Soylent could be considered exactly as acceptable as any specific food but most other diets offer a very wide diversity of foods. The current thinking in nutrit

Soylent could be considered exactly as acceptable as any specific food but most other diets offer a very wide diversity of foods. The current thinking in nutrition science seems to be that diversity in diet gives us a better chance of eating how we should be eating. Because we don't actually know how we should be eating we rely on that diversity. It's naive to think that the definition of "nutritionally complete" (which Soylent adheres to) isn't going to change over the coming decades. A traditional diet will still have a chance of being "nutritionally complete" under future requirements whereas Soylent's exact formula almost ensures that it won't. I think what's even more important are some of more complex functions of digestion and nutrition response. For example, what is the glycemic response of Soylent? In December Annals of Internal Medicine published a study (1) showing that a daily multivitamin has no benefit to the longevity and health of the average American but we do know that dietary interventions which increase dietary intake of certain vitamins via actual foods are beneficial to health. Scientists are still figuring out why but it is apparent that you can't just take a pill or formula containing certain nutrients and gain the same benefits of getting these nutrients through food. (1) http://annals.org/article.aspx?articleid=1789253 http://annals.org/article.aspx?articleid=1789253