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Comment by tolmasky | Hacker News Reader

So the way I look at this critique is that most people in the US are running a parallel experiment with their bodies, only instead of the input being Soylent, it's garbage like fast food. It's true, we don't understand how the human body operates - whether you're eating McDonald's, or organic, or Soylent. So given that the baseline seems to be an equally untested and probably more detrimental food choice, this completely voluntary experiment doesn't seem so bad, it's not like the govt is teaching us to eat a certain way (which they have been known to do incorrectly). In other words, Soylent vs theoretically ideal diet (which we don't even know) - sure, bad choice. But the reality is for the target audience (such as myself) its Soylent vs pizza and burgers, which doesn't seem that bad.

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I think for this parallel to be valid he'd have to be eating McDonalds or what-have-you every day. The point is variety (mostly) ensures we get everything we need from somewhere. I think it's almost assured that in the long run 100% (or so) soylent will turn out to be more detrimental than even the 'average diets' out there. BTW, I'm kinduva healthy eating nut myself, but this just isn't 'healthy eating'.

Right, thats precisely my point: I think you underestimate how many people eat McDonalds or what-have-you every day. The interesting thing about this phenomenon is that I think it takes place all over the spectrum: the poor do it as well as the rich. Perhaps you do not see this as much because you are a self-described health nut (and thus this diet probably isn't for you, the same way an Alienware computer isn't for someone who knows how to build a PC), but in my developer circle I see eating trash food every day for all meals quite often. And what I've found is often the problem is that you forget about food and then are starving and make a bad decision so you can keep working, not necessarily because you love pizza or whatever. If Soylent can deliver on immediateness, then it has a chance of competing with this lifestyle. And, if the end result is people thinking more about what they eat, it may be a win either way.

haha, I really hope you are right about the problem space. I'm currently building a company that hopes to solve exactly the "forget about food and then are starving and make a bad decision" problem. Not ready to say more yet, but again, sure hope you're right :-)

Anyway, if it's that thing to have on stand-by, I'm sure its ok, but so is an Ensure, a Balance Bar, a Slim-Fast, etc, so again, no real innovation here.

Do you have a sign up form yet so I can get notified when your product is up?

Note that your argument began with "It's too radical, it won't work!" and ended with "It's boring, there's nothing new here." When I see this particular pattern of cognitive dissonance, I take it as a sign that the phenomenon being dismissed has real merit. Not to single you out, either--this pattern describes perhaps the majority of arguments I've heard against Soylent.

to eat one thing 100% of the time "is too radical it won't work". yep. To eat one thing as your 'go-to' filler is fine. but neither new nor radical. One addressed one argument, the other addressed a different one.

I'd also be interested in a signup form

If you email us at previews _at_ fudi.st , we'll be happy to keep you updated.

I recently started using a meal replacement shake as my primary food source and this is exactly how I respond to the nay sayers.

The same thing happened when I became a vegetarian (how will you get your protein??). When you do something abnormal like this people tend to have ill thought out emotional reactions.

The biggest valid criticism is the QA process. But it's an issue with all meal replacement shakes.

May I ask specifically which meal replacement shake are you using? Which brand or are you making it or something?

yeah! I'm using something called "ultimate meal": http://www.amazon.com/The-Ultimate-Life-Meal-powder/dp/B0001...

Thanks. May I ask what are some of the results? I don't mean weight loss necessarily but more health effects. Do you feel like you're lacking anything, are there any negative side effects?

I'm not doing controlled research which is part of the reason for buying a premise solution. I hadn't noticed anything negative that I can attribute to the stuff. I've only been doing it for a few weeks.

If proper studies were done on this, we could actually know if it is better or worse than burgers and pizza. From what I know of how the human body works (serious amateur interest), I'm exceedingly doubtful.

I really believe the combination of long-term liquid diet and an extreme uniformity of diet will be the cause of significant health problems. I also think we will find a bunch of "nanonutrients" that are critical to long-term health that we have no idea are important today.

There is no easy answer today for nutrition. If there was, the thousands of food technicians working everywhere from universities to food companies to NASA and the military would have already come up with it. They all have compelling reasons to try.

> There is no easy answer today for nutrition. If there was, the thousands of food technicians working everywhere from universities to food companies to NASA and the military would have already come up with it. They all have compelling reasons to try.

You have to start somewhere[1]...

[1]: http://xkcd.com/397/

I would say a century of study of this specific topic is "starting somewhere". Now, while I believe Zombie Feynman would go far, far more hungry in a group of nutritionists than he would in a group of string theorists, it doesn't mean that there isn't a lot more knowledge than what is contained in a single, undergrad text book (witness the lack of sulfur) that espouses thinking to has begun to be significantly altered by new science in the last decade. To completely ignore that isn't "starting somewhere", it's blindfolding yourself, spinning a few times, and stumbling off.

I'm all for experiments with n=1 in nutrition (I do it all the time), but call it what it is. Don't pretend that, even if it works for six months or a year on you, that you really have any info that is relevant to the rest of the world. Increasing his n with others is a good start, but it will still take 50 years or more to know if this stuff is poison or panacea.

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