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Comment by gabemart | Hacker News Reader

This is why I'm very skeptical of the long-term health of food replacements like Soylent. We know vegetables are good for you. We're not really sure why. How can we possibly create a healthy food-replacement system if we don't fully understand what makes food healthy?

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You should be more than skeptical. Soylent should not replace a normal diet. It will definitely take years off your life.

I'm really liking mealsquares http://www.mealsquares.com/, they're just expensive. They do rely on whole foods to take care of unknown unknowns in nutritional requirements.

The pricing works out to around $1.50 per bar's worth ($3 each, and they're around 2 energy bars' nutrition) -- that's not terrible by any means.

Mealsquares are really small unfortunately. I found it hard to be full on them if I used for my full calorie intake.

Tasty things otherwise, it basically tastes like dense chocolate pastry.

If you want 'fast food', then a combo of prewashed veggies, frozen food like trader joes dumplings and things like mealsquares and soylent can work. I myself dont really like soylent.

And even lembas gets tiring after a while!

> We know vegetables are good for you.

I don't think we know this. We know that we can live complete, healthy lives on them, but we know that about meat and carbs, too. I'm happy that people are experimenting in an extreme way; that's the best way for me to learn from their experiences what works and what doesn't.

All these "vitamin supplements aren't doing anything" articles I see are talking about general population people eating standard diets and then supplementing them with multi vitamins.

I'm interested in what happens when someone takes meal replacements that don't necessarily cover the micro nutrients and then takes multi vitamins.

> How can we possibly create a healthy food-replacement system if we don't fully understand what makes food healthy?

Well, in order to finally achieve that understanding, what are we going to need to do?

Basically, attempt something like Soylent and see if it works, adjusting it as we learn... which is what they seem to be doing.

Indeed, the fibre content makes a big deal too. The more biochemistry and medicine you learn, the more you realize most of it hasn't even finished exploring "stamp collecting" mode. But what can you do? You have to keep pedaling and steering since you only get one life to work on.

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