6 ms·

How is this any different from mail-order diets and such? Where are the double-blind peer reviewed studies? The original post by Rob Rhinehart sounds no differe

by shas3 13y ago

How is this any different from mail-order diets and such? Where are the double-blind peer reviewed studies? The original post by Rob Rhinehart sounds no different from the mail-order diet ads that you see on TV. Is it legitimate because it is funded via Kickstarter? Is it legitimate because it is marketed suavely via blogs and such? How does recent research about how differently processed foods are digested differently [1] apply to Soylent? [1] http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/when-dieting-not-all-calo/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/when-dieting-not-a...

smackfu 13y ago
AFAIK, this isn't a diet to lose weight, it's just a meal replacement. What would the double-blind be? Whether you can actually live on this stuff alone?
Guvante 13y ago
Because the focus is different. "I don't want to deal with food" rings a different bell than "Eat this and lose weight". I would say a big factor is that avoiding food just to avoid food is (to my knowledge) unique, helping it gain traction. And while I certainly wouldn't trust the long term implications of this yet, I can't blame a company for wanting to sell units before spending money on studies, especially given their size.
msandford 13y ago
I think there are multiple differences but in my mind the biggest one is that his post mostly talks about the benefits that he gained himself. There are no promises about what it would do for you. Now obviously if you're reading critically and you're naturally a bit suspicious of his motives then of course it seems heavily implied that the benefits he feels he's gotten are the ones that you'll get too once you also use Soylent. There are two (maybe three) ways this can go: 1. He made it all up to launch a startup 2. Everything he says is true 3. He believes everything he says is true In truth it's not as mutually exclusive as I've presented it. Many of the benefits might be true, he might believe some BS about others, and some of it might be outright fabrications. I think another hugely contributing factor to the notion that he's not a snake-oil salesman is that the formula seems to be freely available and not patented: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_(food_substitute) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_(food_substitute) I am not sure how you would do a double blind between a supposedly all-encompassing shake-meal and one that is not. Are you going to purposely malnourish people so that you can see they're malnourished? That's ethically dubious at best.
- MDS100 13y ago
  "3" most likely. "Are you going to purposely malnourish people so that you can see they're malnourished? That's ethically dubious at best." Yes, that's what Soylent is currently doing. No suprise the founder got bad news from his cardiologist with an earlier version. "Failing" with their product in this case actually means hurting the customers.
  - msandford 13y ago
    There's a difference between knowingly and willingly malnourishing people and doing so out of ignorance. In order to perform a double-blind you have to do the former. The people making Soylent might accidentally do the latter. Supposing the two are the same sets an impossibly high bar. Furthermore since it's not a double-blind the people who choose to participate go in with the knowledge that it might not be done yet and that they face risks. I don't really care about this one way or the other; I think Soylent is an interesting idea but I like eating a variety of food so I'm not participating. But I don't think that the people in charge of Soylent are a hair's breadth from war criminals either, ethically.
- shas3 13y ago
  This is not about motives. This is about the method of science. There should be scientific evidence to believe such claims as Solyent's, especially since it is possible to do reliable experiments to test many of his claims. Also, more specifically: he is a single data point. And hardly an objective one.
  - marze 13y ago
    You are hoping for something similar to all the scientific studies showing how optimal the fast food diets most people eat are?
sowhatquestion 13y ago
-- Soylent is not a diet. It's not low-calorie, low-carb or anything like that. The simplest way to describe its nutritional content is that a Soylent "meal" has 33% FDA daily value of everything (including fats, carbs, protein, vitamins, minerals). Also, unlike a diet, you don't have to eat it all the time (or according to any sort of regimen) to benefit from it. It is designed to be nutritious enough to replace one's whole diet if necessary, but this decision is up to the user. -- True, there aren't double-blind, peer-reviewed studies (give it time, though...). But the product was developed over the course of a year, with the help of ~100 volunteers who beta tested it and offered feedback [1]. -- The article you linked correctly identifies the importance of low-glycemic carbs, but it loses me when it argues that all "processed" foods are high-glycemic. Not only does "processed" strike me as a weasel word here, the person they're citing as an authority on this issue is Dr. Dean Ornish, whom many regard as a quack [2]. Soylent's carbs are designed to be low-glycemic. They use a form of maltodextrin ("low DE") that is designed to be low-glycemic, as well as whole-grain oat flour. These ingredients are indeed "processed." But (forgive me) the proof of the Soylent is in the eating: all the beta testers took regular blood tests, and these were checked for any abnormalities, including blood sugar levels. Rob Rhinehart actually had a glucose monitor implanted in his chest to test Soylent's glycemic index directly. The result: "Soylent has a pretty low GI" [3]. [1] http://blog.soylent.me/post/69009837729/last-month-five-boxes-showed-up-on-my-doorstep http://blog.soylent.me/post/69009837729/last-month-five-boxe... [2] http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2009/03/05/dr-dean-ornish-turn-away-from-the-dark-s/ http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2009/03/05/dr-dean-ornish-... [3] http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1qpjh4/im_rob_rhinehart_the_ceo_and_founder_of_soylent/cdf4qwt http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1qpjh4/im_rob_rhinehar...
- aroch 13y ago
  >with the help of ~100 volunteers who beta tested it and offered feedback [1]. Random testing with no controls, oversight or monitoring is useless.
  - gnaritas 13y ago
    Unfortunately, anecdotes are enough for most people; they have no concept of sound science.
DanBC 13y ago
I was strongly anti-Soylent during the first few announcements. Some of the claims they made during the kickstarter were shameful exploitative quackery. The Soylent team seem to have dialed that down a bit now. So, at the moment they're selling glop made from food ingredients that they claim has all the nutrients a healthy average person would need to live, and they are letting people chose how much glop to introduce into their day food routine. I hope they have some good press materials handy in case some idiot does something weird with the product because the backlash could be fierce. Now that Soylent have stopped making ridiculous overblown claims I am not so worried about what people chose to put in their bodies.
MetaCosm 13y ago
How would you even double-blind for this? Double blind means neither the participants nor the people running the study knows who is on what. You give half the people Soylent and the other half -- what?
- shas3 12y ago
  Designing the experiment is also a problem they have to figure out. A part of the challenge is designing hypotheses that best represent the physical phenomena that are also testable. So instead of going for the whole enchilada, work on parts of the project and build to up to a whole. Solyent is pie in the sky the way Elon Musk's hyper-loop is: a bare minimum sketch (not literally, but in scientific terms) that requires a lot of sub-systems to work and a lot of theories to fall in place to be practical. Answering your question directly, you could give the control-group a Solyent-type drink that is devoid of nutrients, and to the other group you can give a true Solyent drink. This can test if people report feeling better simply because they are drinking something healthy as opposed to the improvement being caused by the nutrients in the drink.
  - MetaCosm 12y ago
    Wouldn't people in group A.. die?

by shas3 13y ago

smackfu 13y ago

AFAIK, this isn't a diet to lose weight, it's just a meal replacement. What would the double-blind be? Whether you can actually live on this stuff alone?

Guvante 13y ago

Because the focus is different. "I don't want to deal with food" rings a different bell than "Eat this and lose weight". I would say a big factor is that avoiding food just to avoid food is (to my knowledge) unique, helping it gain traction. And while I certainly wouldn't trust the long term implications of this yet, I can't blame a company for wanting to sell units before spending money on studies, especially given their size.

msandford 13y ago

I think there are multiple differences but in my mind the biggest one is that his post mostly talks about the benefits that he gained himself. There are no promises about what it would do for you. Now obviously if you're reading critically and you're naturally a bit suspicious of his motives then of course it seems heavily implied that the benefits he feels he's gotten are the ones that you'll get too once you also use Soylent. There are two (maybe three) ways this can go: 1. He made it all up to launch a startup 2. Everything he says is true 3. He believes everything he says is true In truth it's not as mutually exclusive as I've presented it. Many of the benefits might be true, he might believe some BS about others, and some of it might be outright fabrications. I think another hugely contributing factor to the notion that he's not a snake-oil salesman is that the formula seems to be freely available and not patented: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_(food_substitute) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_(food_substitute) I am not sure how you would do a double blind between a supposedly all-encompassing shake-meal and one that is not. Are you going to purposely malnourish people so that you can see they're malnourished? That's ethically dubious at best.

MDS100 13y ago
"3" most likely. "Are you going to purposely malnourish people so that you can see they're malnourished? That's ethically dubious at best." Yes, that's what Soylent is currently doing. No suprise the founder got bad news from his cardiologist with an earlier version. "Failing" with their product in this case actually means hurting the customers.
- msandford 13y ago
  There's a difference between knowingly and willingly malnourishing people and doing so out of ignorance. In order to perform a double-blind you have to do the former. The people making Soylent might accidentally do the latter. Supposing the two are the same sets an impossibly high bar. Furthermore since it's not a double-blind the people who choose to participate go in with the knowledge that it might not be done yet and that they face risks. I don't really care about this one way or the other; I think Soylent is an interesting idea but I like eating a variety of food so I'm not participating. But I don't think that the people in charge of Soylent are a hair's breadth from war criminals either, ethically.
shas3 13y ago
This is not about motives. This is about the method of science. There should be scientific evidence to believe such claims as Solyent's, especially since it is possible to do reliable experiments to test many of his claims. Also, more specifically: he is a single data point. And hardly an objective one.
- marze 13y ago
  You are hoping for something similar to all the scientific studies showing how optimal the fast food diets most people eat are?

sowhatquestion 13y ago

-- Soylent is not a diet. It's not low-calorie, low-carb or anything like that. The simplest way to describe its nutritional content is that a Soylent "meal" has 33% FDA daily value of everything (including fats, carbs, protein, vitamins, minerals). Also, unlike a diet, you don't have to eat it all the time (or according to any sort of regimen) to benefit from it. It is designed to be nutritious enough to replace one's whole diet if necessary, but this decision is up to the user. -- True, there aren't double-blind, peer-reviewed studies (give it time, though...). But the product was developed over the course of a year, with the help of ~100 volunteers who beta tested it and offered feedback [1]. -- The article you linked correctly identifies the importance of low-glycemic carbs, but it loses me when it argues that all "processed" foods are high-glycemic. Not only does "processed" strike me as a weasel word here, the person they're citing as an authority on this issue is Dr. Dean Ornish, whom many regard as a quack [2]. Soylent's carbs are designed to be low-glycemic. They use a form of maltodextrin ("low DE") that is designed to be low-glycemic, as well as whole-grain oat flour. These ingredients are indeed "processed." But (forgive me) the proof of the Soylent is in the eating: all the beta testers took regular blood tests, and these were checked for any abnormalities, including blood sugar levels. Rob Rhinehart actually had a glucose monitor implanted in his chest to test Soylent's glycemic index directly. The result: "Soylent has a pretty low GI" [3]. [1] http://blog.soylent.me/post/69009837729/last-month-five-boxes-showed-up-on-my-doorstep http://blog.soylent.me/post/69009837729/last-month-five-boxe... [2] http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2009/03/05/dr-dean-ornish-turn-away-from-the-dark-s/ http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2009/03/05/dr-dean-ornish-... [3] http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1qpjh4/im_rob_rhinehart_the_ceo_and_founder_of_soylent/cdf4qwt http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1qpjh4/im_rob_rhinehar...

aroch 13y ago
>with the help of ~100 volunteers who beta tested it and offered feedback [1]. Random testing with no controls, oversight or monitoring is useless.
- gnaritas 13y ago
  Unfortunately, anecdotes are enough for most people; they have no concept of sound science.

DanBC 13y ago

I was strongly anti-Soylent during the first few announcements. Some of the claims they made during the kickstarter were shameful exploitative quackery. The Soylent team seem to have dialed that down a bit now. So, at the moment they're selling glop made from food ingredients that they claim has all the nutrients a healthy average person would need to live, and they are letting people chose how much glop to introduce into their day food routine. I hope they have some good press materials handy in case some idiot does something weird with the product because the backlash could be fierce. Now that Soylent have stopped making ridiculous overblown claims I am not so worried about what people chose to put in their bodies.

MetaCosm 13y ago

How would you even double-blind for this? Double blind means neither the participants nor the people running the study knows who is on what. You give half the people Soylent and the other half -- what?

shas3 12y ago
Designing the experiment is also a problem they have to figure out. A part of the challenge is designing hypotheses that best represent the physical phenomena that are also testable. So instead of going for the whole enchilada, work on parts of the project and build to up to a whole. Solyent is pie in the sky the way Elon Musk's hyper-loop is: a bare minimum sketch (not literally, but in scientific terms) that requires a lot of sub-systems to work and a lot of theories to fall in place to be practical. Answering your question directly, you could give the control-group a Solyent-type drink that is devoid of nutrients, and to the other group you can give a true Solyent drink. This can test if people report feeling better simply because they are drinking something healthy as opposed to the improvement being caused by the nutrients in the drink.
- MetaCosm 12y ago
  Wouldn't people in group A.. die?