Hacker News Reader

Comment by source99 | Hacker News Reader

I don't intend to pass judgement on this person but from all the scientific research I have read the ratio of carbs to fat/protein in soylent is not healthy. This individual may not have any visibly negative health effects but I doubt this diet will work for a majority of people for an extended time frame.

View on HN

The problem I have with statements like this is that it gives no context for what 'not healthy' actually means (and, by extension, what a 'perfectly healthy' diet is).

For example, I often don't hit 3 of the 5 recommended fruit/veg in a day and I consume far too many fatty foods. Over an extended time frame this will probably cause me to become overweight and deficient in vitamins. Given this, it'd be useful to know what the advantages and disadvantages of soylent would be in my current situation.

Do you have a link to the studies? They presumably give more information about their benchmarking.

Gary Taubes provides a good summary of recent scientific studies. http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qEuIlQONcHw

Would you mind sharing a reference to some of this research? I haven't heard this and am currently considering working soylent back into my regular diet.

Gary Taubes is a journalist that does a great job of summarizing scientific research. Read or watch just about anything he writes.

I've never tried the "official" soylent but have toyed around with a few recipes on http://diy.soylent.me/ . You can adjust it how you please and set your own nutrient profile to get as close as you can to what you want. (...I am not a health expert)

Source? I know they recently changed it for digestibility purposes, but most of the DIY projects and the older versions of Soylent were an exact match to what the health authority recommends if I recall correctly.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com