I would strongly recommend against doing this; a meal replacement shake designed by one guy simply won’t cover every possible nutrient/compound you’d need from food.
It’ll be healthier and more enjoyable just to eat actual food. Our understanding of nutrition is growing, but we’re not at the point where we can apply reductionism to food. Supplements are extremely effective as part of a diet, but we don’t know enough to make a diet completely based upon supplements.
If you’re going to go for meal replacement anyway, don’t choose soylent. His understanding of nutrition is mediocre at best; as an example, he put no cholesterol at all in his original formula (I have no idea if he’s updated it or not).
Food is good, but not that good. For instance, 95% of the time, I settle for eating something unhealthy and not particularly appetizing, because it is easy and quick to make. If I were cooking for someone else, this may be a different story. When I first read the Odyssey by Homer, my professor told me the Greek behaved as though sharing a meal was a spiritual experience, which is reflected in our culture (dinner dates, family meals, holidays etc.)
But as I currently do not eat with others on a regular basis, I think it would be of greater utility to go with whole food replacement, and eat with others on rare occasions, provided the cost for food replacement is low enough. Or I can explore new post-food psycho-social opportunities, which should be interesting in of itself.
I meant, until now, that the ONLY OPTIONS were “healthy diet” and “shit diet” under this schema. So “anything is better than a shit diet” is an odd claim to make.
Go to a pharmacy and ask about a complete liquid diet for someone who had jaw surgery? They should have stuff that’s pretty much Soylent, but more expensive and designed and tested by experts.
A quick & dirty Google search returns a recent paper, which lists Optifast, KicStart, and Optislim as brands “packaged and marketed as very-low-energy diets (VLED), defined as total dietary replacement with FMR [formulated meal replacements]”. The “Price per serve” of those brands, incidentally, is given as 1.87 to 2.99 AUD in table 1.
They also seem to be intended for weight loss, so you might want to augment your calories with normal, high-energy foods. Or maybe you can double up on servings, I dunno.
Edit: amusingly, all of these mixtures made by the pros also seem to be deficient in various nutrients. Most of the VLED brands don’t meet a “recommended dietary intake” or “adequate intake” baseline for protein, calcium, phosphorus, potassium or magnesium. Maybe you should nosh on some chicken, bananas, and a daily mineral supplement too?
I’m going to recommend something less specific—researching what’s going on with your metabolism, instead of trying things that seem to work for some fraction of other people.
These are some fast guesses—my impression is that it can take years [1] to track down this sort of thing. Also, I don’t know how much of this has already been done.
Start with five minutes thought. What does Eliezer know about his symptoms? Can anything be deduced by mulling over them?
I’d start with poking around to find out whether other people have the same pattern of symptoms. Does it have a medical name? What does medical research say about what works? What do people say about what works? Do the symptoms ever become better or worse? Does this correlate with something that could be experimented with?
Hire MetaMed, but also look for anecdotal information.
I’m going to recommend some caution about experiments—so far as I know, Eliezer has fairly good health. He’s got some energy problems, an inability to lose weight, reacts very badly to missing a meal, and doesn’t get any good from exercise. There’s a lot of room for making things worse.
I’m in substantial agreement with this, but I do think the bad reaction to missing a meal is enough to be of at least a little concern. On the other hand, the cultural issues around fat are weird and extreme enough that it could explain the lack of thought that’s gone into Eliezer’s efforts to lose weight.
[1] Something in the neighborhood of 2 years or more for people who report success. Original research takes time.
Total meal replacement shakes exist, although I have no idea about pricing. However, going down this route is basically ensuring sub-optimal nutrition. We know a ton about nutrition, but not enough to have an optimal diet without food.
Total meal replacement shakes exist, although I have no idea about pricing. However, going down this route is basically ensuring sub-optimal nutrition.
Very nearly every other diet is also sub-optimal. Most of them are quite probably worse than what we can do via supplementation.
I looked at what’s available in Finnish pharmacies, and they seem to be in the $20 a day ballpark mentioned elsewhere in the thread if you aren’t going to eat anything else.
It’ll be healthier and more enjoyable just to eat actual food
I tried that. It didn’t work.
Could you be more speciifc? (In particular with respect to macronutrient ratios, and whether you’ve ever been in ketosis and confirmed it with a blood or urine test.) I have a strong prior against people having tried all the things, even if they’ve tried to try them, since some of the strategies are easy to do incorrectly without realizing it.
Agreed; this is particularly true for things like creatine. But most Americans have cholesterol higher than recommended, and most of the health risks I’m seeing associated with low cholesterol are “if your cholesterol suddenly drops without a known cause, this is a warning sign for disease.” Is there something else I should be aware of?
[edit] Thought I should quote the relevant section of the DRIs:
All tissues are capable of synthesizing enough cholesterol to meet their metabolic and structural needs. Consequently, there is no evidence for a biological requirement for dietary cholesterol. Neither an Estimated Average Requirement (EAR), and thus a Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA), nor an Adequate Intake (AI) was set for cholesterol.
Much evidence indicates a positive linear trend between cholesterol intake and low density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol concentration, and therefore an increased risk of coronary heart disease (CHD). A Tolerable Upper Intake Level (UL) was not set for cholesterol because any incremental increase in cholesterol intake increases CHD risk. It is recommended that people maintain their dietary cholesterol intake as low as possible, while consuming a diet that is nutritionally adequate in all required nutrients.
Dietary cholesterol and lipid cholesterol aren’t the same thing either, and just as your body can compensate for an intake of 0 cholesterol, it can likewise compensate for an intake of excess cholesterol.
It’s not clear to me yet why I should expect a cholesterol intake above 0 to have superior health outcomes to a cholesterol intake of 0. You don’t need to argue that the body can compensate for excess cholesterol; even perfect compensation would just mean that small intake is just as good as 0 intake. You need to argue that without intake, the body will produce a suboptimal amount of cholesterol. Is there any evidence of that?
I would strongly recommend against doing this; a meal replacement shake designed by one guy simply won’t cover every possible nutrient/compound you’d need from food.
It’ll be healthier and more enjoyable just to eat actual food. Our understanding of nutrition is growing, but we’re not at the point where we can apply reductionism to food. Supplements are extremely effective as part of a diet, but we don’t know enough to make a diet completely based upon supplements.
If you’re going to go for meal replacement anyway, don’t choose soylent. His understanding of nutrition is mediocre at best; as an example, he put no cholesterol at all in his original formula (I have no idea if he’s updated it or not).
Food is good, but not that good. For instance, 95% of the time, I settle for eating something unhealthy and not particularly appetizing, because it is easy and quick to make. If I were cooking for someone else, this may be a different story. When I first read the Odyssey by Homer, my professor told me the Greek behaved as though sharing a meal was a spiritual experience, which is reflected in our culture (dinner dates, family meals, holidays etc.)
But as I currently do not eat with others on a regular basis, I think it would be of greater utility to go with whole food replacement, and eat with others on rare occasions, provided the cost for food replacement is low enough. Or I can explore new post-food psycho-social opportunities, which should be interesting in of itself.
Yes, it’s better than a shit diet. Pretty much anything is better than shitty diet, though.
My point is that Soylent will be suboptimal. Also, most of the claims they make can’t be substantiated.
So … what other options are you including in “anything”, exactly?
I think it goes without saying what I mean. Healthy diet > soylent > shit diet
I meant, until now, that the ONLY OPTIONS were “healthy diet” and “shit diet” under this schema. So “anything is better than a shit diet” is an odd claim to make.
Unless you know of another option?
Huh? Diets are on a spectrum, from shitty to healthy.
… good point. You’re right, Soylent isn’t going to be the highest possible thing on that scale.
I tried that. It didn’t work. If you have something specific to recommend that can replace meals instead of Soylent, speak up.
Go to a pharmacy and ask about a complete liquid diet for someone who had jaw surgery? They should have stuff that’s pretty much Soylent, but more expensive and designed and tested by experts.
Yup, and the magic search keywords here seem to be “total diet replacement”.
A quick & dirty Google search returns a recent paper, which lists Optifast, KicStart, and Optislim as brands “packaged and marketed as very-low-energy diets (VLED), defined as total dietary replacement with FMR [formulated meal replacements]”. The “Price per serve” of those brands, incidentally, is given as 1.87 to 2.99 AUD in table 1.
They also seem to be intended for weight loss, so you might want to augment your calories with normal, high-energy foods. Or maybe you can double up on servings, I dunno.
Edit: amusingly, all of these mixtures made by the pros also seem to be deficient in various nutrients. Most of the VLED brands don’t meet a “recommended dietary intake” or “adequate intake” baseline for protein, calcium, phosphorus, potassium or magnesium. Maybe you should nosh on some chicken, bananas, and a daily mineral supplement too?
I’m going to recommend something less specific—researching what’s going on with your metabolism, instead of trying things that seem to work for some fraction of other people.
Can you be more specific? How does one do that? Daily blood tests or something, and acquiring the knowledge to know what to measure and what it means?
These are some fast guesses—my impression is that it can take years [1] to track down this sort of thing. Also, I don’t know how much of this has already been done.
Start with five minutes thought. What does Eliezer know about his symptoms? Can anything be deduced by mulling over them?
I’d start with poking around to find out whether other people have the same pattern of symptoms. Does it have a medical name? What does medical research say about what works? What do people say about what works? Do the symptoms ever become better or worse? Does this correlate with something that could be experimented with?
Hire MetaMed, but also look for anecdotal information.
Exercise might be bad for some people.
I’m going to recommend some caution about experiments—so far as I know, Eliezer has fairly good health. He’s got some energy problems, an inability to lose weight, reacts very badly to missing a meal, and doesn’t get any good from exercise. There’s a lot of room for making things worse.
I’m in substantial agreement with this, but I do think the bad reaction to missing a meal is enough to be of at least a little concern. On the other hand, the cultural issues around fat are weird and extreme enough that it could explain the lack of thought that’s gone into Eliezer’s efforts to lose weight.
[1] Something in the neighborhood of 2 years or more for people who report success. Original research takes time.
Testosterone supplements should help with most of these issues.
Maybe. Blood tests first. And possibly research second.
Total meal replacement shakes exist, although I have no idea about pricing. However, going down this route is basically ensuring sub-optimal nutrition. We know a ton about nutrition, but not enough to have an optimal diet without food.
Very nearly every other diet is also sub-optimal. Most of them are quite probably worse than what we can do via supplementation.
I looked at what’s available in Finnish pharmacies, and they seem to be in the $20 a day ballpark mentioned elsewhere in the thread if you aren’t going to eat anything else.
I believe you can live off Boost for an indefinite period of time.
Made it really hard for me to poop normally.
Could you be more speciifc? (In particular with respect to macronutrient ratios, and whether you’ve ever been in ketosis and confirmed it with a blood or urine test.) I have a strong prior against people having tried all the things, even if they’ve tried to try them, since some of the strategies are easy to do incorrectly without realizing it.
This is actually a bad example; humans can produce cholesterol, and so the FDA does not recommend intake.
“Can produce” doesn’t mean optimal intake is 0.
Agreed; this is particularly true for things like creatine. But most Americans have cholesterol higher than recommended, and most of the health risks I’m seeing associated with low cholesterol are “if your cholesterol suddenly drops without a known cause, this is a warning sign for disease.” Is there something else I should be aware of?
[edit] Thought I should quote the relevant section of the DRIs:
Dietary cholesterol and lipid cholesterol aren’t the same thing either, and just as your body can compensate for an intake of 0 cholesterol, it can likewise compensate for an intake of excess cholesterol.
It’s not clear to me yet why I should expect a cholesterol intake above 0 to have superior health outcomes to a cholesterol intake of 0. You don’t need to argue that the body can compensate for excess cholesterol; even perfect compensation would just mean that small intake is just as good as 0 intake. You need to argue that without intake, the body will produce a suboptimal amount of cholesterol. Is there any evidence of that?