Any bored nutritionists out there? I’ve put together a list of nutrients, with their USDA recommended quantities/amounts, and scoured amazon for the best deals, in trying to create my own version of Soylent. My search was complicated by the following goals:
I want my Soylent to have all USDA recommendations for a person of my age/sex/mass.
I want my Soylent to be easy to make (which means a preference for liquid and powder versions of nutrients).
My Soylent should be as cheap, per day, as possible (I’d rather have 10 lbs of Vitamin C at $0.00/day than 1lb at $0.01/day).
Because I’d like it to be trivially easy to possess a year’s supply of Soylent, should I find this to be a good experiment.
I want to make it easy for other people to follow my steps, and criticize my mistakes, because I’m totally NOT a nutritionist, but I’m awfully tired of being told that I need X amount of Y in my diet, without citations or actionable suggestions (and it is way easier to count calories with whey protein than at a restaurant).
I want the items to be available to anybody in the USA, because I live at the end of a pretty long supply chain, and can’t find all this stuff locally.
I’m trying not to order things from merchants who practice woo-woo, but if they have the best version of what I need, I won’t be too picky.
There’s probably other things, but I can’t think of them at the moment.
The spreadsheet isn’t done yet. I hope to make it possible to try dynamic combinations of multiple nutrients, since most merchants seem to prefer the multivitamin approach. Plus, I’d like for there to be more options for liquid and powder substances, because they are easier to combine. Right now, I’m just an explorer, but eventually I’d like to just have a recipe.
If this all sounds too risky, I’ve also made contact with Rob, and he says that he’s planning on releasing his data in a few weeks, once he’s comfortable with his results (I think he’s waiting on friends to confirm his findings). I’m planning on showing him my list, so we can compare notes. It has already been noted that his current Soylent formula is a bit lacking in fiber. My Soylent is currently slated to use psyllium husks to make up the difference, but I’m looking into other options.
A brief overview of the options indicates that this isn’t much cheaper than other food choices (~$7.20 / day), but it meets all of your needs, and once the routine is down, would be fast and easy to make, and could be stored for a long time. So I’m optimistic.
Relevant dinosaur comic. The blog section “What are the haps my friends” below the comic also has some information that might be useful.
As much as I love this idea, I’d be too worried about possible unforeseen consequence to be one of the first people to try it. For example, the importance of gut flora is something that was brought up in the comments to the Soylent blog post that didn’t occur to me at all while reading. Even if you can probably get around that, it’s just an example of how there are a lot of possible problems you could be completely blind to. As another commenter on his follow up post said:
My overall concern with your idea is that you only eat what is known to be necessary to support life. It used to be that when people set out to sea, they’d develop scurvy because of vitamin C defficiency. You’re setting yourself to be a test subject for discovering new vitamins.
Maybe it’d be useful to look up research on people who have to survive on tube feeding for an extended period of time. Of course, there’s lots of conflating factors there, but I bet there’s some good information out there (I haven’t looked).
Also, most of the benefits he described are easily explained as a combination of placebo, losing weight by eating fewer calories, and exercise.
But still, I do like the idea. I bet a kickstarter for something like this would do really well.
I got in touch with Mr. Rhinehart about my list. Here’s his analysis of what I currently have:
Hey Paul,
Looks quite thorough. Note at small scale it is usually more efficient to find a multivitamin that contains many of the >micronutrients than mixing them separately. Also you will exhaust your carb source rather quickly so it may pay to buy >maltodextrin at a slightly higher scale. Otherwise looks pretty good.
I should be getting some money from the Good Judgment project soon. I’ll buy the ingredients then.
Any bored nutritionists out there? I’ve put together a list of nutrients, with their USDA recommended quantities/amounts, and scoured amazon for the best deals, in trying to create my own version of Soylent. My search was complicated by the following goals:
I want my Soylent to have all USDA recommendations for a person of my age/sex/mass.
I want my Soylent to be easy to make (which means a preference for liquid and powder versions of nutrients).
My Soylent should be as cheap, per day, as possible (I’d rather have 10 lbs of Vitamin C at $0.00/day than 1lb at $0.01/day).
Because I’d like it to be trivially easy to possess a year’s supply of Soylent, should I find this to be a good experiment.
I want to make it easy for other people to follow my steps, and criticize my mistakes, because I’m totally NOT a nutritionist, but I’m awfully tired of being told that I need X amount of Y in my diet, without citations or actionable suggestions (and it is way easier to count calories with whey protein than at a restaurant).
I want the items to be available to anybody in the USA, because I live at the end of a pretty long supply chain, and can’t find all this stuff locally.
I’m trying not to order things from merchants who practice woo-woo, but if they have the best version of what I need, I won’t be too picky.
There’s probably other things, but I can’t think of them at the moment.
The spreadsheet isn’t done yet. I hope to make it possible to try dynamic combinations of multiple nutrients, since most merchants seem to prefer the multivitamin approach. Plus, I’d like for there to be more options for liquid and powder substances, because they are easier to combine. Right now, I’m just an explorer, but eventually I’d like to just have a recipe.
If this all sounds too risky, I’ve also made contact with Rob, and he says that he’s planning on releasing his data in a few weeks, once he’s comfortable with his results (I think he’s waiting on friends to confirm his findings). I’m planning on showing him my list, so we can compare notes. It has already been noted that his current Soylent formula is a bit lacking in fiber. My Soylent is currently slated to use psyllium husks to make up the difference, but I’m looking into other options.
A brief overview of the options indicates that this isn’t much cheaper than other food choices (~$7.20 / day), but it meets all of your needs, and once the routine is down, would be fast and easy to make, and could be stored for a long time. So I’m optimistic.
Relevant dinosaur comic. The blog section “What are the haps my friends” below the comic also has some information that might be useful.
As much as I love this idea, I’d be too worried about possible unforeseen consequence to be one of the first people to try it. For example, the importance of gut flora is something that was brought up in the comments to the Soylent blog post that didn’t occur to me at all while reading. Even if you can probably get around that, it’s just an example of how there are a lot of possible problems you could be completely blind to. As another commenter on his follow up post said:
Maybe it’d be useful to look up research on people who have to survive on tube feeding for an extended period of time. Of course, there’s lots of conflating factors there, but I bet there’s some good information out there (I haven’t looked).
Also, most of the benefits he described are easily explained as a combination of placebo, losing weight by eating fewer calories, and exercise.
But still, I do like the idea. I bet a kickstarter for something like this would do really well.
I am also worried about possible unforeseen consequences of eating bad diets, but one of those bad diets is my current one, so…
Interview: http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/rob-rhinehart-no-longer-requires-food
I got in touch with Mr. Rhinehart about my list. Here’s his analysis of what I currently have:
I should be getting some money from the Good Judgment project soon. I’ll buy the ingredients then.
The list formatting doesn’t seem to have quite worked. Can you try replacing the dashes with asterisks?
Anyway, I wish I could help, but I am not a nutritionist.
He needs a full empty line between the list and his preceding sentence, I think.
Oops, sorry!