

Nutritionist Criticizes Soylent as Dangerous and Unhealthy - dylangs1030
http://www.businessinsider.com/rob-rhinehart-food-substitute-eating-disorder-2013-3

======
gwern
> But Rhinehart's claims are completely untested, have never been included in
> a clinical trial, and his diet isn't being monitored by a doctor.

All true, but not actual refutations. Most people's diets are not monitored by
a doctor, after all, and most foodstuffs have not been put through clinical
trials despite being cocktails of unknown thousands of compounds and are
believed to be safe merely because they don't seem to be _too_ poisonous.

> His self-experiment is ludicrous

Absurdity heuristic, check.

> and most likely dangerously unhealthy.

'most likely'? I'm guessing this is a guess, and not any sort of informed
comment based on a meta-analysis etc.

> While the diet is essentially trying to be like the medical food that is
> injected into a patient's stomach when they have a feeding tube, Jay
> Mirtallo of Ohio State told the Washington Post that these are "very complex
> products, in terms of making sure you get them in a form that’s palatable
> but that stays in a form that’s bioavailable to the body." He continued,
> "some of the products are very difficult to get into a liquid form and may
> lose their potency when they do that, or could interact with other
> substances that keep them from being absorbed completely."

His Soylent is also pretty complex looking, last I saw one of his posts, and
also prepared shortly before eating.

> however, I see a red flag for a potential eating disorder."

Insinuation of mental issues, check.

> Stella Metsovas's response: It's no surprise that a fasting state produces
> endorphins. The fact of hemoglobin being brought up so casually alerts me to
> how novice the experimenter must be.

My god! He's using biological terms! What a novice.

> SMR: Are you sure the author is using real olive oil (insert satire)?

Click the link; it's merely reporting that some olive oils are sold as higher
quality than they are, others are not as excellent as they could be. Moronic
reply.

> SMR: Definitely caught my attention here and wondered if I should review the
> rest of the post. Is he suggesting the cocktail will provide him with the
> appropriate nutrients for endurance running?

Er, should an improvement in diet not have some sort of effect? Suppose
Rhinehart saw his distance go down; would SMR be ignoring the effect - or
triumphantly implying the diet was unhealthy and that was proof?

> SMR: Note: Mean Corpuscular Hemoglobin Concentration (MCHC) was on the lower
> end of range, dated 1/7/13, prior to this experiment.

Implying...?

> SMR: Should we have a roundtable discussion about this? What a stupid,
> ridiculous statement.

Right, because there are no studies showing differences in metabolic rates, or
demonstrating differences in response to exercise...? What a stupid,
ridiculous statement (by SMR).

> SMR: As an avid cook, I can tell you the author wasn't spending 2 hours a
> day on food preparation and cleanup.

As an avid reader, I can tell you that SMR has apparently never actually timed
total time devoted to food prep, never read historical novels or economists'
estimates of time devoted to food, or had an informed thought in this whole
page.

> FYI: cultures that have lived healthiest and longest without disease, base
> their life on foraging, cooking and consuming quality foods.

Great! I'll keep that in mind the moment I become a hunter-gatherer! Thanks
for the advice!

> SMR: Living on fast-food isn't cheap.

Price out 2000 calories of fast food and get back to us.

> SMR: The authors interpretation of calorie restriction (CR) is hugely
> inaccurate. [It's true, the latest studies about caloric restriction
> indicate that it doesn't seem to work in primates, even after a 25-year
> study]

Quibbling. It may not 'reverse', but it does slow aging in many rat studies
(and all sorts of other animal studies). The primate studies are interesting,
but all the ones I've read are still in progress... And the in-progress human
studies show benefits on some dimensions, as would make sense since Americans
are lardy-lardballs and all the nutritionist advice in the world has yet to
make a dent in our belts.

> SMR: The author has no idea what he's talking about when it comes to protein
> digestion and assimilation. Even with a reasonable amount of intake,
> variability in protein consumption can result in measurable health
> consequences in specific conditions. This said, dietary protein delivers
> more than energy and building blocks to the human body: The pools of body,
> tissue, and cell proteins, peptides, and amino acids are under complex
> metabolic control, resulting in a highly dynamic protein turnover, that is,
> the interplay between synthesis and degradation. Proteins also contain
> peptide sequences that can be interpreted as bioactive precursors which can
> be liberated upon digestion to exert biological functions locally (e.g., in
> the gut) or systemically (i.e., via the bloodstream).

This would be fascinating, if the Rhinehart quote had had anything to do with
it.

Amusingly, my own reaction is exactly that of the single comment:

> I started the article wholly on the nutritionist's side and ended up
> dismayed by her reliance on snark over reasoning. If this green frothy diet
> is nutritionally flawed, it ought to be downright easy for a professional
> nutritionist to explain why, so Metsovas' reliance on insults and vague
> generalities ends up trivializing her position and setting up Rhinehart to
> be the misunderstood genius. Nonetheless, I'm going home to COOK dinner that
> I will actually CHEW. But I don't feel right now that I'm in particularly
> good company, if Metsovas is on my side.

Indeed. With friends like these, who needs enemies? I still prefer to let
Rhinehart treat himself as a guinea pig, but it's hard to remember this when I
see such sneering idiotic contempt & rhetoric passing for informed commentary.

------
molecule
> RRB: I used to spend about 2 hours per day on food.

> SMR: As an avid cook, I can tell you the author wasn't spending 2 hours a
> day on food preparation and cleanup.

As a reader, I can tell you that the author said 'on food', which includes
time to eat, not the '2 hours a day on food preparation and cleanup' that the
nutritionist mis-states.

> Nutritionist Explains Why The 'Stop Eating Food' Diet Is Dangerous And
> Unhealthy

> RRB: olive oil for fatty acids

> SMR: Are you sure the author is using real olive oil (insert satire)?

> RRB: Some people can eat all they want and never gain weight, others can't
> shed pounds no matter how hard they try. The trick is in the genome, though
> both extremes are uncommon. 23andme is awesome!

> SMR: Should we have a roundtable discussion about this? What a stupid,
> ridiculous statement.

this nutritionist seems to provide more mockery than explanation, for a large
serving of <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty_and_doubt>

------
stg
The whole article is no more than a glorified appeal to authority/audacity
from a so called expert nutritionist who, it turns out, pimps detox and other
homoeopathic diets fads on her website.

~~~
illuminate
But she's appeared on so many television shows!

------
randomknowledge
The rebuttals seem pretty weak. The only substantive criticisms made were
already addressed or changed. Most of the "point made" basically amount to
name calling.

------
illuminate
[http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/it-sounds-
so-n...](http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/it-sounds-so-
nutritionous/)

Anyone can call themselves a "Nutritionist". I bet she'd never be qualified to
be a Dietitian, now would she enjoy being hampered by ethics and knowledge.

------
Doublon
"Nutritionist Explains Why...", no she doesn't.

------
stuaxo
There is a part of me that thinks it's a bit like a parody of ycombinator -
"I'm too doing to much entreprenerism" to have time to eat.. still, each to
their own..

------
jack-r-abbit
Of course. And we all know that professionally trained/educated nutritionists
always agree and are never wrong.

~~~
illuminate
I doubt her training/education was very "professional" considering the big
"detoxification" blurb on her website :p

Edit: Oh jesus, the banner that says "ALL DISEASES BEGIN IN THE GUT". That she
can play at "practicing medicine" is horrible.

~~~
LeeHunter
According to her website her education consisted of one year at Chapman
University (possibly it was more than one year but her About isn't clear).
Chapman does have a food science program but not a medical school (according
to Wikipedia)

<http://stellametsovas.com/about/>

------
Shorel
Nutritionist Criticizes Bacon as Dangerous and Unhealthy while praising Gluten
as a staple food.

Honestly, he could have accepted that he doesn't know anything about Soylent
because nobody really does.

After doing keto, all nutritionists seem untrustworthy Monsanto slaves to me
now.

------
superkamiguru
It has been interesting looking at this whole thing from the outside, but
there are too many unknowns in my perspective. The fact that he isn't going on
with this experiment with regular doctor check ups is crazy.

I love the attitude he has about Soylent, the whole disrupt food industry type
thing is like hacker culture invading health science. However, it should be
done in a controlled scientific approach. Kickstarter is probably going crazy
trying to figure out if they should approve his application.

~~~
illuminate
I'm fine with this criticism, but not from this quack with an agenda to push
and money to be made from selling her own literal cure-everything diet.

------
xijuan
Not surprised at all...

