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Comment by bbwharris | Hacker News Reader

I personally just don't like this concept that food is a "nuisance". Or healthy food rather. Food and meals are the one thing that brings people together and offers up conversation, laughter, and emotion. Food is something that a lot of people enjoy and look forward too.

Are we really supposed to just take soylent as a healthy alternative for sustenance so we can continue to work? Just buy a juicer and keep it natural then. But really, take the break and eat a meal with a human being. You've got one life. Live it.

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> Are we really supposed to just take soylent as a healthy alternative for sustenance so we can continue to work? Just buy a juicer and keep it natural then. But really, take the break and eat a meal with a human being. You've got one life. Live it.

I didn't see any stipulations on the soylent website requiring you to avoid socializing and stay chained to your desk while drinking it. Maybe I missed some small print?

No not at all. But I don't see eating as a problem that needs a solution. I didn't mean for my comment to mean that soylent is anti social.

Does that mean the evening meal I eat with my family every night isn't enough to make me human? There are literally 0 other people in the house when I grab breakfast on the way out the door to work. Health-wise, I'd rather get extra sleep than spend the time eating, so I take something I can eat in my car. Do I have to atone for not "taking a break" by sleeping 20 minutes less in the morning? Ridiculous.

Never said you weren't human or that champions of soylent aren't human. Simply that eating doesn't seem like a problem that needs a solution to me. I imagine soylent being used when you are too busy to eat. The problem is that you are too busy, not the eating part.

Couldn't have said this better.

Walking doesn't seem like a problem that needs a solution to me. I imagine cars being used when you are too pressed for time to walk. The problem is that you are making too many commitments for yourself, not the walking part.

A bit hyperbolic, but this type of argument can be made for pretty much any disruptive technology that allows humans to overcome physical limits in order to make more choices about how they spend their time.

I like to think of it as flying versus taking the train. I don't think anyone prefers the experience of flying economy to a romantic first-class cabin on a train, but they do it anyways because it saves time and money that they can spend on things they consider more important.

I'm not too busy. There are things I would rather do than eat. Sure food is important, but it's not always my #1 priority.

Juice is about one of the most unhealthy things you can have.

It's essentially pure sugar.

Not if you do it yourself. If you buy it yes.

If you juice, you'll still end up with something that has most of the fiber removed, is mostly sugar, and spikes your blood glucose just as severely as store-bought juice. Sure it'll have a lot of vitamins and minerals, but straight up blending is generally better, or just eating the fruit/veggies whole.

Depends. I juice up 1.5lb spinach, chard, kale, 1 carrot, and a lemon. I rarely add high glucose/fructose fruits. Carrot juice is pretty sweet. I like green veggie juices over fruit juices.

A real good juicer goes a long way. It changed my perspective the first time I tasted a fresh cup of what I describe above. Invigorating and healthy.

Who says you can't take a break just because you don't have to eat? If an employer wants to take your breaks away by making you drink soylent instead, that's just an example of how terrible employers can be, not how awesome food is.

I enjoy eating food, but having the option to speed up my meal by a large factor and bond with friends over a different activity is pretty much entirely positive.

I'll buy that argument. Drink soylent horse around.

Still, I don't see how this is different than a bag of nuts and some veggies... Maybe cheaper and easier, but I'd rather put veggies in my body over powdered supplements...

First of all, juiced fruits and vegetables don't provide most of the nutrients Soylent does.

Additionally, no one is saying that if I buy a bag of Soylent then I can never eat a pleasurable meal again. Why do people continue to use this "argument"? It doesn't logically follow from anything.

If you get a juicer and juice up greens, and other vegetables you have a powerful concoction loaded with nutrients. You feel a buzz from the rush of nutrients.

You know what literally has more nutrients than that? Soylent.

I would actually LOVE to see that challenged. It would be interesting reading and provide some baseline for how good this stuff is supposed to be.

It really didn't take me very long to find the ingredients [1]. It's quite clear that there exists no combination of fruits and vegetables that could match the list of ingredients.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_(food_substitute)#Ingre...

Kale by itself exceeds that list of nutrients for almost every nutrient that I could find data for. For many nutrients it blows it out of the water. It also likely includes many unknown beneficial phytonutrients that are not included in Soylent.

Also, from what I understand many of the benefits of these nutrients are diminished or not observed when they are injested from industrial refined supplements like those used in Soylent as when they are eaten in whole plant foods like Kale.

The five nutrients where Kale had less were Sodium, Selenium, Pantothenic acid, Vitamin D, and Vitamin B12. Kale's Sodium was still 127% of the RDA, Selenium was 82% of the RDA, and Pantothenic acid was 91% of the RDA. Not bad for a single plant. I suspect that in a well-rounded whole plant diet these deficiencies would be resolved. If you grow your own Kale then you will make plenty of Vitamin D :) If you don't make enough then you can supplement Vitamin D like millions of animal-eating humans do. B12 is not included in plants, so obviously if you eat only plants you need to supplement it. It costs less than US$0.01/day so I don't see that as a major problem.

I'm highly suspicious that you will find many nutritionists who would say that Soylent is more nutritious than a diet of whole plant foods.

Notes: the USDA data for nutrient amounts in foods are not always very accurate. I believe the nutrient amounts linked by the parent represent an old Soylent recipe, since they have only 5g of fiber which is less than RDA of 25g (female) and 38g (male). "-" in the table indicates I don't have data for this. (+ (* 4.1 400) (* 50 4.1) (* 65 9.3)) => 2449.5 calories for the Soylent data you linked [edit: I'm not sure if carbs included fiber so it's possible that the Kale diet has 1% more calories than the Soylent diet]

Obviously I'm not recommending people eat 74.6 cups of Kale each day, but you can get all you need of these nutrients from a much more tasty diet of a variety of whole plant foods.

  |                     | Soylent | Kale     |
  |---------------------+---------+----------|
  | Calories            | 2449.5  | 2449.1   |
  | Carbohydrates       | 400 g   | 437 g    |
  | Protein             | 50 g    | 213 g    |
  | Fat                 | 65 g    | 46 g     |
  | Sodium              | 2.4 g   | 1.9 g    |
  | Potassium           | 3.5 g   | 24.5g    |
  | Chloride            | 3.4 g   | -        |
  | Fiber               | 5 g     | 179 g    |
  | Calcium             | 1 g     | 7.4 g    |
  | Iron                | 18 mg   | 73 mg    |
  | Phosphorus          | 1 g     | 4.5 g    |
  | Iodine              | 150 μg  | -        |
  | Magnesium           | 400 mg  | 2349 mg  |
  | Zinc                | 15 mg   | 28 mg    |
  | Selenium            | 70 μg   | 45 μg    |
  | Copper              | 2 mg    | 74 mg    |
  | Manganese           | 2 mg    | 32 mg    |
  | Chromium            | 120 μg  | -        |
  | Molybdenum          | 75 μg   | -        |
  | Vitamin A           | 5000 IU | 83220 IU |
  | Vitamin B6          | 6 μg    | 13.5 mg  |
  | Vitamin C           | 60 mg   | 5997 mg  |
  | Vitamin D           | 400 IU  | 0        |
  | Vitamin E           | 30 IU   | 77 mg    |
  | Vitamin K           | 80 μg   | 35227 μg |
  | Thiamin             | 1.5 mg  | 5.5 mg   |
  | Riboflavin          | 1.7 mg  | 6.5 mg   |
  | Niacin              | 20 mg   | 50 mg    |
  | Folate              | 400 μg  | 7047 μg  |
  | Biotin              | 300 μg  | -        |
  | Pantothenic acid    | 10 mg   | 4.5 mg   |
  | Lycopene            | 500 μg  | -        |
  | Omega-3 fatty acids | 750 mg  | 9000 mg  |
  | Ginseng             | 50 μg   | -        |
  | Ginkgo biloba       | 100 μg  | -        |
  | Lutein              | 500 μg  | -        |
  | alpha-Carotene      | 140 μg  | -        |
  | Vanadium            | 100 μg  |          |

You'd need to eat 20 lbs of kale to get the nutrients you've outlined.

(Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kale , 28 calories per 100g, 2500 calories would be 8,928g or 19.6829 lbs.)

Yeah, eating that much Kale would make Soylent very pleasurable in comparison :)

I mention that it's a lot of Kale and allude that it's not practical to eat that much ("Obviously I'm not recommending people eat 74.6 cups of Kale each day"). The parent said there exists no combination of plants that could match the Soylent nutrients, and I showed that just using a single plant and a single supplement you could get almost there on all the nutrients for which I had data, so it's plausible there does exist some combination that gets there (except for B12, and possibly some of the other nutrients for which I don't have data if they do not exist in any plants).

Your comment is confusing. How could there be literally no combination of fruits and vegetables that would match Soylent? Is Soylent using nutrients found only in beef and mineral water? I'm ignoring ginseng and ginko biloba. And despite my playful question, I am seriously asking.

Fish oil, rice protein, gum arabic, and other things I've noticed just from scanning their blog, which has a bit more information on sources: http://blog.soylent.me/

Fair enough, but fish oil is just for omega 3, right? Which is prevalent in many veggies; rice protein will obviously only be in rice, but it's probably equivalent to protein in other veggies; I'd be surprised if Gum Arabic is used for more than texture.

Not that I'm not excited about soylent - I most definitely am, and hope to make it my lunch at work. At ~$4 a meal it's still a little too expensive for just a healthy filler until I get home (my current meal: beans/lentils and mixed veggies), but when it comes down a bit it will be great for me. Yet I feel some around here are anointing it as the end-all-be-all of healthy consumption, superior to natural options, which I'd argue is a bit premature. And I'm not educated enough to speculate on benefits of nutrients in plants vs. those industrially derived.

We don't even know the truth about something as engrained in the health-conscious public as omega-3 fats.

http://www.nutraingredients.com/Research/Omega-3s-have-no-be...

Completely agreed. A lot of commenters on HN are completely missing the social function of eating.

So you eat 3 communal meals/day 365 days/year? I doubt that. We're talking about replacing the meals people eat alone when they only care about eating something and minimizing the hassle of cooking.

Most of the time, yes. I actually enjoy cooking too. Cooking is also a social activity.

Good for you. That doesn't mean people who have other priorities are wrong.

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