
Eat Real Food – Not Soylent 2.0 - CptJamesCook
http://fixyourgut.com/soylent-2-0-review/
======
yunong
> Canola oil is one of the worst fats one could put in their body because it
> contains erucic acid that damages the heart.

Terrible piece, but this comment, without references, puts the cherry on top.
This guy is about as bad as Food Babe.

I'm not making any judgements on Soylent, since I am not a nutritionist.
However, anyone who's actually interested in any dietary supplement, including
Soylent, should read about the industry's massive lobbying to prevent
regulation by the FDA. Indeed, instead of the companies having to prove that
their supplements are not harmful (via clinical studies and trials), it
instead falls on the 20 something FDA staff to prove that they are harmful --
against the thousands of supplements available for sale in the United States
[1].

[1] [http://www.marketplace.org/2016/01/19/health-
care/vitamins-a...](http://www.marketplace.org/2016/01/19/health-
care/vitamins-and-supplements-are-dangerous-business)

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sirsar
> _Captive animals, who have lost their freedom to graze naturally, are fed
> commercial products derived and processed from corn, soy, and vegetable oil.
> The ingredients are designed to keep animals alive in a confined and
> restricted environment as cheaply as possible without a reduction in weight.
> When you read the story of a software engineer overworked, too busy to eat,
> and consumes Soylent, there are some definite parallels._

Really? This doesn't even pretend to be a coherent argument. Is the idea that
Soylent is morally wrong because it is similar to livestock feed? Here, I have
a better idea: maybe it is similar because the components of a healthy
vegetarian diet for many mammals are very similar.

 _Pigs, which give birth to children, wallow in their own excrement and are
shunned by the gods, share 98% of their DNA with humans. When you read the
story of a software engineer with a family, who enjoys the outdoors, and has
this DNA, there are some definite parallels._

I mean come on.

~~~
fallinghawks
This article is just ludicrous Food Babe-ism. Yes, we do share 98% of our DNA
with pigs, we're just another type of animal -- why shouldn't we consume
Soylent? Regular food is made from corn, soy, and vegetable oil, the only
difference is the way it's prepared. Sheesh.

~~~
ten10ten
Ever heard of epigenetics? Genetic expression changes given the environment
and stimuli. Do wild pigs look like captive pigs? Which would you rather be?

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emptybits
> given the ingredients, it most likely tastes like glue

The food reviewer did not taste the food reviewed. Sigh.

I understand this is (I think?) a quantitative/nutritional food reviewer, but
I think it's lazy to not even _taste_ the food you lambaste.

~~~
resist_futility
Is he not right? Nothing on the list of ingredients sounds tasty. I thought
they were trying to remove any taste or after taste.

~~~
jackson1372
I drink Soylent 2.0 everyday. Definitely doesn't taste like glue. I has a very
mild, but quite pleasant, vanilla-y taste. It kind of tastes like liquid
cheerios.

It tastes good enough that I have cravings for it. But it's not so strong a
flavor that I get sick of it.

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bhouston
Does anyone know about the vitamin claims this article makes? That Soylent
makes claims about vitamins D, and K:

> When evaluating vitamins and minerals, it is important to look at the form
> that you are taking. For instance, the type of vitamin D used in Soylent 2.0
> is ergocalciferol or vitamin D2. Humans need cholecalciferol or vitamin D3
> that is used throughout the body. D3 is significantly superior to D2 in
> human physiology.6 In the same regard, Soylent 2.0 uses vitamin K1 instead
> of K2. K1 is transported poorly in the intestines and does not convert well
> to K2.7 In clinical studies, vitamin K2 has shown cardiovascular
> improvements while K1 had no effect.8 This is because K2 helps transport
> calcium into teeth and bones rather than forming arterial calcification.9 K2
> has also been shown to reduce cancer risk, and K1 has been shown to be
> ineffective in this area as well. 10

It is hard for me to judge the accuracy of these claims (not knowning the
literature), but these are interesting claims if they are true:

> Since the bacteria have, only a restricted diet of the carbohydrate sources
> in Soylent 2.0 the lack of options will limit the diversity of the
> population. Bacteria that can process isomaltooligosaccharides and rice
> starch are going to have a tremendous advantage over those that do not. Over
> time, the Coprococcus, Collinsella, and Coprobacillus phylotypes will
> overrun the Bifidobacteria,14 butyric acid levels will drop,15 and endotoxin
> will leak out into the bloodstream.

~~~
brerlapn
Regarding the Vitamin D3 and K2 quotes, I have seen the same information from
multiple sources. Vitamin D3 is what your body produces, and what you would
get from eating fish. When I've read up on the topics I've never seen any
counterpoints that you should be preferring D2 or K1.

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drivativ
Better arguments against Soylent can certainly be made, though by smarter
people than myself. I do have three main issues with it:

1\. The idea that we can take something as fantastically complex and as poorly
understood as nutrition and successfully boil it down to a formula is really,
really unlikely at this point.

2\. As incredibly unlikely as it is that someone could create such a formula,
even if they had access to and total understanding of all the research that
currently exists in the world, it is even more far-fetched that it would be
some random software developers who would create it.

3\. Even if, despite all that, Soylent is the perfect formula, it still isn't.
As is becoming more evident, diet is so individualized that the idea that one
formula would be ideal for any significant percentage of the population is
very unlikely.

Given all that, it seems really unlikely that Soylent should be the
cornerstone of your diet.

So, having spent way too much time studying and experimenting with diet
(including SAD,vegetarian, vegan, paleo-variations, etc), the only nutrition
advice I feel comfortable with (assuming you are so lucky as to have the
choices I do in middle-class America, with practically every food available)
is just to start with a variety of whole, unprocessed foods (probably mostly
plants) and do your best to identify the ones that you have obvious issues
with and avoid those. As there is seemingly no known individual health benefit
to gain from processed foods, the safe bet seems to be to avoid them in favor
of unprocessed foods when possible. At least until the next over-hyped study
comes out showing that vegetables kill!

~~~
Houshalter
Soylent probably isn't absolutely perfect. But it could still be better than
normal food. It's not like normal food is optimized for nutrition, and we eat
a ton of things that weren't around when humans evolved. Or wildly different
portions and amounts. Soylent at least tries to optimize. It doesn't need to
be perfect, it just needs to be better.

The only risk that keeps being brought up is that there is some obscure
chemical that our bodies needs that soylent excludes. As long as you don't go
on a 100% Soylent diet, that risk can be avoided.

And this isn't a new idea at all. There have been liquid foods before soylent,
people in comas have been fed by IV even. We mass produce meals for animals
like the article mentions. And people eating soylent don't seem to be dying
left and right. Young humans naturally live on an entirely liquid diet like to
soylent, so it's clearly possible.

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solveforall
Awful hit piece containing at least 2 exaggerations and lies:

"Canola oil [aka rapeseed oil, present in many foods] is one of the worst fats
one could put in their body because it contains erucic acid that damages the
heart."

Not sure about the "worst fats" part, but what about palm oil, lard, etc.? It
is true that erucic acid has been shown to be harmful to animal hearts, but at
high doses. According to Wikipedia, In Australia, the maximum recommended dose
is 500 mg/day/kg, and that's a safety factor of 120 over what is considered
safe. Also canola oil has a maximum of 2% erucic acid, so you would need to
consume 1/2% * 70 kg (about 150 lbs) * 500 mg/day/kg = 1.75 kg of canola oil
per day to get the maximum safe dose. I don't think people eating Soylent are
getting anywhere close to 1.75 kg a day -- that's a lot of oil to be in a
food.

"Studies have shown that dl-alpha tocopherol (synthetic vitamin E) is linked
to increased cancer rates."

The cited study:

There were no significant differences (all P>.15) in any other prespecified
cancer end points. There were statistically nonsignificant increased risks of
prostate cancer in the vitamin E group (P = .06) and type 2 diabetes mellitus
in the selenium group (relative risk, 1.07; 99% CI, 0.94-1.22; P = .16) but
not in the selenium + vitamin E group.

Conclusion Selenium or vitamin E, alone or in combination at the doses and
formulations used, did not prevent prostate cancer in this population of
relatively healthy men.

\-- So basically cited study says that synthetic vitamin E did not PREVENT
cancer -- quite different than causing it!

Also,

" In the same regard, Soylent 2.0 uses vitamin K1 instead of K2."

Vitamin K1 and K2 have different functions in the human body. K1 (the plant
form) helps with blood clotting. K2 is related to cardiavascular health,
strong teeth, and healthy skin (not sure about the cancer prevention mentioned
in the article). While it's true that K1 doesn't do these things, some does
get converted into K2 by the gut. I haven't read that K2 can converted to K1,
so using K2 alone would seem to be worse than just K1 (obviously though, it's
not binary). That K2 might prevent cancer does seem to have some evidence,
though not particularly good:

\---

We observed a nonsignificant inverse association between total prostate cancer
and total menaquinone [the most studied form of vitamin K2] intake
[multivariate relative risk (highest compared with lowest quartile): 0.65; 95%
CI: 0.39, 1.06].

\-- From
[http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/87/4/985.full](http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/87/4/985.full)

Key words being "nonsignificant" and a pretty large confidence interval.

I could probably go on, but basically, it's a bunch of lies and exaggerations
wrapped in scientific mumbo-jumbo. I have never had Soylent and have no
interest in it, and also have doubts about how wise/healthy it would be to
rely on a single food source, but pieces like this just make legitimate
critics look bad.

My personal philosophy -- pretty much anything in high doses has been shown to
cause cancer, so don't worry about it that much. Eat a lot of different
things, and don't eat too much of anything, and especially cut down on the
ramen (who knows that the hell they put in those spice packets, find another
food to eat when you're poor) and processed sugar.

~~~
a_bonobo
>"Canola oil [aka rapeseed oil, present in many foods] is one of the worst
fats one could put in their body because it contains erucic acid that damages
the heart."

FYI, reducing the erucic acid content in canola seeds it one of the main
targets of canola breeding - you have to have less than 2% erucic acid and low
contents of glucosinolates to qualify for the name of "canola" (it's a
trademark: "Canada oil", or possibly "Can(ada)+o(il)+l(ow)+a(cid)").

Wild seeds have too much acid to be edible, cultivars have very low content of
erucic acids, so I agree with you, it shouldn't be that much of a problem.

~~~
solveforall
Thanks I updated my comment with the less than 2% part, makes it 50x harder to
get close to the maximum safe dose!

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Houshalter
I heard about the lead thing which was also on HN, and the conclusion in the
comments were very skeptical that it was more than is in traditional food, or
enough to hurt humans:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10066432](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10066432)

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nikolay
I can't believe developers are falling into the Soylent marketing trap!
Oversimplification is the root of all (nutritional) evil! If want something
based on real food, at least do something like Ambronite [0] instead!

[0] [http://ambronite.com/](http://ambronite.com/)

~~~
im_dario
It pretty much look like Soylent, Joylent or Nano. Ambronite's site doesn't
look less "marketing" than others. Where is the real difference between this
and the rest?

~~~
gola
Ambronite co-founder here. Ambronite is made out of real food ingredients. We
believe that real foods are the most comprehensive, healthy and safe way to
ensure intake of all nutrients, also the ones that are not well understood by
nutrition science today.

This video explains the same in 1 min:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QusSrxWNWa8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QusSrxWNWa8)

Moreover, it's also quite eye-opening to compare our ingredient list to any of
the other products mentioned. :)

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cardamomo
Google cache:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Tg9wyu6...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Tg9wyu6F_GQJ:fixyourgut.com/soylent-2-0-review/)

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logibly
I still don't get it. What is wrong with the real food again? Why look for
alternatives ?

