Over the past few months I've gotten to engage with a lot of picky thinkers regarding soylent. I think people tend to make up their minds quite quickly, and then proceed to defend their snap judgments. As Stephen Pinker says, the mind is more of a spin doctor than a commander-in-chief, and it can be extremely difficult to change. In fact, trying to change it can simply solidify perceptions. This is one of many cognitive biases we are burdened with. For fun I've cataloged a few others, and explored how they may lead to a critical perspective of soylent. Even if you are supportive of the idea, it is crucial to be cognizant of our own biases, and the fallacies they can lead to. If you're on the fence, I hope you will at least agree that food could use some innovation.

System Justification / Status Quo Bias: The brain, seeking to conserve energy in the short term, has an irrational preference for the current state of affairs. The longer things have been a certain way the more difficult they are to change, and the harder it is to see inefficiencies. Food's necessity and ubiquity gives it a powerful status quo, along with massive potential for improvement. It is easy to lose perspective. Most of the world finds it weird that adults in the United States drink milk. Inuit would find it strange that one would own a cat with no desire to eat it. I wish eating organ meats were more common in the United States. I think they're delicious. There is nothing sacred about the way we do things. Improving food security, the health of those with an average income, giving more people the option to cook less and eat out more often, and abandoning the appeal to nature fallacy would certainly be a change, but it is one that is long overdue.

Appeal to Nature Fallacy: Nature is not on our side. Most of it is trying to kill us. Nature abounds with neurotoxins, carcinogens, starvation, violence, and death. It is technology that makes our lives so comfortable. We have a responsibility to protect the environment, but it feels no such responsibility for us. Technological innovations should be thoroughly tested and verified to be safe, and they are. Besides being an arbitrary distinction, being "natural" is absolutely no guarantee of safety, usefulness, or practicality. Today it is often the opposite. I think it's a little weird to eat food that comes from a tree. Do we still use leaves for clothing? Like diet, balance is key. I am glad to drink fluoridated water for the same reason I prefer the natural sky. It's healthier.

Essentialism: There is no magical mold objects are cast from. Every label is a lossy abstraction, and our world abounds with diversity. Even electronics like iphones vary within industrially controlled limits. Description is important, but no distinction should be sacred. Michael Pollan's "real foods" are like Sarah Palin's "real americans". It's good to have standards, and tastes, but labels can be problematic. More practically, our old foods can't really compete today. They are too expensive, inconvenient, and bland for most consumers. If we want people to be healthier we're going to have to beat fast food at its own game.

Anchoring: Anchoring is relying too much on one piece of information and having all further analysis tainted by it. This is partially my fault, since I called it Soylent. Many people hate the name and thus the whole idea. Part of the reason for the name was to demonstrate this bias. However, others point out trivial information like the alleged benefit of unknown phytochemicals, or even the color. Should we call off the mission to feed the hungry until we have thoroughly tested and categorized a few thousand more plant metabolites? It may not be perfect, but it's certainly an improvement. Also, the vast majority of phytochemicals studied have no biological role or a mix of marginally positive and negative effects. Some are even toxic or allergenic. I do not think cancer has not been widespread enough in humans long enough for plants to be selected based on their antioxidant properties. The benefit of lycopene is purely coincidental, and there is evidence it is the most potent antioxidant that exists naturally. Surely we can engineer better ones.

Binary Opposition: This is not an all-or-nothing endeavor. While a dream come true for a busy bachelor, I think most people would probably prefer soylent for breakfast and lunch and then have a nice dinner. My net enjoyment of food is far higher than it has ever been. Being in excellent health, never eating poorly, and still enjoying good food socially is a win-win-win. Exchanging my biological cravings for psychological ones has been intensely liberating. I still eat, but I have not been to the grocery store, cooked, or cleaned a dish in 4 months, nor has hunger ever led to stress. There is always a healthy, cheap, convenient option. I feel like the world's most food secure human. I carry a Nalgene of soylent in my laptop bag and only eat for pleasure. In light of this, eating multiple times every single day seems incredibly excessive and imprudent. Perhaps in the future today's eating habits will be seen the same way we see the smoking and drinking habits of the 1950's.

Argument from Authority: "Science", Feynman says, "is the belief in the ignorance of experts." I am not a doctor, biologist, or nutritionist. However, we all have access to the same information. Anyone can read a textbook. One does not have to take a class on something to know it, nor must one fully master a field in order to do something useful with it. People learn in different ways. Even when paying for a formal education I tended to skip class and self-educate. Graduation is no reason to stop studying. Research journals are going open access, Wikipedia is my television, and Khan Academy, Coursera, Udacity, and OpenCourseWare are lowering the barriers to information that used to be reserved for a select few. Like health, I would like to see a future where education is uncorrelated with income.

Ad Hominem: It doesn't matter who we are. Ideas should be evaluated based on evidence and principle, not source.

Reasonable Concerns

• The initial sample size was small and the timeframe short, but the results are easily reproducible, as shown by the community site discourse.soylent.me.
• One may think a liquid diet could affect the GI tract in the long term but gastroenterologists seem to agree this is not the case. The body turns ingested food to liquid quite quickly anyways.
• It was a concern that nutrients can affect each others' absorption, but there have been no deficiency symptoms, and if this becomes a problem the amounts can be changed to compensate.
• It was a concern that important gut bacteria would need the other substances in food, but fiber alone seems to do the job. In fact, it may be preferable to kill off some species, like the ones that turn chemicals in red meat in to unsavory byproducts.
• I assumed I would quickly get tired of the taste but this does not happen. I accidentally stumbled on what the soft drink industry uses to make sure people never get tired of Coca-Cola, "sensory-specific satiety". If a taste is pleasant, but not very specific, the brain does not tire of it.
• Soylent is a little difficult to say. I still consider it the official name but I usually just call it "nom".
• Contamination is not much of a concern. This is a solved problem in the heavily regulated food industry, with well vetted methods to ensure products are free of heavy metals and microbes, unlike anything I ever cooked at home.
• The act of food processing does not destroy nutrition, but it does destroy flavor, which is carried by volatile chemicals. This is the only reason people assume "fresh" food is healthier. It's not. But it usually is tastier, for a day or two. It is completely possible to make healthy processed foods, there just hasn't been much demand due to this bias. As our understanding of the complex field of flavor science advances we will soon have tastier, healthier foods than ever before.
• Healthy food is very difficult to define. My working hypothesis is that health is not about restriction or elimination, but balance. I consume a lot of calories, because I need them.  The minimalism is nice too. I believe that the gut bacteria that proliferates depending on the other "stuff" that's in food has a lot more to do with our health than we currently realize, perhaps our cognition as well.
• Soylent is probably not going to solve hunger, obesity, and health in one fell swoop. But I certainly think it could help. And I certainly think these problems are worth working on.

Objectivity Bias: The tendency to see yourself as objective and others as biased. I fall prey to this one a lot, which is why I try to always place evidence over opinion, and remain open to criticism.

Other Criticisms

Demand for Omniscience: Some say this experiment makes no sense because we do not understand everything about the body. I think this is backwards thinking. If we do not understand something that is all the more reason to experiment with it in the pursuit of greater understanding.

Downplay Results: "The only reason you feel so much better is your diet is so much healthier than it was before." Yes. That's that point.

New vs Useful: How strange that some criticize this as being unoriginal, others as too weird. Obviously I considered other options before deciding to do this on my own. Nothing fit my requirements. There are plenty of liquids with calories. You'd probably be surprised how long you can survive on just cow's milk or beer, but you can't run a 5k every day on them. If you think something is a good idea and find the current options inadequate that may mean there is a lot of potential there. A good idea does not have to be altogether new, just practical. Soylent is certainly not a new idea. "Let medicine be thy food", advises Hippocrates, millenia ago.

Foodies: Most people cycle through their entire meal repertoire every 4 days, and precious few manage a balanced diet. If all of your meals are delicious and nutritious I ask you to consider what percentage of the domestic or global population has the means to eat exactly like you do. Remember, time is money. If eating at home was cheaper more people could enjoy nice restaurants more often, and I think they want to. When gas prices fall the first thing that falls with it is grocery spending, as people eat out more. We already have plenty of luxury foods, we need something with utility. People rarely go to restaurants alone either. It's not about the food. It's about the people.

This is Just Weird: Look at the current behavior around food in the developed world. Fad diets are in constant rotation, and the food industry follows suit based not on data, but demand. People staple their stomachs, freeze themselves, starve themselves, slavishly clean juicers, and drink weird liquid diets like Odwalla juice, which had a fatal e. coli outbreak due to a refusal to pasteurize (they do now). Eating disorders claim more lives than any other mental condition. Obesity and diabetes are out of control. Diets are unsustainable because they are too difficult. 95% of those that go on a diet quickly gain the weight back. Being healthy is about forming good habits and allowing yourself time off. Every organism makes decisions based on perceived energy expenditure. Humans thus consistently seek the cheapest, easiest solutions. By making the cheapest, easiest option for food the healthiest, and helping maximize the enjoyable aspects of social eating, soylent breaks the cycle of poor diet and makes users healthy by default. Currently health and diet are strongly correlated with income. I wouldn't say it's normal to have a perfectly balanced diet on the cheap. But I wouldn't say it's weird. Worrying about something as simple as food in the digital age is weird. If my behavior is making me happier, healthier, and reducing my environmental impact it should be encouraged, not mocked.

But I like food: I like beer, but I usually drink water. I love walking through the city, but I usually take the bus. I love conversation, but I still send a lot of emails. I find separating utility from leisure increases my enjoyment of both. Personally, I enjoy food, there are just many things I enjoy more. I get far more enjoyment out of a Stephen Pinker book or a jazz band than a fancy dinner. I'd rather build a ham radio or learn a new programming language than plan a meal. Asking me to cook is like asking a chef to program. It's not for everybody, but I respect their passion and skill. I want cooking to be a hobby and a profession, like photography, not a necessity. Now I have the freedom to spend more time on the things I want to do. When I do want a nice meal I'll happily pay someone to cook who is actually good at it.

Conclusion

I don't care much for cooking or eating but I care deeply about food. Food is how we extract energy from the stars. Food is all that staves off entropy. At this point my body is largely made of Soylent, and I couldn't be happier with it. We should solve the biological and logistical problems behind health and food security and then focus on making foods that are altogether new and wonderful. I see a bright future for food, but utility should come first. I think people would enjoy food more by needing it less, like having central heating in addition to a fireplace. I am not alone in having loves outside eating, either. Emerson wouldn't eat all day. Chomsky says he pays as little attention to food as possible. Biologist Rita Levi-Montalcini ate the same tiny meal every day and lived to be 103. Even Kanye West considers five star dishes ridiculous. Surely our minds can find more enjoyable activities than chewing. Despite all our innovation finding food still takes up a significant percentage of many individuals' free time and money. This is wrong. Busy people should be among the healthiest people alive. They're the ones who need it the most. Not having time to cook because you're working on your career or passion should be praised. If you never got hungry how often do you think you would eat? I find the pleasures of discovery, creation, laughter, learning, or pursuing a passion far more satisfying than a stomach full of ancestral food. Man was meant to do more than subsist.

get some at campaign.soylent.me

After three months I should be finding deficiencies, and I did. I started having joint pain and found I fit the symptoms of a sulfur deficiency. This makes perfect sense as I consume almost none, and sulfur is a component of every living cell. Sulfur is hard to miss in a typical diet so the FDA would have little reason to recommend it. A typical male physique has 140g of sulfur, making it the sixth most abundant element in the human body. Ten grams of sulfur from Methylsulfonylmethane cured me right away, and I now consume 2g/day. Sulfur is also what gives flatulence its characteristic odor. Most gas is just Hydrogen, but humans have evolved to be extremely sensitive to Hydrogen Sulfide, which is by the gram as deadly as cyanide, and produced by the bacteria in our colon. Before this change my gas was odorless. Releasing the equivalent of deadly cyanide gas from our anuses is a questionable design decision, nature. I have not experienced any other deficiency symptoms and am quite confident I am now getting everything I need, but I will keep testing.

I have been keeping better track of my physical traits. I'm holding steady at 180 lbs, and my muscle mass is about 46%, which is optimal for my lifestyle. I have 6.4lbs of bone mineral mass and am 63.8% water by weight, both normal. My body fat is currently 9.6%, which is a little too low for a non-athlete. Because of this when I do take the time to eat I converge towards bacon, which serves as an efficient source of fatty acids and happiness. Bacon is high in Oleic acid, the principal component of adipose (fat) tissue so it is great for increasing body fat. While the environmental effects of livestock farming do bother me, I think eating meat as rarely as I do is completely sustainable. However, bacon also has Palmitic acid, which is closely associated with cardiovascular disease so moderation is still in order. By the way, an acid is anything that donates protons. Only a few have corrosive properties like sulfuric acid, and bases can be corrosive too. Additionally, I track my sleep now, using a device called the "Zeo", an EEG headband that measures characteristic patterns of different sleep cycles. According to this device, I sleep like a baby, with an average "ZQ" of 104. Typical 20 year olds score 84.

I spent a week in L.A. to appear on a TV show and film the Kickstarter video. This served as a good control since I went without soylent almost the entire week. Though leisure food is fun, with no soylent in my diet the difference was clear. Cognition was the first to go. Patience shortened, attention dulled, curiosity waned. Socializing was more taxing, my inbox more foreboding. The physical effects took another few days. It was harder to wake up, the gym seemed much less inviting, and I gained a few pounds. Upon returning and going back to soylent I quickly bounced back, no harm done. I now refer to this as “low power mode”.

Soylent has changed my relationship with food. Before I probably craved pizza and cheeseburgers because that was the easiest way to provide my 6’3″ frame with the calories it needed. Now that my nutritional needs are always met I am able to appreciate food more for its flavor, and started really enjoying sushi. Sushi is especially interesting because there is such range and intensity of flavors, and it is so difficult, yet rewarding to make well. This makes it pricey, but I spend so little on food I can enjoy nice sushi once or twice per week. Fast food restaurants look laughably obsolete to me, like a Blockbuster.

I made a rather significant change to the formula, now on major revision 7. I've replaced half of the maltodextrin carbohydrates with oat powder, which has a much lower glycemic index. Oat powder is quite nutritious, and while not a raw chemical (I had to adjust several other ingredients to compensate), is very stable and inexpensive, should be fine for celiacs, and dramatically increases the fiber content, without interfering with the absorption of the maltodextrin. I underestimated the importance of fiber in a diet, and went from consuming 1.2g / day to 40g / day. The maltodextrin kicks in quickly, providing energy almost immediately, and when it runs out the oat powder takes over as an energy source. It also seems to improve the feeling of satiety, and affects the taste to be less sweet, which I actually prefer. I also added creatine, spurred by this study¹, and Coenzyme Q10, a component of the electron transport chain with preliminary evidence for a variety of benefits. I made the decision to use whey isolate rather than the slightly cheaper concentrate / isolate blend. I am glad I did not just because my skin looks a little better and soylent is now lactose free, but crucially whatever was causing it to congeal after a few days must have been in the extras of the concentrate. My test has lasted in liquid form for 2 weeks now and is still holding steady. The flavor has dulled but it’s still very drinkable. Flavor chemicals tend to be very volatile so it’s hard to make them last, but they can always be added back in before consumption. I use ethyl vanillin, a synthetic form of vanillin that is more potent. Having soylent stable in liquid form could prove very useful. I’m currently working on kegging it.

I was intrigued to find that on nootropic days I craved about 15% more carbohydrates. This got me thinking, and researching. Our brain requires glucose and ions to operate, just like our muscles do. Perhaps processes and traits like learning, analysis, optimism, and self-control consume more calories than their lazier counterparts, and if the brain doesn’t have easy access to them, they will be impaired. Neuroscientist Gregory Bems writes about how our brain optimizes itself to reduce its energy consumption as needed. One of the ways it does this is by framing new things in terms of old. Those who cannot form new pathways rely on old information, insisting that nothing is new. “Imagination,” says Bems, “stems from the ability to break from categorization”. Remapping takes effort. Asking someone to change deep-seated beliefs like political or religious viewpoints is asking them to run a mental marathon, and the vast majority of people cannot be bothered. Often only the youth, with healthy energetic minds stay in a state of flux in their viewpoints. However, the youth know so little in general it is often a trade-off versus our older, more experienced, conservative selves. It would be really nice to have both though, and I have met enough open-minded older people to know it’s possible. Perhaps the real value of efficient food is not in making us skinnier, but having better fuel for our brains.

We no longer live in a hunter-gatherer society. I have no use for bulging biceps. No one in the United States plows fields or hammers steel. It has all been automated. We need mental strength. We need creativity, patience, discipline, and humility. If people had more self-control obesity would take care of itself. Perhaps companies would be more productive if managers had more humility and employees had more discipline. These processes are abstract but they must have a physiological basis, and it seems intuitive that more difficult processes consume more energy. I fear many people who work primarily with their minds do not put much effort in to their health, and we are all missing out because of it.

The world has changed. We don’t live anything like our ancestors. We don’t work like them, talk like them, think like them, travel like them, or fight like them. Why on earth would we want to eat like them? Practically everything has gotten better over the past century but food has gotten worse. This is because food is a haven for reactionaries. Reductionism is not romantic, but everything can be improved once seen as the sum of its parts. If we can make transistors that are cheap, fast, and low power, surely we can make food that is tastier, cheaper, and more nutritious than anything that exists naturally. In the past food was about survival. Now we can try to create something ideal.

I promised that if I was still healthy after three months of soylent I would launch a Kickstarter campaign to bring it to the world. That time has come. The project is currently being reviewed and if approved I will post the link here, and tweet about it as soon as it is up.

edit: Since posting this I have heard from a number of additional platforms. I now realize crowdfunding has come a long way since Kickstarter coined the term 4 years ago. In light of this perhaps a different venue would be a better fit.

Email / Twitter / Discourse

References

1: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1691485/pdf/14561278.pdf