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Comment by ceasarby | Hacker News Reader

How is Soylent any different than mass gainer products or protein+carbs supplements like muscle milk?

Yeah I know, it cost 5 times more, taste worse and gives you tons of gas.

So why should I buy it over well known products?

You can't live off those products alone, you would miss out on important nutrients. AFAIK Soylent is a food replacement.

You cant live HEALTHY on soylent alone also. Soylent have more ingridients but half of them are bad choices and low quality. I do not grasp why people are hooked on this. You do not need to know much aboit nutrition to see that this is a bad idea and bad execution.

People are "hooked" on this because it's something they want (a meal-replacement) or find interesting.

You say it's a bad idea, but don't explain why. I can believe it's a bad implementation, but that's exactly why people are interested in Soylent: they want to know if it works, if it's safe, etc.

> You can't live off those products alone, you would miss out on important nutrients.

As you would with Soylent, as others have pointed out in detailed analysis of how it provides, in many nutrient categories, only a single (and often the least useful) one of a broad group of related nutrients.

> AFAIK Soylent is a food replacement.

Well, its marketed that way. That doesn't mean its actually good for that.

Take vitamins, take fish oil and you'll be fine. You can't live on just Soylent either. (Unless you chained up in dark room with Soylent as the only food available)

How do you know you can't live on just Soylent? Their CEO has been doing it for months.

Correction: "Their CEO states that he has been doing it for months".

That´s why "metabolic wards" were invented for: Clinical trials with diets are extremely difficult to control.

All we know is that this one guy has survived on it for months. How will his health be after 5 years? 10 years? Both if he stops now and if he continues. Nobody knows.

And that assumes that everyone is the same as this guy.

Yes, nobody knows, that's why it's interesting to see instead of prematurely declare it impossible.

"Nobody knows" and "interesting to see" are very different to the claims made by Soylent:

"You can finally join the easy, healthy, and affordable future of nutrition."

"What if you never had to worry about food again?"

"For anyone that struggles with allergies, heartburn, acid reflux or digestion, has trouble controlling weight or cholesterol, or simply doesn't have the means to eat well, soylent is for you." (this one is clearly making medical claims and I am amazed that Soylent avoided regulators)

"Soylent frees you from the time and money spent shopping, cooking and cleaning, puts you in excellent health,"

"there is much evidence that it is considerably healthier than a typical diet."

People can do what they like with their bodies but the Soylent founders were shady by making these nonsense claims during fundraising.

Sure, but ceasarby didn't raise issues about Soylent's claims, s/he wrote "You can't live on just Soylent either.", and that's the post being replied to.

I don't understand.

You claim that Soylent is a fun experiment. Soylent don't. Soylent claim that you can replace all your food with this forever.

When someone says "you can't live off Soylent" and someone replies that it's a fun experiment letting people know the lies and misrepresentations from the producers of Soylent is a valid response. Soylent is not being marketed as an experimental product woth some risk. Soylent is being marketed as a finished product that has health benefits.

I do understand. That just wasn't what was under discussion here. The back-and-forth was about the possibility of living on Soylent-the-product, not about the claims of the company.

I'm not declaring it impossible, but I think that saying "this is a meal replacement, its safe to replace all your meals with it" is premature and potentially dangerous.

You didn't, but ceasarby above did, and that's the post this thread is replying to.

I'm not saying it's not possible technically. You can. But it's just miserable. Soylent taste bad, it's pricy and you can do same (live on just protein shakes + vitamins) with the other products. It will save you money and supplements like Muscle Milk taste way better than Soylent.

But still I'd rather eat balanced diet than just Soylent or just protein shakes. Personal health is too important to turn myself in lab rat for Soylent CEO.

Seeing as you don't even know that fish oil is more like snake oil[0], I don't think you're in any position to give nutrition advice.

0: http://www.onlinecjc.ca/article/S0828-282X(14)00237-2/abstra...

> fish oil is more like snake oil[0]

Except it's not - http://examine.com/supplements/Fish+Oil/#main_clinical_resul...

All studies are cited at the very bottom (720+ in total)

You didn't even bother to read the review article I linked, did you? The whole point is that the data has been misinterpreted, just like the site you linked.

I'm waiting for you to send me the $31.50 to read the full-text.

Their conclusion is about a specific claim for fish oil, re CAD. Examine.com is looking at more than just CAD. If it has a health benefit outside of the CAD claims, then I don't see how you can call it snake oil. Particularly, a reduction in triglycerides. The abstract of what you linked (again, just let me know where you'd like to send the $31.50 so I can read this full-text that you are linking to) is discussing one effect of fish oil and Examine is looking at any possible effects (and many say it has negligible to no effect, but some do).

Obviously you did not either.

There is no centralized data from which all fish oil studies came from. It simply stated that the impetus was a study that had misinterpreted data. The rest is exclusive to it.

Not weighing in on either side just wanted to provide this [0] link posted to HN 5 days ago and the discussion [1].

[0] http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/popular-fish-oil-study-...

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7740561

I read the article, and your interpretation is wrong. Simply put, the Eskimo Diet != Fish Oil. There is simply no denying the efficacy of supplementing with EPA, DHA and Omega-3 fat, regardless of the source. If your concern is motivated by your ideological beliefs that you should not consume animal products then you should look into an algae based supplement.

Not giving any nutritional advice here, you just misinterpreted. If you don't need it, don't take it. It works for me though. I mentioned fish oil because it's technically not a vitamin, so the message was Vitamins + Protein/Carb Supplements > Soylent. Own it in any dimension (price, taste, variety, etc.)

> Not giving any nutritional advice here, you just misinterpreted.

There's no point in trying to backtrack after saying "Take vitamins, take fish oil and you'll be fine." Have the grace to just accept that you're wrong and admit that you have no fucking clue what you're talking about.

> Have the grace to just accept that you're wrong and admit that you have no fucking clue what you're talking about

Why are you being a jackass to him? What is your justification for saying he has "no fucking clue" ?

Flagged for being inflammatory

I'm not "being a jackass to him," I'm calling him out on his bullshit claims that fish oil is nutrionally beneficial. My justification is the journal article linked in my first post.

"Take vitamins, take fish oil and you'll be fine." <-- this was an answer for that: "You can't live off those products alone, you would miss out on important nutrients."

Again if you have a problem with fish oil it doesn't mean that it's useless and everyone else is wrong about.

I don't have a "problem" with fish oil, I have a problem with people going around claiming that it is nutrionally beneficial. According to your standards for proof of nutrional value, you should also be going around telling everyone to drink donkey semen.

You could also say : "AFAIK Soylent is a fun replacement" for many people all around the world consider eating and preparing fun. And rewarding.

There is nothing stopping you from eating food for enjoyment. Soylent replaces food for fuel. If I were to live on Soylent, I'd still go to restaurants with family and friends, and they'd probably be more enjoyable as I'd be used to the taste of Soylent.

Maybe, but then why do people using Soylent seem to be making a full switch and only eating that full time instead of mixing food intakes? Every blog post about Soylent is about people who stopped eating real food for good for x weeks.

They probably want to know what it's like to live on Soylent for an extended period of time. I did see a video by Motherboard/Vice where he drank it at a restaurant which I think misses the main point of Soylent.

Eating the same food every day for a month will make you crave different foods, even if it's Soylent.

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