> I think you'd be insane to make [Soylent] more than 30% of your daily calories
You can't make claims like this without context. There's 85th-percentile health, and then there's 99th-percentile health. Plenty of foods, including Soylent, can help people attain or maintain that more modest level of health. Now, if you were an Olympic athlete requiring 99th-percentile health, I agree you'd be insane to make Soylent more than 30% of your daily calories. But if you're an average person eating the Standard American Diet, you are currently insane from a health standpoint, and switching to Soylent would make you a lot less so. And among all the options you might have for improving your diet, it is among the cheapest and lowest-effort.
It amazes me how people can fail to recognize that nutrition is a part of a larger economic problem of time and resource allocation. There are real tradeoffs to be made! Perfection is rarely attainable or even desirable except in special cases!
Rob Rhinehart, for his part, has always been honest about this. The Soylent team has looked at including things like antioxidants and digestive enzymes--things you'd get from whole foods but not from Soylent's processed ingredients--but they concluded that there's just not enough information to determine the types and quantities of these substances that are necessary to improve health. I think this lack of information is no accident. It's easier to research core nutrients whose deficiency will cause clear symptoms than it is to research nice-to-haves like antioxidants whose presence may cause slight performance improvements at the margin. Soylent is designed to reflect the state of nutritional knowledge. As that knowledge improves, so will Soylent. While I have bought MealSquares and enjoy their product, I prefer Soylent's approach to one that pretends our knowledge is more complete than it really is.
* But if you're an average person eating the Standard American Diet, you are currently insane from a health standpoint, and switching to Soylent would make you a lot less so. And among all the options you might have for improving your diet, it is among the cheapest and lowest-effort.*
I have been skeptical of Soylent's claims, and I'm often troubled by the concept that we need to somehow "fix" food, but this comment makes quite a bit of sense. I would rather a person suck down Soylent instead of Twinkies, Doritos, and other highly-processed, barely-food stuff that is sold these days.
> Perfection is rarely attainable or even desirable except in special cases!
I question what definition of 'perfection' you are using if you believe that it is only desirable in 'special cases'.
If you can attain '99th-percentile health', why would you settle for '85th-percentile health', even if it is marginally (or substantially) better than your current health.
It may be desirable in all cases, but to attain peak physical condition would require far more effort of you than would be worth it for most of us in terms of time and money invested for minimal extra day-to-day benefits.
E.g. I lift weights. I'm stronger than 95% or so of people around. It's been a decade long commitment of 3-5 hours a week of exercise. Lets say 4 weeks for 50 weeks a year on average. In addition comes meal planning and a substantial additional cost in supplements. Lets say it cost me $1k/year extra (almost certainly an underestimate). That's $10k+interest excluding things like the gym membership which would add up to almost as much, and about 2000 hours of time investment over a decade. I'll need to continue to invest about as much to maintain it over the next several decades to maintain the maximum viable strength for my age as I get older.
I doubt I've got 99th-percentile health. I have no idea how many additional hours I would need to get there by e.g. improving my endurance, tweaking my diet, improving my flexibility, reducing my stress, increasing my sleep and many more. That time investment starts to add up, and quickly take away from your ability to actually live life.
It's quite amusing when you complain over unsubstantiated and anecdotal data points when you don't even try to offer up anything at all yourself.
We probably don't know what 99th-percentile health is. But we do know that e.g. a variety of indicators of physical fitness affects a long list of lifestyle related illnesses. As does diet.
While narrowing down "99th-percentile" health precisely would be hard, it is clear that for a number of these indicators, for someone to even reach 95th-percentile or even 90th-percentile is going to involve more effort than they will consider worthwhile.
Perhaps they can achieve 99th-percentile health through some other combination of more moderate effort, but it seems reasonable to question your flippant rhetorical question of why someone would settle for 85th-percentile health on this basis:
Because it's hard.
That's what my argument boiled down to, with some examples as to why I believe it is hard. You've not given any counter arguments of any substance.
My "unsubstantiated and anecdotal data points" are not evidence, but it beats "nothing" when it comes to providing a starting point for discussing what 99th-percentile health is, and why it may (or may not) be hard any day.
I guess I'm just not sure that 3-5 hours of work a week (that's assuming that's the minimum required; I don't know if that is true or not) is all that much effort.
Eating fully nutritious food should just be a given.
You can't make claims like this without context. There's 85th-percentile health, and then there's 99th-percentile health. Plenty of foods, including Soylent, can help people attain or maintain that more modest level of health. Now, if you were an Olympic athlete requiring 99th-percentile health, I agree you'd be insane to make Soylent more than 30% of your daily calories. But if you're an average person eating the Standard American Diet, you are currently insane from a health standpoint, and switching to Soylent would make you a lot less so. And among all the options you might have for improving your diet, it is among the cheapest and lowest-effort.
It amazes me how people can fail to recognize that nutrition is a part of a larger economic problem of time and resource allocation. There are real tradeoffs to be made! Perfection is rarely attainable or even desirable except in special cases!
Rob Rhinehart, for his part, has always been honest about this. The Soylent team has looked at including things like antioxidants and digestive enzymes--things you'd get from whole foods but not from Soylent's processed ingredients--but they concluded that there's just not enough information to determine the types and quantities of these substances that are necessary to improve health. I think this lack of information is no accident. It's easier to research core nutrients whose deficiency will cause clear symptoms than it is to research nice-to-haves like antioxidants whose presence may cause slight performance improvements at the margin. Soylent is designed to reflect the state of nutritional knowledge. As that knowledge improves, so will Soylent. While I have bought MealSquares and enjoy their product, I prefer Soylent's approach to one that pretends our knowledge is more complete than it really is.