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It seems probable that soylent is better than much of the manufactured food on the market. It also seems unlikely that soylent is better than quality whole food.
I take Nassim Taleb's approach. We don’t know what we don’t know about food. I’d like to address two of Shane’s points. I'm listing the objections Shane raises, then his reply:
Shane's first point:
Objection: The body needs whole foods, not atomic nutrients; the synergy between diverse ingredients is what matters in nutritional uptake. Shane's reply –> This sounds nice, but has not been scientifically proven. (Shane links to the naturalistic fallacy)
My reply: It’s true that nature doesn’t prove something is good. We can nonetheless have a strong presumption that the body does best on whole foods.
We have thousands of years of history of humans doing well on whole foods, and zero evidence that the human body can do as well on artificial foods.
Nassim Taleb would tell us there is a presumption in favour of natural system that has stood the test of time. Human biology is very, very complex. If whole foods serve it well, they may do so for reasons we can fathom.
One problem for Soylent is that it would have to prove itself safe on the timescale of a human lifetime. That’s very, very hard to do.
Shane’s second point
Objection: We don’t know what we don’t know about nutrition (i.e. Soylent might be unexpectedly harmful). Shane's reply —> That’s not a good reason to not try to innovate. Why not do some tests?
My reply: See my point above. How can you test that Soylent is better than whole foods? There is a massive potential for false positives.
With natural foods, if something seems effective, it probably is. We would have discovered poisonous or second order effects long ago.
With an artificial food like soylent, it could appear effective for, say, ten years, while introducing a variety of malignant effects.
Or maybe it is totally healthy. I have no idea. How can we know? You can’t prove a good is safe without using it for a long, long time.
That said, I would expect soylent to be better than a diet of pure artificial junk food, as many americans eat. They’re also engineered foods, but in that case we can positively identify the harm.
One additional problem of soylent: the designers assume we need a steady inejection of the same macronutrients every time we eat.
We know positively that this is false. Bodybuilders have long known that carbohydrates are more effective after a workout. As with increased protein after a workout.