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That gizmodo article's only "source" of nutritionists is from this article [1] (another article on the same site). That article's only source of nutritionists is someone who just called them up before Soylent was even on the market, and while none of those nutritionists had examined the product.

Many cats and dogs will eat the same food source almost exclusively for most of their lives without any ill effect. Obviously Soylent is having problems right now, but outright dismissing the mere possibility of a healthy "people-kibble" by those nutritionists seems rather unscientific.

[1] http://io9.gizmodo.com/could-soylent-really-replace-all-of-t...

> Many cats and dogs will eat the same food source almost exclusively for most of their lives without any ill effect.

Where "without any ill effect" includes tooth decay, obesity, and death from kidney damage among others.

Certainly not all cats and dogs experience all of those things. All you've done is highlighted the possibility for a nutritionally unsuitable meal source. Obviously it's possible to construct a food which does not meet our nutritional needs, many Americans have managed that themselves. That does not however dismiss the existence of pets which live long and healthy lives, or the possibility of an analogous fodo source for humans.

Pets that live long and healthy lives do not eat a single form of "kibble". Obesity and health problems in pets is a very well known issue (talk to any vet and they'll tell you all about it) and it's mostly due to overfeeding by owners and not enough variety in diet. Doesn't that sound eerily familiar to the problems with human food consumption?

There are so many health problems in the tech industry, why are we creating more and making businesses out of it?

I often hear testimonials from owners who say "I have been feeding this food for 14 years and my dog looks great!" I think that there could be such a thing as a good enough people kibble the same as I believe that many dogs live healthy and happy lives eating one kind of dog food all their lives. This is not to say that I believe all dogs could eat the same exact kibble all their lives and be perfectly healthy. Full Disclosure: I have owned a pet store for the last 8 months after getting tired of programming.

I'd like to hear more about your exit.

I had been itchy for quite a while in the field and thanks to a very generous boss and a wife who could put up with a very low standard of living, was able to do some farming part time last year. I realized that while I grew up on a farm, the area I lived in, didn't have enough of a farming network to allow getting started slow. It was all or nothing and I didn't like the prospects of either actually. If I would have been successful, I would have worked like crazy and not been home much. If I would have failed, it would be the same except for no fun at all. The pet store was up for sale and I did the figures and realized that if it all goes down in flames, I could still code myself out of the hole if needed. This gave me the courage to give it a try. I work much harder now in some ways and in other ways I work less. Hanging out and talking to people is now part of my job description. Working with animals and figuring out what makes them tick is also part of my job. People regularly show up and ask my opinion on what they should do with their dog itching and hot spots and stuff. Often, simply switching away from a cheap bottom dollar food to a better product is the answer and is far less expensive than a vet visit. OK done.....

I know I could "code myself out of a hole" too and have reduced my CoL significantly so I guess I just have to continue waiting for the right opportunity. Thanks for sharing!

> Where "without any ill effect" includes tooth decay, obesity, and death from kidney damage among others.

Tooth decay: giving your dogs something hard to chew on is essential if you don't relish the idea of brushing your dogs' teeth. If they're not gnawing on actual bones, their teeth aren't get cleaned. Hard chew toys are a good substitute. The only dog I've had with tooth troubles didn't like chewing hard things.

Obesity: that's not a result of an unvaried diet, that's a result of eating too much and/or not enough exercise for the amount of food being given.

Kidney damage: I find it's surprisingly hard to find unbiased information around this that isn't published by pro- and anti-commercial dog food organizations. Even within that subset, documented facts seem rare, and articles read more like scare advertisements to encourage $PREFERRED_FEEDING_METHOD[1]. Anecdotally: after six dogs and three cats that have all lived somewhat to significantly longer than the breed average life span while being fed largely the same food for their entire lives... kidney troubles have never been a problem for us.

1.The closest to consistent info that I could find were statements that high vegetable protein content can cause kidney troubles in older dogs. Even these only showed up on a) "Feed your dog all natural" blog-type-things, b) specialty dog food sellers/manufacturer sites, c) copy lifted from these places largely verbatim and deposited onto other sites.

> kidney troubles have never been a problem for us.

Congratulations on your robust good health! How about your pets?

Most dogs and cat's however are domesticated and have been eating a mostly single-source diet for many many generations... some adaptation has occurred. There is a reason they don't give zoo animals kibble (aside from the herbivores who naturally focus on a single food source, and the pellets are made from that food source). Lions don't get kibble, and they don't even get a single kind of meat, they rotate their food, because if they dont, the lions become depressed and sluggish and sick. We're meant to eat a variety of food - the variety stimulates our internal biome which has more effect over us than just how we digest our food - our gut is basically a second brain and has a direct effect on our mood and our brain chemistry, and can even influence our thinking process (this is how when you eat something that makes you sick, you naturally avoid that thing for a while)

This isn't remotely true.

Look at the wiki article on dog food [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_food#History] - diets for dogs have been ad hoc and varied for thousands of years. I'd argue that it is only with the advent of kibble (in the late C19) and canned cat/dog food (in the early C20) that pets started eating single-source diets.

I do not think that this is enough time for adaption, and any selective breeding has been focused on other attributes rather than diet.

In addition, I'd also point out that the term "nutritionist" doesn't even mean anything is most jurisdictions, as highlighted by the following anecdote:

"A demonstration of the ease in which it is possible to become an accredited nutritionist can be seen in Dr Ben Goldacre's successful application to have his dead cat Hettie accredited as a certified professional member of the American Association of Nutritional Consultants" [1]

I'd typically listen to what a Dietitian has to say about nutrition, but not anyone calling themselves a nutritionist.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutritionist#Regulation_of_the...

> In addition, I'd also point out that the term "nutritionist" doesn't even mean anything is most jurisdictions

That bears repeating. Dietitian actually means something, whereas nutrition doesn't. Dara O'Briain has a nice way of describing the difference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMvMb90hem8

   I'd also point out that the term "nutritionist" doesn't even mean anything is most jurisdictions

As someone who is living with someone becoming an accredited "Nutritionist" I can assure you this is not the case. There is an extreme amount of scientific research and cellular biology that is studied. This may not be the case for all nutritionist courses, but to dismiss an entire field because of one case is extremely ignorant.

BUT.. this is Hacker News where coders go to confirm each other's biases about the world at large and remind each other how much knowledge you can have by sitting behind your work desk.

Multi choice online testing is not extreme research. A phd is research, a masters is research.

She may well be taking some courses but let's not devalue these words.

A dietitian is at least masters qualified that is what people were pointing out.

A) Maybe you're in a jurisdiction where it actually does mean something? That exception is clearly defined in the sentence you quoted.

B) The claim is not that nutritionists are useless, it's that (in most jurisdictions) the word is useless. The fact that you know a non-useless one does not disprove the claim.

In addition to what other people said: changing dog food is often accompanied by horrible diarrhea, up through the mid 90s dog shit turned bone and grew hair and canine coprophagia is usually attributed to insufficient nutrition. So you know: dog food, we're still figuring it out.

> At least he's been eating his own product almost exclusively when at home according to that blog post.

I'd note that he got anemia early on in his Soylent journey because he forgot iron was a basic nutrient.

http://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/not-just-bad-for-horm...

I'd note that many people in my social circle and family forget that iron is a basic nutrient. It happens. People forget that sodium is as well, especially with all of the talk about how bad salt is for you.

Presumably the Soylent guy ought to be held to a higher standard of knowing what "basic nutrients" are, as he actively promotes himself as an expert on the topic and encourages people to buy his drink full of "all basic nutrients." If your friends and family aren't doing that, their ignorance is excusable.

I thought it was sulfur:

http://robrhinehart.com/?p=570

I love grocery shopping and cooking. It provides mental relief from the day's grind. The sites and sounds at a good grocery store are stimulating. Wegmans comes to mind.

The prion disease rumours circulating on Twitter about Soylent are really disturbing.

Can you elaborate on these rumors?

Read on Twitter a while ago about a guy who ate almost nothing but Soylent for two months and started getting joint pain and trembling, and was falling over a lot. Then there was a comment by someone on Reddit who started having seizures and anxiety and blamed Soylent. Seems crazy that people are just eating nothing but this stuff for months on end and not thinking about the consequences.

I'm anti-Soylent, but I'm not sure I'd classify "two random anonymous internet anecdotes" as "disturbing".

It's outrageously unlikely that either of those people had a prion disease. See my reply to your previous comment for details. The median duration of CJD (which is the most similar to nvCJD and the best proxy for the statistic I could find easilty) is 4 months. That's duration of the disease before death. If the commenter had those symptoms because of prion disease, I'd estimate a greater than 50% chance he'll be dead by February. Again, it's extremely unlikely that he had prion disease.

Prion diseases usually take longer than the couple of months to develop symptoms.

Prion disease has a case-fatality rate of 100%. That's not an estimate or approximation and it's not rounded up. They are also untreatable.

There are only five well studied prion diseases (because of their rarity). Two are exclusively heritable: fatal-familial insomnia and Gerstmann–Sträussler–Scheinker syndrome. One, Kuru, is transmitted via cannibalism.

The incubation times are extremely long. Some estimates for Kuru go up to 20-50 years.

The most prevalent form of prion disease in humans is new variant Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (nvCJD) or Human Mad Cow which has a lag of about 10 years based on CDC data. It is transmitted by eating tainted beef products. Let me stress that this is extremely rare: there have been 3 confirmed cases in the United States.

It is extremely unlikely that Soylent is a vector for prion disease, especially since it's been vegan since version 1.2 and never contained beef as an ingredient. Even if it somehow contained tainted beef, given that it's been available for less than 3 years, it's extremely unlikely that any cases of nvCJD (of which there have only a few in the last decade) or any other cases of prion disease were caused by Soylent.

There is good reason to question the safety of Soylent given its record but "prion disease rumors circulating on Twitter" are utterly ridiculous.

Trolling? Soylent -> Soylent green -> Movie where you grind up poor people and turn them into food -> Cannibalism -> Known vectors for prion diseases.