4 ms·

Good question. I take a conservative view. I consider how our understanding of nutrition is limited, I look at the evolutionary morphology of our species and ta

Good question. I take a conservative view. I consider how our understanding of nutrition is limited, I look at the evolutionary morphology of our species and take a look at what we've adapted to eat for nearly a million years and favor that sort of food over something synthesized _this year._ I allow that Soylent may be better quality than this food. But the odds are it's not.

baddox 12y ago
I don't mean to offend, but that sounds like irrational risk aversion, unless you have more information about nutrition and the development process of your usual diet vs. Soylent. My usual diet is fairly unorganized and not particularly well-researched (by me). I'm sure a huge amount of engineering and "artificial" processes have gone into most of it, just like with Soylent. I don't really see a dichotomy between a diet "naturally" formed by evolution over millions of years and a Soylent diet.
- nickbauman 12y ago
  When you consider the iceman, a nearly 6,000 year old preserved corpse of a man pushing-50-years-old suffering from Lyme disease who was crossing the alps ON FOOT when he was murdered as irrationally healthy, I see your point.
zevyoura 12y ago
Almost none of the foods we eat were common 200 years ago, let alone 1 million.
- sytelus 12y ago
  Huh? You mean meats, vegetables, milk, grains didn't exist 200 years ago?
  - zevyoura 12y ago
    Sorry, what I posted was idiotic and said in haste. One million years is a couple orders of magnitude too long, but humans have of course had agriculture for 10k+ years. My point, though poorly phrased, was meant to be that modern crops are far different (largely more efficient) than the crops that were grown in distant human history. Also, corn, wheat, and rice dominate the worldwide diet in a way that wasn't always the case. Soylent is largely composed of these same crops anyways so the point I failed to make is silly on a couple levels.

baddox 12y ago

I don't mean to offend, but that sounds like irrational risk aversion, unless you have more information about nutrition and the development process of your usual diet vs. Soylent. My usual diet is fairly unorganized and not particularly well-researched (by me). I'm sure a huge amount of engineering and "artificial" processes have gone into most of it, just like with Soylent. I don't really see a dichotomy between a diet "naturally" formed by evolution over millions of years and a Soylent diet.

nickbauman 12y ago
When you consider the iceman, a nearly 6,000 year old preserved corpse of a man pushing-50-years-old suffering from Lyme disease who was crossing the alps ON FOOT when he was murdered as irrationally healthy, I see your point.

zevyoura 12y ago

Almost none of the foods we eat were common 200 years ago, let alone 1 million.

sytelus 12y ago
Huh? You mean meats, vegetables, milk, grains didn't exist 200 years ago?
- zevyoura 12y ago
  Sorry, what I posted was idiotic and said in haste. One million years is a couple orders of magnitude too long, but humans have of course had agriculture for 10k+ years. My point, though poorly phrased, was meant to be that modern crops are far different (largely more efficient) than the crops that were grown in distant human history. Also, corn, wheat, and rice dominate the worldwide diet in a way that wasn't always the case. Soylent is largely composed of these same crops anyways so the point I failed to make is silly on a couple levels.