Meal replacements really are awesome. I’ve been on Soylent 2.0 for several months. I don’t have to cook, wash dishes, or refrigerate my food, it’s shipped to my front door, all of my waste is recyclable (to my knowledge), I don’t have opportunities to impulse buy any more, it’s more nutritious than what I was eating before, I’m a vegetarian (vegan, even?) as a side effect, and it’s hard to choke on it. Rosa Labs also just released a caffeinated version with coffee in it, which will replace my energy drink habit. (I should probably drop caffeine altogether, but I love it so much.)
Cons include people looking at me weird, possible nutrition-related black swans, jaw muscle atrophy (which may be a notable pro for any transwomen out there), and lack of fibrous material to chew on to clean out the fissures in my molars, which could increase risk of dental caries. I could pick up a gum habit for the last one; xylitol gum would probably be best as long as I’m trying to improve my oral health.
Chewing gum is generally recommended with this kind of food.
There are already known problems with this kind of food, and I wonder why no one seems to address them. First, the lack of probiotics. Second, some metabolic pathways cannot be done at the same time (sorry, I don’t remember the specific examples), so if you eat both X and Y in the same food, X will take priority and get digested, but Y will be ignored. This is not a problem if some of your food contains only X and other contains only Y, but may become a problem when X and Y always come mixed together.
The second problem seems relatively easy to fix: just split the food into two (or more if necessary) variants. For example, make one variant with double X, zero Y, and the usual amount of everything else, and other variant with no X, double Y, and the usual amount of everything else. Not sure what to do about the first problem; I suspect probiotics do not have the same shell life as the usual Soylent ingredients.
I started probiotics around Christmas last year. Been losing weight consistently since then. Have largely gotten off the easy carbs. Pre diabetic. All numbers have gotten much better since then.
There has been a lot of noise in recent years about probiotics for treating diabetes and generally controlling insulin levels.
some metabolic pathways cannot be done at the same time
Have you updated on this since you made this comment (I ask to check whether I should invest in doing a search)? If not, do you now recall any specific examples?
I haven’t paid attention to this recently (I have small kids, so we need to cook anyway), but I think it is magnesium and calcium—they somehow interfere with each other’s absorption.
(Plus there is a more general concern about what other similar relations may exist that no one has studied yet, because most people do not eat like “I only eat X at the same time as Y, mixed together”.)
Meal replacements really are awesome. I’ve been on Soylent 2.0 for several months. I don’t have to cook, wash dishes, or refrigerate my food, it’s shipped to my front door, all of my waste is recyclable (to my knowledge), I don’t have opportunities to impulse buy any more, it’s more nutritious than what I was eating before, I’m a vegetarian (vegan, even?) as a side effect, and it’s hard to choke on it. Rosa Labs also just released a caffeinated version with coffee in it, which will replace my energy drink habit. (I should probably drop caffeine altogether, but I love it so much.)
Cons include people looking at me weird, possible nutrition-related black swans, jaw muscle atrophy (which may be a notable pro for any transwomen out there), and lack of fibrous material to chew on to clean out the fissures in my molars, which could increase risk of dental caries. I could pick up a gum habit for the last one; xylitol gum would probably be best as long as I’m trying to improve my oral health.
Chewing gum is generally recommended with this kind of food.
There are already known problems with this kind of food, and I wonder why no one seems to address them. First, the lack of probiotics. Second, some metabolic pathways cannot be done at the same time (sorry, I don’t remember the specific examples), so if you eat both X and Y in the same food, X will take priority and get digested, but Y will be ignored. This is not a problem if some of your food contains only X and other contains only Y, but may become a problem when X and Y always come mixed together.
The second problem seems relatively easy to fix: just split the food into two (or more if necessary) variants. For example, make one variant with double X, zero Y, and the usual amount of everything else, and other variant with no X, double Y, and the usual amount of everything else. Not sure what to do about the first problem; I suspect probiotics do not have the same shell life as the usual Soylent ingredients.
I started probiotics around Christmas last year. Been losing weight consistently since then. Have largely gotten off the easy carbs. Pre diabetic. All numbers have gotten much better since then.
There has been a lot of noise in recent years about probiotics for treating diabetes and generally controlling insulin levels.
Have you updated on this since you made this comment (I ask to check whether I should invest in doing a search)? If not, do you now recall any specific examples?
I haven’t paid attention to this recently (I have small kids, so we need to cook anyway), but I think it is magnesium and calcium—they somehow interfere with each other’s absorption.
Just a random thing I found in google, but didn’t read it: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1211491/
(Plus there is a more general concern about what other similar relations may exist that no one has studied yet, because most people do not eat like “I only eat X at the same time as Y, mixed together”.)