Missing nutrients is probably the most obvious, but bad combinations of nutrients having strange effects is certainly possible.
A person's vitamin C needs are different if they are eating a diet that is predominately meat than if they are eating a lot of grains (the reason why Inuits didn't suffer from scurvy). Maybe there is a combination in Soylent that makes calcium very difficult to absorb or alters the body's ph so calcium has to be leached from the bones to proper ph. After 10 years, your bones become exceedingly brittle, and there isn't much you can do about it.
I'm not saying this is less healthy than eating Ensure for every meal, but I would say the exact same thing about Ensure, and I trust a little more science has gone into it (maybe 10% valid nutrition and 90% "how do we get this to taste/sell better" food "science").
The worst part for me is that we have no idea. At best, we have a few anecdotes. But I feel this way about every "miracle food" that comes on the market.
A person's vitamin C needs are different if they are eating a diet that is predominately meat than if they are eating a lot of grains (the reason why Inuits didn't suffer from scurvy). Maybe there is a combination in Soylent that makes calcium very difficult to absorb or alters the body's ph so calcium has to be leached from the bones to proper ph. After 10 years, your bones become exceedingly brittle, and there isn't much you can do about it.
I'm not saying this is less healthy than eating Ensure for every meal, but I would say the exact same thing about Ensure, and I trust a little more science has gone into it (maybe 10% valid nutrition and 90% "how do we get this to taste/sell better" food "science").
The worst part for me is that we have no idea. At best, we have a few anecdotes. But I feel this way about every "miracle food" that comes on the market.