Comment by cgh | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cgh | Hacker News Reader

Uses soy protein, making it a non-starter for informed people wanting to build/maintain muscle mass. A McMaster study[1] demonstrated that 20g of soy protein (S20) was as effective at muscle protein synthesis (MPS) as 0g.

This bar contain 12g of soy protein, making it about as effective for MPS as plain water.

[1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22698458?dopt=Citation

"RESULTS: Whole-body leucine oxidation increased with protein ingestion and was significantly greater for S20 vs. W20 (P = 0.003). Rates of MPS for S20 were less than W20 (P = 0.02) and not different from 0 g (P = 0.41) in both exercised and non-exercised leg muscles. For S40, MPS was also reduced compared with W40 under both rested and post-exercise conditions (both P < 0.005); however S40 increased MPS greater than 0 g under post-exercise conditions (P = 0.04)."

Isn't that the point? It's not Muscle Milk or other mass-building replacements.

You do understand your body needs to build muscles every day right?

If a large part of your protein intake is based on soy you can quickly start to lose muscle mass which isn't great.

It looks like rapid weight loss but you are effectively gaining fat and losing strength.

You're confusing maintaining muscle with gaining muscle. You don't have any study supporting the claim that you would lose muscle by getting your protein from soy. The only study here says that thirty 70+ year old men didn't gain muscle while taking soy protein isolate.

This is interesting. Why would a source of complete amino acids be totally ineffective?

http://nutritionstudies.org/animal-vs-plant-protein/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essential_amino_acid#Relative_...

the prevailing theory (which makes sense to me, fwiw) is that protein from meat has a much closer amino acid profile to human muscle compared to protein from plants.

Most people I've talked to or read about who use Soylent also mix protein powder into it.

Is there any other study not focusing on 71 year old men which is as conclusive? It's strange group to focus and then claim it's as effective as plain water for everyone.

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