Reminds me of this quote from Good Omens, where Famine now spends his time coming up with new foods (“indistinguishable from any other [food] except for […] the nutritional content, which was roughly equivalent to that of a Sony Walkman. It didn’t matter how much you ate, you lost weight. […] And hair. And skin tone. And, if you ate enough of it long enough, vital signs”).
It's interesting to compare this with Soylent: while Soylent provides nutrition without the pleasure of eating, this provides the pleasure of eating without risking overnutrition (in other words, getting fat).
I wonder why aren't there VC firms dumping huge amounts of funding in stuff like this (or maybe I'm just not aware of)?
On a separate note, why would someone eat Soylent? Oily farty flavorless sand milkshake? I wouldn't eat it even if it was free! Now this wooden noodles stuff? Sign me up!
You seem to be reacting to version 1.0; the current shipping versions are 1.5 (in powder packs) and 2.0 (in liquid bottles)
Soylent being an engineered food which is versioned, it gradually improves over time as issues are discovered and solutions found.
The "oily" attribute only applied to the first couple versions of the product when you had to add oil separately and it didn't mix well. (Now that the oil is sourced in powdered form this is no longer an issue.) The "farty" and "gritty" attributes were similarly resolved by tweaking other ingredients.
The "neutral flavor profile" is a deliberate product feature that makes it easy to add your own flavoring if you care to. but if adding a little cocoa powder or peanut butter or cinnamon when you mix it up is just too hard I'm sure they'll eventually come out with pre-flavored variants. (Though I personally like the bland version)
I used Soylent on a super long backpacking trip where space and weight were huge considerations. It tasted awful but was incredibly effective from a dietary perspective.
> There are already noodles made just from konjac, also known as Devil’s Tongue or Voodoo Lily because of the plant’s striking flower. But it has been difficult to sell because of its bitter taste, according to Keiichi Ohi
Having tried konnyaku (skewered blocks though, not noodles), my issue was not so much taste (which is pretty much non-existent, all the flavor came from the sauce) as texture, superficially very slimy jelly with surprisingly firm internal consistency, it was somewhat gag-inducing.
I'd be interested in learning how the texture changes by introducing cellulose mix into konnyaku.
My wife is vegan (and a Japanophile) and uses konnyaku as a meat substitute -- the issue is flavouring, and with various seafood flavours (often seaweed-derived) it makes an excellent fish/shellfish substitute. One thing to note is that it requires boiling before further cooking to get rid of the initial rather off-putting aroma.
I've lately begun seeing it show up as the base of various "gluten-free diet wonder-food" products in our local wholefood supermarket (in the UK), at about five times the price it is in your typical Chinese/Asian foods supermarket ...
The issue is that there are plenty of people who rely on the food energy contained in those carbs.
This was an enormous problem during the American industrial revolution, where already food-insecure families were buying products covertly made from "Potato flour", the insoluble fiber left once all nutrition was dissolved from potatoes. "Potato flour" was added to everything from sausage to bread as a filler and substitue for more expensive ingredients. This resulted in the poor watching their children and families starve despite seeming to eat regular full meals.
In a perfect world, there would be a net benefit from the choice to eat a non-nutritive carb substitute if that choice was made clear by strict labeling standards.
However, in our imperfect world, infrastructure that can produce food based on non-nutritive fiber has historically been used to rip off the most needy. In a world with actual fake egg and "gutter oil" problems, creating industrial processes to shape cellulose into something that looks like food is going to have severe negative effects for a lot of people.
> I remember there was a controversy when it came to the public's attention that there was cellulose (wood) in many popular brands of bread.
> Personally I see nothing wrong with it, in fact, it seems like a pretty clever "food hack". We have sugar substitutes, so why not this?
There's nothing wrong with it when it's advertised as what it is. There's everything wrong with it when it's used to covertly bulk up food and make more money because you're selling 50% wood pulp 50% bread for the price of 100% bread to people expecting the caloric intake of bread.
I guess the problem is association with war-time practices of cutting flour with sawdust and other measures to "cheat" on consumers – and generally the feeling of getting cheated. Sugar substitutes are demanded by the public (and usually advertised if present), while this is just yet another additive nobody knew about.
I eat konjac noodles quite often as a lower carb alternative. They are not as nice as "real" noodles but alright to have sometimes, specially if they are served with highly flavoured food. They are not perfect though, so I'm happy to see this if it improves the taste texture a bit.
In order to counter skyrocketing calorie levels and the lack of fiber in ordinary cheaply produced food, and following hysterical trends like being afraid of fats or carbs or gluten, companies are busy inventing new food that doesn't have any nutritional value.
Although this is basically just garbage manufactured into pseudo-food, with some clever marketing it's bound to be a hit on the market, and people who have no clue what they're doing will probably ruin their health in new interesting ways.
At the same time, billions of people in the global lower class don't have access to even barely decent food.
If this sounds insane to you, that's because it is in fact completely insane.
From what I can gather this will have virtually no nutritional content whatsoever. I really do struggle to see how it could be considered a "health" food.
Although food like kale does have 10x the amount of calories, I have a sneaky suspicion you would be much better off eating that. The problem (in my view) that is the cause of obesity is the tendency to eat foods that are more processed rather than less..
It's great when cutting. After a long period of bulking it's very easy to get ripped with miracle noodles. You fill your stomach without getting the excess energy in order to stay on a calorie deficit.
> From what I can gather this will have virtually no nutritional content whatsoever. I really do struggle to see how it could be considered a "health" food.
When the alternative is more energy-dense food and you've already more than filled your caloric budget, it's healthier to eat this. Plus konjac and wood pulp are high in dietary fiber.
I had the same initial reaction, then checked it has about the same caloric intake than vegetable soup. So it can probably give you some sense of (short-term) satiety but it would be hard to base your diet on it.
We get wood pulp from trees that are farmed, not by clearcutting old-growth rainforest. If we used less tree pulp, the obvious result would be that we'd plant fewer acres of forest. If anything, finding more uses for wood helps the environment as it's using a resource that literally grows on trees in lieu of other resource that don't.
[+] [-] MrJagil|10 years ago|reply
Edit: Here's the wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cysteine#Industrial_sources
[+] [-] riffraff|10 years ago|reply
Still interesting, but probably outdated.
[+] [-] AndrewDucker|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iMark|10 years ago|reply
cf Soylent.
[+] [-] ucaetano|10 years ago|reply
I wonder why aren't there VC firms dumping huge amounts of funding in stuff like this (or maybe I'm just not aware of)?
On a separate note, why would someone eat Soylent? Oily farty flavorless sand milkshake? I wouldn't eat it even if it was free! Now this wooden noodles stuff? Sign me up!
[+] [-] glenra|10 years ago|reply
You seem to be reacting to version 1.0; the current shipping versions are 1.5 (in powder packs) and 2.0 (in liquid bottles)
Soylent being an engineered food which is versioned, it gradually improves over time as issues are discovered and solutions found.
The "oily" attribute only applied to the first couple versions of the product when you had to add oil separately and it didn't mix well. (Now that the oil is sourced in powdered form this is no longer an issue.) The "farty" and "gritty" attributes were similarly resolved by tweaking other ingredients.
The "neutral flavor profile" is a deliberate product feature that makes it easy to add your own flavoring if you care to. but if adding a little cocoa powder or peanut butter or cinnamon when you mix it up is just too hard I'm sure they'll eventually come out with pre-flavored variants. (Though I personally like the bland version)
(1.4 was probably the biggest change. Here's a review of it: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/04/soylent-1-4-formula-c... )
[+] [-] outside1234|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drumdance|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] masklinn|10 years ago|reply
Having tried konnyaku (skewered blocks though, not noodles), my issue was not so much taste (which is pretty much non-existent, all the flavor came from the sauce) as texture, superficially very slimy jelly with surprisingly firm internal consistency, it was somewhat gag-inducing.
I'd be interested in learning how the texture changes by introducing cellulose mix into konnyaku.
[+] [-] cstross|10 years ago|reply
I've lately begun seeing it show up as the base of various "gluten-free diet wonder-food" products in our local wholefood supermarket (in the UK), at about five times the price it is in your typical Chinese/Asian foods supermarket ...
[+] [-] Drakim|10 years ago|reply
Personally I see nothing wrong with it, in fact, it seems like a pretty clever "food hack". We have sugar substitutes, so why not this?
[+] [-] awakeasleep|10 years ago|reply
This was an enormous problem during the American industrial revolution, where already food-insecure families were buying products covertly made from "Potato flour", the insoluble fiber left once all nutrition was dissolved from potatoes. "Potato flour" was added to everything from sausage to bread as a filler and substitue for more expensive ingredients. This resulted in the poor watching their children and families starve despite seeming to eat regular full meals.
In a perfect world, there would be a net benefit from the choice to eat a non-nutritive carb substitute if that choice was made clear by strict labeling standards.
However, in our imperfect world, infrastructure that can produce food based on non-nutritive fiber has historically been used to rip off the most needy. In a world with actual fake egg and "gutter oil" problems, creating industrial processes to shape cellulose into something that looks like food is going to have severe negative effects for a lot of people.
[+] [-] masklinn|10 years ago|reply
> Personally I see nothing wrong with it, in fact, it seems like a pretty clever "food hack". We have sugar substitutes, so why not this?
There's nothing wrong with it when it's advertised as what it is. There's everything wrong with it when it's used to covertly bulk up food and make more money because you're selling 50% wood pulp 50% bread for the price of 100% bread to people expecting the caloric intake of bread.
[+] [-] creshal|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rplnt|10 years ago|reply
edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_cardboard_bun_hoax
[+] [-] jbb555|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dao-|10 years ago|reply
In order to counter skyrocketing calorie levels and the lack of fiber in ordinary cheaply produced food, and following hysterical trends like being afraid of fats or carbs or gluten, companies are busy inventing new food that doesn't have any nutritional value.
Although this is basically just garbage manufactured into pseudo-food, with some clever marketing it's bound to be a hit on the market, and people who have no clue what they're doing will probably ruin their health in new interesting ways.
At the same time, billions of people in the global lower class don't have access to even barely decent food.
If this sounds insane to you, that's because it is in fact completely insane.
[+] [-] gruez|10 years ago|reply
What makes you think that?
[+] [-] btrask|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] weavie|10 years ago|reply
Although food like kale does have 10x the amount of calories, I have a sneaky suspicion you would be much better off eating that. The problem (in my view) that is the cause of obesity is the tendency to eat foods that are more processed rather than less..
[+] [-] Kiro|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] masklinn|10 years ago|reply
When the alternative is more energy-dense food and you've already more than filled your caloric budget, it's healthier to eat this. Plus konjac and wood pulp are high in dietary fiber.
[+] [-] seren|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] khabaal|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jtheory|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jacobush|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dasboth|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] glenra|10 years ago|reply
We get wood pulp from trees that are farmed, not by clearcutting old-growth rainforest. If we used less tree pulp, the obvious result would be that we'd plant fewer acres of forest. If anything, finding more uses for wood helps the environment as it's using a resource that literally grows on trees in lieu of other resource that don't.
[+] [-] masklinn|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kifki|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] masklinn|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] duaneb|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] masklinn|10 years ago|reply
That's not exactly new, there's a ton of low-calorie stuff out there.
> instead of low $/calorie
Obesity epidemics are caused by the over-availability and over-consumption of low $/calorie.
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
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