy food. It shouldn't be so much work to fuel up.
          • foobarbazqux 13y ago
            My point is that taking the time necessary to make (and eat) proper healthy food is a large part of what makes it healthy.
            • gnaritas 13y ago
              Which is the bug things like Soilent (not that I support Soilent) are trying to fix. In this day and age, science should be able to fix problems like this so we can have fast and healthy food. You're begging the question.
              • foobarbazqux 13y ago
                Preparing food slowly and eating it slowly together with other people and enjoying the entire process is psychologically healthy. Michael Pollan has written extensively about this. It's not just about the nutrients.
  • rdl 13y ago
    Pre-cooked bacon (ideally, that you cook yourself and just throw into the fridge). Eggs, if you want to bother cooking at all. Pre-cooked bacon can be eaten alone, or put on a salad, or whatever.
    • rodgerd 13y ago
      Streaky bacon can microwave in 5 minutes and tastes fucking delicious.
  • IanCal 13y ago
    For breakfast I often mix natural yoghurt and some frozen berries. It's tasty, cheap and I think fairly healthy.
• beering 13y ago
  Soylent fans would argue that this alone is a valid benefit of Soylent - reasonable, healthy nutrition that takes no planning or decision-making, and is cheap and easy. Getting people to eat better is not an easy problem to fix. (BTW, it's also easy to paint restaurant food as bad, without actually examining why. It's also easy to make unhealthy home-cooked organic food.)
  • Steko 13y ago
    "reasonable, healthy nutrition that takes no planning or decision-making, and is cheap and easy." You can't say it's cheap because it's not being sold to consumers. There's a promotional price that works out to $10 a day which is cheap but not out of line with similar products. "reasonable, healthy nutrition" give the benefit of the doubt here. "no planning" - doubtful, it's a powder mix you make into shakes. That requires some planning. "no decision making" - identical to any "eat only x" diet, many people would not consider this a selling point. "easy" Ok, we'll give them a pass here. Not the easiest though.
    • IanCal 13y ago
      I wouldn't consider $10 a day cheap. That'd add up to $600 a month for me and my wife, and that's way more than our current food budget (including delivery, beer, wine, fresh roasted coffee and more luxuries). I assumed it was going to be way cheaper than that.
  • SquidLord 13y ago
    You know, "you are too stupid to be allowed to make your own food," is probably not a good selling point for most people. I'm going to go out on limb and suggest that it's not a good selling point for anyone. "Soylent fans" who are fans before the actual product has been seen or tested in any significant way might self-identify as people who need to be targeted by the first paragraph of this reply, however.
• natrius 13y ago
  Besides the sodium, Chipotle isn't that bad, especially if you skip the tortillas and sour cream.
• speeder 13y ago
  I was bothered by that too. I think soylent would have a hard time beating my diet WHEN I eat correctly (some recent issues resulted into me drifting far from my normal diet, but now I am returning to it again). My normal diet, breakfast: toast, cheese, chinese tea (I like all colors) or matte tea (it remembers black tea, but with a less harsh taste and less caffeine) lunch: vegetables and proteins (meat, cheese, sashimi, whatever..) dinner: proteins (usually, fish) and then you can sprinkle some fruit and cereal bars during the day. When I did this diet for the first time (while ignoring my nutriotionist and doctors) my weight plunged from 125 to 100, most of that in fat, my cholesterol dropped from the dangerously high 270 to 170, and several other stuff in my blood tests that were unhealthy got fixed. I see here lots of "healthy" people like the author, that avoid meat because it is supposed to be "healthy" that are quite unhealthy. Well, several of them are not obese, but they are obviously weak and have nutrition issues. I met REALLY FEW non-cow eaters, vegetarians and vegans that really knew what they were doing... (by the way, the advice that I ignored from my medics was eat more grains, like rice, and avoid fatty foods, specially red meat... I did exact the opposite and it worked, while when I followed their advice strictly I got fatter, to me it is clear that even the fat in the meat is useful and important for the body)
  • precisioncoder 13y ago
    Since vegetarianism tends to attract a certain sort of person anecdotal evidence regarding them is shaky at best. It would be interesting to see various studies but I'm not sure there are many I trust since they tend to get hijacked to serve a political or moral point. If soylent (or some future product) does prove successful I would think a lot of vegetarians (as well as meat eaters) would benefit from having some occasionally just to make sure they're getting all their required nutrients.
  • Fuzzwah 13y ago
    Your weight numbers could do with some units. I hope / expect you're talking 125kg down to 100kg. But I'm an Aussie living in the US so I have a clue what you mean. I suspect many Americans wouldn't.
    • 13y ago
• jurassic 13y ago
  What's the big deal? What this guy is eating already is definitely above average in quality. A Chipotle burrito bol (fresh whole ingredients, sans tortilla) is a legit meal. Other than dental impacts from the carbonation, health hysteria about diet soda and aspartame has been debunked. I don't know about the take-out Thai, but at least it's real food and not some preservative-laden packaged food product from the grocery store. Not everybody has 5 hours a day or a stay-at-home wife to cook their Whole Foods organic produce into a masterpiece of nutrition.
  • lysol 13y ago
    Even the veggie burrito bol is in the 800 range for calories, and based on how employees heap stuff on, much more than that. It's really two meals' worth of food. Even the highest quality starch and fat filled meal is still a starch and fat filled meal. The health hysteria over aspartame hasn't really been fully debunked, there are still countless conflicting studies about the effects of aspartame, one of the more recent ones finding the metabolic effects of artificial sweetener to be the same as an actual HFCS-sweetened soda. Soda may or may not be bad for you, but it's certainly empty calories. He shows a picture of Diet Coke but mentions Vanilla Coke throughout. Your parent comment is on the mark.
    • jurassic 13y ago
      800 calories for one of his two daily meals is not bad. And I'm curious what you think he should be eating for calories as a vegetarian (he said he didn't eat meat) if fat and starch are both off limits. A raw vegan diet is the only one I can think of that limits both of those, and I would dispute its healthfulness.
    • ars_technician 13y ago
      >Soda may or may not be bad for you, but it's certainly empty calories. Not diet soda. There are NO calories in it. It's not "empty calories". With your level of ignorance, I'm surprised you haven't poisoned yourself. >Even the veggie burrito bol is in the 800 range for calories, and based on how employees heap stuff on, The calorie counts have to be based on the average serving size, or they will be fined by the FDA for lying.
• hcarvalhoalves 13y ago
  > Soylent aside, im amazed at how terrible his traditional normal days meal is? I wasn't able to take the post too seriously after that since Soylent, as simples as it is, apparently is still better than his previous diet.
• codezero 13y ago
  Do you think, on average, peoples' diets are higher quality than his "normal meal?" I'm a bit pessimistic, so I think that his diet is probably not far off from the average American's diet, probably a lot better. That's a depressing idea in itself, but does lend credence to the idea that a simple, cheap alternative would be beneficial to people who are too busy/stupid/ignorant/poor to solve the problem for themselves.