That defeats my primary use case for MRP: not needing to think about nutrition. I hate cooking, I hate cleaning, and eating out all the time feels wasteful. I just want quick, healthy meals with a decent shelf life.
As I've come around to thinking of the human body as more of a system than a binary switch (sick/not sick), I've come to appreciate that natural food sources have a lot of nutrients in them that are hard to get with manufactured foods.
There's a lot of debate about studies proving this one way or another, but for me looking at it intuitively from a co-evolution standpoint (foods we eat evolved in conjunction with humans) is proof enough to pay attention to the quality of my food. The intuition is basically: food we've been cultivating and bringing around with us for millions of years is going to be more beneficial to our internal chemistry than a substitute we recently made up to save money on production costs.
I also view eating as a chore (except when it's not), so I often end up eating this: black beans, chicken, guac, milk
PS: for the "naturalistic fallacy" group, how do you account for the role of evolution as an optimizer for health vs evolution as optimizer for 20th century economic cost? Optimization targets make a difference.
Mindfully listening to the body will lead to better adaptation than formulaic consumption.
Sure, we do have a fair bit of nutrition knowledge right now, of course, and not everything natural is good for you, of course. However, current popular "natural food" at this point has been vetted through centuries of sampling and cross breeding. At this point I would consider it "more reliable" than processed MRPs (soylent powder is made of natural ingredients too but has been very heavily processed to get where it is) for that reason alone.
MRPs are okay every now and then, sure. Personally I would bet against using them all the time. Even in the bodybuilding community where whey protein supplements are popular, the consensus seems to be its much better to get your protein from a chicken breast if possible.
Human evolution has optimized us for having children early and often and living to 40-50 so they've enough time to grow up and become the next generation of subsistence farmers/breeders.
EDIT: Also I think the term we should actually be using is "Natural Selection" rather than "Evolution" in this case.
Nope, I'm using it in the "evolutionary algorithm", "evolution as mathematical optimization" sense.
> It is an optimizer for breeding and nothing more.
I really disagree there. Humans did not evolve in a vacuum; their are a ton of systems and subsystems that evolved across different species leading up to humans. I don't have time to write an essay, but I think you're vastly oversimplifying evolution in pursuit of a binary function. It's just not that simple, and neither is how food interacts with our body.
As far as your disagreement goes... Perhaps "breeding" wasn't the 100% accurate thing to say, but natural selection is the process that decides what genes to pass to the next generation causing evolution... if you really disagree with that you are not disagreeing with me personally, you are disagreeing with over 200 yrs of science spanning many fields.
Oh, is that what I'm doing? And here I thought I was suggesting that evolution (in practice and in theory) is a more nuanced process than you're letting on.
>sunday
>market, buy groceries, pasta and meat for whole week
>cook everything at once
>put everything on freezer
>clean up everything only once
Of course, I need to wash my dishes during week, but it takes literally 1 minute and half. And you can argue that there are powder to purposes other than macros, and I agree with you that you must take it if you think you need to. I, personally, don't.
The deal is that people have to know what their body needs first and foremost. Gain? Lose? Maintain? All are different goals and methods. Solyent advertising as an off-the-shelf works-for-all-people might be fundamentally true, but I don't think it can be argued that it's the ideal for each and every person.
anecdotal at best, but a friend years ago was diagnosed with adult diabetes and told he had to change his diet. this guy never cooked. part of his transition was cooking classes provided as part of his diabetes counseling. he discovered a world of quick and easy meals, many in a single pan and all were healthy.
For anything decent, you need AT LEAST 30 minutes, usually more like 60+.
And then comes the cleaning of pots, pans, filling the dishwasher.
That's a WHOLE HOUR I could be wasting my time on HN instead!
Cookbook author Melissa Joulwan has an algorithmic approach to weekly meal prep that results in delicious and easy weekday meals, if you're willing to make the "cook 2 hrs on weekend + cook no more during the week" trade-off. It's not the mere minutes that Soylent promises, but for some folks reading this it might be useful. It's paleo so easy to adapt to high protein/low carb/high veggie/whatever floats your boat here.
http://www.seriouseats.com/2016/09/how-to-clean-maintain-cas...
I learned of these from obesity researcher Stephan Guyenet's blog: http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/instant-pot-...
I use the same Instant Pot LUX60 model. I haven't tried any other model.
And as far as the active part is concerned, I like to listen the radio and if I can get organised so that I can prepare the food while one my favourite broadcasts is on the air, I don't even notice I "have to work".
Saying "it's so easy, they deliver the ingredients" is a non-sequitur. Sure you don't have to buy groceries, but cooking still takes a lot of time and effort. Sometimes it's a solid hour that I spend cooking, then a half hour eating, and a half hour cleaning up.
I get four hours I spend at home between work and sleep, and two of those are spent preparing to eat, eating, and cleaning after eating. It's much quicker and easier to pick up KFC on the way home instead. That's the problem Soylent solves.
On the one hand, it can be kinda nice getting everything you need for a new recipe delivered to you. But I have a pretty well-stocked larder and a binder of recipes I make semi-regularly so it didn't really solve a problem I have. (And it's not inexpensive either.)