> a 24-year-old software engineer
> ...
> Soylent contains all of the nutritive components of a balanced diet
What utter bollocks. We're (as in, scientists studying nutrition and how utterly wrong food industry has gotten that in the 20th and early 21st century) finally starting to get our collective heads around the benefits of whole foods vs. highly processed foods, and just how badly our bodies deal with the latter. It may be theoretically possible to create some processed food that's on par with the nutrition of whole foods, but I doubt that anyone alive today knows how to do it. He may see "good" results on some metrics due to a lack of any desire to go hypercaloric -- i.e. there's probably no artificially boosted food reward[1] mechanisms in his glop. But that won't make up for the glop's likely deficiencies.
So an impatient _software engineer_ comes along and claims to have whipped up a drink that eliminates all that. A task that specialists have so far failed at.
> "I read a textbook on physiological chemistry and took to the internet to see if I could find every known essential nutrient."
I've seen this enough to be sick of it; it seems to be form of the software "everything is just an [easy] problem" mindset gone badly wrong. The supplement and meal replacement powder/drink industry is a multi-billion dollar market. First sanity check: _no_ staff scientists for any of these companies thought to go look at a textbook and the intertubes and do the same thing? DOH! Egg's on them!
Another example of this failure: when software/CS types wander off to do experimental science (e.g. human subjects) without _any_ training in how to do experiment design, data collection, or analysis. "Just ask 'em some questions!" The general form of the problem seems to be a blindness to the depths of domain knowledge required to be effective in other disciplines.
>an impatient _software engineer_ comes along and claims to have [succeeded with a] task that specialists have so far failed at
The guy who invented the spreadsheet didn't have to absorb all available accounting literature first, and Elon Musk didn't spend 30 years in the Apollo program before being allowed to send his own rocket to space. Nutrition is a field full of pseudoscience and highly susceptible to disruption. People should be encouraged to try new things here. If this guy is wrong it's at his own cost, and if right the potential benefits are enormous.
One fair point (in defense of the Scrawny Pale Guy Diet he is advocating) is that the food industry in general devotes a large majority of its funding to making foods that TASTE really really good. If that gets in the way of nutrition, taste wins every time.
But you are correct in the fact that this is crazy. Hell, I drank and smoked a lot when I was 24, and still looked healthier than this guy. Does that mean that I stumbled across an amazing new diet of beer, burgers, and weed when I was 24?
Though I dont share quite the same level of negativity towards the idea (Personally, I think it'd be amazing to be able to give up food for something that is nutritious and safe), I definitely share your concerns.
It is possible that the nutrient powder (and similar) industry hasn't given much thought to this idea because its radical and potentially risky, especially as a business venture where legal liability might be very, very high (all it takes is one person to die or be seriously injured as a result of this drink, and they are in big trouble). I'd say that IF any of these supplement producers did consider this type of drink, they probably dismissed it as too risky (both legally and financially, as I don't see the demand exploding for this).
Also, he's not claiming that he has solved any problem. He's only claiming that after some research, he whipped up this drink, and that it seems to be working fine for his body chemistry. In fact, he's pretty clear about this being experimental and potentially dangerous (Though apparently there have been no negative effects as of now). I think its a really interesting idea, but nonetheless, I'd feel much better if he was a scientist focusing on a similar field. This seems like the exact kind of thing where small, seemingly unimportant details may propagate into significant risk.
I seriously wish him well though. Personally, I wouldn't do much more than use this as a supplement (perhaps to replace lunch), but Im not the risky type when it comes to things like this.
About 18 months ago I gave the Four Hour Body diet a whirl, primarily to lose weight. I was very surprised to notice that my psoriasis improved. A lot. While I was eating well. Took a stressful contract gig, resumed eating poorly, psoriasis came back with a vengeance. So I tried harder to stick the diet and my skin's health improved.
Maybe 9 months ago I saw Dr Terry Wahls TEDx talk. I thought "Aha!" I'm a software guy, not a nutritionist. And I really just want to know what I'm supposed to do, the bullet points, not really needing the details.
Since then I've tried very hard to eat like Wahls suggests. My psoriasis is now about 2/3rd gone. From bleeding breaking skin plagues back to normal skin mixed with flakiness.
I see my dermatologist next week for my yearly. I'm quite eager to see if he notices the improvement. I've been dealing with this stuff for 10+ years and have gone to great lengths to treat it. I'm a bit chagrinned (grumpy) that all I had to do is eat more vegetables.
So I believe, but cannot prove, that I lacked the proper nutrition and now that I'm eating a very diverse diet my health has improved.
It's pretty uncontroversial. I'm impressed by the commenters who take great exception to your points. Like my scientist cousin is fond of asking skeptics (e.g. creationists, climate change, economics) "What level of proof do you require?"
Do you have any actual evidence that ingesting all nutrients known to be essential in powder form will lead to a nutritional deficiency or was your fallacious appeal to authority your whole argument?
I have upvoted your remarks, not because I agree, but because they are a classic example of head-in-the-sand thinking and should be paraded as such.
As a young developer I was often told "you can't do that" or "stop jumping to solutions" and as a now much, much older and very slightly wiser man I recognise that these were the knee-jerk fears of threatened reactionaries stuck in their ways, not the wise voices of experience that they thought they were.
As someone else implied, the appeal to authority is one of the least credible forms of supporting argument.
Look, as a Medical student, I agree with what you are saying regarding the challenges that faces solving such a problem.
But, being stupid help solve BIG problems. This guy is risking his health for the sake of science. He has a very high risk/reward ratio. I don't think he is not serious. He is not even trying in animals (which I thought he was doing before reading the rest of the article). He's obviously stupid when it comes to experimentation, but this is when it yields interesting results.
First off, thanks for dampening the enthusiasm I was feeling after reading the OP. I would love to hear your thoughts on what, specifically, his formula is/may be missing. I can think of nothing more amazing than to consume a magic glass of nutrition a day and be done, and your post has given me pause.
Dude. He's just some guy that built up some (not very useful but fun) shit, and is very cautious (explicitly!) about what it will do. He will even do an experiment, even if it's a very limited one. Give him a break, FFS. It's not like he's claiming his newly-developed pee cures cancer, or something.
Incidentally, all you have shown in this thread is some bullshit about "processed foods" and "mitochondria", plus some TEDx talk "based on personal narrative" that shows all signs of being made by a fucking crank, about how your mitochondrial bullshit will, in fact, cure cancer. Well, not really. Just multiple sclerosis. (... are you fucking kidding me...? To think I had upvoted you at first... )
Yeah, I've also seen this pattern often enough to wonder what the underlying reasons for it are. My inchoate thoughts:
When you study, say, biology, you'll probably learn about all the wrong turns that very smart people made along the road to where we currently stand: self-moving principles in Aristotle; vitalism; spontaneous generation; enzymes as living organism; and many many more. That background gives you a sense of how hard it is to be right, and the importance of modesty and self-doubt.
Whereas with computer science, what you learn about is the (relatively short, historically speaking) string of amazing successes in the field. And the more practical side of it (e.g., what software we produce for consumers) is even more unique in having this underlying exponential growth (Moore's law) foisting it up, and drastically changing at every moment what is possible, so that in fact there are very many opportunities that no one thought about simply because they weren't opportunities three years earlier.
And then programmers start thinking that, not only is improvement easy in all fields, but also the fact that other fields don't have as much to show for themselves by way of these improvements (whereas they do) just indicates how much better and smarter and innovative they are, and how in light of this it really isn't surprising at all that they may, even as outsiders, have a lot to contribute to any given field.
> it seems to be form of the software "everything is just an [easy] problem" mindset
> when software/CS types wander off to do experimental science...
When a random nutter makes some woo, we just call them random nutters and ignore them.
...But when that random nutter happens to be a software engineer during the day, suddenly it is game on for slagging engineers? Clearly it must be indicative of some sort of common hubris in the industry?
Eh? It's early days, and he's approaching it more like an engineer than a scientist; but it looks like he has the right end of the stick (for some sort of stick). He's synthesizing his food de novo, so it's very easy to control the inputs and eliminate confounding factors. He's also doing occasional measurements (albeit not regularly enough for Proper Science, perhaps), and he is offering his replacement for free to other people on the condition that they do the same measurements. His hypotheses are not ideal, because he's not a domain expert yet, but that just means he's going to be a bit slower until he reads more papers and starts avoiding other people's mistakes ;-)
One key thing I learned in university: Once you start reading papers, you're quickly going to turn into the world's leading expert on the tiny corner of science that you're reading on. (Of course, this has nothing to do with being a genius, and everything to do with no one else ever having cared about that corner before. :-P )
I am a software engineer and do tend to look at things as just simple, solvable problems... Then I met my girlfriend who is completing her masters in Public Health. She has taught me of the great importance of what you mentioned (experiment design, data collection, and analysis). You can't account for all factors, but if you haven't even considered what the most important ones are, you're doing it wrong.
That being said, I hate that stories like this get more attention because everyone here is irate over how obviously wrong it is while someone's great Show HN project gets passed over.
Pretty terrible experience. I had to drink close to a dozen cups of the stuff a day and it didn't go down easy. The stuff worked however and I went back into remission.
Defecating while on this became a very rare occurrence but otherwise almost normal if I recall correctly.
And another interesting twist: while I was very weak, I gained some noticeable muscle mass - I imagine because this is essentially taking protein powder consumption to an extreme.
It seems like this perhaps guy created a better version than Nestle on account of it actually tasting good and not needing a dozen cups a day - it is not a good lifestyle for healthy people but is very interesting as a supplement.
Drinking one can of something a day to insure you get all the nutrients necessary, including the rare ones, is a lot easier than adhering religiously to a very balanced diet. Sort of like a multivitamin that actually works.
Eating to me is a leisure activity, like going to the movies, but I don't want to go to the movies three times a day.
For anyone that doesn't understand that statement, I recommend taking a few years off work, where you spend your time getting up early every day, doing something all day (hiking, walking, gardening, building, whatever) and go to bed late in the evening (i.e. Full days of activities you want to be doing). I spent 2 years doing this, and I was shocked how much time is wasted buying, cooking, and eating food three times a day. It's really a huge chunk of time you can't spend doing what you want.
Now I'm back in the 9-5 routine, and it's not so obvious - partly I think because taking time away from my desk to eat is actually nice, as-is dinner with my girlfriend and others.
When you've got other things you'd rather be doing, eating is a time-consuming PITA.
I don't know what your situation is, but personally, being married, I love spending time cooking with my wife. For example, last night we spent 2 hours cooking crab cakes, chocolate souffle, kale chips... it was fantastic. We both enjoy one another's company while cooking.
For some people, it may seem like a waste of time, but for me, it's a way to connect to other people.
This really hit home for me one winter vacation when I decided to fast for 5 days straight. I had absolutely nothing to do so I mainly played video games and read. I couldn't believe how not hungry I was and how utterly bored I was because I wasn't occupying my days with procuring, preparing, eating, cleaning.
Whilst I understand your point, that's a matter of choice (or needs). You can perfectly buy, cook and eat 3 times/day without wasting too much time. Of course, if you want to have a gourmet experience in every meal it would be complicated.
I have had different phases in my life (currently I eat mostly paleo), and even though now it is the moment of my life when I spent more time cooking, I used to cook only once per week, having to re-heat the food on each meal.
You can also prepare food using slow cooking if you know the time you will be having the meal.
In my case, I "parallelize" and I work/study/work out/whatever while things are being cooked.
I am still unsure of the viability of these systems where they mix every single thing "needed" by the human body. How much time is needed to ensure this method of feeding is viable for humans?
> For anyone that doesn't understand that statement, I recommend taking a few years off work, where you spend your time getting up early every day, doing something all day (hiking, walking, gardening, building, whatever) and go to bed late in the evening (i.e. Full days of activities you want to be doing). I spent 2 years doing this [...]
How did you afford this, financially? What was the before/during/after story of how you organized life to do this?
Suddenly up and leaving my job and financial obligations (of which I have few), for a period of a year or two and then resuming where I'd left off does not seem even remotely feasible.
In addition to this, even those of us who sit at a computers for 7-8 hours a day and then spend the rest of our time doing other activities.
I try and go surfing every week day, and most of the weekend, and i don't want to be bothered with taking time out to eat (i've got 2 kids too - so I don't have much time). Sure I can easily go grab some junk food and eat on the go but I really don't want to when I'm trying to keep my body in good shape.
I usually mix a bunch of raw nuts, raisins, fruit/berries, yogurt into a smoothy and have that as food. but it still requires time to make a clean up, not to mention the cost of fruit and nuts. Dinner is usually cooked by my wife, so that's not an issue for me because it's time with the family.
There's this triangle of food - cost/time/consequences.
You can spend little time and little money, and get something that's not very healthy for you. The dollar menu, for instance. You can spend a little time and a lot of money buying pre-prepared food at say, the deli at Whole Foods, and get something pretty healthy. If you have the time, tools, and knowledge, you can make cheap healthy food at home.
It just depends on what resources you have and what sacrifices you want to make. Shopping, cooking, doing the dishes, those things all take time you could use to do other things.
Taking off work to do this, is absolutely great and i recommend it for everyone as long as you can. But whether something like cooking is a PITA, is mostly up to you and what you make out of it.
in 2008 I've took a seven month unpaid leave from my job to travel through central america and the caribbean. I never felt buying, cooking or eating was wasted time. Quite the contrary. Some of the most memorable moments of my whole journey came with those. Being it, cooking with people from all around the world in hostels, learning how to open a coconut and make a spoon out of the shell with a machete (yes, pretty touristy), or getting invited by a local family and let the kids show me how their favorite dish is done.
And I wasn't an avid chef before. I barely cooked by myself back home. Now i love it. Every step of the process. Its like programing – with real time compilation.
Yes, it is really time consuming. When I had other things to do, i just didn't spend that much time on it. I actually never had three meals a day (and i don't have now either).
I understand the statement and I find the idea of a having a food replacement in some cases very interesting. Its not anything new after all. But in my opinion, his motivation is questionable. Honestly, this Soylent-Shake thing remembers me of employers trying to squeeze everything out of their workers for sheer productivity. But, to each his own. If that guy is happy with his choice, he should continue doing it. If people blindly follow his way, its not his fault – they'd follow someone/something else. (As long as he is not starting a big campaign, saying that his way of life is the only right one)
If he's a true programmer, he'd code up an iphone app that controls an arduino that mixes up the precise amounts of amino acids, boron, saccharides, glucose and polyphenols for the perfect Soylent to start his day. Maybe even post his objective C on github so I can issue a pull request with 200% more boron. You know, here in the bay area, we have plants that tweet when they run out of water. I can rig up a tweetbot so his body tweets whenever he is dehydrated, and Amazon can intercept that tweet to dropship amino acids to his kitchen where the arduino mixes up the next batch of Soylent.
>Soylent contains all of the nutritive components of a balanced diet, but with just a third of the calories...
This worries me. It's not a misquote, either. From his blog^0 :
>...I get all the nutrition and energy I need with about 1/3 the calories the average American consumes...
The average American consumes 2,757 calories^2 . There's a term called the Basal Metabolic Rate. It is the amount of calories your body needs just to keep living, without thinking about movement^2 . A sample man's basal metabolic rate is over 1800 calories^3 . So thinking you can drop that down to 900 is suspect, especially in the long term.
I think this is absolutely fascinating. I'm surprised that many think that this type of eating is some sort of dangerous experiment. People eat crap diets all the time. In my bachelor days, I knew several people who ate only fast food, microwave burritos, frozen pizza, etc. Literally, these people would almost never eat fruit and their vegetables were mostly just the beans in their Taco Bell.
Myself, I eat almost exclusively low carb. Salads, chicken, various low carb veggies, eggs, cheese, etc. I supplement with a lot of protein shakes to increase muscle mass from working out. I feel fantastic, I have very little body fat, and my mind stays much clearer than when I'm carbing.
I think the whole low-carb trend showed us that the dogma surrounding foods and diet has been a load of crap. There are lots of approaches to eating that can work, and many are far superior to the "food pyramid" nonsense that has practically ruined the health of America.
Experiments like this one in eating (er, not eating) may show us things about our metabolisms that we never realized.
I, for one, would love to get rid of most food preparation, save money, and maybe even be healthier. Kudos to Rob Rhinehart for looking for a new approach to the problem of sustenance.
This mechanism can also metabolize protein and fat, but the brain can only use Glucose for energy. In fact, the brain uses 25% of the body's glucose, though it accounts for only 2% of its weight.
This would have me concerned if I were considering this. While 100% true, it neglects the entire ketone metabolic pathway[2], which the brain will use fine instead of glucose. If this something big like this has been missed (it's the foundation of many very-low carb diets, treatments for epilepsy and other brain disorders, etc), what subtle things have been missed?
I (half-Swiss) like efficiency as much as the next HN reader, but at a certain point, efficiency must be weighed against enjoyability. I can't imagine not eating a delicious roasted vegetable strudel with a balsamic vinegar reduction, or potatoes with crème fraîche and chives in puff pastry. I delight in the delicacy required to prepare these items, and enjoy eating them even more.
Cooking is (obviously) an activity that is not enjoyed by everyone, but it's an enormous leap to call it "a waste of time". Imagine, if you will, that someone has invented a speedy way of deodorizing yourself without water and soap, as showering is as much a waste of time. Sounds great, until you realize that there is a reason for these rituals. It takes me away from code, writing, and working, and offers me a moment to clear my head. What does your morning shower take you away from? What does preparing your breakfast, a cup of coffee, or dinner take you away from?
Not everything needs to be optimized for efficiency. If you've ever been to France, you'll know that many people spend an hour or more at breakfast. It slows people down, and provides them a chance to think, contemplate, and relax. Sometimes, the very act of something being inefficient can be beneficial in its own right.
> because "soylent" is the name of a wafer made out of human flesh and fed
Bit of nerd pedantry: this is incorrect. "Soylent" is the name of a type of processed food. There are different kinds made from various things. "soylent green" is a new variety introduced in this category that is supposedly made from kelp (or something like that) but is famously made from something else entirely.
This is the kind of idea that will probably go nowhere, but could change the world.
My first reaction, being an ardent lover of many ethnic cuisines, was "of course I'd never use something like that" but then I got to this line:
Eating to me is a leisure activity, like going to the movies, but I don't want to go to the movies three times a day.
Suddenly, I'm imagining "A DVR for eating." You have a steady intake of Soylent (the name absolutely must change), and when you have time to prepare a nice meal or go out to a restaurant, you adjust your intake ahead of time so your hunger level is appropriate. Crazy, but now I have another ingredient for my sci-fi universe.
I read a textbook on physiological chemistry and took to the internet to see if I could find every known essential nutrient.
The danger is that there are far more essential nutrients that we don't know about, than nutrients that we do. And the only way to get these nutrients is to eat a well balanced diet.
That being said, this would be amazing if it works and I applaud him for trying.
Call me superstitious, but I believe there are unknown unknowns in our understanding of nutrition. The human body evolved eating various fibrous things. I'm not going to run that kind of experiment on myself.
Overhyped synthetic-milk or what. Another misguided 'engineer' thinking he can 'hack' a system, which modern science is still figuring out, and that too without any controls or rigorous monitoring...
I'll check back in 5 years and see how healthy he is, assuming he sticks solely to Soylent without problems till then.
Setting aside the question of whether the subject is actually feeding his body everything he needs (a question that he appears to readily acknowledge as "good skepticism"), I have to wonder about the consistency of statements like these:
we'll have to give up many traditional foodstuffs like fresh fruits
and veggies, which are incompatible with food processing and scale.
Soylent can largely be produced from the products of local agriculture
If local agriculture suffices to produce Soylent, why not just eat food? What concerns me is that it's somewhat unclear what's actually involved in producing the constituent ingredients, whether there are limitations on how much of them you can easily produce, and what the byproducts of the production process are.
Fascinating. The discussion as well. Surprised at how few comments there were about the culture of eating.
Part of the reason Soylent makes sense is that we are already eating 'food-like substances' (to paraphrase Michael Pollen) much of the time.
He is just doing it in a controlled instrumental way.
When I go to the datacenter (5 miles from the Lincoln tunnel in the godforsaken New Jersey Meadowlands). I generally pack the same food. kefir, beef jerky and an almond cranberry mix. Purely functional food so I can stay there and concentrate. Is it balanced and nutritional? probably not really.
I am American and the soylent thing feels very American to me. Which is not a bad thing. I love food and good eating but when I compare my relationship with food and eating with my wife's it is totally different. I was raised on frozen stringbeans with a sauce made of canned mushroom soup next to pot roast cooked to medium well...
My wife is Korean and food is totally different - more like what I would associate with someone from Italy or the south of France, etc. Ingredients and process. Her kimchi or the way she cooks rice (6 kinds of grains) - the innumerable side dishes all complementing one another, table grilled meat. Friends, wine. Strong coffee afterwards.
I could not imagine life without that - even though much of the preparation is time consuming. When she roasts seaweed over an open fire it takes hours. My boys seem to eat it in minutes...
Homemade dumplings involves the whole family and flour all over the place and a few hours of work to make about a gross of dumplings...
All of that is not something I would like to replace.
However - how often do you have a meal like that? 10 - 20 times a year.
What happens the rest of the time? There is an element of drudgery to daily eating. I use a hand grinder and a moka stovetop pot for my coffee. A pain in the ass - but I am addicted to the result.
Maybe a routine where you ate soylent for the instrumental times and had festive meals when desired (or when you really craved something).
When consuming all vitamins and minerals together, some cancel each other out.
I tried Googling some articles to back up what I'm saying. Unfortunately, there is nothing presented in a pretty pre-packaged form. So go with this. e.g.: CTRL + F "vitamin C supplements can destroy dietary vitamin B12" and "Potassium" here: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/druginfo/natural/926.html
He may not be absorbing all the nutrients. Talking about absorption, through my own experience, I believe a body absorbs naturally occurring things like protein, carbs, and fat better than when it is isolated. Again, I couldn't find some quick hard scientific evidence, but found very general malabsorption of nutrients info here: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000299.htm
Generally, it is thought that loose stools means you are not absorbing nutrients properly. So, joking aside, I am interested to know what type of stools this man has.
I'm sure we can gain some interesting insights, albeit from one single person, if he tracks his experience/diet properly.
I am a 27 year old software engineer and am glad to see a peer researching alternate nutrition (and it truly is just that) that doesn't boil down to [Agent X] is EVIL or [Agent Y] is MIRACULOUS.
I have a negative appetite in the morning and used to forego breakfast. Last year I opted for a protein and fruit shake as soon as possible after waking and began a low-carb low-sugar diet. I highly recommend it for a lifestyle that unavoidably includes sitting far too long in front of a computer.
His idea is taking that to an extreme - but I'm certainly interested in trying that extreme.
I'd be really curious to learn how his teeth and gums are doing. If you can find a way to eat without ever having food touch your teeth or gums, I'd imagine you'd have incredible oral health. Thoughts?
There are plenty of liquid feeds already in existence. These contain fibre and all the other nutrients you need to survive, and they come in a variety of flavours.
And you can have a naso-gastric tube fitted, to eat while you're doing just about anything else.
[+] [-] saidajigumi|13 years ago|reply
What utter bollocks. We're (as in, scientists studying nutrition and how utterly wrong food industry has gotten that in the 20th and early 21st century) finally starting to get our collective heads around the benefits of whole foods vs. highly processed foods, and just how badly our bodies deal with the latter. It may be theoretically possible to create some processed food that's on par with the nutrition of whole foods, but I doubt that anyone alive today knows how to do it. He may see "good" results on some metrics due to a lack of any desire to go hypercaloric -- i.e. there's probably no artificially boosted food reward[1] mechanisms in his glop. But that won't make up for the glop's likely deficiencies.
So an impatient _software engineer_ comes along and claims to have whipped up a drink that eliminates all that. A task that specialists have so far failed at.
> "I read a textbook on physiological chemistry and took to the internet to see if I could find every known essential nutrient."
I've seen this enough to be sick of it; it seems to be form of the software "everything is just an [easy] problem" mindset gone badly wrong. The supplement and meal replacement powder/drink industry is a multi-billion dollar market. First sanity check: _no_ staff scientists for any of these companies thought to go look at a textbook and the intertubes and do the same thing? DOH! Egg's on them!
Another example of this failure: when software/CS types wander off to do experimental science (e.g. human subjects) without _any_ training in how to do experiment design, data collection, or analysis. "Just ask 'em some questions!" The general form of the problem seems to be a blindness to the depths of domain knowledge required to be effective in other disciplines.
[+] [-] zeteo|13 years ago|reply
The guy who invented the spreadsheet didn't have to absorb all available accounting literature first, and Elon Musk didn't spend 30 years in the Apollo program before being allowed to send his own rocket to space. Nutrition is a field full of pseudoscience and highly susceptible to disruption. People should be encouraged to try new things here. If this guy is wrong it's at his own cost, and if right the potential benefits are enormous.
[+] [-] JPKab|13 years ago|reply
One fair point (in defense of the Scrawny Pale Guy Diet he is advocating) is that the food industry in general devotes a large majority of its funding to making foods that TASTE really really good. If that gets in the way of nutrition, taste wins every time.
But you are correct in the fact that this is crazy. Hell, I drank and smoked a lot when I was 24, and still looked healthier than this guy. Does that mean that I stumbled across an amazing new diet of beer, burgers, and weed when I was 24?
[+] [-] unix-dude|13 years ago|reply
It is possible that the nutrient powder (and similar) industry hasn't given much thought to this idea because its radical and potentially risky, especially as a business venture where legal liability might be very, very high (all it takes is one person to die or be seriously injured as a result of this drink, and they are in big trouble). I'd say that IF any of these supplement producers did consider this type of drink, they probably dismissed it as too risky (both legally and financially, as I don't see the demand exploding for this).
Also, he's not claiming that he has solved any problem. He's only claiming that after some research, he whipped up this drink, and that it seems to be working fine for his body chemistry. In fact, he's pretty clear about this being experimental and potentially dangerous (Though apparently there have been no negative effects as of now). I think its a really interesting idea, but nonetheless, I'd feel much better if he was a scientist focusing on a similar field. This seems like the exact kind of thing where small, seemingly unimportant details may propagate into significant risk.
I seriously wish him well though. Personally, I wouldn't do much more than use this as a supplement (perhaps to replace lunch), but Im not the risky type when it comes to things like this.
[+] [-] specialist|13 years ago|reply
About 18 months ago I gave the Four Hour Body diet a whirl, primarily to lose weight. I was very surprised to notice that my psoriasis improved. A lot. While I was eating well. Took a stressful contract gig, resumed eating poorly, psoriasis came back with a vengeance. So I tried harder to stick the diet and my skin's health improved.
Maybe 9 months ago I saw Dr Terry Wahls TEDx talk. I thought "Aha!" I'm a software guy, not a nutritionist. And I really just want to know what I'm supposed to do, the bullet points, not really needing the details.
Since then I've tried very hard to eat like Wahls suggests. My psoriasis is now about 2/3rd gone. From bleeding breaking skin plagues back to normal skin mixed with flakiness.
I see my dermatologist next week for my yearly. I'm quite eager to see if he notices the improvement. I've been dealing with this stuff for 10+ years and have gone to great lengths to treat it. I'm a bit chagrinned (grumpy) that all I had to do is eat more vegetables.
So I believe, but cannot prove, that I lacked the proper nutrition and now that I'm eating a very diverse diet my health has improved.
It's pretty uncontroversial. I'm impressed by the commenters who take great exception to your points. Like my scientist cousin is fond of asking skeptics (e.g. creationists, climate change, economics) "What level of proof do you require?"
[+] [-] fc2|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rosser|13 years ago|reply
Exactly. Yeah, he seems to have done a pretty good job of making sure his glop includes all the things we know we need.
It includes exactly zero of the things we don't know we need.
[+] [-] inopinatus|13 years ago|reply
As a young developer I was often told "you can't do that" or "stop jumping to solutions" and as a now much, much older and very slightly wiser man I recognise that these were the knee-jerk fears of threatened reactionaries stuck in their ways, not the wise voices of experience that they thought they were.
As someone else implied, the appeal to authority is one of the least credible forms of supporting argument.
[+] [-] csomar|13 years ago|reply
But, being stupid help solve BIG problems. This guy is risking his health for the sake of science. He has a very high risk/reward ratio. I don't think he is not serious. He is not even trying in animals (which I thought he was doing before reading the rest of the article). He's obviously stupid when it comes to experimentation, but this is when it yields interesting results.
[+] [-] jgj|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lolcraft|13 years ago|reply
Incidentally, all you have shown in this thread is some bullshit about "processed foods" and "mitochondria", plus some TEDx talk "based on personal narrative" that shows all signs of being made by a fucking crank, about how your mitochondrial bullshit will, in fact, cure cancer. Well, not really. Just multiple sclerosis. (... are you fucking kidding me...? To think I had upvoted you at first... )
[+] [-] jkarni|13 years ago|reply
When you study, say, biology, you'll probably learn about all the wrong turns that very smart people made along the road to where we currently stand: self-moving principles in Aristotle; vitalism; spontaneous generation; enzymes as living organism; and many many more. That background gives you a sense of how hard it is to be right, and the importance of modesty and self-doubt.
Whereas with computer science, what you learn about is the (relatively short, historically speaking) string of amazing successes in the field. And the more practical side of it (e.g., what software we produce for consumers) is even more unique in having this underlying exponential growth (Moore's law) foisting it up, and drastically changing at every moment what is possible, so that in fact there are very many opportunities that no one thought about simply because they weren't opportunities three years earlier.
And then programmers start thinking that, not only is improvement easy in all fields, but also the fact that other fields don't have as much to show for themselves by way of these improvements (whereas they do) just indicates how much better and smarter and innovative they are, and how in light of this it really isn't surprising at all that they may, even as outsiders, have a lot to contribute to any given field.
[+] [-] jlgreco|13 years ago|reply
> when software/CS types wander off to do experimental science...
When a random nutter makes some woo, we just call them random nutters and ignore them.
...But when that random nutter happens to be a software engineer during the day, suddenly it is game on for slagging engineers? Clearly it must be indicative of some sort of common hubris in the industry?
There is some selection bias going on here.
[+] [-] Kim_Bruning|13 years ago|reply
One key thing I learned in university: Once you start reading papers, you're quickly going to turn into the world's leading expert on the tiny corner of science that you're reading on. (Of course, this has nothing to do with being a genius, and everything to do with no one else ever having cared about that corner before. :-P )
[+] [-] csmatt|13 years ago|reply
That being said, I hate that stories like this get more attention because everyone here is irate over how obviously wrong it is while someone's great Show HN project gets passed over.
[+] [-] _pmf_|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Selfcommit|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thoradam|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] recuter|13 years ago|reply
http://www.nestlehealthscience.com/products/modulen_ibd A similar, more familiar product: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ensure
Pretty terrible experience. I had to drink close to a dozen cups of the stuff a day and it didn't go down easy. The stuff worked however and I went back into remission.
Defecating while on this became a very rare occurrence but otherwise almost normal if I recall correctly. And another interesting twist: while I was very weak, I gained some noticeable muscle mass - I imagine because this is essentially taking protein powder consumption to an extreme.
It seems like this perhaps guy created a better version than Nestle on account of it actually tasting good and not needing a dozen cups a day - it is not a good lifestyle for healthy people but is very interesting as a supplement.
Drinking one can of something a day to insure you get all the nutrients necessary, including the rare ones, is a lot easier than adhering religiously to a very balanced diet. Sort of like a multivitamin that actually works.
[+] [-] grecy|13 years ago|reply
For anyone that doesn't understand that statement, I recommend taking a few years off work, where you spend your time getting up early every day, doing something all day (hiking, walking, gardening, building, whatever) and go to bed late in the evening (i.e. Full days of activities you want to be doing). I spent 2 years doing this, and I was shocked how much time is wasted buying, cooking, and eating food three times a day. It's really a huge chunk of time you can't spend doing what you want.
Now I'm back in the 9-5 routine, and it's not so obvious - partly I think because taking time away from my desk to eat is actually nice, as-is dinner with my girlfriend and others.
When you've got other things you'd rather be doing, eating is a time-consuming PITA.
[+] [-] bnegreve|13 years ago|reply
I really don't, how do you define what is a waste of time and what isn't? Why eating is a waste of time and working isn't?
[+] [-] davidwparker|13 years ago|reply
For some people, it may seem like a waste of time, but for me, it's a way to connect to other people.
[+] [-] ScotterC|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tassl|13 years ago|reply
I have had different phases in my life (currently I eat mostly paleo), and even though now it is the moment of my life when I spent more time cooking, I used to cook only once per week, having to re-heat the food on each meal.
You can also prepare food using slow cooking if you know the time you will be having the meal.
In my case, I "parallelize" and I work/study/work out/whatever while things are being cooked.
I am still unsure of the viability of these systems where they mix every single thing "needed" by the human body. How much time is needed to ensure this method of feeding is viable for humans?
PS: the drink kind of reminds me of Wall-E...
[+] [-] mathteacher1729|13 years ago|reply
How did you afford this, financially? What was the before/during/after story of how you organized life to do this?
Suddenly up and leaving my job and financial obligations (of which I have few), for a period of a year or two and then resuming where I'd left off does not seem even remotely feasible.
[+] [-] smalter|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] noknockers|13 years ago|reply
I try and go surfing every week day, and most of the weekend, and i don't want to be bothered with taking time out to eat (i've got 2 kids too - so I don't have much time). Sure I can easily go grab some junk food and eat on the go but I really don't want to when I'm trying to keep my body in good shape.
I usually mix a bunch of raw nuts, raisins, fruit/berries, yogurt into a smoothy and have that as food. but it still requires time to make a clean up, not to mention the cost of fruit and nuts. Dinner is usually cooked by my wife, so that's not an issue for me because it's time with the family.
[+] [-] bluedino|13 years ago|reply
You can spend little time and little money, and get something that's not very healthy for you. The dollar menu, for instance. You can spend a little time and a lot of money buying pre-prepared food at say, the deli at Whole Foods, and get something pretty healthy. If you have the time, tools, and knowledge, you can make cheap healthy food at home.
It just depends on what resources you have and what sacrifices you want to make. Shopping, cooking, doing the dishes, those things all take time you could use to do other things.
[+] [-] smoe|13 years ago|reply
in 2008 I've took a seven month unpaid leave from my job to travel through central america and the caribbean. I never felt buying, cooking or eating was wasted time. Quite the contrary. Some of the most memorable moments of my whole journey came with those. Being it, cooking with people from all around the world in hostels, learning how to open a coconut and make a spoon out of the shell with a machete (yes, pretty touristy), or getting invited by a local family and let the kids show me how their favorite dish is done.
And I wasn't an avid chef before. I barely cooked by myself back home. Now i love it. Every step of the process. Its like programing – with real time compilation.
Yes, it is really time consuming. When I had other things to do, i just didn't spend that much time on it. I actually never had three meals a day (and i don't have now either).
I understand the statement and I find the idea of a having a food replacement in some cases very interesting. Its not anything new after all. But in my opinion, his motivation is questionable. Honestly, this Soylent-Shake thing remembers me of employers trying to squeeze everything out of their workers for sheer productivity. But, to each his own. If that guy is happy with his choice, he should continue doing it. If people blindly follow his way, its not his fault – they'd follow someone/something else. (As long as he is not starting a big campaign, saying that his way of life is the only right one)
[+] [-] adammil|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ZoFreX|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jl6|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arasmussen|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dxbydt|13 years ago|reply
I should stop watching scifi.
[+] [-] zck|13 years ago|reply
This worries me. It's not a misquote, either. From his blog^0 :
>...I get all the nutrition and energy I need with about 1/3 the calories the average American consumes...
The average American consumes 2,757 calories^2 . There's a term called the Basal Metabolic Rate. It is the amount of calories your body needs just to keep living, without thinking about movement^2 . A sample man's basal metabolic rate is over 1800 calories^3 . So thinking you can drop that down to 900 is suspect, especially in the long term.
[0]http://robrhinehart.com/?p=298
[1]http://www.livestrong.com/article/347737-the-average-america...
[2]http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/metabolism/WT00006
[3]http://www.bmi-calculator.net/bmr-calculator/ for a 5'10", 175 lbs, 30 years old, inactive man
[+] [-] crusso|13 years ago|reply
Myself, I eat almost exclusively low carb. Salads, chicken, various low carb veggies, eggs, cheese, etc. I supplement with a lot of protein shakes to increase muscle mass from working out. I feel fantastic, I have very little body fat, and my mind stays much clearer than when I'm carbing.
I think the whole low-carb trend showed us that the dogma surrounding foods and diet has been a load of crap. There are lots of approaches to eating that can work, and many are far superior to the "food pyramid" nonsense that has practically ruined the health of America.
Experiments like this one in eating (er, not eating) may show us things about our metabolisms that we never realized.
I, for one, would love to get rid of most food preparation, save money, and maybe even be healthier. Kudos to Rob Rhinehart for looking for a new approach to the problem of sustenance.
[+] [-] SoftwareMaven|13 years ago|reply
This mechanism can also metabolize protein and fat, but the brain can only use Glucose for energy. In fact, the brain uses 25% of the body's glucose, though it accounts for only 2% of its weight.
This would have me concerned if I were considering this. While 100% true, it neglects the entire ketone metabolic pathway[2], which the brain will use fine instead of glucose. If this something big like this has been missed (it's the foundation of many very-low carb diets, treatments for epilepsy and other brain disorders, etc), what subtle things have been missed?
1. http://robrhinehart.com/
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketone_bodies
[+] [-] nickheer|13 years ago|reply
Cooking is (obviously) an activity that is not enjoyed by everyone, but it's an enormous leap to call it "a waste of time". Imagine, if you will, that someone has invented a speedy way of deodorizing yourself without water and soap, as showering is as much a waste of time. Sounds great, until you realize that there is a reason for these rituals. It takes me away from code, writing, and working, and offers me a moment to clear my head. What does your morning shower take you away from? What does preparing your breakfast, a cup of coffee, or dinner take you away from?
Not everything needs to be optimized for efficiency. If you've ever been to France, you'll know that many people spend an hour or more at breakfast. It slows people down, and provides them a chance to think, contemplate, and relax. Sometimes, the very act of something being inefficient can be beneficial in its own right.
[+] [-] thejsjunky|13 years ago|reply
Bit of nerd pedantry: this is incorrect. "Soylent" is the name of a type of processed food. There are different kinds made from various things. "soylent green" is a new variety introduced in this category that is supposedly made from kelp (or something like that) but is famously made from something else entirely.
It's actually a pretty apt name.
[+] [-] mortenjorck|13 years ago|reply
My first reaction, being an ardent lover of many ethnic cuisines, was "of course I'd never use something like that" but then I got to this line:
Eating to me is a leisure activity, like going to the movies, but I don't want to go to the movies three times a day.
Suddenly, I'm imagining "A DVR for eating." You have a steady intake of Soylent (the name absolutely must change), and when you have time to prepare a nice meal or go out to a restaurant, you adjust your intake ahead of time so your hunger level is appropriate. Crazy, but now I have another ingredient for my sci-fi universe.
[+] [-] jbaudanza|13 years ago|reply
The danger is that there are far more essential nutrients that we don't know about, than nutrients that we do. And the only way to get these nutrients is to eat a well balanced diet.
That being said, this would be amazing if it works and I applaud him for trying.
[+] [-] jacoblyles|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shiven|13 years ago|reply
I'll check back in 5 years and see how healthy he is, assuming he sticks solely to Soylent without problems till then.
[+] [-] kscaldef|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] InclinedPlane|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mbubb|13 years ago|reply
Part of the reason Soylent makes sense is that we are already eating 'food-like substances' (to paraphrase Michael Pollen) much of the time. He is just doing it in a controlled instrumental way.
When I go to the datacenter (5 miles from the Lincoln tunnel in the godforsaken New Jersey Meadowlands). I generally pack the same food. kefir, beef jerky and an almond cranberry mix. Purely functional food so I can stay there and concentrate. Is it balanced and nutritional? probably not really.
I am American and the soylent thing feels very American to me. Which is not a bad thing. I love food and good eating but when I compare my relationship with food and eating with my wife's it is totally different. I was raised on frozen stringbeans with a sauce made of canned mushroom soup next to pot roast cooked to medium well...
My wife is Korean and food is totally different - more like what I would associate with someone from Italy or the south of France, etc. Ingredients and process. Her kimchi or the way she cooks rice (6 kinds of grains) - the innumerable side dishes all complementing one another, table grilled meat. Friends, wine. Strong coffee afterwards.
I could not imagine life without that - even though much of the preparation is time consuming. When she roasts seaweed over an open fire it takes hours. My boys seem to eat it in minutes...
Homemade dumplings involves the whole family and flour all over the place and a few hours of work to make about a gross of dumplings...
All of that is not something I would like to replace.
However - how often do you have a meal like that? 10 - 20 times a year.
What happens the rest of the time? There is an element of drudgery to daily eating. I use a hand grinder and a moka stovetop pot for my coffee. A pain in the ass - but I am addicted to the result.
Maybe a routine where you ate soylent for the instrumental times and had festive meals when desired (or when you really craved something).
[+] [-] kafkaesque|13 years ago|reply
I tried Googling some articles to back up what I'm saying. Unfortunately, there is nothing presented in a pretty pre-packaged form. So go with this. e.g.: CTRL + F "vitamin C supplements can destroy dietary vitamin B12" and "Potassium" here: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/druginfo/natural/926.html
He may not be absorbing all the nutrients. Talking about absorption, through my own experience, I believe a body absorbs naturally occurring things like protein, carbs, and fat better than when it is isolated. Again, I couldn't find some quick hard scientific evidence, but found very general malabsorption of nutrients info here: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000299.htm
Generally, it is thought that loose stools means you are not absorbing nutrients properly. So, joking aside, I am interested to know what type of stools this man has.
I'm sure we can gain some interesting insights, albeit from one single person, if he tracks his experience/diet properly.
[+] [-] glenntzke|13 years ago|reply
I have a negative appetite in the morning and used to forego breakfast. Last year I opted for a protein and fruit shake as soon as possible after waking and began a low-carb low-sugar diet. I highly recommend it for a lifestyle that unavoidably includes sitting far too long in front of a computer.
His idea is taking that to an extreme - but I'm certainly interested in trying that extreme.
[+] [-] tocomment|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DanBC|13 years ago|reply
There are plenty of liquid feeds already in existence. These contain fibre and all the other nutrients you need to survive, and they come in a variety of flavours.
And you can have a naso-gastric tube fitted, to eat while you're doing just about anything else.