I have very strong priors against this idea. The priors are based on the following:
Our knowledge of human biochemistry is very incomplete. We have only a vague idea of how a huge variety of substances that we normally eat on a day-to-day basis affects us. Studies showing effects of various compounds on human health pop up (and are shot down) all the time. I am not willing to accept that we know enough to construct a complete diet from molecular building blocks.
The goal of choosing food (besides sensory considerations which are clearly not important here) is to be healthy, not just stay alive. What would be the effect of living on Soylent on your heart disease risk? Cancer? Autoimmune diseases? Thyroid? what, you have no idea..? :-/
People are different. It’s very clear that there is no single diet suitable for everyone. Is Soylent suitable for rapidly growing teenagers? For old people? For bodybuilders? Pregnant women? Someone recovering from injury? Someone with gastrointestinal problems? There is no average person
There is a much evidence that societies switching to “contemporary” refined food, notably white flour, sugar, vegetable oils, rapidly acquire all the so-called diseases of civilization. The evidence is epidemiological/correlational, but there is a lot of it.
We have a large and very important to our health collection of bacteria and other organisms living in our gut. It’s a bad idea to shift it towards pathology and I’m pretty sure subsisting on Soylent is going to affect it in major ways.
Now, I’m perfectly fine with experimenting on oneself and willing collaborators. But mass-marketing a “food replacement” to the general population doesn’t look like a good idea to me.
This argument “proves too much,” as they say. Many of these are also reasons to be afraid of my current diet (especially the fourth; I really don’t understand how that’s an argument against Soylent instead of for it).
Many of these are also reasons to be afraid of my current diet.
But then you’re not asking for money to commercialize your current diet and sell it to the general population with the explicit or implicit assurance that it’s all they need to stay healthy, are you?
Besides, we do have a bunch of empirical data (admittedly, much of it confusing and incomplete) on the effect of various foods on human health. I don’t think it suggests that something like Soylent is going to be good for you.
Our knowledge of human biochemistry is very incomplete. We have only a vague idea of how a huge variety of substances that we normally eat on a day-to-day basis affects us.
[...]
The goal of choosing food (besides sensory considerations which are clearly not important here) is to be healthy, not just stay alive. What would be the effect of living on Soylent on your heart disease risk? Cancer? Autoimmune diseases? Thyroid? what, you have no idea..? :-/
Don’t these sort of … cancel each other out?
EDIT: I mean, if we don’t know the effects of everything that’s in our food right now, how is Soylent any worse?
Only if you think solely in terms of black and white.
We certainly have some idea about what different foods and food components do to us. Sometimes there’s a bit more clarity, sometimes much less.
Soylent is worse (in this context) primarily because of lack of diversification. While we don’t know the exact details of human nutrition, we know that eating a variety of natural foods is generally OK. That’s what humans have evolved to eat, at least. You don’t need to know each necessary ingredient as long as you have reason to believe there’s some in that diverse pile of stuff.
But Soylent makes a strong assumption: that we know ALL that’s necessary for a human to thrive. To flip this statement around, it says that everything that’s not in Soylent is not necessary for optimal human nutrition.
That smells of major hubris to me and I’m not going to believe that.
I have very strong priors against this idea. The priors are based on the following:
Our knowledge of human biochemistry is very incomplete. We have only a vague idea of how a huge variety of substances that we normally eat on a day-to-day basis affects us. Studies showing effects of various compounds on human health pop up (and are shot down) all the time. I am not willing to accept that we know enough to construct a complete diet from molecular building blocks.
The goal of choosing food (besides sensory considerations which are clearly not important here) is to be healthy, not just stay alive. What would be the effect of living on Soylent on your heart disease risk? Cancer? Autoimmune diseases? Thyroid? what, you have no idea..? :-/
People are different. It’s very clear that there is no single diet suitable for everyone. Is Soylent suitable for rapidly growing teenagers? For old people? For bodybuilders? Pregnant women? Someone recovering from injury? Someone with gastrointestinal problems? There is no average person
There is a much evidence that societies switching to “contemporary” refined food, notably white flour, sugar, vegetable oils, rapidly acquire all the so-called diseases of civilization. The evidence is epidemiological/correlational, but there is a lot of it.
We have a large and very important to our health collection of bacteria and other organisms living in our gut. It’s a bad idea to shift it towards pathology and I’m pretty sure subsisting on Soylent is going to affect it in major ways.
Now, I’m perfectly fine with experimenting on oneself and willing collaborators. But mass-marketing a “food replacement” to the general population doesn’t look like a good idea to me.
This argument “proves too much,” as they say. Many of these are also reasons to be afraid of my current diet (especially the fourth; I really don’t understand how that’s an argument against Soylent instead of for it).
But then you’re not asking for money to commercialize your current diet and sell it to the general population with the explicit or implicit assurance that it’s all they need to stay healthy, are you?
Besides, we do have a bunch of empirical data (admittedly, much of it confusing and incomplete) on the effect of various foods on human health. I don’t think it suggests that something like Soylent is going to be good for you.
Don’t these sort of … cancel each other out?
EDIT: I mean, if we don’t know the effects of everything that’s in our food right now, how is Soylent any worse?
Only if you think solely in terms of black and white.
We certainly have some idea about what different foods and food components do to us. Sometimes there’s a bit more clarity, sometimes much less.
Soylent is worse (in this context) primarily because of lack of diversification. While we don’t know the exact details of human nutrition, we know that eating a variety of natural foods is generally OK. That’s what humans have evolved to eat, at least. You don’t need to know each necessary ingredient as long as you have reason to believe there’s some in that diverse pile of stuff.
But Soylent makes a strong assumption: that we know ALL that’s necessary for a human to thrive. To flip this statement around, it says that everything that’s not in Soylent is not necessary for optimal human nutrition.
That smells of major hubris to me and I’m not going to believe that.
Taboo “natural foods” for me, would you?
Foods that have been around long enough that we some idea, possibly simply hermeneuticly, about their effects.
Shouldn’t the unit here be the “diet”, not the “food”? I mean, physically, what matters is what the body gets out of the whole collection, right?
Let’s say someone is eating pizza for 20% of their meals. Do you think that replacing pizza with Soylent would result in a worse diet?
Soylent as a supplement and Soylent as a total food replacement are very different things.
Evidence suggests that if you’re the average person, you’ve already screwed up your gut flora with antibiotics. Possibly irreversibly.