After reading the first Soylent post, I felt inspired to try and come up with a recipe for a "nutritionally complete" soup. I used an online tool that calculates the total nutrients for a recipe and came up with this:<p>3 potatoes
1 onion
500 grams of wild alaskan salmon
1/2 cup of mushrooms
3.5 tbsp of olive oil
30 grams of sunflower seeds
1 tbsp of dried parsley
2 tbsp of ground thyme
50 grams of parmesan cheese
3 cloves of garlic
20 grams of sesame seeds
1 medium oyster (from a can)
1 tbsp of ground mace
1 tsp of cod liver oil<p>To cook it I just added everything to boiling water in order of cooking time, starting with the potatoes and onions and ending with the salmon.<p>I tried making it last night and ate it for dinner and breakfast, and it was delicious! I also feel amazing. I guess I should track the effects of the recipe on quantified-mind.com. :-)<p>I was actually surprised by how hard it was to fit all of the daily nutrient requirements into a recipe with about 2000-2500 calories (while also avoiding nutrient overdoses). It would be great if someone would create a website for "nutritionally complete" recipes, especially recipes that are cheap and easy to make with a good blender or crockpot.
Crazy name. Grab-bag, ad-hoc nutritional doctrine. Still, I'm glad such fringe self-experimentation happens.<p>My biggest concern would be that healthy adaptive systems benefit from variety, challenge, and chaos.<p>Intermittent fasting is good. A little contamination from things that are normally unhealthy is good. (See, for example, the hygiene hypothesis or the idea of hormesis.) Chewing is good -- as is the somewhat random mix of very-chewed or less-chewed foods you swallow. Triggering your body's reactions (including your gut biome's reactions) to different extremes of nutrient mix will keep the systems 'practiced'...<p>..unless you're sure you'll spend the rest of your life like a brain-in-a-vat, and then you might as well take nutrition by IV.
Via Wonkblog:<p><i>For those of us who generally don’t like food, consider it an annoyance, and yearn for a way to avoid eating it, Soylent sounds immensely promising. But is it safe?<p>Surprisingly, the answer from nutrition experts seems to be, “Yeah, probably.” Jay Mirtallo is a professor of pharmacy at Ohio State and the immediate past president of American Society for Parental Enteral Nutrition, which focuses on the science and practice of providing food to patients through both intravenous injections and feeding tubes. His main concern with Rhinehart’s plan is that he’s making the concoction himself, rather than buying it from reputable suppliers.<p>“He basically made medical food,” Mirtallo says. “If he wanted to switch to a liquid diet, those are already available.”<p>Indeed they are. Companies like Abbott Nutrition and NestléHealthScience sell dozens of medical food products.<p>...<p>I asked Mirtallo if I could live a healthy life just drinking medical food from here on out. “You can completely,” he says. “But I don’t know why you’d want to. There are so many social aspects to food in what we do.”<p>One potential downside is cost. Rhinehart claims that he only spends $154.82 a month on Soylent. By contrast, a case of 24 eight-ounce cans of Jevity 1.5cal, a high caloric density product Abbott sells for feeding tube patients, costs $57 from Abbott’s Web store. As each can has 355 calories in it, you’d need six cans a day to top the 2,000 calorie a day mark used in FDA nutrition data. So a 24-pack would last you about four days. That works out to 7-8 packs a month, which could cost up to $456.</i><p><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/03/14/rob-rhinehart-has-a-crazy-plan-to-let-you-go-without-food-forever-it-just-might-work/" rel="nofollow">http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/03/14/r...</a>
This guy is effectively popularising something that has existed for ages in the medical/weight loss industries: namely medical food/meal replacement drinks. The difference is that he is using them daily, without paying the premium for an off the shelf, tested, and regulated version by doing it himself.<p>My question for those more experienced in this area is:<p>What well tested, off the shelf, medically regulated products could I buy today that would allow me to eliminate the consumption of solid food altogether - and of those products, which ones are the best value for money?<p>I really can't be bothered doing all the leg work required to make my own meal replacement drink (reasons being: the chance of not measuring correctly + work + forgetting nutrients + risk) - I'd like to just grab a product every month or so and just go.
> Some people tell me going "ketogenic", or reducing carbs is healthy. I am now skeptical of this claim as lowering carbs makes me feel hungry and tired, and the drink taste less sweet. Perhaps it would be possible after an unpleasant transition period, but I don’t see the ultimate gain...<p>Their advice seems to fall in line with the paleo/primal philosophies—in a nutshell: man only started eating a significant amount of carbohydrates after the agriculturalization of cereals (grains) about 10,000 years ago. They argue that wasn't enough time for us to evolve enough to adapt.<p>But to your point about feeling hungry and tired—I think it's because you're addicted to carbs and sugar (like almost all of us are), but you don't NEED carbs, at all. I tried primal for a month, and yes, the adjustment took a few days (maybe a week). However, after I got over the sugar/carb cravings, my energy levels where much more even throughout the day, sans-grains.
Sorry, but after reading the following (elsewhere on that blog), I'm hard-pressed not to dismiss this as an elaborate troll.<p>"I read a book on Number Theory in one sitting, a Differential Geometry book in a weekend, filling up a notebook in the process."
This is just a marketing ploy - otherwise, the ingredients and instructions as to how to make it would have been provided for free on the blog. And no, I don't buy the excuses that have been made as to why the list of actual ingredients can not be provided.
I have a great deal of respect for self-experimenters, no matter how crazy they seem.<p>That said, I'd like to see him compare two months of Soylent to two months of eating solid meals with a similar nutritional profile. Most of the benefits he has experienced are probably just a result of extremely well-balanced diet, not anything specifically related to Soylent.
"I didn't give up food, I just got rid of the bad food."<p>After reading the 1st HN abut this I was skeptical, but this sentence fully convinced me that Rinehart is on to something. Imagine a world with a quick, healthy, affordable lunch substitute that negated the 'need' to eat fast food when you feel pressed for time at work... Thankfully this only happens to me 2 or 3 times a month , but I'm guessing that for most of America that's more like 2 or 3 times a week.
How exactly does Soylent solve world hunger? I've heard we produce more than enough food to solve hunger already, and much is wasted. Is the food too expensive?<p>Is Soylent much more shelf stable?
I'm confused. Is soylent the same thing as soylent green? In which case, this is a satirical post (but I don't find it very funny)...<p>If not, isn't soylent just about the worst possible name for a real food product (with unknown/nonspecific ingredients), because of the movie?
I can't wait for the Kickstarter.<p>But, it seems strange that this is coming from one guy rather than big companies. If it is possible to sell food/food replacement for cheaper this way, why hasn't anyone jumped on the chance to outsell others by selling for less?
I wonder if this guy realizes his teeth are going to fall off. Since he has very little chewing action, the gums and underlying bone are going to go soft and eventually the teeth are going to begin falling off.<p>But who cares, right? He doesn't really need his teeth.<p>He should be prepared to accept a new and maybe uncommon physical shape.
All this talk of chemical drinks and medical foods and intermittent fasting reminds me of the saying about another diet regimen: "Do vegetarians live longer, or does it just feel that way?"
I think the biggest thing I want to remark here is that he needs to go to the doctor frequently while he's running these experiments. Once every couple of weeks or once every month. He could be doing serious harm to himself and he won't know until it's too late. Blood work might also give some interesting insights, such as "his bad cholesterol levels are lower than I've ever seen, this is amazing!" which would be useful in helping to push his encouragement of it.
Other HN thread from a couple days ago:
<a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5369778" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5369778</a>
Easy version (not nutritionally complete but a decent meal replacement) if anyone is interested, comments welcome.
<a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AjA38cUd4BZBdG56UTZoLVBEMHBqM0VJQUt6YmV0dUE" rel="nofollow">https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AjA38cUd4BZBdG5...</a><p>I always add whey to this for additional protein, which I didn't list because composition varies and it is micronutrient poor anyway.
While your project is crazy, you've inspired me to try eating 1/2 of a 600-calorie sandwich every 3 hours. The points about disconnecting our energy source from our entertainment resonates with me, and I'm becoming more aware of the benefits of a consistent calorie supply.<p>The FDA recommends a crazy amount of potassium. Most people don't get that much potassium in their diets.
I don't question the premise here, but I question the research and specific formulation.<p>I'm more specifically intrigued by the formulation behind something like Chori bar. <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/health/article/Chori-bar-nutritious-punch-for-poor-eating-habits-3571765.php" rel="nofollow">http://www.sfgate.com/health/article/Chori-bar-nutritious-pu...</a>
The problem with this idea long-term is that the body will 'plateau' and what may happen is decreased immunity and inability to adapt to natural seasonal and/or drastic weather changes. The body is not so simple as to be relegated to some normalizing diet. Food is as much about energetics than just protein/carbs/calories.
This product would never work for me (I can't speak for everyone else) because such a thin, denatured substance transfers into the intestines (digests) rather quickly. This leaves the stomach empty and me feeling hungry. My brain starts to make me feel bad at this point. Even if I have consumed 4000 calories, it does not care. My brain wants some food in there.<p>This is one of the same reasons why babies who can't eat solids yet need to eat so often? They can't even sleep all night because they wake up hungry. The day you start to feed them some cereal for dinner, they sleep much longer.
All the time you "save" with this sort of bullshit diet will be spent in a hospital sooner than later.<p>You need your fucking vegetables, you need fruit, you need to chew and you need to sleep. It's as simple as that.