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No, we know people do fine on traditionally healthy food. We do not know whether they do fine on Soylent. My guess is that anyone 100% on Soylent will become ma

by tormeh 11y ago

No, we know people do fine on traditionally healthy food. We do not know whether they do fine on Soylent. My guess is that anyone 100% on Soylent will become malnutritioned either very subtly or over a long time frame. Personally, I think that's fine as the body can handle pretty fucked up diets and no one is really going to go 100% Soylent anyway. Like, I'd replace 80% of my diet with Soylent if they shipped to me and I liked the taste, but I understand why someone would be a little skeptical.

seanflyon 11y ago
> we know people do fine on traditionally healthy food This is a valid point to an extent, but we don't know that people do fine on a particular subset of traditionally healthy ingredients. We may discover that Soylent lacks some subtle nutrient, but we could discover the same thing with MealSquares.
- 001sky 11y ago
  The body reflexes to things like mastication, salivation, etc triggered by texture and the presence of actual things in your mouth, so I think the (bias of) argument is more along the lines of reducing the variables away from normal eating. If you look at the military and other people who "starve for a living" (hikers, climbers, explorers etc), these considerations are very self-evident and at the forefront of mind. Its not clear that "wishing them away" (considerations of texture/pallatability) is backed up by any hard science. But I'd be curious to see if there are any leads in that direction.
baddox 11y ago
> No, we know people do fine on traditionally healthy food. We do not know whether they do fine on Soylent. But we don't really know how far along the scale between dead and in maximum possible health traditionally healthy food gets us. Short of some genuine scientific results, I see no reason to suspect that Soylent is less healthy than traditionally healthy food. It could just as easily be more healthy.

by tormeh 11y ago

seanflyon 11y ago

> we know people do fine on traditionally healthy food This is a valid point to an extent, but we don't know that people do fine on a particular subset of traditionally healthy ingredients. We may discover that Soylent lacks some subtle nutrient, but we could discover the same thing with MealSquares.

001sky 11y ago
The body reflexes to things like mastication, salivation, etc triggered by texture and the presence of actual things in your mouth, so I think the (bias of) argument is more along the lines of reducing the variables away from normal eating. If you look at the military and other people who "starve for a living" (hikers, climbers, explorers etc), these considerations are very self-evident and at the forefront of mind. Its not clear that "wishing them away" (considerations of texture/pallatability) is backed up by any hard science. But I'd be curious to see if there are any leads in that direction.

baddox 11y ago

> No, we know people do fine on traditionally healthy food. We do not know whether they do fine on Soylent. But we don't really know how far along the scale between dead and in maximum possible health traditionally healthy food gets us. Short of some genuine scientific results, I see no reason to suspect that Soylent is less healthy than traditionally healthy food. It could just as easily be more healthy.