Humans are very adaptable wrt. food, generally speaking. Look at the different diets all around the world, or even in one person's lifetime.
The only issue I take with Soylent is their claim that it's perfect. I think we need MUCH more time to gather data.
We've only begun to start understanding some of these diseases (like Pellagra: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pellagra#Epidemiology), and we don't really have it all nailed down yet.
But we do know about nutrients and have a good idea of the proportion of them for the avg human.
I think my main problem with the backlash is with the argument that boils down to "We don't know, so let's not risk it". I don't see why we can't try it, and then monitor and react. If I started using Soylent and then 30 days down the road I was feeling ill, I'd probably stop using it first thing while exploring other causes.
We really, really don't. You could be excused for thinking we've got it all figured out if you listened only to news reporting on nutrition studies, but there's so much contradictory information out there that it's difficult to know which end is up.
For example: Soylent, according to the story, is partially fish oil. Did you know that there's a study out of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center that strongly suggests that fish oil supplementation increases the incidence of aggressive, fatal prostate cancers? What was once a nutrient panacea is likely now contraindicated in men.
Does this mean that Soylent shouldn't be using fish oil? Hard to say. I doubt that even the creators have any idea.
I welcome doctors, researchers, and people who know what they are doing to experiment with the human body. But when a computer science major armed with nothing but a few textbooks in body chemistry claims that he has "figured the body out", I am going to assume otherwise.
Does he have any cooking experience? What is his medical background?
Its not so much that "we don't know", but "the creator of Soylent clearly doesn't know", and yet he wants us to believe that he does.
The fear is that Soylent, used as hyped, has the potential to break a human.
Breaking yourself, or much worse, others, is a far more serious than breaking a machine. That sort of relaxed attitude towards health is exactly why I would not trust a product like this from people like this.
Soylent really should not be banking on "it is difficult to kill a human", and neither should you.
Yes, breaking humans is bad. Is there any indication that Soylent is going to break people though?
As far as I can tell, it's unknown what the long term effects will be, but we have some evidence that it should be just fine.
Do you have any evidence that points to Soylent being harmful?
I say give it a try. Let's wrap the handle, observe in operation, and then react when we have more data.
I can't believe I have not made myself clear on this already, but I'll give it one more go: You can fuck around with lawn mowers because breaking one typically doesn't fucking kill somebody.
If you break your fucking lawnmower, you buy a new one. You don't get to buy another human.
Such a lazy attitude towards human safety is positively chilling. Have you learned absolutely nothing from the horrors seen over past centuries of people treating human lives like any other test subject?
Show me some evidence or even some indication that Soylent will result in an irreversible and sudden decline in health.
I'm guessing that you won't, or can't.
Your argument is "We don't know, so let's not risk it". The risk here is minimal. If it fails to live up to the hype, it's reversible.
> If it fails to live up to the hype, it's reversible.
Once again, demanding evidence that something is unsafe instead of providing evidence that it is not, then in the same breath taking that it is not for granted.
Is that all you are wired to do? It's like what I'm saying is going in one ear and coming out the other.
I don't treat human life lightly. You're just treating a dietary change too heavily.
> It's like what I'm saying is going in one ear and coming out the other.
I was just about to say the same of you. I'm done here.
And there is clear evidence of trial-and-error that has resulted in short-term health effects due to initial versions of Soylent. Longer term effects would not have been identified and so remain a very high risk.
From wikipedia: Modifications to the ingredient list have occurred in response to results incurred in testing, for example: the first version of the formula omitted iron, which caused Rhineheart to report his heart had begun to race.[8] In other early experiments, intentionally induced overdoses of potassium and magnesium gave Rhinehart cardiac arrhythmia and burning sensations.[8] After the early recipe had stabilized, Rhinehart found himself suffering from joint pain due to a sulfur deficiency. Methylsulfonylmethane was added to address this problem
You are demonstrating a very basic failure to analyze risk, understand the variety of medical risks that can be posed by experimental diets, and indeed understand the concerns that other people are raising (the concern is not that you will die after drinking it three times in a row.....).
What if Soylent increases the risk of some form of cancer or some long term damage to the liver of other organs ? You wont know until its too late.
You want people to prove that Soylent is bad, but instead the Soylent team needs to proof that Soylent is good! And a couple of dozen reviews from people using it for a month does not prove anything.
If you build software that doesn't work, people get pissed off and yell at you on web-forums... but in the great scheme of things that's not a big deal.
The main downside is that once you leave software, startup culture becomes incredibly dangerous. If you build an airplane that "doesn't work", people die. If you build a train that "doesn't work", the train crashes into a building and people die. If you build a bridge that doesn't work... people die.
And of course, when it comes to Soylent... if you build a food process that can be infested with diseases, or leave out important dietary nutrition in a particular diet... people can die.
We have all this discussion talking about the diet side of things, but little discussion on the practicality of storage, or whether or not it needs to be refrigerated.
Well, that combined with typical SV engineer hubris. Being bright in your field and well paid does not mean that you can be the master of any field. Some engineering disciplines require tighter tolerances. Some fields, particularly those that use human subjects, have much tighter ethical and safety requirements.
It seems as though being immersed in SV startup culture for too long can render somebody literally unable to comprehend the notion of more stringent requirements and regulations existing.
How do you know that?