You probably know this, but for those who don’t, the person who made Soylent wants to start a Kickstarter for his project in the near future to make it a real product. I have high hopes and only slightly less high expectations that he’ll succeed.
Can you go into more detail on your third and fourth points for not copying Soylent?
3 is complex (hence the contention). One of the useful outcomes of testing soylent will be providing decent evidence on this. There are definitely some non-trivial issues going on in that several substances cause no problems in high quantities in whole foods but show signs of toxicity in small amounts from supplements (manganese, vitamin A). I am paranoid about not absorbing nutrients or poisoning myself, so I am sticking to whole foods until I see some blood panels.
4:
His claim about maltodextrin being slower than sugar to absorb is wrong and can be disproved in 30 seconds with a trip to wikipedia. This does not give me faith in his process.
Protein intake is woefully low for anyone who exercises regularly.
Fat intake is contentious. One camp holds that PUFAs are bad and the other that SFAs are bad. There is little debate that MUFAs are good for you, so olive oil is a good choice. One possible modification to my shake is using skim milk and replacing the lost fat with olive oil, but this eliminates the fat soluble vitamins present in the milk which then complicates the recipe significantly trying to add them back in. I get my MUFAs in the rest of my diet by cooking in coconut milk a lot. I’m not worried about the PUFAs in the sunflower seeds because sunflower seeds have the highest concentration of vitamin E of almost any food by weight. It is highly doubtful the PUFAs are oxidizing in such an environment.
I’ve doubted his process from the start—I remember reading a third person’s comment that pointed out he had forgotten to add iron—and his subsequent reply that this mistake was the cause of his feeling bad. I know nothing about nutrition (except that it’s not a very good science, if it’s science at all), yet iron is obvious even to me. To miss it shows that he didn’t really do much double checking, much less cross-referencing or careful deliberation of the ingredient list.
I’m really hopeful about Soylent—I’d even jump in and risk poisoning to test it myself, if I were living alone. If anything, this experiment highlights how untrustworthy and limited our dietary knowledge is (and should motivate us to improve it). If this fails due to a new form of scurvy, the cause can be found and the experiment retried. If it fails due to not having read information that’s already out there, well, that’s a downer.
He seems to be responsive to thoughtful feedback, and he may listen to you and end up making something even closer to what you (and now I) want if you tell him that stuff (if you haven’t already).
Your mentioning protein intake compelled me to research protein needs and notice that I’m not getting nearly enough of it. 150 g/day for a tall, exercising male; that’s the equivalent of 20 oz of steak! So, thank you.
From his recommendation, 148 g/day, or 115 g/day using the .64 g/day/lb figure. The equivalent of 16 oz of steak every day does sound a little more attainable.
By which I mean, I’m going to start taking whey protein rather than spending all of my money on delicious steaks, even if that does sound like a great life.
Note that on point #4: his exact words are “[...] Short chains get metabolized very quickly, leading to a ‘sugar rush’, and long chains can be difficult to digest. I use only oligosaccharides, like Maltodextrin, for Carbohydrates. [...]”
and from the wikipedia page on maltodextrin “[...]Maltodextrin is easily digestible, being absorbed as rapidly as glucose,[...]” However metabolism != absorption and “[...]Maltodextrin is typically composed of a mixture of chains that vary from three to seventeen glucose units long.[2] [...]” Something which tells me that Maltodextrin will take longer to be metabolized than Disaccharides.
You probably know this, but for those who don’t, the person who made Soylent wants to start a Kickstarter for his project in the near future to make it a real product. I have high hopes and only slightly less high expectations that he’ll succeed.
Can you go into more detail on your third and fourth points for not copying Soylent?
3 is complex (hence the contention). One of the useful outcomes of testing soylent will be providing decent evidence on this. There are definitely some non-trivial issues going on in that several substances cause no problems in high quantities in whole foods but show signs of toxicity in small amounts from supplements (manganese, vitamin A). I am paranoid about not absorbing nutrients or poisoning myself, so I am sticking to whole foods until I see some blood panels.
4: His claim about maltodextrin being slower than sugar to absorb is wrong and can be disproved in 30 seconds with a trip to wikipedia. This does not give me faith in his process.
Protein intake is woefully low for anyone who exercises regularly.
Fat intake is contentious. One camp holds that PUFAs are bad and the other that SFAs are bad. There is little debate that MUFAs are good for you, so olive oil is a good choice. One possible modification to my shake is using skim milk and replacing the lost fat with olive oil, but this eliminates the fat soluble vitamins present in the milk which then complicates the recipe significantly trying to add them back in. I get my MUFAs in the rest of my diet by cooking in coconut milk a lot. I’m not worried about the PUFAs in the sunflower seeds because sunflower seeds have the highest concentration of vitamin E of almost any food by weight. It is highly doubtful the PUFAs are oxidizing in such an environment.
I’ve doubted his process from the start—I remember reading a third person’s comment that pointed out he had forgotten to add iron—and his subsequent reply that this mistake was the cause of his feeling bad. I know nothing about nutrition (except that it’s not a very good science, if it’s science at all), yet iron is obvious even to me. To miss it shows that he didn’t really do much double checking, much less cross-referencing or careful deliberation of the ingredient list.
I’m really hopeful about Soylent—I’d even jump in and risk poisoning to test it myself, if I were living alone. If anything, this experiment highlights how untrustworthy and limited our dietary knowledge is (and should motivate us to improve it). If this fails due to a new form of scurvy, the cause can be found and the experiment retried. If it fails due to not having read information that’s already out there, well, that’s a downer.
He seems to be responsive to thoughtful feedback, and he may listen to you and end up making something even closer to what you (and now I) want if you tell him that stuff (if you haven’t already).
Your mentioning protein intake compelled me to research protein needs and notice that I’m not getting nearly enough of it. 150 g/day for a tall, exercising male; that’s the equivalent of 20 oz of steak! So, thank you.
of interest: http://mennohenselmans.com/the-myth-of-1glb-optimal-protein-intake-for-bodybuilders/
From his recommendation, 148 g/day, or 115 g/day using the .64 g/day/lb figure. The equivalent of 16 oz of steak every day does sound a little more attainable.
By which I mean, I’m going to start taking whey protein rather than spending all of my money on delicious steaks, even if that does sound like a great life.
I rotate my non shake meals between eggs, fish, shellfish, beef, and chicken.
Note that on point #4: his exact words are “[...] Short chains get metabolized very quickly, leading to a ‘sugar rush’, and long chains can be difficult to digest. I use only oligosaccharides, like Maltodextrin, for Carbohydrates. [...]” and from the wikipedia page on maltodextrin “[...]Maltodextrin is easily digestible, being absorbed as rapidly as glucose,[...]” However metabolism != absorption and “[...]Maltodextrin is typically composed of a mixture of chains that vary from three to seventeen glucose units long.[2] [...]” Something which tells me that Maltodextrin will take longer to be metabolized than Disaccharides.