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Comment by mga226 | Hacker News Reader

With products like this, the concern is always that we "don't know what we don't know" about human nutrition. Our mechanical understanding of how nutrients do what they do is in its infancy, and human metabolism is mind-bogglingly complicated. This is the thinking behind the (pretty good, in my opinion) advice to "eat real food."

I've been toying with the idea of developing a "real food soylent" -- an easy-to-prepare-in-bulk stew or chili, with a base of real-food ingredient options that can be interchanged based on season, availability, and taste. The idea would be to develop a real food framework that could (in theory) constitute once's entire diet. I think of this idea as Soylent minus the hubris.

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I've had the same thought -- the history of the last 100 years of processed foods definitely supports the "don't know what we don't know" suspicion.

One hidden assumption behind Soylent immediately jumps out at me: the assumption that it is healthy to ingest the same level of every nutrient constantly over time. In reality it's possible that our bodies are actually adapted to -- and benefit from -- variation in nutrient intake. We are not engineered industrial artifacts designed to run on constant engineered inputs. We are the product of a varied, highly textured environment and an evolutionary design process whose "reasoning" is quite alien from our own.

>I've been toying with the idea of developing a "real food soylent" -- an easy-to-prepare-in-bulk stew or chili, with a base of real-food ingredient options that can be interchanged based on season, availability, and taste. The idea would be to develop a real food framework that could (in theory) constitute once's entire diet. I think of this idea as Soylent minus the hubris.

This is not only sensible, strength trainers already do this. My favorite is a cabbage+(beef/venison/lamb) curried stew. You could probably just sell this as microwaveable packets, but then it doesn't have the mystique of Soylent :)

Very interesting, and sounds delicious.

Look at the diet of bodybuilders (that includes the population beyond the diet of the largest, most steroid abusing population).

Meat, rice/potatoes/oatmeal, veggies.

Over and over again.

It's how I eat. It's how my son eats. We don't get bored of it, we're both healthy.

Obsessing about making food "interesting" and "varied" all the time is the sign of something else.

Eating plain, simple, home-cooked food isn't as complicated, time-consuming and mundane as people think it is. Guests at my house marvel at how good our food is.

Foodie-ness and shit eating can very easily be countered by simple foods, cooked quickly, at home.

Everything else is just.. fodder for blog posts and journalism.

Why are you so reductive? I don’t really get that …

What’s wrong with enjoying to cook and eat really complicated stuff?

After years of [poor diet], I am a firm food supporter of 'small changes, very carefully and very slowly'.

I don't have judgment or opinion of how other people choose to organize or live their lives, but I do wonder whether people are aware of what they are replacing, as they choose to replace it.

But, that's not to say that those who remain conservative aren't missing out on opportunity that otherwise might not be afforded to them, given the choice. Maybe you want to create a soylent/ individual dietary analytics startup with your biology PhD and CS buddies.

My idea behind eating real food is, I like to. A lot. It looks pretty, it smells pretty, and it tastes awesome, and it's about the only time I blab to whoever I am surrounded with in real life. Food can be more than food.

I agree. I think anyone who lives on an all (or nearly all) Soylent diet is very likely setting themselves up for some sort of long-term health problems.

That said, I can see a strong argument for replacing one meal a day with Soylent. It's unlikely to be worse than what most people eat, and as part of an overall varied diet I'd be much less concerned about the unknown missing ingredients.

> some sort of long-term health problems.

The leading cause of cancer is life. Everything causes long-term health problems, eventually. People are too risk-averse, How can you enjoy anything if you are perpetually concerned about long-term health risks?

One end of the spectrum is being too careful, the other end is not taking any kind of precautions. Both are probably a bad way to live. (ie: if everything is equally dangerous, why not let children smoke a pack a day while working in a coal mine? They'll all die eventually anyway).

If someone only wants to eat Soylent they should. They should also be documenting as many health data points as possible, how much they are eating, and when they deviate from the diet. Twenty five to thirty years out we should have a good idea what the side effects are.

Negative side effects showing up within the next couple of years will kill Soylent. Why? Because their marketing says you don't need to eat anything else. That is a very steep claim, not much different than claiming your magical sugar pill prevents cancer.

If they made diminished claims I would speak less negatively. Certainly, as a nutritional supplement it would have strong and immediately measurable benefits in poor areas such as sub-Saharan Africa. Put a healthy 21 year old exclusively on it until they are 35? Ouch.

In response to your request for a "real food soylent",

There is another company called mealsquares that is planning on doing just that. I was going to sign up for the beta test but it currently isn't available in Canada.

http://www.mealsquares.com/

Great idea. Garanimals for food. I do this informally. Common base of ground meat, onions, tomato, spices, and broth with a varying selection of additives like beans, bell pepper, carrots, peas, corn, root veggies of all kinds, green leafy veggies, squash. It comes out different every time but always tasty, easy to freeze and reheat, and a decent balance of protein, fat, carbs, fiber, and micro-nutrients. Not great for breakfast, but it's fine for a good chunk of the remaining 14 meals per week.

Had to Google "Garanimals", but yeah. I'd imagined getting a little geekier about the details, along the lines of "Take 2 lbs from food list A, 1 lb from food list B, 1.5 lb from food list C..." but I may be falling prey to the very thing I'm criticizing.

I disagree on one point: this sounds delicious for breakfast.

Right - for example, we didn't even know about phtyo-nutrients until recently.

Still, if it only replaces the mexican tortilla chips I eat regularly, I'll probably still come out ahead.

Probably, and to take it a step further, people who are already on diets of mostly processed foods could even see improvements from switching to 100% soylent, which I suspect underlies a lot of the "I went soylent and my blood work improved and I've never felt better!" reports.

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