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Comment by huhtenberg | Hacker News Reader

At the risk of stating the obvious - this is all good and the experiment he's running is very interesting, but - no. I really like eating tasty food. Not for the nutrients, but for the experience. Similarly to how I really like sleeping in a comfortable bed and taking a hot shower daily even though, technically, I can rest as well on a bare floor and shower once a week.

To each his own, but some things are just too unorthodox.

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"This automobile business is all good and interesting, but - no. I really like riding in a horse buggy. Not for the speed, but for the experience. Similarly to how I really like candle light and wearing a top hat even though, technically, I could do as well with a baseball cap.

To each his own, but some things are just too unorthodox."

You are very forward thinking. Soylent is in the aisle one.

Comfort and pleasure are subjective irrational metrics that have a lot of inertia, but that change with time. I'm sure it's plausible that people would love soylent just as much as a freshly baked croissant, but it takes time. The way things stand right now, soylent solves a problem that few people have and it comes at a price that is awful. So, yeah, it's unorthodox.

Even freshly baked croissants were once an odd novelty.

I encourage you to research what a croissant is and then find and devour one. This comment makes me feel like you're missing out on that.

A croissant is also about the most amount of butter you can possibly fit into a pastry.

This should be the OED definition.

I think that dubious honour probably belongs to the "buttery" from North East Scotland:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buttery_%28bread%29

They are basically lumps of butter and salt held together with a trace amount of flour. The versions available from mainstream stores (e.g. M&S) or from recipes online are fairly tame - for the real effect they need to be purchased from a small local baker in some remote fishing village.

Best butteries I've ever had were actually on a trawler in the North Sea - where they were served hot awash in molten salted butter.

You'd be hard pushed to find a buttery actually made of butter these days. Even the local bakers are using vegetable oil and fat. Still, they are beautiful, flaky rolls of salty tastiness.

Don't forget about the Iowian "Deep Fried Butter on a stick"

mm, i don't think that's an apt comparison. cuisine doesn't develop in the same way that mechanical conveyance does. there's no objective basis for saying one example of food is superior wrt that basis than another, at least not one that isn't trivial. with a car you can say you can go this many miles per hour, or this many miles per dollar, that you require only this area to house the car, that its emissions are relatively benign compared to horse shit, etc. what people look for in food is the subjective, aesthetic experience. even when someone's eating for utilitarian reasons, they'll still make aesthetic choices, like the article about the north korean refugee who described the variety of foods made mostly from rice that you could buy at the market in a time of mass starvation, where all eating was utilitarian.

you know what'll happen if this catches on (which i don't think it will but anyway)? people will tinker with it, trying to make it more palatable, making different varieties for different occasions, or moods, or just for the sake of variety. this idea for replacing food will just become new kind of cuisine, at best. a style of cooking that seeks to provide all or most of the nutrients a body needs would be cool, but markedly different to the shift from horse drawn carriages and automobiles.

when automobiles came along, they replaced horse buggys rather than becoming a new kind of horse buggy.

This seems to be a common complaint, and the response seems to frequently be: you don't need to replace all your food intake. 50% of the time you eat you might find it tedious and boring, so you can leave the other 50% for pleasurable eating and cooking or whatever else you enjoy about non-clinical cuisine!

> 50% of the time you eat you might find it tedious and boring

  - I hate cats. All that fur, the smell...
  - Oh, you just don't know a good recipe

Learn to cook, damn it :)

Unfortunately, learning to cook doesn't make it not tedious and boring if all you want is to get something in your belly and move on to the night's activity.

I know how to cook, but don't often have time to cook. I don't even always have access to a kitchen!

I used to have more time, and might again in the future - and if that happens, I'll go back to spending a few hours preparing dinner. Until then, I'd absolutely love to be able to eat a magic nutrition pill instead of grabbing a badly-made sandwich from the nearest shop. Especially if it's cheaper, too.

Finally, someone else gets it! This drink has the total package, much more so than any ensure or power bar. If I could wipe out breakfast and lunch, and enjoy normal dinners, and be healtheir, hell yeah. or skip lunch, and eat a light dinner, and a glass of solyent in hte evening, money. You don't need to go whole hog on this, but it's a fantastic idea to try to optimise you nutrient intake regardless. Plus ease and connivence, win win win.

He addressed this point in the interview posted a month or two ago. He compared it to going to the movies. You can love movies without wanting to go see one three times a day. He still eats real meals occasionally.

I don't think that's a fair comparison. What if sleeping on the floor and not showering made you think better and your body healthier? It's not simply a privation technique, he seems to be doing it to hack his body for better performance. Although kind of anecdotal evidence, the article mentions several mood and energy changes when not on the soylent diet (I think those things could just as likely be a change in environment/routine though).

What if sleeping on the floor and not showering made you think better and your body healthier?

There is almost certainly someone, somewhere, claiming that sleeping on the floor and/or not showering makes you think better and your body healthier ("The Cave Man Sleep Technique....we didn't evolve in cushy beds now did we?")

99% of these sorts of stories are outrageous pseudo-science looking for an easy fix. Mood/energy changes from diet are interesting reading, but hold astonishingly little value because of the Hawthorne effect, and the simple reality that again people want easy fixes: His description of the perilous decline of his mental capacities when he regressed to normal food sounds like the standard nonsense you hear from people pushing energy bracelets.

Like the GP, food is one of the glorious luxuries of life. Next he'll be chemically castrating himself to save the annoying time waste of sexual congress.

Like the GP, food is one of the glorious luxuries of life.

The great thing about having values is that each person can value what she/he wants. You and GP value food, soylent green dude seems to value experimenting and optimizing his body/brain with food (lack/substitution of food?). I'm not hating on either one of your values, but pretty much everyone thinks "food is good" (to put it simply) so that isn't really gonna pique everyones interest like soylent green guy over there.

> There is almost certainly someone, somewhere, claiming that sleeping on the floor and/or not showering makes you think better and your body healthier ("The Cave Man Sleep Technique....we didn't evolve in cushy beds now did we?")

On the internet, of course there is :) http://www.paleodietandliving.com/paleo-living/sleep/sleep-w...

Oh and showering to often is linked with everything from fungal infections, dandrufs, psoriasis and acne. Definitely not healthy according to lots of lifestyle strategists out there.

What-if I'd exercise and drink less coffee? It would help me both feel and sleep better. Am I doing either? You bet I don't. Point being that people derive pleasure from things that aren't rational, so rationalizing a soylent diet ain't going do a thing to facilitate its adoption (which was iirc one of his stated goals). It's a truly interesting experiment, but it's from the same category as a polyphasic sleep.

I created my own version of soylent (primarily made of a combo of hemp and whey protein powder, canola oil and vitamins, chocolate flavored and sweetned with sucralose and stevia) because I liked the idea so much. Its a great tasting chocolate shake and I look forward to each one. A liquid shake lunch doesn't have to taste bad.

I think you are missing the point. Rob is using this as a replacement for boring food. The same stuff you eat every day for breakfast and lunch.

When he does choose to eat a tasty meal with friends or family, I think those meals would be even more delicious.

I really like eating out at restaurants, but I mostly eat at home, and even if I could afford to eat out every meal, I wouldn't. There's no incompatibility with enjoying one thing while mostly choosing to do another.

You might not have read the whole post but the OP mentions that he's now enjoying the regular food experience more than ever.

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