Hi, this is Romeo Stevens, cofounder of MealSquares. We’re really interested in feedback. Since Soylent is a similar product in our space, I wanted to discuss

Hi, this is Romeo Stevens, cofounder of MealSquares. We’re really interested in feedback. Since Soylent is a similar product in our space, I wanted to discuss some points made by Rob Rhinehart in his post "The Fallacy of Whole Foods": http://robrhinehart.com/?p=874 http://robrhinehart.com/?p=874 Rob likes to compare Soylent to medical meal replacements. But medical meal replacements have taken a long time to mature. For example, it took a while for professional nutritionists to realize maybe they shouldn’t pump newborns full of soybean oil [1]. This may sound silly today, but that was the best nutritionists could do based on the science available to them. And that's the problem I see artificially constructed meal replacements running in to--if you do the best you can based on the science available, that still may not be enough. Different forms of the same nutrient do seem to affect the body differently. We see negative health outcomes from substances such as beta-carotene, vitamin E, and folic acid in supplemental form [2], while high levels in whole foods demonstrate no such harms. So bioavailability is complicated, and for whatever reason whole foods seem to have consistently healthier profiles than supplements. Many examples of strong nutrient synergy have been discovered. Vitamin D and calcium, vitamin C and iron, the fat soluble vitamins and dietary fat are some of the most well established. It seems likely that we've still got more to discover. Rob himself seems to acknowledge this in his inclusion of many non-essential nutrients like lycopene. Even given these points, we don’t consider Soylent a bad thing. Rob is right, the average diet is terrible, and anything that improves on that is great. We know MealSquares aren’t perfect. Nutrition science has come up with no substitute for regularly eating fish for example; supplements don’t cut it [3]. But including MealSquares in your diet means you are getting a solid dose of healthy, nutrient dense foods from a variety of sources. We don't think nutrition is settled science, and we look forward to becoming a multi-billion dollar corporation so we can improve the state of knowledge with our research department. :P On the topic of longevity in general, you can read some of my research here: http://lesswrong.com/lw/jrt/lifestyle_interventions_that_affect_longevity/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/jrt/lifestyle_interventions_that_aff.... [1] http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/08/130814101429.htm http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/08/130814101429.ht... [2] http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleID=205797 http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleID=205797 [3] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12848287 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12848287