Without Food: Testing an Organic Soylent Alternative, with Doctor's Comments

blog.betterdoctor.com

12 points2t2 comments

>Apart from missing a good meal I felt pretty good, lost some weight and didn’t even feel hungry.

Emphasis added.

I wish people wouldn't treat this universally as a good thing, when talking about food replacements. The goal in consuming nutrients is to sustain your body. If you're losing weight, you're either losing water weight or not eating enough calories.^1

Now, certainly for many, losing weight would be a good thing, but we also need to ensure that these products can actually keep a body healthy. "I've been on them for two months, and I'm staying at a healthy weight" would make me feel better about them. "I've lost a few pounds" means I can't discriminate between healthy weight loss and a product that is putting you into starvation.

[1]Not a doctor, not a nutritionist.

Good point. There's an assumption in talking about losing weight that it's a good thing because for most Americans, at least, it would be a good thing.

I wouldn't see this as a problem in a week-long test though. The reader probably understands that the lost weight is most likely water. Don't know about the calorie content of Ambro but it's likely to be quite high since it contains nuts.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com