How I Stopped Eating Food
by rob
Food is the fossil fuel of human energy. It is an enormous market full of waste, regulation, and biased allocation with serious geo-political implications. And we're deeply dependent on it. In some countries people are dying of obesity, others starvation. In my own life I resented the time, money, and effort the purchase, preparation, consumption, and clean-up of food was consuming. I am pretty young, generally in good health, and remain physically and mentally active. I don't want to lose weight. I want to maintain it and spend less energy getting energy.
I hypothesized that the body doesn't need food itself, merely the chemicals and elements it contains. So, I resolved to embark on an experiment. What if I consumed only the raw ingredients the body uses for energy? Would I be healthier or do we need all the other stuff that's in traditional food? If it does work, what would it feel like to have a perfectly balanced diet? I just want to be in good health and spend as little time and money on food as possible.
I haven't eaten a bite of food in 30 days, and it's changed my life.
The Experiment
There are no meats, fruits, vegetables, or breads here. Besides olive oil for fatty acids and table salt for sodium and chloride nothing is recognizable as food. I researched every substance the body needs to survive, plus a few extras shown to be beneficial, and purchased all of them in nearly raw chemical form from a variety of sources. The section on the ingredients ended up being quite long so I'll save that for a future post. The first morning my kitchen looked more like a chemistry lab than a cookery, but I eventually ended up with an thick, odorless, beige liquid. I call it 'Soylent'. At the time I didn't know if it was going to kill me or give me superpowers. I held my nose and tepidly lifted it to my mouth, expecting an awful taste.
It was delicious! I felt like I'd just had the best breakfast of my life. It tasted like a sweet, succulent, hearty meal in a glass, which is what it is, I suppose. I immediately felt full, yet energized, and started my day. Several hours later I got hungry again. I quickly downed another glass and immediately felt relief. The next day I made another batch and felt even better. My energy level had skyrocketed at this point, I felt like a kid again. But on day 3 I noticed my heart was racing and my energy level was suddenly dropping. Hemoglobin! I think, my heart is having trouble getting enough oxygen to all my organs. I check my formula and realize iron is completely absent. I quickly purchase an iron supplement and add it to the mixture the next day. I have to be more careful not to leave anything out.
On day 4 I noticed how much healthier my skin was. It's long been dry and rough, with splotches and red bumps but now it's soft, smooth and clear. Before I rarely had enough energy to go to the gym, but this day I had plenty so I decided to put the diet to the test. I'd been running off and on for several months, never able to do more than a mile straight, but this day I ran 3.14 miles non-stop. This is an irrational improvement.
My cravings and tastes closely matched with my needs. One day I accidentally put in a tablespoon of salt, rather than a teaspoon. I immediately noticed the mixture tasted unpleasantly salty. When I was deficient of iron I felt a strong craving for red meat. As I started running longer distances I craved more carbohydrates. After a week advertisements for fast food looked repulsive. All I crave is Soylent.
Week 2 was rough since I started experimenting with the proportions, trying to find the optimum amount of everything. When I was off I paid for it dearly, but I soon found just the right mixture.
The rest of the month went smoothly. It quickly became part of my routine and I didn't have to think or worry about it. I was fully expecting to crave traditional food, but I don't as long as I've had my Soylent. Hunger comes from two chemicals triggered by a lack of nutrients, ghrelin and leptin, as well as mechano-sensors in the stomach. If there's something in your stomach and all your nutritional needs are met you won't feel hungry. I feel full after drinking a single glass of Soylent and while the smell of Mexican food from the street used to drive me crazy, now I am unaffected. It's like finding a new partner you really care about. When all your needs are met, you don't have a desire to stray.
Results
Quantitative
I had my blood tested in two ways: complete blood count and chemical panel, and got a lipid panel near the end. This shows stuff like red/white blood cell counts, Na, K, P proportions, and more. The internist had to bill it as "testing for blood-borne diseases". She said a lot of providers do not support preventative care, which I thought was strange. I also monitored my heart rate, and bought a glucose meter to track my blood sugar (I'm not diabetic). I am 6'3" so my BMI was on the upper end of normal at the start. Remember I am not trying to lose weight here.
| Week 0 | Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 | |
| Weight (lbs) | 204 | 196 | 192 | 188 | 191 |
| Blood Work | report (pdf) | report (pdf) | |||
| Max run | <1mi | 3.5mi | 5mi | 6mi | 7mi |
| Notes |
low blood sugar, is this why I always elt tired? |
one belt loop down | feel great |
two belt loops down, blood work excellent |
started getting chilly, added a few pounds |
I wasn't able to get a lipid test until week 3 but my triglycerides and cholesterol are certainly low now. I have a family history of heart disease, but my risk is now well below average.
I also got my genome sequenced. Genetically, my body's response to exercise should be typical, along with my response to diet, though on average I should have a slightly higher BMI, consistent with my status before the experiment. My LDL cholesterol is subject to be slightly higher than average, while my HDL levels typical. Though this is only one case, it should be representative of most people since my diet and exercise genetics are typical. 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!
Qualitative
I feel like the six million dollar man. My physique has noticeably improved, my skin is clearer, my teeth whiter, my hair thicker and my dandruff gone. My resting heart rate is lower, I haven't felt the least bit sickly, rare for me this time of year. I've had a common skin condition called Keratosis Pilaris since birth. That was gone by day 9. I used to run less than a mile at the gym, now I can run 7. I have more energy than I know what to do with. On day 4 I caught myself balancing on the curb and jumping on and off the sidewalk when crossing the street like I used to do when I was a kid. People gave me strange looks but I just smiled back. Even my scars look better.
My mental performance is also higher. My inbox and to-do list quickly emptied. I 'get' new concepts in my reading faster than before and can read my textbooks twice as long without mental fatigue. I read a book on Number Theory in one sitting, a Differential Geometry book in a weekend, filling up a notebook in the process. Mathematical notation that used to look obtuse is now beautiful. My working memory is noticeably better. I can grasp larger software projects and longer and more complex scientific papers more effectively. My awareness is higher. I find music more enjoyable. I notice beauty and art around me that I never did before. The people around me seem sluggish. There are fewer 'ums' and pauses in my spoken sentences. My reflexes are improved. I walk faster, feel lighter on my feet, spend less time analyzing and performing basic tasks and rely on my phone less for navigation. I sleep better, wake up more refreshed and alert and never feel drowsy during the day. I still drink coffee occasionally, but I no longer need it, which is nice.
Time
I used to spend about 2 hours per day on food. Typically I would cook eggs for breakfast, eat out for lunch, and cook a quesadilla, pasta, or a burger for dinner. For every meal at home I would then have to clean and dry the dishes. This does not include trips to the grocery store. Now I spend about 5 minutes in the evening preparing for the next day, and every meal takes a few seconds. I love order of magnitude improvements, and I certainly don't miss doing dishes. In fact I could get rid of the kitchen entirely, no fridge sucking down power, no constant cleaning or worrying about pests, and more living space. I just need a water source.
Money
Monthly I was spending about $220 on groceries, and another $250 eating out for lunch and the occasional dinner. The average american spends $604/month on food, about half of which is groceries.1,2 As a percentage of income this is actually the lowest of any nation. Kenyans for example spend 45% of their income on food.3 I used to dream of one day being able to afford shopping at Whole Foods, but now it's irrelevant to me. Consuming only Soylent costs me about $50/month, another order of magnitude improvement, and would be cheaper if I didn't need the energy for running every day. At scale the cost would be even lower.
Edit: this was a miscalculation from a mistake in my spreadsheet, at personal scale it actually costs me exactly $154.82/month.
The Quantified Diet
It's wonderful to have full visibility and control over what's going in to my body. Besides making food allergies irrelevant, it's trivial to increase or reduce consumption of a particular substance by a precise amount. I am hopeful diabetics could use this to control their blood sugar. I was able to control mine to within about 5mg/dL by varying carbohydrates and fiber. Starting a more intense workout routine? Increase protein and carbohydrates 20%. Want to lose some weight? Reduce fat consumption by 30% (don't eliminate it entirely!). Blood work shows potassium deficiency? Increase it by the precise amount required. In fact, unless you work on a banana plantation you're probably not getting the recommended amount of potassium (3500mg is 9 bananas), and never have. Ever wonder what it would feel like if you did?
Social Implications
As any Instagram user knows, food is a big part of life. Food can be art, comfort, science, celebration, romance, or a reason to meet with friends. Most of the time it's just a hassle, though. Americans only eat out for 12% of meals. I think it would be nice to have a default, healthy no hassle meal. Similar to drinking water most of the time, but wine or beer when you're socializing. If you saved money on food at home you would have the freedom to go out more often.
I for one would not miss the stereotype of the housewife in the kitchen. Providing diverse, palatable, and nutritious meals for an entire family every day must be exhausting. What if taking a night off didn't mean unhealthy pizza or expensive take out? How wasteful society has been with its women! The endless hours spent cooking and cleaning in the kitchen could be replaced with socializing, study, or creative endeavors. And why beg children to eat vegetables? Soylent has every vitamin and mineral the body needs, and it's delicious.
To me diet always seemed to be a trade-off. Time, money, health: pick two. You certainly have the capability to be healthy, but it will cost you. What about the single mom, the poor student, struggling entrepreneur or artist, the unemployed, or the elderly? These people desperately need energy, and its harder for them to be healthy than anyone else. Living on fast food and ramen is cheap and convenient, but unhealthy. Shopping at places like Whole Foods costs a fortune to many people and cooking healthy recipes takes practice and time. Cooking should be a hobby, like hunting. People used to hunt for survival, now they just do it for fun.
Global Implications
With Soylent you can be in peak mental and physical condition for less than $2/day. Soylent does not spoil for months, does not require refrigeration, is easy to transport, cheap and environmentally friendly to produce, contains no pesticides, hormones, or preservatives, is trivial to prepare, without even requiring a heat source (though you do need clean water), does no harm to animals, and drastically lowers sanitation requirements. I almost forgot to mention, when everything going in to your body is diffused in to the bloodstream, you don't poop. I only have to remove a few grams of fiber from my system per week. I also noticed I was generating far less trash than before. The vast majority of personal refuse is food-related. Why else would the trash can always be in the kitchen?
Discussion
This is one case and it's only been a month, so it's early, but I'm certainly not stopping now. Also, every body is different and there may be long term effects so more data is necessary. However, I am consuming no toxins or carcinogens and I get all the nutrition and energy I need with about 1/3 the calories the average American consumes so I hope in the long term my longevity will be improved (caloric restriction has been shown to reverse the effects of aging in rodents)4,5 while lowering my risk of cancer and disease. If you would like to try this experiment as well please contact me so we can pool our results. It's fine to have a normal meal too, nutritional fundamentalists really irk me. The point is freedom, you don't have to. I started consuming Soylent exclusively just to test the effects. I see nothing wrong with eating traditional food as well, I just don't have much of a desire to. The only thing I missed was eating with friends. Now that 30 days are up I'm going to start doing that again. I only drink socially, and now I only eat socially.
I notice only now how much of this city is devoted to the stuff. Wherever you are I challenge you to find a search term for google maps that returns more results than "food". Travelling back home to the American south I am still shocked to see how prevalent obesity is. How many people still spend their lives just surviving, living to eat, and it's killing them? The food is eating us. I don't know how to change peoples' behavior, but now that I've discovered Soylent, I'm healthier than I've ever been, have more freedom with my time and money, and never have to worry about the stuff. Finally, I can have my cake and eat it too.
update: Getting way more responses than I can respond to individually. Please sign up at soylent.me. Follow up post w/ ingredients here: http://robrhinehart.com/?p=424
update 2: discussion board up here: discourse.soylent.me
[1]http://www.cnpp.usda.gov/Publications/FoodPlans/2012/CostofFoodDec2012.pdf
[2]http://www.gallup.com/poll/156416/americans-spend-151-week-food-high-income-180.aspx
[3]http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2012/01/america-food-spending-less
[4] http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1474-9726.2012.00825.x/abstract
[5] http://www.cell.com/molecular-cell/abstract/S1097-2765(12)00905-7#Summary
I would like to join you in this study. I am currently a college student. Could you provide me with a more in-depth analysis of the composition of Soylent? I'm a diabetic, and I've had success with a 'paleo' diet. I'd like to try this other extreme. Want more introspection into blood glucose levels?
Yes also Diabetic (Juvenile Tyle 1). This sounds great. Food can be such a curse for a Diabetic…where all those sweet sugary goods are so much more desired when you cannot or are "not allowed" to have them. Nice option for travelling too.
Hi! I'm also a college student and type1 diabetic, much like Andrea i've had difficulties staying away from the common sugar and carb filled diets. A sustainable and balanced option would be a miracle for me and many others. In addition to being a diabetic I am also a very active intercollegiate athlete, I was wondering if you had any ideas as to what the impact of heavy cardio oriented exercise would have on someone who is both diabetic and on a minimalist diet as you have described.
Type 1 diabetic and chemistry PhD here. This sounds excellent, although surely it has been done before? I think the composition of Soylent willl have to change depending on local food consumption habits. Catering for specialised allergies (nut ,gluten etc) will make this product sell, as well as flavourings. Good luck!
Hi Rob. Ever seen the film Soylet Green? the one where they turn people into miracle food?
Also, you must admit that you went from a prettty shoddy diet typical of the developed world, from what you list as your daily pattern (eggs for breakfast, burger for lunch) to what is essentially a detox diet; on any healthy, temporary detox diet anyone will feel great and energised compared to their relatively poor regular diet. It is likely that you were not getting sufficient nutrients, and had too much processed food/refined carbs/sugar/fat/salt in your dient, and that switching to the whole foods that your ingredients came from would have had the same effect.
How is your product more sustainable than regular food? surely the refined ingredients need to be sourced from actual food anyway? if so no consumption is reduced, and at the cost of unneccessary processing?
I meant the film Soylent Green!
I am fairly certain that's where he got his name inspiration from.
Its more sustainable in the sense that it will create a ripple effect. Powdered goods can be shipped compact and for more people, things like livestock farms will be a thing of the past because all the nutrition you can get from animals can be grown in the plants that are being processed to create raw nutrition. People will save money on food and spend it elsewhere thus helping the economy, peoples minds would be sharper and disieses would slow to a hault because peoples immune systems will be in top gear all the time. Its very beneficial In so many ways. And if you want to go back to the traditional way of eating then no one can stop you from growing your own food.
My biggest concern is from looking at the ingredients. I am a Naturopathic Doctor, and I can tell you that most of those ingredients are synthetic vitamins and most of the minerals were just "crushed rocks". The minerals need to be organic from whole food sources, and the vitamins that are synthetic are just isolates and act like drugs. They excite the receptors (and in most instances over excite), but do not act like vitamins in the body by providing "vitamin action". Just as an example, Ascobic acid is commonly sold and used as vitamin C, but it is only the antioxidant protective coating of the vitamin C complex. And, incidentally it is the only part of the C complex that the body will not accept or use. It is like the egg shell around the egg, it is only the "package" that the C complex comes in. Published in Rueters Health on 3 March, 2000, was an article showing that research on men taking just 500 mg of synthetic vitamin C (Ascorbic acid), daily for only 18 months caused an increase by 250% in the intimia media (inner lining) of the corotid artery. This is how they measure for the progression of atherosclerosis. Synthetic Vitamin C causes atheroscerosis.
I believe in the long term, and maybe even the short term he will have some very serious health issues as a result of this regimen. He needs to switch to "Wholefood" vitamins and "Organic" minerals from plants that include the carbon and nitrogen molecules.
God made it perfect, man screwed it up!
carbon and nitrogen atoms, not molecules…. sorry.
Brad, I'm with you on this. Unfortunately there are the 'Quackwatch' style discounters here. It's been PROVEN again and again you can't fake nutrition. Let them go back to their GMOs and scratch their heads when they can't get pregnant.
Don't believe me? Look up
http://www.salem-news.com/articles/february022012/gmo-babies.php
Ask your *real* doctor if you need to get off GMOs – and see what HE tells you.
Let's wait until the REAL doctors see the evidence.
Never dismiss something until fully tested. This could revolutionize and eliminate many problems with the agro industry.
It has the same type of atoms as food; so it didn't change a thing that the Flying Spaghetti Monster created.
That was obnoxious, Draken.
Not really, you're being over sensative. Apeals to mysticism should be questioned. We need answeres not mind games.
Sometimes people come off so condescending I lose my faith in humanity.
And the post didn't deserve it?
First Brad states that he is a "Naturopathic Doctor". This is a meaningless term (not legally protected, I can say my dog is a naturopathic doctor and nobody can really refute it). Brad is attempting to make a fallacious Arguement from Authority to try to lend the authority of his "qualifications" to the utter nonsense he's about to write.
The Arguement from Authority is fallacious because Brad fails at the first requirement. i.e. that he must be a legitimate expert on the subject matter.
He then procedes to display his astounding lack of elementary chemistry and biology knowledge, talking gobbledegook about overexciting vitamin receptors, talking about health journalism from reuters as if it was the actual research paper (which I can almost guarantee you he hasn't read and I'd place a second bet that he lacks the education to understand it).
Then he makes some kind of religious appeal to authority.
And reasonable people are supposed to let his comment go unchallenged?
> I am a Naturopathic Doctor
Naturopaths are not doctors.
Naturopaths are doctors. Acupuncturists, herbalists, are doctors. We treat diseases doctors can't. They fuck up people's health, all the time.
That's because they aren't running a scam and the things they actually do affect the patient. If chi was a real thing messing around with it could kill the patient. It isn't, so it can't.
If it was real, we'd be discovering new things about it. We'd be learning more about how it works. Physicists would be trying to make it.
The ancient people that actually believed in acupunture believed it was what made people alive. They believed that people needed to breath air in to extract chi. That chi was processed in the spleen. Their understanding was that if you lost your spleen, you'd die. Many people today live perfectly healthy lives without their spleens, and presumably, without chi. Nobody is doing studies to figure out why.
If some guy had his heart removed and he didn't die but kept on living for even a few days it would be a headline in every major newspaper around the world. Medical science wouldn't just ignore it.
No you aren't. You can be involved in healing but doctor actually means something.
And Doctors perform life saving procedures and surgeries that you wouldn't even know where to begin, spend years in school so while during those surgeries they, unlike you, will know not to cut any important nerves, kill you, or cause you to bleed to death.
Get real.
And Reuters Health News isn't the kind of medical journal a Doctor would consult. If there's a vitamin C complex, no-one ever told all the animals that synthesize pure ascorbic acid and ignore the rest of the "complex", i.e., most of them.
You Sir, are not a doctor, nor are you a medical professional. You can give yourself any title you wish thats not legally restricted, but it still dosn't mean your uninformed personal opinions magically become factual.
So let me get this right. One has to pay thousands of dollars at a state sanctioned propganda institution to magically have opinons turn into facts? The lol's i just had thank you sir.
No, but he used his "title" to sound like he was more of an expert than you, me or even the guy doing the experiment who even includes actual results. He even goes on to attribute a deity, adding to his lack of judgment.
"There are more doctors under heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy…" Heck, I'm a doctor. It's physics, not medicine, but it still gives me data about expertise. To become a proper doctor of anything takes study and concentration. Directed, tested study and concentration. I want to see the curriculum the naturopath dealt with. Otherwise, it's an argument not from authority, but from assumed authority.
Nevre listen to a naturopath! This guy has no idea what he is talking about. A chemical is a chemical. A sodium ion is a sodium ion no matter where it is derived from, earth or plant source (where do yu think the plant got it geniius??) There also is no difference chemically or nutritively between "natural" or synthetic molecules.
Ever see those people that carry dogs in purses? They're cute, adorable, and friendly. Some people worry about having such small dogs around children because the children might hurt them.
Mother nature didn't make those dogs, we did. before they were domesticated, they were wolves. They would literally jump out of the darkness and tear your child to bits the moment you left the poor tyke unattended. The same artificial selection process that created dogs happened to other animals. Cows and pigs and chickens were bred the same way. Here's the thing most people don't realize.
The same force that turned wolves into purse dogs has been acting on nearly every single plant that humans consume. They didn't always sit in tidy little rows waiting for us to eat them. They didn't always give up their nutrients so easily. In many cases the effort required to eat fruit cost more calories than the fruit provided, and it was only through the clever use of tools that some fruit became edible.
Plants are not as passive as people think, and they are no slouches when it comes to murder. They poison, they cut, they even trap and "eat" insects. Durians will literally drop down out of the trees and bash your head in with their spikes. They kill more people than sharks.
The only reason that you see nature as benevolent is because you look at the artificial foods engineered by agriculture and think they're somehow "natural". Human beings act in their own best interest, so the more artificial it it, the better.
"Better" can sometimes be a problem. Sometimes a food is better at staying fresh longer at the expense of it's healthfulness. Sometimes a food is better because a sacrifice in quality has made it cheaper. Organic isn't about health, it's not about the environment, it's about reducing the amount of technology involved. Sometimes that means sacrificing shelf life for a more nutritious product – that's good! Sometimes it means less negative environmental impact – that's good too! But sometimes it means using a lot of an old pesticide instead of a small amount of a newer one that isn't carcinogenic. That's bad! Thinking in terms of how "Organic" things are isn't very useful and leads to a lot of very arbitrary decisions based on the absurd assumption that nature is some sort of magic, benevolent force.
Nature evolved itself to what it is no one waved a magical wand to create it my friend
God made nothing bro….
Synthetic vitamins and real vitamins contain the exact same vitamers, which are the functional molecules. That's why, to use your example, ascorbic acid (which is naturally occurring, produced in many animals, but whatver) has been shown to have vitamin action.
Source: THAT'S THE DEFINITION OF VITAMIN.
This suggests you really don't understand what you're talking about. Since that article you "cite" doesn't exist and has no record of its existence anywhere and you don't seem to grasp how digestion works at all (hint – minerals bonded to nitrogen and carbon are unbonded before the body processes them, even if such things occurred) I'm going to go ahead and call you a liar.
I am a Naturopathic Doctor,
Quack! Quack! Quack!
Brad,
What you are saying is just fundamentally wrong.
1) Minerals are by their very nature not "organic" as you say. Organic means containing carbon along with hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen. etc. Minerals are various metals primarily in their element form, i.e. iron, magnesium, selenium, etc. These are by their nature "inorganic". You study these in general chemistry, which is essentially inorganic chemistry.
2) Vitamins do not excite receptors. Vitamins like many of the minerals stated above act as cofactors for various enzymes. Iron (a mineral) for example is a component of the hemoglobin protein structure and is required for binding of oxygen. Vitamin C which you go on to wildly misexplain is a cofactor for various enzymes, primarily hydroxylases (enzymes that transfer hydroxyl groups) involved in collagen biosynthesis.
3) Vitamin C is not a complex. Vitamin C refers to the class of vitamers that are ascorbic acid and its various salts. L-ascorbic acid (the active isomer) can be interconverted between the various salt forms in the human body. Your body is more than willing to accept and use L-ascorbic acid.
4) Your Reuters Health study, which is completely contradictory to many more studies suggesting a positive benefit of Vitamin C on cardiovascular health was never subjected to peer review. It was a report from an American Heart Association meeting and as far as I can tell this was never actually published and thus subject to the stringent review of much better studies. Additionally, vitamin C is extremely water soluble. Elevated dietary intake will not really contribute to significant elevations in plasma levels as the excess will be flushed out in your urine.
You are out of your area of expertise. Stop acting like an expert when you do not even have a basic knowlege of chemistry, biology and biochemistry. Read some books and try again.
Seriously, thank you. My thoughts exactly. I was skeptical when I read "naturopathic doctor". When I read "organic minerals" I was 100% positive Brad has no fucking idea what he's talking about. This is basic chemistry here. You need only a high school-level understanding of chemistry to understand why there's no such thing as an "inorganic mineral". All minerals are "organic" by definition of being a mineral! It's the default, and only, quality a mineral can possess! An iron atom is the same whether it comes from a steak, your blood, a rock, or a pile of rust. The same goes for potassium, sodium, zinc… every mineral on the periodic table that our bodies require. How someone can be so off-base on something like this is mind blowing. This is pretty embarrassing, "Dr. Brad". Delete the comment and go grab yourself a science book.
Hey I am 18 and about to start college this summer I was wondering if you could send me a more indepth analysis as well. I would love to try this product out.
I think this experiment is cool but i would like to have the recipe of this drink for test it on my body and my mind. Sorry for my english but I'm italian.
I am a mother of 3 and wife and with age increase i feel terrible and would like to start this please let me know where to start!
You ran Pi miles. Irrational improvement!
Excellent! Hahaaa… You must be software engineer…
Pi miles. That's funny.
best comment ever
Thought the same, lol. I guess he did it in purpose…
Hehe I also noticed it immediately
I have for the longest time wanted something like this. Unlike many people I consider food a necessary evil. I hope your experiment is a success and an FDA approved commercial product comes out of this.
Agreed, This could help end world hunger. If people didn't HAVE to eat and could CHOOSE this option instead. I have been dealing with weight issues all my life, even more, after my three children were born. I've often lamented having to go in the kitchen and cook. Not because I can't, but because not everyone is willing to eat the same diet as the next. The cycle keeps repeating. I would easily take the torch, sort of speak, and transition to this if I could.
Raven, I'd recommend you check out the Feast or Famine diet. It's a program of intermittent fasting where you limit your daily caloric intake to 500 calories just 2x a week. The other 5 days, you are free to eat whatever you want. I'm in my 4th month of doing it and I feel great. The first few days of calorie restriction are difficult but also the most rewarding - I lost 8 kilos during the first two weeks. Now my weight has more or less stabilized, which I suspect has something to do with displacing fat with muscle, since I hit the gym twice a week as well and muscle is heavier than fat. My skin is clearer and I have less visceral fat, and best of all my face and neck have slimmed down, which has done wonders for my self-esteem. The great thing is that it's easier to make it through a day of eating very little knowing that you can eat chocolate the next day if you want to. And socially, it doesn't mess you up too much. Just have a light meal during the day and skip dinner, and voila! You've made it through the day. I usually have an orange or banana for breakfast, followed with a salad of unlimited veggies (cucumber slices, carrots, radishes, arugula), a cup of cous cous and a hard-boiled egg. And of course you're limited to black coffee, tea or water for your drinks. But it's only twice a week, so it's definitely doable!
World hunger is NOT about lack of food – the world has plenty. It's about getting the food to areas in which bandits, armies, rebels, violent criminals, corrupt and downright evil governments etc rule.
And stuff like this already does exist – it's called Ensure and is commonly used to re feed anorexics
A commercial product could be the end of it all for most people. It would be expensive and once it becomes popular enough we'd really be screwed. It'd become way harder for the average person get ahold of the ingredients on their own. The food industry (like all industries) can be a dark place my friend.
I am optimistic. No one has or realistically can have a monopoly on plain essential nutrients. Engineering has shown me how standardization dramatically drives down cost. It is amazing to me how cheap a wi-fi radio is for all the complexity. True it is non-trivial to acquire the ingredients and make it on your own, but I think this has the potential to dramatically drive down the cost of being healthy at scale.
Alex:
This is borderline conspiracy theory. If a company was massively overcharging, there'd be economic incentive to compete by producing a cheaper product. Further, these are basic nutrients. Are you claiming that the nutrients we be (almost) impossible to obtain if an "application" becomes popular? This is complete nonsense. Its equivalent to saying, its impossible to get raw tomatos because of ketchup manufacturers. Sure consumers can buy them as cheaply (read: *scale*), but this doesn't imply economic or legal infeasibility!
The only hurdles to cost and availability have to do with raw resources, manufacturing, and distribution at scale. The only hurdles I see are the raw vitamin/mineral availability (because I haven't researched this) and potential FDA issues (which don't seem problematic at first glance, but you never know)
Saying "the food industry can be a dark place" is not fair.
The real issue would surface when big pharma get's invovled to protect us from potential overdoses or problems with raw ingrediants… vitamins don't replace an entire industry and lobbiests are working hard to regulate that… but this has the potential to put some of the biggest companies in the world out of business… in a best case scenario at least. I can very realistically see the FDA requiring a prescription to purchase the raw ingrediants, or go ahead and pay 10-50x this amount for premade approved stuff.
This is not a trivial concern, this is very real, I suggest you refrain from too much exposure or from trying to market it and keep it a cool online "did you know" type thing. Once this information becomes widespread enough to cause damage to any of these companies, the only way they'll be able to stop people from trying it is through misinformation and claiming it's dangerous, which by then, anyone who's tried it will easily know is BS. They will come for you if you get too big, so be careful.
Todd doesn't ever let not knowing what he's talking about get in the way of talking. He loves talking so much that he does it whether he's got something or not. Conspiracy theories keep Todd from having to say anything, but they keep him talking. Keep talking, Todd.You'll win your personal battle with large pharmaceutical companies one comment on a blog at a time.
I like Todd. He makes me feel better about my own trainwreck life.
I agree with Michael on this. The biggest GMO company ''fighting to end'' starvation is Monsanto.And fighting with this company is not an easy deal when they feel threatened. You have the INTERNET. Use it! It should`t be even alowed to have a patent on a seed or a plant – monsanto has it.
Once they control food and water supplies, you are slaves. And they already control it.
Can this be patented? If so, there could definitely arise a Soylent production monopoly. Never underestimate the evil that large corporations are capable of.
Whatever the other obvious issues with this diet (lack of bulk, for example), a commercial product would be useless because it would not target individuals. We all know that different people have different dietary requirements (if they didn't, there would be no need for dieticians).
I suspect that there IS no need for dieticians.
A "universal" commercial supplement would be essentially useless, but that certainly wouldn't keep someone from marketing one.
Just wondering where and what form of chemical did you get? From what I know, potassium in its pure form is pretty reactive; and something like iron would be hard to dissolve in water in its pure form.
Excellent question. I use Potassium Gluconate, which is non-reactive. And I dissolve Iron Chellate in fat separately before adding it to the mixture.
What type of fat do you use to dissolve your Iron Chellate in?
I believe he's stated olive oil.
and Fish Oil. Need to keep that Omega 6: Omega 3 ratio proper
Interesting concept just wondering what forms of the other products you are using. Many supplement companies sell poorly absorbable forms or forms that need to be furthur processed in the body to become active. For example a popular form of B12 is cyanocobalamin or hydroxycobalamin however, many people have 1-2 mutations of the MTHFR gene that inhibits the methylation of these products and patients do much better being given the already methylated form. This can be true of folic acid as well. A few other things to consider, Vitamin D should be D3, Vitamin K should be K2, trace minerals are a must but you can also add trace minerals to water to sip on throughout the day. If you're using botanicals you can consider aqueous extractions of herbs such as avena sativa (oatstraw) or Equisetum arvense for the mineral content. Just some thoughts.
Potassium in its metal form is very different from potassium ion in a salt or in a solution.
Ummm…yws. It's a lot like sodium. As a kid I dropped a one-pound block of pure sodium (you could get it by mail back then, it was a cube about 1-1/4" on a side) into a bucket of water, and ran like hell. We were rewarded with a loud "WHOOMP" and a ten-foot column of orange fire. Both metals must be stored submerged in kerosene so they don't oxidize violently. So, don't try to get your mineral fix by biting into a hunk of potassium.
As for Methyl-Cobalamin for Vitamin B12, it's available from a company named Life Extension, which offers a wide range of nutritional materials. I have no connection whatever with the company, but believe it would be of interest to many of the nutrition-geeks on this thread.
Interesting and fun discussion here.
Can you add food colouring? Soylent Red, Yellow and Green?
I'd be interested if you had seriously pulled this off, but I find myself sceptical of the possibility. Surely human nutritional requirements are complex and require a huge variety of trace elements that can only come from eating complex oodstuffs?
I have the utmost respect for skepticism. You’re right. Human nutritional requirements are complex, but finite. The list may be shorter than you expected, and I see no reason they have to come from food, which is mostly made of things that you don’t need. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essential_nutrient.
I would dye it a golden color like Honey – so people watching me drink it would want to try it too!
It might look like piss.
Or beer!
Think OPTIMISTIC, man.
Yeah, and if you're anything like me, the "complex foodstuffs" are things like chicken wings and cheeseburgers, so it could only stand to help.
Really? You used Wikipedia as your source?? Here I was, actuall yinterested in what you were saying. Nevermind, carry on. smh
Your ignorance is showing.
Some Kiddo used wikipedia to invent a new way of diagnosing pancreatic cancer 100 times more efficiënt, 28 times faster and 30 times less expensive than with currect technology. Wikipedia's a very good source to start.
"100 times more efficient." That's interesting, but means what? Link?
I'm sure what he meant to say was:
^ "National Academy of Sciences. Institute of Medicine. Food and Nutrition Board. Dietary Guidance: DRI Tables". US Department of Agriculture, National Agricultural Library and National Academy of Sciences, Institute of Medicine, Food and Nutrition Board. October 2009. http://fnic.nal.usda.gov/nal_display/index.php?info_center=4&tax_level=3&tax_subject=256&topic_id=1342&level3_id=5140.
^ Pauling, L. (1986). How to Live Longer and Feel Better. New York NY 10019: Avon Books Inc. ISBN 0-380-70289-4. Page 24.
^ J D Kopple and M E Swendseid (May 1975). "Evidence that histidine is an essential amino acid in normal and chronically uremic man.". J Clin Invest. 55 (5): 881–891. doi:10.1172/JCI108016. PMC 301830. PMID 1123426.
^ "National Academy of Sciences. Institute of Medicine. Food and Nutrition Board. Dietary Reference Intakes: Elements". US Department of Agriculture, National Agricultural Library and National Academy of Sciences, Institute of Medicine, Food and Nutrition Board. October 2009. http://www.iom.edu/Global/News%20Announcements/~/media/48FAAA2FD9E74D95BBDA2236E7387B49.ashx.
^ R. Bruce Martin "Metal Ion Toxicity" in Encyclopedia of Inorganic Chemistry, Robert H. Crabtree (Ed), John Wiley & Sons, 2006. doi:10.1002/0470862106.ia136
Although actually he was giving information for you to read, not citing a source. And for the record, you don't cite Wikipedia as a source because you don't cite ANY encyclopedia as a source. It's not the original source.
Nutritional requirements are a lot simpler than you realize. When you speak of complexity you seem to be referring to a natural source of nutrition as opposed to a raw, refined source. An example would be the complexity of trace elements found in sea salt as opposed to purified table salt, or the trace elements and minerals found in a fresh orange as opposed to the purified ascorbic acid found in Vitamin C.
It shouldn't be too difficult to collate enough information to form a list of all essential and non essential trace elements in foods and then design a formula that incorporates balanced amounts of each in a daily diet.
Soylent green is people.
I was waiting for this reference I love that movie
Do you add fiber to Soylent? How does this affect your defecation?
Yes it has fiber. Everything except the fiber is absorbed in to my bloodstream so I poop very little.
This part makes me sad.
WHEN WILL I READ NOVELS?
This actually concerns me. Your gut flora are extremely beneficial, and I wonder if you're doing enough to feed them and keep them alive and healthy. You might consider talking to a respected gastroenterologist about this. I would also worry about muscle weakness when you go for days or weeks at a time without exercising your intestines or sphincter. The last thing you want is a weak sphincter.
Exercise is essential for the intestines and bowel – and unless the drink has enzymes, probiotics, AND far more bulk, the intestines would become atrophied – I am very confused about that part – and the fact that many can't take Vitamin D at all!
No one is addressing the part where Vitamin D can HURT to KILL some – those with lupus and sarcoidosis among them – ask Bernie Mac and others like me…
Vit D can hurt to kill some? What do you mean?
I can imagine this concern, but if you look at the sustainability of this diet: I am one who doesn't necessarily enjoy eating or food in general except from a good meal from time to time (once a week?). If I were to implement this diet, which I'm contemplating once I get hold of the formula, I'd probably still eat meals from time to time, feeding the flora and exercising the smooth muscules. I agree on talking to a gasteroenterologist, even if simply for confirmation/security instead of speculating to the outcome. However I do think, as a base diet, this certainly has potential. Rob already mentioned the social implications of going out for a meal with friends (and by extension probably family, collegues etc), which might ease some of your concerns further. – CFB
That's telling – regular bowel movements of the correct consistency are crucial for good bowel health and infrequent defecation and long transit times are key risk factors in bowel cancers.
But isn't that only important in the sense that they have to maintain that good health to deal with the things we shove into them in general from our food choices? Is the bowel system, aside from the small intestine which gets nutrients into the blood stream (if I remember 9th grade health class correctly), essentially only there to remove the bad bits? If you then eliminate the bad bits… haven't you eliminated the need to maintain them for doing so?
Denny, you are essentially right. However, you must realize that the bacteria are already there, and if not fed are very likely to migrate into the body tissue. As for the bowels: they need exercise or they will experience atrophy, muscule shrinking/death. You'll still need the whole package (intestinal lining, smooth muscule, bacteria, internal sphincters etc.) for proper absorbtion. Only IV nutrition might be able to eliminate the need for the intestines. On a final note: our body produces and uses liters of enzymes every day and most of the fluids are resorbed in the large intestine so we'll still need that, too.
Well then that's the end of the German shiza movie industry.
Are you kidding? This would make life a lot easier for those people. Being able to fast safely and being able to eat on a specific schedule (instead of whenever you are hungry) would be very helpful for people that need to schedule and coordinate their bowel movements.
General question about the framing of this: I don't know anything about the history of nutrition and am wondering how we have come up with the list on Wikipedia? Presumably nutrition is as subject to revision and new discoveries as any other aspect of biological science. Is it not therefore possible that not all the stuff we need in food (or perhaps more particularly, the combinations we need it in) has been identified yet?
I am no nutrition expert (in fact I am surprised by how little I know about nutrition), but couldn't eating only Soylent totally wipe out your gut flora? (some bacteria will no longer be needed and die)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gut_flora
I just asked him the exact same question.
You could always find a rich source of lactobacillus acidophilus and add that to the Soylent. Even keeping a separate supply of Yakult or something similar in the fridge would be a good way of keeping the level of gut flora at a nominal level.
I would think that their presence would only be relevant if you were to return to eating regular foods, as their main funciton is the digestion and decomposition of whatever mass is resting in your intestines. So, while you would only be able to sustain a very minute population of them (since you're eating so little), you would be able to sustain them on the basis that you are in fact eating a minute amount of food. Even if they were hypothetically wiped out by your lack of consuption, you wouldn't need them anyhow because of said lack.
Beyond that, if you were to return to eating 'regular' foods, you would be able to repopulate your gut flora because it is through food that the bacteria find their way to your tummy. You aren't born with them, after all.
To be fair, I also know nothing about nutrition or biology, but that all seems logical.
Alex,
This may seem logical, but that doesn't make it correct.
We are only now beginning to know how much we don't know about our gut flora and why its important.
While aiding infood digestion is arguably the main function, gut flora also playa role in our immune system, and likelya few other things too. Many people have cured themselves of certain diseases – mainly auto-immune type, like Crohns, by chaning their gut flora (anf often their diet too). people are also doing helminthic therapy (google it) – infecting themselves with hookworms and whipworm, which actually stimulate our immune system.
So, viewing our body as a vast (bio)chemical reactor is, technically, correct. But that doesn't mean that we should feed it purified chemicals. Certain vitamins, like B12, need certain adjuncts (intrinsic factor) to be absorbed, miss these and you miss the nutrient. There is lots we don't know about nutrition, and quite likely some "essential" nutrients that we have not yet identified.
And some deficiencies take a long time, or even a generation, to show up – the famous example being Pottenger's Cats.
The success of many people in curing infections like C. diffilcile using fecal transplants shows what gut flora can do – we will have to wait and see how he does without them.
Great comment, thanks!
The gut bacteria would not "know" or discern the difference between traditional food and Soylent… after all it has the same chemical composition. The only affect would may be due to the absence of roughage or bulk. Rob has said in the comments that he has added fibre to the mix, but Soylent is still liquid, and does not have roughage or bulk… food fibres… so this affects the mechanics of how the food travels through the digestive tract, which could affect bacteria that normally grow on the food bolus rather than on the gut wall.
The lack of roughage in Soylent is of concern as well from a general gut health point of view, and could affect colon cancer risk.
From what I understand, the colon cancer risk is due to the length of time that rubbish (undigested food, aka toxic waste products) sits in your colon for, and the roughage helps protect against this because it speeds up the passage of material through the bowel so that waste is excreted in a timely manner. If only essential vitamins and minerals are being consumed then there are no toxic waste products that you need to flush out of the system ASAP, and thus no risk of colon cancer.
The body is constantly producing toxic byproducts itself through metabolic pathways. What you eat isn't the only source of wastes.
What's "toxic" about undigested food?
For what it's worth, I take a probiotic now.
In the long run I don't see how it would be all that much of a concern anyhow.
You can buy probiotics in supplement form can you not? I guess long term other essentials could be added. carbs, proteins and fats could be added to the mixture in small amounts. Phytonutrients etc. could be added in the form of a small amount of powdered greens?
Scientific testing will, hopefully, help to identify these things.
Perhaps you should go back to just eating regular foods for a week or two after a while and see how you cope switching back to normal foods. The same kind of cognitive and blood tests can be used to see how things change.
This is very interesting. Where can I get more information about this and is there a forum were everyone can collaborate?
I just want to try it. when U will post some guide, what and how to prepare?
Have you noticed your tongue becoming smooth? I've heard people who go for long periods with no solid food start to get a smoother tongue.
If you go back to regular food anytime soon I'd be interested in hearing about how ou find the taste of it.
Vitamin B12 deficiency. You also get anemia. It's not good to miss essential nutrients – that's why they are called essential. Take a multivitamin, or just eat a balanced diet.
Very interesting article! I'd be interested in trying this myself. I do juice fasts from time to time and am curious to see how similar/different the two methods are.
Speaking of juice fasts, I assume you've got some kind of a juicer. My son uses a VitaMix 5200 (about ten horsepower) blender to grind up both vegetables and fruits to make highly-concentrated smoothies which he lives on for days at a time. They usually taste great. It keeps all the fiber, which of course a juicr does not. He eats an occasional large porterhouse steak to make sure he has a balanced diet.
The VitaMix 5200 is the standard model and comes with cookbooks and a CD instruction program and a 7-year warranty. This is one hell of a kitchen tool for all kinds of apllications. In a recent TV demo, they zipped up a glass full of fruits, poured this out, rinsed the jug and then dropped in… a cellphone. Blended the hell out of it. One of these days, I'm going to see how well it blends a coconut.
They're pricey… list around $500, but if you research well on rhe web (and keep an eye on Costco for a special) you can land one for $400 or a little under. Any serious foodie (I'm one) will be delighted with what can be done with this thing. Happy cooking
I find it wonderful that it's working out for you. I suppose most of what you're feeling comes from not eating, actually, although getting your vitamins in the right proportion certainly makes a lot of good. I've been through several experiments with diets, most of them resorting to simplifying the diet, and the best so far (for me) is 80/10/10 by Dr Graham. The book will resonate a lot, since you're doing something very similar: you're cutting away the crap we're used to eat and you're having a healthy dose of exercise. BTW, just as I believe it's the not eating that is doing you the best, I also believe the exercise is key to your diet. So keep up with that
As a next step you might consider polyphasic sleep. It's another order of magnitude improvement. Not only do you get to be awake 22h/day, you also get a memory that's unbeatable. The only down side of polyphasic sleep is that you can't socially sleep, it requires the discipline to keep it up as clockwork. But think of what you could achieve.
I did some research/experimentation with sleep. Sleep is important in forming memories, and (I don't remember the article, but) increased periods of sleep lead to improved reaction time. You may have better short term memories, but I'm not sure about your long ter memory.
I'm also not sure this diet is sustainable. Your fat can store sime vitamins and calories, which might get released during this experiment. So any test for this would have to take as long as your fat could hold out for.
You successfully do polyphasic huh! Since my experimenting in it Ive been able to sleep almost instantly nearly anywhere… But was not able to totally transition to it. How many weeks did it take before you were no longer 'a zombie' waking refreshed every time?
Thank you for your post and for your endeavors with Soylent.
I live with a horrible chronic illness (Crohn's and associated maladies) and am on a ridiculous variety of medications (immune suppressants and cortical steroids).
Food is my enemy. Since I've had so many surgeries (bowel resections and other horrors) and taken these meds for such a long time, the side effects are becoming worse than the disease itself.
Every time I eat, I am gambling. Sometime the result is an obstructed bowel, which feels like an alien is trying to claw it's way out of my abdomen. Sometimes other horrible things happen that I won't describe.
I'd love to try Soylent. It would be absolutely fabulous to stop eating altogether. Would you be willing to sell me a few days worth? I am in Canada. (Eh!)
Hello. I also have Crohn's and have experimented with foods. I have been looking for a healthy liquid based item to replenish my body while I am having a flare up. Through many trials and unsuccessful products, I began looking on the web for other solutions.
I found two powder mixtures that work well for me: Vega One (which is found online or at a whole foods type place), the other is Inflacleanse (found online). But, they are rather expensive. Soylent seems like the way to go if you figure out the proper proportions for your body. Let me know how it goes. I would love to try finding the proper amounts of each item with you.
Eliminate wheat from your diet. Modern wheat is not the wheat our grandfathers ate. It has become so hybridized (for production results) that it is basically a GM (non)food now and is extremely harmful to the body. Read "Wheat Belly" by preventative cardiologist, Dr. William Davis.
Good book and well explained. Wheat is the cause of many ailments (I believe). It's high in acid and increases blood sugar, mental fog and a host of other things.
I find this sentence on your pre-"Soylent" diet the most revealing of your post: "Typically I would cook eggs for breakfast, eat out for lunch, and cook a quesadilla, pasta, or a burger for dinner."
It seems to me you went from one extreme (a lack of concern for proper nutrition) to another extreme (a controlled study of essential nutrients in the human diet and their effect on your overall wellbeing).
Essentially, you started "eating" right and exercising and are now amazed at the results. Medical professionals and dieticians have been advocating exactly the kind of lifestyle change you underwent for decades now (just not to the same scientific precision) because of exactly the same benefits you've listed.
It's not hard to find thousands of testimonials online of people who changed their diet and lifestyle and report back exactly the same benefits that you've experience (youthful energy, clearer skin, whiter teeth, deep sleep yet waking up feeling refreshed, etc.).
My only concern with your experiment is that I would worry about the long term effects of getting the proportions wrong on trace and ultratrace nutrients.
So, while I commend your effort to focus on your health and wellbeing, I would stop short of saying you've found a revolutionary replacement for solid food that will cure world hunger and ignite the creative energies of American housewifes.
Before my diet was pretty typical of someone in my demographic, it’s basically how all my friends eat. I watched it a little, avoiding all fast food, eating kale, avoiding trans fats, and exercising a couple times a week. I was not extremely unhealthy, but average. I am fully conscious of the fact that a tightly controlled healthy traditional diet probably has essentially the same effects. My point was it’s a pain. It’s possible to be healthy, but it’s a massive expenditure of time, money, and self control. I just want to make it easy, and cheap. I resent that health is so strongly correlated with socioeconomic class. Maybe there are adverse long term effects, maybe the long term effects are positive. I think it’s worth testing.
I completely agree with you here. It's one of the saddest things about healthiness. It really irritates me how health is associated with class. I see it all the time in the UK.
Obesity is strongly correlated with poverty in the west.
Could also be the people that give a S*** about themselves and their health are the same that give a S*** about busting their A** to make money instead of playing WoW and watching TV.
That's a pretty bullshit conclusion you've drawn there, Todd – "People who are poor, overweight and/or unhealthy only have their own laziness to blame".
Cooking healthy meals from scratch takes time, energy and money that many people with families to feed and/or low paying jobs just don't have. If your wife gets home from her Walmart job at 6:00 and your family of four has to be fed before you go off to your night job stocking supermarket shelves at 10:00, you don't have time or energy for either WoW or calibrating carb:protein ratios.
Ever notice how it's the boxes of white pasta and HFCS breakfast cereal that are "buy 2, get 1 free" at the supermarket, and not the quinoa or the kale? There's a LOT more to obesity and poor health than giving a S*** or busting A***.
I have a feeling you've never had to feed 2 kids on a patchwork of part-time jobs.
You seem upset Todd.
Well, I give a S*** about myself and my health, my diet is very strict and based on optimal healthiness and I do everything from scratch, I am slim and in a very good shape for my age. I also play a lot of wow and watch tv instead of busting my a** to make a lot of money, so where does that leave me in your theory? I choose not to spend a fortune for stuff I don't need and for expensive living quarters, instead I spend that time doing things I enjoy, whether it be computer games, tv&books, creating volunteer projects with my friends or traveling low budget.
Healthiness and good values have nothing to do with excessive consumerism and killing yourself with stress, on the contrary. I'm happy to be in your "low class" to mess up your demographics.
Grow up.
I am a single mom, I work full time(as well as run a home based business), go to school full time all while trying to raise a healthy vibrant 5 year old.( I am not a teen mother either, my husband and I lost our first child and he never came too even after our second daughter’s birth so now I am on my own) I don't play any video games, I don't go out unless it’s for my daughter( museums , zoo, etc. Which we generally scope out the free days) and we rarely eat out. I work, go to school, play with my daughter and go to sleep. I make 2 meals every night (dinner and if no leftovers whatever it is I will take for lunch). We don’t keep candy\soda in our house. However it is very hard to keep healthy food (non-processed) around all the time because it is so expensive. I try to keep fresh fruit in a bowl for my daughter to grab and carrots/celery/raisins etc. as snack for her to grab but even that is not always possible. I know exactly what is required to eat healthy and I care a great deal about that. It does not mean I can achieve it even working as hard as I do. There are times I go hungry or eat the cheap unhealthy food so that the fresh healthy (expensive) items are there for my daughter to eat instead. (Also I make $0.30 too much for government assistance….so no the government does not pay for my food)
I have been reading everything on this site to see if this is something realistic for me (so that I can spend more on making a healthy food diet for my daughter since this is definantly nothing I would subject on her with such little testing)
Please try to use your brain before you criticize an entire group of people and group them as one.
Perhaps the intersection is education. Educated people tend to have more money and tend to know more about how to be healthy. Maybe?
That was pretty much my thought, and it's the same thought I have about people who report miracle benefits from Paleo, vegan, or anything other extreme diet. Before their transformation, they were eating like crap.
I wasn't eating like crap, at least not according to the general recommendations, I was eating healthy, low fat meat and dair, with brown pasta, brown rice, brown bread, "healthy" cereals for breakfast etc. You get the point. Yet as I moved into my late 20's / early 30's, it got harder and harder to maintain my weight, and the intolerance I'd had of one or two things had ballooned into full blown IBS which was getting increasingly worse as time went on.
After I switched to paleo and dropped the grains, the difference was amazing to the point that I was once again able to eat most of the foods which would previously have triggered IBS flare ups.
Would it have been the same had I gone vegetarian, one that actually just eats vegetables? Possibly, but the point was that at that time I had no idea that it was the gluten and similar proteins in the grains that was causing my intolerence of other foods.
So it's certainly not just about dropping the McDonalds and pizza, at least not for everyone.
Additionally, I would think that the average person doesn't regulate their meals that scientifically either, and the majority of us fluxuate on our intake of trace nutrients (probably to a pretty extreme degree). So, I think that if anything this represents a healthier, and probably safer alternative to most diets.
Based on the naysayers I'm figuring the following would need adjustment.
- cultures/probiotic (which rob has stated he's already added)
- Boron
As far as protein is concerned, meat that is produced today is mostly fed feed that is composed of grass/hay, straw, corn & soy. It could be argued that an animals specific metabolic functions provide certain amino acids that humans may not be able to consume, but it seems that the main components necessary are met.
It is entirely possible to get all essential amino acids (that is, those we can't manufacture in vivo) from plant sources.
What's the different in this stuff and a comerical meal replacer, like Ensure?
Ensure is used typically used to all people and patients to gain weight rather then loose it's used a lot in hospitals and aged care facilities as a desert to ensure the clients and or patients gain weight and not actually use it, it doesn't give you as much of a fuller feeling,
This is incorrect. Ensure Plus is for gaining wait. Ensure is for maintaining weight. Glucerna is for diabetics (low sugar). The product line ranges from 200 calories per bottle to 350 calories per bottle. You need ~4 per day to meet your daily nutritional needs which comes out to 800 – 1400 calories per day if you stick to that.
[...] http://robrhinehart.com/?p=298 [...]
I would be interested to hear how this works without the carbohydrates. If you have given up on the positive aspects of eating them then I don't see any reason not to go fullly ketogenic.
I think that would be a very bad idea. The brain can only metabolize glucose for energy. Clinicians seem to be mostly in agreement that a fully ketogenic diet is unhealthy and dangerous.
The brain can metabolize ketones for energy perfectly fine, and the body has no trouble synthesizing as much glucose as it needs. I stuck to a <20g carb diet for around 6 months with no ill effect
I have also been on a fully ketogenic diet, less than twenty carbs per day. I felt better and was less hungry so I ate less. No ill effects for me either. If people would want to lose weight with this, I would recommend adding a keto product as well as the original. Doctors also recommend keto for diabetics.
I think this statement shows that you don't clearly understand all that is involved in nutrition yet. There isn't any substantial evidence currently that keto is more damaging than a higher/typical carbohydrate diet.
You probably have a much higher risk with your diet versus keto (which is a well studied subject).
After reading The Paleo Diet and The Paleo Solution by Dr. Loren Cordain and Robb Wolfe, respectively, I learned that the only organ in the body that requires carbs (more specifically glucose) is the brain. Sufficient amounts of glucose can be produced through gluconeogenesis in the liver and are not required to be ingested.
Rob please, read the good comments that have been made here on Ketogenic diet. They are correct.
I'd love to experiment myself with a low-carb/hi-fat version of Soylent.
The waste product of glucose metabolism is carbon dioxide, something that the body disposes of VERY easily. The waste product of protein and fat metabolism is ammonia, uric acid (among other things), both of which are toxic to the body. Little or no carb. paleo diets put extra stress on your organs. I suspect that in 20 years when the hospitals are full of "new" cancer patients as a result of these unbalanced protein/fat high diets, everyone will be talking about high carb diets again, which will once again be – wrong. It’s all about balance. With that said, this 'diet' I suspect removes this issue as he is using (if I understand correctly) the direct Aminos rather than the raw protein source itself. From what I see, it’s very balanced, and you’ve got me VERY curious.
So a diet that make you healthier by every measurable marker puts more stress on your organs? Really?
People thrive on low carb or even no carb diets… definately more than they thrived on high carb diets.
Without carbs and the body getting so much protein is a precursor to osteoporosis. The protein causes a slightly more acidic blood therefore in order to neutralize, it pulls from the bones calcium and other minerals which cannot be offset by simply taking more of. See The China Study.
I was wondering if anyone here knows exactly what differences there are in nutritional requirements for women, and whether there would be interest for a female version.
personally I'd be interested in seeing a female version of this, and hearing about how it works for someone to try it (I'd try it, but I'm one of those poor people he mentioned when discussing how not everyone can afford to buy random stuff, and of course I haven't got the knowledge to do it without instructions anyhow). I know some nutritional needs of women are quite different from men (and possibly quite different depending on one's age also?), so I'd like to know how Soylent would be different if it were intended for the ladies.
to the OP: my boyfriend is throwing-up sick all the time and has trouble eating any kind of food, and when he DOES eat food it's whatever nonsense we can afford, so he also suffers from malnutrition… this sort of thing sounds like it'd be amazing! The idea of having energy to move about, having any kind of memory, and being able to do things again… for both me and him it sounds almost too good to be possible! But I know it would theoretically be possible if we ever magically got rich and could get personal trainers and buy things from whole foods etc. Since that is unlikely to happen we've just been muddling along however… but something like your creation could really help him! Currently he drinks a lot of Ensure-type drinks (the most expensive grocery item we get) and this sounds similar, but better, maybe? I like that you were able to balance it for your personal needs… I'm pretty sure the needs of someone who is 5'8" and weighs 115 lbs (and who really wants to gain weight) are different from yours so info on how to change up the formula would be great to have as well!
Ensure helps people gain weight due to its high levels of carbs and sugar but lacks many needed nutrients. It sounds like your boyfriend needs more nutrients but is not able to absorb them from food due to his body rejecting the food. It might be helpful to blend up raw vegetables, fruits, yogurts and other items for him to drink. It will be easier on his digestive tract and help him absorbed the nutrients he needs.
Tell me, what is the benefit of drinking this that I cannot aquire from a typical multivitamin? Obviously multivitamins don't contain much carbs, fat or protien.
Most multivitamins I looked at are also typically lacking in essential nutrients like Vitamin D, phosphorous, calcium, iron, potassium, and others.
Most does not mean all… most multivitamins are a joke (centrum, one a day, etc), but you can absolutely find them with all these ingrediants – short of carbs/protein/fats. Check mercola.com multivitamins, or Garden for life I believe. Also Athletic Greens and similar drinks have been around for a while, the big difference appears to be the full dose carbs/fats/proteins in this drink.
My question exactly: it seems most of the chemical work here that can go wrong is in the vitamins and minerals. Why not just pop a pill for that portion, and down some oligosaccharides, protein powder, and olive oil mixed in water?
I understand that a major goal here is time-efficiency, and this would speed things up.
Note: I suspect I'm completely ignorant of something important here, I just really want to know what. I'm tempted to turn my lunches at work into just this (with a bit more research first).
Love this experiment, the reasoning, and the experimentalism (and the writing too!). I hope you end up turning out a great quality, low cost product eventually. If nothing else, health conscious students everywhere will be lucking out.
I have yet to find a complete multi. Like Rob, I make my own from the raw products – in my "kitchen chemestry set". I've just never tried to replace food… I'm VERY interested in this test…
Rob, you mention in the overview that you decided to add 3 extra lbs to your weight in the fourth week (after a precipitious loss of 16 lbs in 21 days!).
How did you do this? Did you keep the same proportions of everything and just increase your total Soylent intake? Did you increase macronutrients without increasing micronutrient content?
Thanks, and good luck!
Correct, I simply increased my fat and carbohydrate intake.
If you miss something that is not obvious at first look (for example proteins) your health may be in danger. So better leave this kind of experiments. And eat like all people do
how could you think "proteins" aren't obvious?? The only thing I'd think he could possibly have missed is something we need in an amazingly tiny amount, like gold. Did you read this and come away thinking he was a total idiot who did no research, for some weird reason? Or are you just against people not eating food?
people are forgetful dont tell me youve never forgetten anything. thank kind of mistake could have horrible effects.
define "all people"… I eat mostly "raw" – though that's tough to do with my job that has me travel. People look at me like I'm from outer space when they see that I drink unrefrigerated raw milk and eggs, but my blood work is that of a man 1/2 my age (as is my fact, people regularly accuse me of lying when I tell them my age). So if "all people" means eating cooked food, no, I'm not all… this "experiment' Intrigues me
Very Interesting idea. I hope to see a product come out of this, as many like me would be interested in more efficient eating.
one question: from what I know, men don't need iron unless you lose blood (which some men do via blood letting). Am I misinformed.
Of course men need iron. They make new blood cells, don’t they? Women of menstruating age need more, but everyone needs it.
I’m a little amazed and very worried by how many people are willing to try a diet that’s had no studies to support it, that isn’t even described, just on the say-so of a stranger.I would think this was an Onion article (“housewives”? Running pi miles? Forgot iron–oops?) if it were funnier.
Agreed. This is a dangerous thing to advocate.
Most of the claims you are making can be attributed to something other than "not eating" (you're still eating).
Really, do you know how many products are out there that can and might kill you, but people eat them because the FDA said they are "okay"? The FDA is a political group nothing more. I'd trust my own body to discover the results much sooner buying something off of the shelf that someone else made and the FDA has approved. Seriously, look at the ingredients in this. It's food – just in liquid form. The question is, is it complete? Is there something missing? is it actually better than eating food? Maybe, maybe not, but it's not gonna kill ya like say… aspartame will, and that's in damn near everything, but it's okay, the FDA said it's good for you… think for yourself. I like the idea of weekly blood tests to see what’s really happening, but they can be expensive… Do it or don't do it by your own decision – be your own person.
Let's be honest, people make amazingly bad choices in life when it comes to a lot of things. How many things do people do that are dangerous and without thought? McDonalds & others have built an industry around this mindset. Great ideas like this (and yes, I agree it's great for many reasons) didn't always start in a lab, but with an idea and a person willing to go through the effort. Now that he's exposed himself to it, let's figure out how to get it going so we can all be better from it. Now let's use our collective knowledge and mindset, help him refine and make it more effective, and see what it's like.
Little is known about the long-term in a lot of things, but we have to try.
Georgia Tech has a pi mile. That's where he ran, it isn't a joke.
Men do need iron, but at much lower levels than women. True, we are constantly making red blood cells, but the iron for that is largly recycled from old ones, with a small regular intake from diet to make up for the small losses (through cuts, tiny amounts in feces, etc.). There is also a reasonable store inside the body.
I was also surprised at how quickly iron seemed to help. Certainly in a healthy male, three days is not even close to enough time to become anaemic. I would suggest mentioning anything like this to your family physician/general practitioner – rapid iron loss is suggestive of bleeding (internal/into the bowels). Although it is possible there is some other function for iron in the diet, such as assisting nutrient absorption, that I am unaware of.
As an example of how complex the interaction is between different elements of a diet is, iron's absorption is also affected by your vitamin C consumption. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6940487 It's unclear how much vitamin C would be needed in a liquid diet like this one – certainly more than the RDA which is the minimum needed to prevent scurvy on a regular diet. I'm concerned Rob's mixture may not have enough vitamin C – it's easy to have a subclinical deprivation that doesn't (yet) result in actual scurvy because your body is consuming its reserves. A month of this diet is not enough to tell what the long term effects will be – malnutrition could set in after a year or more.
I absolutely second others' concerns about gut flora, too. Just taking a macrobiotic bacteria supplement like yakult is not enough to ensure all of your diverse populations of gut flora are healthy. Gut flora are a key factor in the health of your immune system. The general low frequency of bowel movements raises concerns about colon cancer etc. Humans (except babies) are not designed for a liquid diet.
The experimenter's ignorance about ketogenic diets is worrying too. You are confusing ketosis with ketoacidosis. Ketogenic diets are actually used as a treatment for conditions such as epilepsy – they certainly aren't impossible to maintain. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2367001/ Some cultures such as the Inuit eat a very low carbohydrate diet as standard their entire lives. As previous commenters have pointed out, many western people now have personal experience of low carb, paleo diets etc with no ill effects over 6 months plus. My own family eats such a diet.
Lastly, what about the pleasure of eating solid food? Some people on this comment board act as if food and sleep are a waste of time and undesirable. But they are a pleasurable and necessary part of being human. If you want to save time, what do you want to save the time for? If you're unsatisfied with your life, there are probably deeper problems at root. In an otherwise healthy person, this obsession with completely altering and controlling your diet sounds kinda like the onset of an eating disorder to be honest ('I eat socially' etc).
I want to join this experiment, please let me know if u need someone else to test this on
Hey Rob! Would it be possible for you to post a more detailed description of what exactly you put into Soylent and how you made the drink from those ingredients? A nice how-to guide would be incredibly appreciated by a lot of people, I think.
Yes please!!!!!!!
I don't beleive this fiction; you have not given even close to the details required from someone who has actually done this. No mention of protein or carbohydrate sources, no details AT ALL (and no replies to comments asking for it) of the composition of the drink, etc.
Be very sceptical people I think this is entirely made up…
I concur with your scepticism although if he is doing this it would probably be best not to give too much information incase anyone copying is harmed by it.
It's an interesting concept, but not wholly a new one. Most "very low calorie diets" have the same concept, but wrapped in a "chocolate shake" flavor. The execution here is much better than in standard diets though.
Food for thought.
Surely you were just lacking in one or more essential nutriants, and the benefits you feel/felt were a combination of having nutricianal deficit(s) reversed, as well as an invigoration from a subtle fasting? (you lost weight)
I have extream time constrainsts everyday for three months at a time, and something like this would be a godsend, not only for the time saved, but also the money, and the health implacations of sitting all day every day, during those months. I would love to try this out, and see for myself, if it can replace meals. If I can loose the extra 70lbs I'm carrying around, great, if not, whatever, atleast i'm saving time/money.
This project assumes that our understanding of human nutritional requirements is complete – Soylent is designed to the current "dietary spec."
If there's one dietary statement I'm very confident in making, it is that our understanding of long-term human dietary needs will be very different in 100 years than it is today. "Good bacteria" is just the beginning of what remains to be understood.
If I'm right, then Soylent will prove deficient (compared to a balanced diet of whole foods and fermented foods) in ways we can't yet understand.
I agree with what you're saying but of course the recipe could be expanded to include these findings as they emerge. For example, some "good bacteria" are available as supplements already: Lactobacillus Acidophilus and Bifidus Acidophilus. If I were to replicate this stuff I'd certainly add some of these into the mix.
I think that the premise this is based on, even if it is assumed, is a sound one. People need food because of the various fuels it provides, not because of it's carrying vessel (e.g. the food itself). While it is likely that our bodies have adapted to eating food for nutrients, I would argue that doesn't make it the end-all be-all of nutrient intake. You seem to be ignoring the results of the experiment.
I would love to try this out. Any way a recipe list/list of where you purchased your suppliments could be shared?
Have you considered getting in touch with the Nutrition Sciences department of a University about this? It would be an excellent way to get a whole bunch of test subjects and I'd wager there are a great many PhD students who would kill to run a study like this one.
my thoughts exactly… better yet, go to school for biology, and this could be your thesis… could make you famous
Be careful with sending out the formula. If people start noticing negative side effects, they're going to be asking you for help/advice. Depending on how many people want to do this (including myself), you may find yourself overwhelmed!
I think a well written disclaimer would be the thing to do.
or, unfortunately, sued. Make sure somehow you protect yourself, just in case
This is bogus on soooo many levels, I shudder to think of all the people this guy is going to f'up if he seriously reveals some hokey formula and people actually try to use this. Might even kill a few.
Just consider this: http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/organic/essam.html
This guy says his concoction is "chemicals" and that by experimentation he can get it right: "your body knows what it needs more of"… Well, nowhere does he ever mention essential amino acids. Hello?? I am not sure what he classifies as "chemicals" but the best way to get these essential amino acids in your system is to allow your system what it has taken, oh, say, 3 million years to evolve to do: ingest plants and other animals and break them down to the "chemicals" it needs. Without getting all persnickety about "toxins". Sure, modern prepared foods are way out of line with an occasional brontosaurus burger and mostly lots of yams, clams, and lambs… but all you need to do is eat to live, not live to eat; and with that level of scrutiny and some exercise, most people do just fine.
Besides that, like, seriously, does anyone really think that their gastrointestinal track will be really really happy put at rest like this? It sometimes happens to people in the hospital and it is an absolute NIGHTMARE even in a hospital with all the intravenous nutrition you could want at your disposal to keep someone who cannot eat food adequately nutritionally maintained to avoid wasting.
Years (scratch that – decades ) ago, this type of unsubstantiated hoccum used to fill various "ladies journals" like Readers' Digest, and various magazines. Now, I don't see them all that often. I am not sure if it is because our scientific literacy has gone up, or what, but people used to make all kinds of claims about boosting you memory to phenomenal levels, staying alert, losing weight effortlessly, learning in your sleep, having energy reserves, etc… Hoccum.
Bottom line: "If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is."
I appreciate your skepticism, but I get every essential amino acid. See the follow up post here: http://robrhinehart.com/?p=424. Given obesity rates I don’t think most people do not have the level of scrutiny you mention.
I do believe in this ! You can try me. . .
Algernon
Hi! Came here after a friend shared your project. Some of what you're observing reminded me of the venerable Hacker's Diet, and I thought you might enjoy having a look-see. http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/www/hackdiet.html
Good luck! I'm not ready to give up on food for its pleasures yet, but I do love the idea that there are options.
I am very interested in exclusive supplementary diets. May I please have the formula?
Long term effect: Not being able to consume regular food.
Mentioned above already by Shabda, but in fairly cryptic way: why the quite dark joke? Soylent Green is 1973 American movie where, in a dystopian 2020 New York, food is manufactured using human bodies. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_Green)
Actually in the book “Make Room! Make Room!” it is not made of people, but soya and lentil. The movie changed many aspects of the book.
Score Rob!
I'm fairly certain that most (if not all) of us got the Soylent-green joke… Seriously Tom, it's like watching a movie and the director assumes we are idiots and explains the joke in the next scene… Don't mean to pick on you, but joke was quietly keeping the smile on my fact until I made it to this post… ugh
i would like to recomend one rotate this in a four day on and off again binge diet rotation scheme with real food… i dont know a lot about science but God is telling me in my cockles that it is a fine idea…
Wow, I think this is great. I love what you've done (and also how courteous you are to doubters in the comments). I am not skeptical about the dietary aspect of this, but I am curious about this statement: "…is easy to transport, cheap and environmentally friendly to produce, contains no pesticides, hormones, or preservatives". How are these products produced, I wonder? If you are consuming whey protein, that is a dairy product, and therefore part of the animal food industry… which is both environmentally unsound as well as inhumane, no? (Yes I'm an annoying vegan.) Also I don't think it would be free of hormones – dairy cows are sometimes given hormones to increase production (unless you are using organic whey, but you are going for cheapness, so I doubt it) - nor would I want to assume that its free of pesticides (what are cows fed?). And all the other products you use to make Soylent – how are they manufactured? I want to believe this is as you say – environmentally sound, etc, but I'd be very interested if you can explain where these products come from and the carbon footprint involved. Thank you :) – beccy
Hi Beccy, good points. I think the whey protein is quite isolated so any amount of hormone or pesticide would be negligible. Though I hope to have the equipment soon to analyze it and know for sure. I know whey requires the use of cows, but milking them seems pretty sustainable. We’ve been milking cows for a long time. In fact not milking cows seems inhumane. They get rather uncomfortable if not milked. I think most of the environmental impact of the cattle industry comes from meat cows. The protein could also come from soy or brown rice but that is much more expensive. For now I’m more concerned with practical methods of reduction than complete elimination. I’ll focus on the ingredients that have significant volume: carbs and fat. Maltodextrin is enzymatically extracted from any starch. In the united states it comes from corn. However, it could also be made from rice or wheat for example. Olive oil is not required in large volumes and it comes from, well, olives. This is no panacea, but I am quite confident it constitutes a reduction in consumption and environmental impact compared to traditional foodstuffs.
Thanks for your response Rob. Re the dairy factor – the cows only get uncomfortable if not milked because they have been separated from their calves who should be drinking their milk… The human dependence on a product that evolved very specifically for baby cows is definitely worth questioning. Also the cows are kept almost continually pregnant, and their calves removed at 3 days of age (as fellow mammals they have the same biochemical processes that would make this traumatic). They are milked by machines for 4 hours a day and often kept in cramped concrete barns.. It's not really much of a life. Generally I find the industrialisation of animals to be a sad state of affairs. But then, I also find capitalism to be so. I personally would fork out extra $ on non-animal protein. Just speaking up for the cows here. Still, I really appreciate what you are doing
.
Humans are the only species on the planet that continue to drink milk beyond infancy and the only species to drink the milk of another species (apart from rare fosterings born out of survival instincts). Also it would be interesting to compare the carbon footprint of producing, extracting and refining the nutrients, vitamins and minerals in this diet as opposed to panting, growing, harvesting, packaging, cooking, consuming and disposing of standard food produce.
trouble is that non-animal proteins are incomplete. This is of course not to say that one could not "make" a complete protein by mixing free-form aminos (which I mistakenly thought Rob was doing). Far and away, the two most complete protein sources for humans are Whey and egg Albumen. It may not be nice to the cows and chickens, but we didn't choose to be omnivores, we were born that way. I think it better to milk the cow than kill it, but I suppose it depends on the farmer.
BTW, the Whey that I use regularly is "One World Whey" Google it, it's the only non-denatured whey, which means that they take raw milk, and then do NOT heat it to make the powder. BTW bccy, they claim that the cows are free range, grass-fed, non-hormone, and humanely treated (but to be clear, I've never visited the farm).
The complete vs incomplete protein myths have long been shattered. Look into info on this. Plants are complete proteins, it all depends on how you define it. And if using traditional mainstream definitions, then numerous plant foods still fit the bill, ex, quinoa, etc.
Just waying in on the Whey debate… How about substituting it with Hemp Powder? Its the richest plant source of protein and has a lot more amino acids & fiber included, may be able to reduce the quantities of the others just by adding hemp.
I think this is a fabulous idea by the way, if i were in the US i would definately sign up for a trial. I have tried something similar before but i dont have the knowledge to pull off a complete food abstinance. I think it would be a great product to aid in many ailments. A lot of which are caused by bad dietary habits that no one really realises. If you could create variations for men, women, aged, menopausal, pregnant, sporting, obese, even people who may need extra nutrients because they smoke for example.
(my tone sounds much harsher than intended! please take my questions as curiosity rather than interrogation
Didnt seem harsh at all to me.
[...] Interesting interlude: “I haven’t eaten a bite of food in 30 days, and it’s changed my life.” [...]
Hey fellow data man, could you track your sleep schedule too and comment on whether you sleep more/less?
You invented Slim-Fast shakes!
This is the same thing as Ensure Plus:
http://ensure.com/products/ensure-plus
You're not far off… EnsurePlus + a high quality multivitamin with micro nuitriants included (mercola, garden for life, etc)
[...] interesting thing I came across teh interwebz today is the Soylent. Looks like that dystopian world in the future where everyone consumes tiny pills for meals is well [...]
Your assumption that the "slump" on day 3 was due to the absence of iron in the first soylent is incorrect. Your iron stores would not be depleted after only three days of it being absent from your diet. and even if it was, the half life of a red blood cell is 120 days, and haematopoiesis takes 8 days (from proerythrocyte to RBC in circulation.) So, no.
It seems you went from a quite unhealthy diet of high saturated fat and high glycemic index foods (quesadilla, pasta, burger, eggs) to a healthier diet more in line with your physiologic needs. Would you have acheived the same benefits with a healthier diet consisting mainly of fruits, vegetables, seeds, nuts, whole unaltered cereals and healthy protein sources?
Furthermore, the idea that you are detaching yourself from food-systems is fallacious – you are growing more dependent on the industrial agricultural complex providing you with purified/extracted forms of nutrients. The processed items that you are using in Soylent are just as energetically expensive to produce, and may have the same impact on the environment if not worse than the original foodstuffs.
You are also assuming that we only eat to sustain ourselves. However, there is increasing evidence that what we eat must also sustain the human microbiome that contributes to human health – a collection of microorganisms that colonize your bowels. As strange as this might sound, it is probably of some importance that your diet includes some "probiotic" organisms. you might want to have some yougurt every now and then.
Interesting points, but let's remember the point of his "diet" is: fast, cheap, and easy. He's not trying to improve on traditional food, he's trying to replace it. Big difference. If he gets the recipe correct, he seems to have it. I too hate the burden of shopping for food, preparing food, and eating food. Sure I like to go out with friends from time to time, but like Rob, if I could do away with the shopping/preparing/eating of food, I would be MUCH happier.
Hi there,
I'm concerned about the environmental impact of such a diet. Highly processed food and nutrients are almost entirely fossil fuel dependent. Though you may think you're drinking a health beverage, if the plants from which those nutrients were extracted were fertilized with chemical fertilizers you would be ultimately eating fossil fuels.
Heh, " I'm concerned about the environmental impact of such a diet…" I, am not. Rob is but 1 in 6,973,738,433 people, and even with ten thousand (hunderd!) people doing exactly the same as he, the impact is zero. In fact: very many zeros!
Was the above a standard "Concern Troll"?
I assume her point was if this was used to cure world hunger as indicated in this thread.
please clarify. Did you mean the impact of the chemicals used in growing/producing the ingredients will have on the beverage, or the impact that making the beverage will have on the planet. Usually "environmental impact" means the impact that we have on the environment, but I suspect you mean the impact that environmental toxins (actually man-made) will have on the recipe. Yes? No?
What's the point of posting this without the ingredients? You think you'll make money by selling your recipe to weight watchers or something? WE DON'T BELIEVE YOU POST THE RECIPE AND LET'S ANALYSE YOUR THEORY.
Oh god please stop yelling you grumpy grumpy man. D:
As he said the ingredients are coming. This process is unfolding.
Here is the next section he has posted: http://robrhinehart.com/?p=424
I would like to participate in this experiment, i had always fantasized about a nutrient suppliment like this that could cover all aspects of nutrition but thought it too difficult to acknowledge all the trace compounds and elements in our system… But by god youve done it! i am a 17 year old in high school, and my only concern would be making sure to incorpirate anything extra i would need hormonally, since my body is still growing. i am 5'10" at 175, so so slightly overweight with an average build.
Hi Ian, for the record, 175 isn't necessaraly "over-weight" for your height. I am 5' 9" and 175… my body fat is 9.9%… no one is calling me fat
… or course, muscle weighs more than fat…
Could this be mixed with occasioanl solid food? I sometimes eat socially at restaurants.
I see that you listed Keratosis Pilaris, which is a condition I have and it is quite embarrassing. What do you think removed it in your case?
Hey Drew, it’s not completely gone but is much better. I don’t know if it was the improved diet, more exercise, or weight loss. I do know that I tried several creams and remedies in the past and this had much more of a noticeable effect.
This is one reason I just signed up to try Soylent! I can't seem to get rid of mine either and am curious.
Just wanted to let you know that many people have had success with applying Coconut Oil on their KP to help reduce it.
Seems like you have an undiagnosed food intolerance. Your pre-experiment sounds just like a lot of people before they figure out what is making them so tired and ruining their skin. Once they figure that out and eliminate it, they are just like you week 3-4, while still eating food.
I don't know if this question was already asked, but would there be any harmful body reaction when you go from food to soylent and then back to food? Besides your body going back to what it originally was, would anything bad happen?
Not in my experience. I eat regular meals once or twice a week now and there have been no ill effects.
What about atrophy of the digestive system?
And think how many animals have not had to die because of you!
[...] или, например, эксперимент: [...]
One important ingredient you should include in your mixture is organic sulfur, commonly known as MSM (methylsulfonylmethane)
Like!
I wonder how it affected your leanbodymass (muscle).
My muscle mass has fared quite well. I’m not sure if I’ve gained muscle or it just looks better because I’ve lost fat. I kept visual records and the improvement is noticeable, but I’m not going to post a shirtless picture of myself on the internet so you’ll just have to trust me for now.
Georgis Your comment is awaiting moderation.
February 22, 2013 at 5:32 pm
What happens to mouth enzymes like Ptylin? What happens when the intestinal villi atrophy from lack of stuff to digest? What happens to intestinal micrflora and the GI immune function? What about trace elements and enzymes that we don't know about, but are esential to our body. What about long term effect on brain cells?
I'm curious about the enzymes too. What happens to the enzymes that are supposed to be breaking food down?
Without sharing the ingredients, this is irreproducible, and scientifically invalid, and thus pure and unadulterated bullshit.
Wow the internet trolls are in full force
so are the internet idiots who believe everything they read.
the idea has merit. and as a fellow engineer, I'm sure he's researched pretty well. That said, he IS NOT attempting to submit this to a peer-reviewed journal. Also, 30 days on ANY diet is not going to hurt the average person. However, this idea serves me as a meal replacement, potentially as high as 2/3 of my intake. I also like the potential of this as a survival/camping/hiking product.
Regarding the questions about stuff like Ensure or Boost. Those products are just sugary shakes. They are not a meal replacement or nutritional supplement at all. You’re better off buying sweet chocolate milk. Read the label!
True, but hopefully there will be better all-in-one liquid product to buy in the future!
That defeats the purpose of not spending so much money a month on groceries!
Ensure/Boost are meal replacements. They are designed to give to people who can't eat solid food for one reason or another (often due to surgery and such).
Over the days now, with this consumption, what are your stools like?
This is a pretty important aspect of any diet, I'd suppose, and not just on an entertainment level but health and all effects included.
[...] How I Stopped Eating Food : Mostly Harmless – [...]
oh come on, this is nothing else than nutrison etc. just go in the store and buy it. thousands of ill people live of things like that…
[...] I haven’t eaten a bite of food in 30 days, and it’s changed my life. [...] I call it ‘Soylent’. At the time I didn’t know if it was going to kill me or give me superpowers. [...] I feel like the six million dollar man. My physique has noticeably improved [...] My resting heart rate is lower [...] I used to run less than a mile at the gym, now I can run 7. I have more energy than I know what to do with. On day 4 I caught myself balancing on the curb and jumping on and off the sidewalk when crossing the street like I used to do when I was a kid. People gave me strange looks but I just smiled back. [...] My mental performance is also higher. [...] I sleep better, wake up more refreshed and alert and never feel drowsy during the day. I still drink coffee occasionally, but I no longer need it, which is nice. [...] This is one case and it’s only been a month, so it’s early, but I’m certainly not stopping now. [How I Stopped Eating Food sur RobRhinehart.com] [...]
I don't know if you have yet, but when you do eat out or have the occasional drink do you feel worse since you're body has ingested these toxins in a while?
[...] that interested in food. I was inspired to write this piece after seeing Rob Rhinehart’s post “How I Stopped Eating Food” (via MetaFilter, which, true to form, has an interesting discussion about this and other [...]
I would love to live on Soylent. I hate having to waste my life on cooking etc. But I would eat raw vegetables (maybe raw fish too) for enzymes, to make the intestines work and generally to avoid becoming Mr Hyde. Because deficiency is extremely harmful, and you may detect/realize it (a bit) too late. And you must poop too.
[...] How I Stopped Eating Food [Rob Rhinehart] [...]
[...] http://robrhinehart.com/?p=298 [...]
This is nothing new actually. These fad diets come and go and there's always a few idiots who follow. I've read about tons of meal replacement drinks diets so this is nothing new. Our bodies are not made to digest liquids only. This is beyond dangerous on the long term.
Hello,
I am very interested and am alreayd email you but got no responded,I am would like give a try.May I have the sample of the product ?
Thanks
>
Someone named Rob Rhinehart has greatly reduced the time and money he spends on food by drinking something he thinks contains all essential nutrients. Someone pointed out to him that he needs bacteria, which he doesn’t have. (No doubt several types of bacteria are best.) He doesn’t realize that Vitamin K has several forms. I suspect he’s getting too little omega-3. This reminds me of a man who greatly reduced how much he slept by sleeping 15 minutes every 3 hours. It didn’t work out well for him (his creativity vanished and he became bored and unhappy). In Rhinehart’s case, I can’t predict what will happen so it’s fascinating. When something goes wrong, however, I’ll be surprised if he can figure out what caused the problem.
http://blog.sethroberts.net/2013/03/01/assorted-links-245/
his olive oil to fish oil ratio should be such that his omega 6: omega 3 ration is around 2:1. The average american's diet is about 10:1
where do we get it
If you were eating the Standard American Diet (SAD) which it seems you were, then you were definitely deficient in nutrients.
As to cholesterol, LDL and HDL, etc., they are not cholesterol, they are lipoprotiens for the purpose of carrying cholesterol molecules throughout the body. There is much evidence that oxidized LDL is a cause of arterial plaque and heart disease. There is only one cholesterol molecule and cholesterol is necessary for life. It's in every cell of your body and your body produces most of it. You get very little from your diet. Studies have found that old people (not youngsters like you) who have high cholesterol levels (above 200, but below 350) are healthier and live longer than old people with cholesterol levels below 160.
Calories do count. You can eat too many calories of any macronutrient and gain weight. However, again, studies have found that eating carbohydrates (even whole grains) will more likely cause weight gain than eating good, natural saturated fats.
Finally, this sounds like a really good experiment. Keep up the good work. It will be interesting how you are doing in a year. Hopefully, quite well. Myself, I would miss the flavor of rare, pasture-raised beef steak (no grains, no hormones, no anti-biotics). Mmm-Mmm!
P.S. In a reply to a comment, above, (Amie and Crohn's disease) I recommended eliminating wheat from one's diet totally. It has become a frankenfood due to intensive hybridization. Dr. William Davis, a preventative cardiologist, explains this in his book "Wheat Belly," or go to wheatbellyblog and see some of the questions and answers.
Thank you for the informative comment. I did not know that about cholesterol and have lately been debating if I should include more in the mixture. If you could link me to a resource giving evidence that the body can produce all the cholesterol it needs on its own I would much appreciate it. The book looks interesting as well, I think I’ll give it a read.
p.s. I’m a fan of beef myself! With the money I’ve saved I hope to buy some good grass fed beef at the local farmers’ market one weekend. Soylent is about 95% of my meals now, meaning I can make the ones I do eat very enjoyable.
Here's a link about your body producing its own cholesterol:
http://health.howstuffworks.com/diseases-conditions/cardiovascular/cholesterol/difference-between-ldl-and-hdl-cholesterol1.htm
This is an excellent article on the benefits of cholesterol:
http://www.westonaprice.org/cardiovascular-disease/benefits-of-high-cholesterol?qh=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%3D%3D
This is another good article on cholesterol and also explains why much of our dietary cholesterol cannot be absorbed and is pass on in our stool.
http://eatingacademy.com/cholesterol-2/the-straight-dope-on-cholesterol-part-ix
Have fun reading.
Rob,
also check out The Paleo Diet by Dr. Loren Cordain and/or The Paleo Solution by Robb Wolfe. The former is more sciencey, which I appreciated as a fellow engineer. Robb studied under Dr. Cordain. Lots of good info regarding nutrition in those books (obviously advocating the Paleo way of eating, but still). Lots of stuff about lipoproteins, omega 3 importance, gluconeogenesis (the body's ability to synthesize glucose for the brain, which is the only organ that "needs" carbs), blood sugar balance, etc. I'm looking forward to making some soylent as a 2/3 meal replacement. I love its potential as a survival/hiking/camping food too!
[...] mai albi, părul mai gros, iar de mătreață am scăpat,” spune Rheinhart, a cărui poveste o puteți citi pe îndelete aici. De asemenea, autorul susține că performanța intelectuală s-a îmbunătățit și ea, că [...]
your results seem really similar to someone doing a juice fast, or even just a no food fast. I'd be interested to read months 2-5.
Interesting hypothesis, however a similar experiment has been conducted on our food supply for over a century based on similar reductionist theories. That is that by only providing a living thing with basic nutritional elements outside the whole of the environment an organism can survive. Just as plants can grow and live on basic fertilizers, it seems they lose fundamental nutritional value. The flaw in your theory is that you assume that we understand all of the human nutritional means and we can synthesize these needs.
I have been on an opposite approach using ancestral diet fundamentals relying on our foods being raised naturally. In this way the basic foods are grown in environments suited to provide the food all its needs, and thus provide our nutritional needs. Animals raised in pastured conditions without the addition of hormones, grains, or medications, seafood caught in the wild rather than in confined pens and fed unnatural nutrients, and plants raised without the addition of synthetic chemicals would better provide our nutritional needs without us having to understand the underlying nutritional components. In other words, nature working as nature intended.
The other issue missing from your theory is the social component, also necessary for healthy living. Meals are institutions distilling food knowledge and social protocols that humans have assimilated over the eons. Scientifically, a synthetic concoction may be able to satisfy nutritional needs, but what of the social costs of removing meals from the human experience? A meal is meant to be a celebration, giving thanks for the bounties of life and sharing the daily experiences. It is one of the most fundamental rituals of human living that teach us how to interact as a society.
I still eat socially, and enjoy it thoroughly. However, I was eating most of my meals by myself, from cheap and convenient foods, which was unhealthy. I appreciate good food, I just choose to consume soylent about 95% of the time now.
Also while your premise is intuitive, there has been no evidence that organic food is healthier than conventional food: http://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/organic-food-no-more-nutritious-than-conventionally-grown-food-201209055264. Most processed food had little to no nutritional value to begin with. Food processing does not destroy any healthy nutrients, though some are mildly reduced: http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/Data/retn5/retn5_tbl.pdf
Why would an ancestral diet be preferable? Do we use ancestral means of medicine, sanitation, or transportation? Today people are much taller, healthier and longer lived on average than primitives. After we understand the fundamental principles technology can be used to vastly improve our quality of life. It seemed food had been left behind. Perhaps I am missing an essential nutrient that we were not aware of. That is why I am testing. I’m certainly not forming the conclusion that I am not, but the evidence so far is clear. The body is pretty robust as well, one can live on milk and potatoes for decades. While perhaps not ideal, I think this is certainly better than the average diet.
Rob,
I'm all for Soylent, and while your Harvard link states that organic is not necessarily healthier than traditional, a read through The Paleo Diet will quickly having you buy into grass-fed meats and wild caught fish. The premise is that grains and their proteins, such as gluten, are not preferred by the body, often even rejected like Ciliac's disease, and that most of us have simply built up a tolerance to them as we can with so many things in our lives (I develop or lose a tolerance to dogs/cats based on my exposure). But these negative traits are passed along through the meat if the animal is fed grains too, which are unnatural for that animal to eat (cows don't eat corn in a corn field). The human body is adaptive for sure. But agriculture has been great for us as a species, though it does not provide the perfect model for personal health. Grains are practically devoid of nutrition, simply being a storable, cheap vehicle for calories.
Thank-You!!! It has annoyed me for some time all the “eat what the cavemen ate” Bull $hit. I don’t want to die at 20 like they did (actually, being 50 looks like I missed that bus). My doctor says that he is embarrassed to do my blood work because it’s nearly perfect and better than his, and people regularly confuse me for a 29 year old… AI eat organic just to avoid the pesticides. Maybe they do not cause us harm, but since they do not help, I figure I’d rather forgo them. As for the “grains are bad” crowd, I eat the traditional high carb, med protein, low fat diet, and always have. The difference is I do not trust the agribusiness, and so buy old grails, sprouted from organic farms. I eat raw whenever possible (yes, including eggs, milk, fish, etc…). With that, I am NOT afraid of embracing modern science. My cupboard looks like a chemistry set. I take BCAA’s before and after workouts. I tale a 2-1 AAKG/OKG mix to fuel growth hormone. I use creative ribose to hydrate my muscle cells. My vitamin supplement is mixed by yours truly out of more than a dozen bottles. I have the energy of a 20 year old, and as mentioned, the blood to show for it. Yes, I juice raw veggies, and eat whole grains, and unadulterated meats, but I am not Amish… my head isn’t stuck in the 18th century (no offence intended to that religion, I just have always wondered why they chose to draw the line in the sand in that century as opposed to any other… just as I wonder why today’s fad dieters are choosing to set their diet millennia further back). BTW, anyone who thinks that cavemen didn’t eat tubers and grains isn’t thinking clearly… proteins can run faster than veggies…
As someone with a number of food allergies, this sounds very interesting to me. I'm lactose-intolerant, and I'm also allergic to a variety of foods, including mushrooms, coconut, chocolate, berries, tea, and wine. Consequently, I tend to eat the same thing every day–it's just easier. Soylent would certainly make things even easier for me, but I'm concerned that it may contain some of the chemicals that make me sick. For example, berries, tea and wine all contain tannin, which causes me to have migraines. How does your formula address common food allergies?
I have not tested enough with people with food allergies but I don’t think an allergy to an essential nutrient could have entered the gene pool. Tannin is not present. Unless one is allergic to one of the non-essential extras any food allergy should be non-reactive. The only doubt is perhaps the effect of whey protein on the lactose intolerant but whey isolate is devoid of lactose. I could replace this with an alternative source of amino acids as well.
Not really an allergy, but there's phenylketonuria.
Phenylketonuria is a rare defect in which the body is unable to break down phenylalanine. A buildup of phenylalanine in the body can cause irreparable damage. I'm sure there's a way to make Soylent suitable for phenylketonurics, but it might take some work.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0002150/
I am allergic to dairy. I've tried whey and it put me in the ER. Therefore, I would like to try Soylent, just without the whey protein in it. I could replace it with my own vegan protein powder mix.
How about your excretion，dude？ For me that's the last thing I can't figure out
I am a graduate student major in psychology. As far as i know, the sense of hunger is cause not only by ghrelin and leptin, but also some profound psychological factors such as eating time and eating clue. sometimes people feel hungery not because their body need food.
[...] http://robrhinehart.com/?p=298 [...]
Hello,I really want to have a try, I love what you've done, but i wonder could it use to solve hunger?
[...] Man Eats Only A Chemical Concoction Instead Of Food [...]
I signed up for this a while ago, but got no response from you. Are you done taking volunteers, or were you simply swamped at the time?
Do you enjoy constant diarrhea and love the sensation of peeing out of your butt? Just buy Soylet today, 3 easy installments of $9.99. But wait, there's more: if you act now you can enjoy lifelong benefits of stock investment opportunities in adult diaper companies.
Damn, fuckin awesome dude! i'd be willing to try this as well. I'd like to hear how you go bout mixing and knowing which powders to use, how much of it, etc. One question though___what would happen to our internal organs, in the long run, as they stop functioning the typical way? such as stomach, liver, intestines, or even your jaw or tongue.
How universal is this formula? I would imagine, proportionally, the body's requirement of many of these ingredients will very according to a number of factors, such as age, lifestyle, environmental conditions, along with a host of genetic factors.
I suppose the tests you are carrying out are largely intended to identify this, but I would be interested to know what degree of variation you are expecting.
I actually did a switch like this with my roommate a couple years ago. I went with pre-packaged meal replacement drinks (Ensure/Boost) and he went with a custom mixture as you did. I chose Ensure/Boost because I didn't want to have to spend time preparing anything and he chose a custom mix because he wanted to tweak it to exactly what he wanted.
Ensure has a range of products from 200 calories per bottle to 350 calories per bottle. They contain everything your body needs to survive (it is what they give to people who *can't* eat solid foods). They keep well (~6 month shelf life). They come in a number of flavors. They are far easier than preparing a concoction and require no dishes (not even a glass).
I did a 2 month stint on Ensure and water only followed by bloodwork with the only negative side effect being lack of fiber, which I resolved by supplamenting with fiber tablets (which taste like candy by the way, even though they are pure fiber). I now do something similar to you in that I use Ensure as my staple and eat as a form of entertainment only, not as a means of survival. This usually results in one meal every day or two depending on what else I have going on and who I am with.
Originally I picked a flavor I liked and stuck with it but I found that I ended up disliking the flavor due to the repetition. Having 5 flavors to choose from with Ensure results in my cycling through them and never getting "sick of" any one flavor. I think for long term (I'm past 2 years now) you really have to consider the "sick of it" factor that is difficult to resolve with a custom drink.
Micah that is very interesting. Do you just drink more on more active days since you cant crank up the protein carb mix?
Hello Micah, I am curious, did you experience similar benefits to what Rob has described getting from Soylent when you started this Ensure/Boost diet?
I'd be very interested in any insight you'd be willing to share on your results because I'm now looking at making my own custom drink and Ensure would probably be easier, if more expensive.
Has anyone thought of the implications of this experiment in regards to world hunger? Maybe it isn't the ideal diet, but it's enough to keep a lot of people from dying.
This is an excellent idea. I'm very curious, however, how the Soylent diet would affect an individuals microbiome. The microbial community in our gut plays an imporant role in our digestive and immune systems, and our diet in turn affects microbial community composition.
Any thoughts?
Wow, lots of hate here.
Honestly, I see this simply as a no-nonsense diet. Most diets try to cram all the essentials into a palatable and user-friendly system that sounds nice because the practitioner can say to his or her mates "I just eat more chicken and beans and I don't have to change much else!". What you have done is cut through the rubbish and concocted a mixture of the essentials – the good things we should be getting from our food.
As it is your body on which you are performing this experiment, I gather you have done so under plenty of consult from your physician, just as anyone else should if he or she were to try this experiment on his or her own self.
As for the "missing pieces" that everyone seems to be concerned with, I reckon that regular tracking would help you identify where your potion is varying from what is understood to be necessary for nutritional sustenance.
Great article, Rob! I have for some time been wondering how feasible this would actually be. Excited to see what you make of it!
Best regards,
EVO
It would be interesting to try this. I am in Canada, I don't know whether or not the medical labs will do these tests for me.
I am scared of getting hooked and reliant on it though, frankly.
Don't you think you should be adding gelatin powder to this? There was some study on how collagen was increased a lot in mice if they are fed gelatin. That would help people who are not in their 20s, as people don't produce as much collagen after a while.
That brings a new idea: instead of a drink, make it a jelly!
Not sure if anyone has asked this already, but how is your pooping? Did you incorporate some sort of fibre source into soylent?
Read the article.
Great article!
I have built a list of all the ingredients…want to trial it and can get just over two weeks worth of everything for about £70…obviously this would come down with bulk purchasing.
Is there any chance of dropping me this list of where to get the ingredients? £70 for over 2 weeks sounds good to me…
I second Johnny, but can you ship it overseas?
this is awesome, also, you are awesome. also, I live in SF and would love to try soylent. i can't afford testing/etc but i would love to try to go Soylent only for a week.
Count me it! lol It just reminded me of the movie Soylent Green tho
Interesting read. I read an interview with you on Vice, and you mentioned you were having trouble preparing it in advance. If this is because it spoils, potentially you could try autoclaving it.
What you're doing is very familiar for any microbiologist who has had to prepare nutrient media for growing microbes, and sterilising the solution inside an appropriate bottle (eg. Schott bottle) with an autoclave is how we make sure our nutrient media lasts on the shelf.
You'll experience a change in the composition of your drink though, as some of the protein would get denatured, etc.
I don't understand what the big deal is. Hospitals have a solution they give patients in an IV in place of food. Roger Ebert who can no longer eat because of mouth cancer has a solution he takes. I say, been there, done that.
Synthetic nourishment already exists, but this is the first time I've ever seen anyone talk seriously about it as a thing that average people could use in a non-medically-required context. It should be a bigger field of study than it currently is. There should already be a product on the market like this, but there are only nutritritionally incomplete weight-loss shakes. The nature of healthy food really needs to be demystified. So why not raise the question with an attention-grabbing experiment?
As a type 1 diabetic I am very interested in your product. I work 60 plus hours a week and food has become something I have to do, not something I plan to enjoy. If I can be of any kind of help with your project feel free to contact me, I would defiantly be available for any kind of study.
This is fascinating, I'm leary of too good to be true senarios but I'm intrigued enough to do due diligence. I don't have a weight problem but I am an incredibly picky eater. This would be really helpful for at least two meals a day. I'm looking forward to hearing more.
Fascinating! Given that your only cosumming essential nutrients, does this mean that your bowel movements are now reduced to zero? I'd love to know the implications
I do feel that many of the benefits you've discussed (more energy, weight loss, etc) are a normal consequence of moving from a meat-oriented diet to a vegetarian diet. I had the same experience. Otherwise, awesome work! Will be sending this to my nutritionist.
I want to try this!
Only in 2013 would you find someone who actually thinks that eating food is a 'leisure activity', and that food is 'so inefficient' (?). Every other organism on the planet eats food to survive, real food that is made of other real living things. We are no exception. I also believe that a lot of the products and powders you use to make your drink are expensive to produce, and require lots of wasteful energy to harvest them from the environment. It's much more efficient to get the nutrients directly from the source, rather than from some byproduct of some industrial process that has taken time and energy from other people to produce. What about all the waste that is generated in the production of all your nearly pure chemicals? Where did your sources get the resources to extract them? From the Earth, and that compounds whatever waste is generated by just harvesting the specific plant or material necessary for the production of that specific chemical. The problem with food today is not really that hard. In fact it is incredibly obvious: there are too many people on this planet. That's pretty much it; too many people consuming too many things. Solving world hunger might mean reducing the amount of people on the planet. Whether this is accomplished peacefully or not is a different matter.
So let me get this right Dave; you think that synthetic nutrition is a less appealing solution to world hunger than genocide? That seems to be what you're suggesting… (By the way, I agree the world is overpopulated, but that problem isn't going anywhere, so we've got to learn to deal with it.)
Also, your argument pointing to the hidden cost of these raw ingredients doesn't stand up. If the ingredients don't cost much to buy, then they didn't cost much to produce; that's simple economics. If they are a by-product of some larger more costly process, then what Rob is essentially doing is re-using waste products; no harm there I believe.
No other organism has achieved the level of control over the terms of their own existence as we have. I don't quite see the point of naturalistic arguments in this kind of context. Every other organism on the planet doesn't wear trousers; does that mean we should cast off our legwear and return to nature?
Spoken as someone who I am guessing does not face significant health problems on a daily basis.
For people with digestive disease (like me), food is NOT a leisure activity. It is a painful chore that I would just as soon not do if I had the option. I have not enjoyed food in over a decade. It's impossible to when all it does is make you ill. I've tried elimination diets. None have worked. The body requires protein (amino acids), but my body rejects nearly all protein sources (food allergies). That's just a single example of the difficulties I (and people like me) face. Therefore, something like Soylent (although not necessarily Soylent) is a viable option to end suffering or at least greatly reduce it.
I'm in Rob. As a fellow engineer, I see the efficiency here, and trust in your research for the formula. As an ardent, although not strict, supporter of the paleo way of eating, I see potential here based on the nutritional science I learned while researching that
I find it a bit curious that there is no mention of people from medical fields studying him. While, as someone with a background in mathematics, I do agree that scientists in the fields of biology, psychology, nutrition, etc. can tend to employ very poor statistical methods for various reasons (e.g. complexity of the study, lack of education in statistical theory), I am absolutely certain that some bloodwork and "this is how I feel" reports are not sufficient metrics for such a massive change in nutrition. Surely it wouldn't be difficult to find top researchers who are willing to monitor and study your health for a publishable paper?
Have you done any sort of system dynamics for the manufacturing of the various ingredients vs standard farming/cooking/etc? It would be interesting to see if this is the real potential of an industrialized system, provided its sustainable. $150/mo says as much anyway. Way to go.
I think such a formula could take a lifetime to perfect, you never know the long-term implications of certain deficiencies, be it flavanoids, anti-oxidants, friendly bacteria or countless other things. However, adding a glass of vegetable/fruit juice daily should keep things fine.
Sounds amazing. I might not give up on food completely, but most of the time I have to eat alone which is pretty boring and a waste of time. I deleted breakfast from my schedule completely, but your drink sounds like a healthy alternative. Had the same idea as a child, but no one ever picked up on it.
What you describe are the typical signs of fasting. Loads of energy, less sleep needed, clearer thinking, better blood results, clearer skin etc. I have been doing juice/protein fasts for years on and off and it is excatly that. You can not stay on this forever and believe me, it is antisocial and not for families. Soylent as a name well chosen, wonder if everybody here knows where the name comes from… I strongly believe this is NO solution for food crises though, as the products you use also need to come from somewhere and ANY nutritionist would laugh at you for believing you could mimic synthetically ALL the nutrients and minerals the body needs. We still only scratch on the surface of understanding the complicated system of nutrition. You can survive and you get a high from the fasting and cleaning, saving your body energy you would normally use for digestion — for a while. It is exhilarating but believe me, after months on it, you get more than just cravings…Been there, done that…and I still love it, so that I do it again and again. Also falls right into place with the beneficial effects of intermittent fasting and calorie restriction to extend life expectancy.
Rob has stated OVER AND OVER this is a test for him, and that Soylent need not be the ONLY food source someone tries. As a fellow person who fasts (from all food but water) regularly and who has done juice fasts I can attest to the "faster's high." However, if you check out the documentary Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead (http://www.fatsickandnearlydead.com/) you will see Rob is definitely not the first person to subsist on a no-chewing diet for a long period of time. Joe Cross did a juice fast for 90 days I believe before he got back into "regular food consumption." Soylent could be a fantastic way for people to kick start weight loss healthily and get their body somewhere they are happy with. You and I both know abstinance fasting and juice fasting help you eat healthier when you return to "food."
I think you have totally underestimated the importance of the physiological and biochemical effects of chewing, for example in the production of amylase and the stimulating effects it has on other digestive secretions. While you may only think that chewing is necessary if something needs 'digesting', there is more to it than that. Take a look at vitamin B12 – the absorption chemistry of this is extremely complex, and I'm sure that a good MD will warn you that it is very difficult to maintain or boost B12 levels just by popping pills. Take a look at http://www.active-b12.com/content/vitamin-b12-absorption to get some idea of how complex the reactions are and where saliva fits into the picture. This is just one 'simple' essential vitamin but a very complex absorption/transportation system.
AFAIK a complete study of the effects of abstaining from chewing has never been done – you will make an ideal guinea pig!
That name for you concoction is genius!
Rob, have you noticed any change to your dental health, other than the whitening of your teeth?
[...] http://robrhinehart.com/?p=298 [...]
I'd love ton give this a try, any chance to get the recipe and providers? Thanks
I find this whole idea highly interesting, but i either have missed something or it's simply not listed. What of your thirst? I understand you say you drink your soylent with water, but from personal experiance, i am thirsty much more often than i am hungry. Do you simply drink more water? And you exercise intensely consistantly right? How are you implementing this in your exercise routine? I am highly intrigued by this topic and i am more inclined to listen or read what you have to say than simply dismiss it. I applaud what you have done so far.
I did a quick scan and it seems you have reduced a large amount of fibre from this diet (defecating infrequently). This should raise a red flag to anyone that has a complete understanding of how the gut was designed ,how it functions and what it's needs are. This reduction in the muscular function of moving waste is a very bad mistake.
Due to the large reduction in waste, the ability of the colon to move product will slowly atrophy to the point where, if not soon, at some point there is the strong possibility of doing serious damage to one of the prime purposes of the intestinal system and blockage could very likely become a consequence requiring medical intervention.
You can be guaranteed that if you drastically reduce a prime purpose of the colon there will be consequences that over the long term that will be serious.
Want a metaphor – think about a mechanism that allows you to be fully mobile without using you legs. Your leg muscels and the blood transport system in your legs will atrophy with quite serious consequences to you body's overall health that would require interventions of some sort to at least partially remedy the problems it would cause.
[...] Via: Mostly Harmless: [...]
While I find what the guy is doing fascinating and I support the general idea, I think it's very irresponsible to post some "amazing" results after just a month. The body is well able to survive on just water for a month without huge problems besides weight loss. In other words, you doing some type of diet for one month means nothing. In addition, it's mixed with running (which was not part of his lifestyle before?), which further blurrs the effects of the diet change to soylent.
I agree, Dimitar. If Rob wanted to be taken seriously, follow-up reports at regular intervals would be required to satisfy the skeptics.
If this were a scientifically controlled experiment, interim reports at 2, 3, 6, and 12 months would be part of the protocol laid out before the experiment began, and follow-up reports at years 2, 5, and 10 would likely be proposed options.
Hey, i was just wondering what the omega 3 too omega 6 ratio is in soylent.
From the research I have done it would seem for perfect health you would shoot for 1:1
You may find this article interesting
http://chriskresser.com/how-too-much-omega-6-and-not-enough-omega-3-is-making-us-sick
[...] out the interview on Vice, his original post describing the experiment that started it all, and the ingredients if you want to try it out [...]
I spotted a glitch in your hypothesis, You mentioned "What if I consumed only the raw ingredients the body uses for energy?'' and then later in your experiment when you realize the possible iron deficiency you add an iron supplement in your Soylent…why not take it by raw ingredients as you declared, like spinach, lentils etc. (eat them raw).
Haha this guy got it all wrong.. Raw ≠ uncooked.
Dude! I think your Soylent will be greatly procured by NASA & future human races that might have to migrate to other planets. You should patent your formula & creations asap! Even if its not yet tested against the many problems raised by users here, it does has alot of commercial values. Imagine armies fighting in desert for months, astronauts manning the space station, starvation in poor countries…
Let us hope this will never be used to feed armies fighting in deserts for months….
Er… I doubt not that your Soylent might be good for health, but… rather than praising its qualities, i'd like to highlight the fact that you stopped eating in restaurants or fastfoods, and stopped eating junkfood in general. Plus you started running and going to the gym.
I reckon there's a little part of placebo effect, along with all the benefits you get when you stop eating too much fat. You didn't invent anything new, actually ^^
Don't think there's anything surprising in the results of your experiment. But, personally, since I really like eating good and healthy food, for I deeply enjoy the huge variety of tastes it provides, I wouldn't try your Soylent-based diet for, say, more than a week…. sorry
you should read the rest of the posts before commenting…he was already running….just not as far…
[...] Rob’s Blog [...]
Exercising is kinda skewing your results here. When I haven't been running in a while I can maybe get 3-6 miles in. After a few weeks of running 2-3 times a week I could get up to 10. Maybe 12 if I were really feeling good. I'd say my diet isn't great & I'm chubby but I do enjoy running when I'm in the mood.
Wow thats great…! I have to run every day for 2 months to be able to run 10 straight…I live in Canada so that is km,s not miles and I am not chubby…I eat well and it costs me a fortune…you have a olympic constitution…
How sad! You have chosen to remove one great joy from your life: the enjoyment of good food. This is one of life's simple pleasures, and you've tossed it along with the baby and the bathwater. I am an endurance athlete who takes great care about what I eat, but I thoroughly enjoy eating food food. And I don't know what you were preparing that took up so much of your time — I eat well for a fraction of your several hours a day. This sounds like a very interesting option, but not a permanent one.
Not everyone loves food and eating. I find it an annoyance unless I'm eating socially, which I do once or twice a week. Rob isn't saying "never eat food". He's saying, "Here's a great alternative when you don't really want to go to the trouble to eat anyway."
If you like to eat, go for it.
i would like to see your FDA approval for this study… Else your already started recruitment may send you to jail.
the amount of non-fda approved items is staggering. watch tv for an hour, pause and look at the disclaimer. most things are not fda "approved".
[...] lives on chemical concoction, loves it How I Stopped Eating Food : Mostly Harmless Calls it soylent, cures many of his ailments. Like some kind of wonder drug/food. I certainly [...]
I am in the Navy and have been for the last 20 years and have always struggled with my weight and energy levels ( suprisingly it does not affect my fitness level). My wife and I currently stick to a pescatarian diet but my job as a Navy Drill instructor has me constantly on the go and rarely home so something like this could most likely be just what I am looking for. Have you started to formulate or sell a compound with all of the necesary ingredients so that someone may purchase it on line.
I will not say I read all of the post other people put but I did read about the ketogenic diet. Theoretically you could have less carbs for someone who was over weight, do you think you would do an experiment like this? I have been trying for months do drop about 30 pounds of 'obease' weight to get to a healthy average for my height, and I find it really hard to lose anything, a total of 5 pounds in about a month.
Rob would you consider making a low carb version of this for an experimental test?
On that same note I would also be very interested in eating nothing but Soylent for a month, then seeing the reaction my body had to not having it at all, going back on a "normal" diet.
You concept is so exciting! I have chronic arthritis and take a massive amount of medication including biologic injections to supress my immune system. For four years I have found eating completely distasteful, and force myself to consume "healthy food". Your idea sounds like a relief to someone like myself. I wish you much success and hope to see your product on shelves of my grocer soon!
[...] you recieved much criticism since posting about your experiment on your blog? At this point I think scepticism is completely reasonable. There isn’t a lot [...]
I am really intrigued by your product, but I am also very skeptical. I fear mostly the long-term effects of this diet. I'm not a biochemist, and this is why I'd like to see actual experts review this drink. Could "Soylent" replace entirely (and without health risks) a balanced diet of natural food? Could it be only a good diet supplement?
(English is not my first language, so pardon me if there are wrong terms)
Are you thinking of getting this approved by the FDA? I am in the medical field and have been thinking about how I can help those in less developed countries, and feel like this is a great option. It'd be more sanitary, cheaper, lower in calories, and healthier (at least so far). And since you went without food for a month, and haven't shown much adverse effects, I feel like getting volunteers for the study wouldn't be too hard.
This is really cool, and I've often thought that in 100 years this is what we'll be doing for the majority of our intake. It would certainly releive a lot of problems in our strained healthcare system.
Anyways, I work in natural product chemistry and my concern is that you may be placing too much faith in science. There are thousands and thousands of chemicals in our foods that we haven't identified and are quite likely essential to our health. I think your recipe is a step in the right direction, but is probably missing a lot of helpful chemicals. Have you thought about finding natural sources of these chemicals and just making a similar juice out of them? I don't meen this as a "All-Natural-freak" comment but rather to get those unidentified chemicals we have yet to discover.
While this all looks pretty awesome, and I really really hope you're onto something, but I have some concerns as well, from an evolutionary and microbiom perspective.
We're finding out more and more every day that our microbiome (you know, all the little guys inhabiting our gut and skin and crevices) is incredibly important in maintaining human health. We've co-evolved over centuries and longer with some of our bugs, with most people having roughly all the same species in our guts, regardless of geography, suggesting that they're pretty important. The gut microbiome thrives on the fact that…we eat food. So I'm wondering what's going to happen to yours now that you're taking a path never before seen in human evolutionary history. Especially considering how much the gut really does affect our health, even the vagus nerve, which travels all the way from the gut to the brain, plays a role in regulating emotion!
Of course, just because we evolved to do something one way doesn't mean that there aren't BETTER ways, it just means that, usually, the old way works best. I do hope this works, but keep an eye on yourself in the long run, people frequently have positive responses to almost any dietary change in the early stages.
[...] potential downside is cost. Rhinehart claims that he only spends $154.82 a month on Soylent. By contrast, a case of 24 eight-ounce cans of [...]
How do you emulsify the olive oil in the water + dry mix?
Do you just blend it and drink it real fast? Otherwise this wouldn't store well, and you'd have to mix it up every time…. For travel it would be interesting to have a dry form that doesn't involve the transport of liquid (olive oil). I did a similar thing with a solid energy cubes I made in ice cube trays with a solid fat (creamed coconut) as the base for long journeys a while back..
[...] potential downside is cost. Rhinehart claims that he only spends $154.82 a month on Soylent. By contrast, a case of 24 eight-ounce cans of [...]
[...] potential downside is cost. Rhinehart claims that he only spends $154.82 a month on Soylent. By contrast, a case of 24 eight-ounce cans of [...]
yeah I was anorexic for years and bulimic for years after. Sorry sweety this sounds like an other food issue. please seek help.
You've had mental disorders so everyone else does too? Sounds to me like you're projecting.
I am very curious and wish to make this my diet also. But I am not a chemist or a nutritionist. I am a High School student in New Zealand. How can I make this at home? Please reply.
feel free to respond via email.
This is fascinating. It's implications as a life-long food replacements might be a little more precarious, but as a method of breaking "food addiction" this is immediately useful. A Soylent-only diet for a few weeks to break hand-to-mouth habit and rid the body of the chemicals that come in highly processed garbage foods. Could be used thereafter as a regular meal replacement, the fixture in a diet also sprinkled with the occasional salad at home and meal out with friends. Soylent is food as fuel, and all dietary deviations from Soylent are treats. Simplicity is a beautiful thing! This really appeals to me! I'd love to contribute to the experiement and get my blood levels checked and all that!
ill be a test subject you can send it to me and ill pay ive been waiting for someone to finally to create a product with everything in it that will only take minutes out of my day to refuel.
Has anyone else noticed that rob's last post was a month ago? Where has he been? Is he still okay?
Dude you are utterly full of shit, an iron deficiency does not develop from two days of not eating iron. It takes months.
Ha yeah I noticed that too. I've fasted for a week before, and shorter periods of time on many occasions…never felt like my hemoglobin stopped working.
Just a thing to keep in mind: the food intake is just a part of the digestive sistem. There are toxins that need to be expeled and without a proper (I mean fiber and consistent) diet, your digestive track is only doing have of the job. I do like the idea of cheap and correct intake, but the system is more complex than that. In a couple of years with an atrophied stomach it may be too late to start thinking at the other implications.
There are many other trace amounts of nutritients in food. In any case, I like this idea. I hate the time it takes to cook, prepare, clean up each day and tend to do the least possible.
Haven't you just reinvented Complan?
http://www.complan.com/
But so much sugar!
Just tell me what I need to do without reading all this stuff
Hi, I wanted to ask, when you say you prepare it in the evening, does it mean you mix everything together and then just take a portion of it the next day and add water, or does it mean you need to keep the preprepared portions apart and then put it in the glass. Because mixed all together, I guess it would be easy to carry to work and I would save a large portion of my low-income wage.
[...] hermano Ernie me ha pasado un blog de un chico que habla sobre nutrición, con una idea loquísima (véase el título del post). Al igual que a él, a mi el tema también me gusta, quizás en parte [...]
I have two questions:
1) What are the implications of changing your diet partly to this kind of substance? i.e. eating only an evening snack, but using this to replace all other foods.
2) What does this actually cost per "meal"?
Would using this while also having one meal a day still have some of the positive effects, do you think?
Also, could extra vitamins be added? My medicine depleats vitamin B, and I hate taking the supplement; it has a weird after-taste.
By your own admission, you ate like crap beforehand and you wonder why you were listless and splotchty? Imagine what would happen if you had tried eating real food before this experiment!
Lol exactly.
While this 'solvent' sounds interesting, and will no doubt have plenty of morons willing to follow suit I'd have to pass as subbing the chemicals and crap in food with the chemicals used to strip these "raw" nutrients, and then compress them into an un-natural form …is just silly.
I do like the idea/concept, but I am just curious, wouldn’t you think NASA is working on this experiment for at least 20+ years?
NASA should have or know all the long-term results/answers….
Somebody tell me if I missed something? http://amzn.com/w/32KLUKHJSE4CQ
Perfect, thanks!
I'll have to reread his list, but I don't think he was using potassium chloride at all (I noted you have that plus another potassium source in your Amazon list).
Also, many of the ingredients (like psyllium) are available on Amazon in bulk rather than pill form, which will be a lot cheaper and simpler to mix in.
I'm a trainee chef, and in what I can gather part of the minority of people for whom food; its science, its taste and its preparation, is a source of great joy and interest. I know it's possible to eat a reasonably balanced diet on a budget – but for me to do that is only because it's a source of interest and something I'm willing to devote time to.
I feel that until very recently people were a lot closer to the source of their food and it was imperative that a lot of thought went into what people eat. Although it's easy to buy pre-made food nowadays, in the past it wasn't so and disposable income per person was significantly smaller. I've found making a pact with yourself only to buy ingredients, on a low budget, quickly makes your diet a lot more balanced. It's the Western 'all cake and no compromise' attitude to food and many other things – because we demand to have unfettered access to what we're interested in without any obstructions - blinds us to the fact that food is essential, and it requires some care and attention to make it fitting source of nutrients and food.
A cultural change in attitudes to food is possible if it were not for vested interests in the food industry that need to be eradicated. A great deal of the environmental damage caused by food comes from eating habits – meat that is not treated as a luxury, modern man's reluctance to be involved with his food allows unscrupulous companies to utulise high fructose corn syrup, soy lechitin and the like with impunity. These are measures to increase profit by marketing second rate goods to indifferent consumers. The effect of widespread use of this sort of nutrition would be to make this indifference absolute. While at present we are somewhere in between, a spread of this sort of consumption would eventually make the average person's position as a submissive consumer of food complete. The nutritional benefits might be wonderful, but in many ways this would be a cultural disaster and, in its own small way, dehumanising.
Of course, I'm just an arty, Guardian-reading foodie – I would say all this. I think this idea could teach me a lot, and I'll be trying it and participating in the study for posterity. I can see its applications for ending world hunger. But I think that, only if the Western world undergoes a coup by sociopathic, authoritarian technocrats (which, I fear, this generation might be capable of spawning), would this idea really catch on – and only by force or propaganda. People, for better or for worse, like food.
The food industry of the world needs, and I feel fairly confident, eventually will be dismantled and rebuilt. Studies have repeatedly shown that buying your own ingredients and making your own food (and growing it, but that *really* is a bourgoisie luxury nowadays) makes a person eat less and better when they do. The reason this practice, which really is beyond no one, is niche is because the industry is adept at selling the idea that food is just another obstruction to accessing your real interests, so just buy it pre-made and get on with things. Even if you mostly cook for yourself, this idea is culturally ingrained to the point that people rarely sit down and consider their diet and buying habits. The facts that people like food, and a balanced diet is possible for anyone if the world's food culture and industry were better built, and the main obstruction to this is vested interests in industry, form a better starting point for change than the view that 'food's not working, let's get rid of food'. In part for the bourgeoisie art-of-living beliefs I have that most I imagine find tedious, but in part because people like food, we could all have good food and we all deserve it, and it seems like a solution that would be easier to get people on board with.
[...] “In my own life, I resented the time, money and effort the purchase, preparation, consumption and clean-up of food was consuming,” Rhinehart explains on his blog. [...]
[...] “In my own life, I resented the time, money and effort the purchase, preparation, consumption and clean-up of food was consuming,” Rhinehart explains on his blog. [...]
[...] “In my own life, I resented the time, money and effort the purchase, preparation, consumption and clean-up of food was consuming,” Rhinehart explains on his blog. [...]
[...] “In my own life, I resented the time, money and effort the purchase, preparation, consumption and clean-up of food was consuming,” Rhinehart explains on his blog. [...]
I'm impressed that you would do this experiment. I find it interesting and somewhat informative. I'm sure some good things have come about as a result.
It sounds so appealing, especiallly to me. Still I know better. There's so much I have to say. I'm sure I'll miss some; unless I want to write a 5 page paper.
First of all, I think the best way to get our nourishment is from foods. It's more beneficial to our bodies, and to the earth and it's creatures. Every time man decides it can do better by cheating nature, it ends up being harmful in some way. Now it's necessary that people get additional nutrients from supplements. If people had never neglected nature, this would never have been necessary. We live in a different world now.
I lived for a month on a medical food shake alone; and supplemented with it for years. I gave it up to avoid the risk of exposing myself to food sensitivities.
You fail to give the exact source of each of these ingredients, and their forms. That is important. Food sensitivities can be an issue. Table salt contains aluminum. Do you really want that in your body? I would choose fermented cod liver oil and virgin coconut oil over olive oil any day. Personally, I value omega 3s in my diet. From my experience, magnesium glycinate is the most absorbable. Oligosaccarides can be harmful for those with small intestinal bacterial overgrowth.
The tests you ordered were a good idea, but it seems you've neglected some other informative measurements. I be interested to know how your adrenals fared, what you body fat percentage was, and it's ratio to you muscle mass.
You mention the social implications. I think food is a form of love; and love makes the world go around. So why deny food?
Of course you felt better. You were eating refined foods and foods that are common food allergens/sensitivities; and you gave your body a break from that. I'm guessing that after several months or so, your body would have some difficulties. We can't know that because you've given up "soylent" as your only source of nourishment.
By the way, I refuse to use the FDA as a trusted source of information considering they've been in the pockets of Big Pharma and Big Ag for years at the expense of the welfare of humanity.
Glancing over some of these comments, I have to agree that microflora and sulfur and probably some other necessities for long-term health have been ignored in your formula.
Keep your investigative spirit. Just be mindful of your influence of others.
Is this science fiction?
I really have a hard time believing this!
[...] you recieved much criticism since posting about your experiment on your blog? At this point I think scepticism is completely reasonable. There isn’t a lot [...]
[...] There are no meats, fruits, vegetables, or breads here. Besides olive oil for fatty acids and table salt for sodium and chloride nothing is recognizable as food. I researched every substance the body needs to survive, plus a few extras shown to be beneficial, and purchased all of them in nearly raw chemical form from a variety of sources. The section on the ingredients ended up being quite long so I’ll save that for a future post. The first morning my kitchen looked more like a chemistry lab than a cookery, but I eventually ended up with an thick, odorless, beige liquid. I call it ‘Soylent’. At the time I didn’t know if it was going to kill me or give me superpowers. (link) [...]
Interesting experiment, but a friendly piece of advice from a doctor and nutritionist specializing in lesions of the small intestine: You will develop food intolerance and food allergies, or a leaky gut syndrome. It's a matter of time, and the time it takes is not necessarily very long. Your body will react violently to the variety of proteins, fiber and trace elements in normal food once "dead" fluids are the norm. Be careful
Spot on.
What kind of doctor are you? If you're a medical doctor, what is your specialty?
I ask because you sound like a naturopath or something along those lines…"leaky gut syndrome" is not a recognized medical diagnosis.
He says he eats regular foods whenever he feels like it (a few times a week or more), so I doubt he's at risk, even if the conditions and outcomes you hypothesize actually exist.
Hello,
your situation is very interesting and I 100% believe in the effect you describe, but :
it probably also comes from :
Having almost given up bad diet (burgers etc)
Not having to spend much energy digesting hard food.
Doing a fun and public experimentation
On the other side I have a few worries if your diet goes for too long, don't know how long (may be 3 months may be more) :
Teeth and gums need to be exercised, otherwise like any other body part they get weaker and can get in serious trouble, for teeth we could have : lower tissue density, and sort of getting loose (the teeth adjust against each-others when under pressure).
As an involuntary compensation bruxism during the night may appear.
Because it's liquid it's likely to be digested very fast so a risk to have a high glycemic index with the classical inconvenient : possible dysbiosis etc.
As it is probably sweet and so easy to drink, so the risk to snack 10 times a day instead of 3 meals, so it exposes teeth to a lot of acids so big risk of tooth decay.
The stomach could become quite smaller (but it seems very flexible in the other direction).
These last points look terrible, but I think it's not with may be 2 little tricks :
chewing gums (the big problem is to find healthy ones (no sugar, no sweetener added, ideally slightly salty with a natural gum), probably no commercial gums are), so we can chew other things, like some sort of woods
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Baton_de_reglisse.jpg (problem it's sweet again, but there are other, like some tribes used to chew some sort of wood to clean their teeth).
more fibers to slow down digestion, so have a higher GI
Best Greetings
"so we can chew other things, like some sort of woods"
Or food.
[...] month ago, Rob Rhinehart posted on his blog his goal, which was essentially to maintain his current fitness level but without having to eat food. [...]
[...] month ago, Rob Rhinehart posted on his blog his goal, which was essentially to maintain his current fitness level but without having to eat food. [...]
This is so cool! While I couldn't imagine myself doing this all the time (I love cooking and eating to much) It would be so cool to have a recipe for when I knew I would be busy, or just for breakfast. I never get enough breakfasts, and definitely not enough protein in them.
I imagine this helping many people with dietary restrictions and also developing nations.
Also, I knew a lot of people with eating disorders growing up. This would probably help them reevaluate their relationship with food. It was easier for some of them to eat food that didn't "look" like food in the beginning to get them closer to a healthy weight.
[...] Dude stops eating food for a month. [...]
[...] “In my own life, I resented the time, money and effort the purchase, preparation, consumption and clean-up of food was consuming,” Rhinehart explains on his blog. [...]
The Food Industry IS a dark Place, there are lots of manipulations in our Food(Fluoride addition, Aluminium, they genetically changed the structure of sugars and proteins *coughmonsantocough*) since the 50s, lots of new foodrelated diseases are suspected to be triggered buy these manipulations. Wake up you fools, the industry doesnt give a shit about your health. They sell u pharmaceuticals.
Great job missing the point!
Just pointing out:
- anecdotal self observation is not very scientific
- cutting fat isn't the the *only* way to lose weight, cutting carbs instead is arguably much better
- diabetics should not eating any carbs whatsoever – diabetes is not some elusive unsolved mystery. Excessive glucose causes insulin response, hence, restrict carbs completely and fat to a minimal level if you are diabetic.
I beg to differ on two of your comments:
*cutting carbs is NOT arguably much better.
*diabetics are NOT charged with consuming zero carbs.
This is amazing, when I was growing up I always thought to myself,"What in food makes us need it?" and I thought that our body needed nutrients! I thought about stuff like this, making something that filled all the requirements but I was way to lazy to figure it out for myself… You are awesome! and i think you did a great job!
Rob, it's now more than 60 days since you began your no-eating experiment, but no report since Day 30. Are you still not eating? Are you sick? Are you still with us? How are you feeling now?
I expect a liquid diet such as yours to have health effects that will take longer than 30 days to appear — and perhaps much longer — so it would be instructive to let us know how you're doing at the 60-day mark, and also at the 3-month and 1-year intervals.
Thanks
congratulations on the fascinating psychological experiment on credulity. “Soylent” without the green, subtle. looking forward to following the results. You had me going up to the claim of iron deficiency after three days!
[...] How to quit eating and love ‘soylent’. Everything an optionally functioning body needs, this stuff makes ‘Tang’ sound like, well, ‘Tang’. The author warn us that hacking the human body is both high-risk and high-reward. [...]
I spend less than this cooking for myself. Whole foods (but not from "Whole Foods"); and there is nothing lacking from my diet according to the blood work I have done semi-regularly, in spite of IBS.
If I didn't enjoy the time I spend crafting meals–it really does seem like a second job, when you're baker, butcher and personal chef–I might consider something like this. Though processed foods set off my IBS, and this is as processed as it gets, so probably not.
[...] recibido muchas críticas desde que posteaste tu experimento en tu [...]
I think this is a hoax
Two problems:
No pooping = health problems due to organ inactivity
No chewing = teeth problems due to no resistance
Here goes all your food savings to the dentist, or maybe you can walk around without teeth as you only drink shakes and code/blog on the computer.
Other than that, I think you're onto something!!!
Especially if you order all your supplements in bulk from the manufacturer, cost goes down to nada!
Skynet here we come
P.S – it would be also cool if you come up with solution to the extremely expensive housing costs and come up with a practical thing that doesn't enslave us for our entire life to pay out mortgage.
This is awesome and exciting! I've always found eating to be a chore (nevermind the preparation and cleanup); those of us who "eat to live" get what you're trying to achieve.
Ignore the haters…humans can safely go 15+ days eating nothing so what you're consuming is unlikely to harm you.
One thing that comes to mind: you say you rarely eliminate since you aren't consuming much waste. On the one hand this is convenient and indicative of not intaking anything you don't need for food. But on the other hand: your eliminative components are designed to be used regularly, and thus it's possible that under-utilization could become detrimental over time (in the "use it or lose it" sense).
I have no idea how that could be researched…maybe with patients who have been on long-term total parenteral nutrition (TPN)? You probably know this: TPN is similar in theory to what you're trying to do, though it's delivered intravenously.
I may sign up as a tester, but I may just try to make this myself; I feel like your instructions are clear enough. Thanks for doing this and good luck!
Hi there,
I read your article and it really seems to struck me. I'm really into health and nutrition, and I do agree that as long as we achieve our daily macronutrients and micronutrients, we're fine. What really caught my eye is how you got rid of your keratosis pilaris. I have the same thing since i was 12 (i'm 21 this year) and it doesn't seem to go away. Its annoying me. I've tried so many things and it never seem to work. =/
I workout as well. In regards to the macronutrients, how do i alter it if i were to consume soylent? I know i need 150g protein, 40-50g fat and 200g carbs, maybe more for carbs on some days when i lift heavy. I am really into health, and would definitely love to get rid of my skin disease at the same time.
I really look forward to your reply!
Impressive job doing the research, and having the courage and discipline to do it yourself. Kudos.
I haven't read all the millions of comments above, so I may be repeating others… sorry if so.
There are already "full nutrition balanced meal" in a drink products out there – usually given to sick people who have tough time keeping food down, for example abbott's "ensure" drinks: http://www.abbottstore.com/search?q=ensure&categoryPathRefs=shop&source=enshp
I wonder how they compare to yours…
[...] recibido muchas críticas desde que posteaste tu experimento en tu [...]
That's a very intelligent idea. I sometimes like to cook and eat healthily. I like eating and enjoying my food… But no matter how well-organized I am, there's always that day when you're exhausted and you wish you had something quick and ready. I've managed to make a few interesting quickies. But then again, as you say, it's a lot of time.
Everything that you've written and studies seems very logical and useful. One thing worries me: your digestive tract, teeth and jaw. A month probably won't make much of a difference, but you could suffer athrophy in the long term. If you let me try, I would eat sugarless chewing gum. Now you're going to eat whole foods occasionally, but, did you exercise your chewing muscles and bones during the first month? If you find it harder to chew or swallow when you get back to solid food, please do report.
Interesting experiment. Good work.
[...] than a mile. i would be intrigued greatly if this actually holds up for the majority of people. How I Stopped Eating Food : Mostly Harmless Reply With [...]
[...] a fellow named Rob Rhinehart who has a fascinating idea–he wants to eliminate food. Rhinehart takes our modern nutritional knowledge and puts it to work, synthesising a cocktail of [...]
This is sort of like a long term velocity diet.
I think you would be much better off using the soylent just for macros (fat, protein, carbs, fiber) and using capsules for your vitamins and minerals.
Exercise was mentioned a couple of times in the post and comments, but not to the extent I'd like to see it addressed. In drastically increasing your weekly running mileage the first week you began the diet, you added another variable to the experiment—which means that the results cannot be cleanly attributed to the change in diet. (By the by, be careful of injury when increasing your mileage more than 10% a week.)
Exercise is obviously beneficial to the human body, but to truly measure the effect of the diet itself, uncoupled from exercise, you would need three groups: a control group, a group just eating Soylent and not exercising, and a group eating Soylent and exercising. Pair up with a unversity; I believe this data would be very valuable.
You might actually need a couple of control groups.
It's about damn time.
Is it people? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IKVj4l5GU4
heh. It's the first thing I thought of when I saw the name.
Hi i want to try it out i am a 19 year old female in college and weigh 125 i was wondering what exactlly do i have to buy and how much of each thing i have to mix?
[...] recibido muchas críticas desde que posteaste tu experimento en tu [...]
[...] Fonte | Rob Rhinehart Blog [...]
[...] Fonte | Rob Rhinehart Blog [...]
I feel sorry for you. Im Italian and life is not all about nutrition but chemicals, but its aslso about pleasure. We Italians that we are if not the best but one of the best food in the world, we are also the less obese country in the world, contrary of US where you have the record of them, despite all your techonology. Food is not just nutrition my friend. but its a pleasure, the odors, the vision, the taste, but moreover the plasure to gather all your family, or friends, around the table and have a great dinner with a nice glass of Chianti wine. This ar the pleasure thing in life, in fact, we italian we are not depressed, we enjoy life and we do not need therapy. However what do you know, when you Americans, get your food from the drive thru and you eat on your SUV on the way home, or in front of a TV with your Dominos pizza in the good days. Maybe if you had a gf or you learn how to enjoy life a bit more, you won't need that stuff but you may learn the pleasure of a good food and good living.
He never said he disliked food. He wants something to eat that's quick and easy so that when it comes time to have "real" food, he can really spend a lot of time, energy, and money to make it something really amazing. Not everyone has time, energy, and money, to cook healthy and delicious meals.
Yes, this is all great, but, what about the pleasure of eating food that you like? I looong all day for eating hours, I wake up and I'm already thinking of what a delicious breakfast I am going to have, and same for lunch, dinner and snacks. And whenever I dine out, which is usually once a week, I want to eat something really tasty.
Not everybody enjoys food the same way, there's people who just eats to live, and you sounf like it. But I live to eat (no obsessions though). And what about the haedonic part of hunger? Last year I was dieting, and on a period of time I was just taking meat, which I don't really like. I ate a lot of meat, and was still hungry. My nutricionist told me that this was because I satisfied my nutritious hunger but not my haedonic hunger, that is to say, my taste wasn't satisfied. So until I moved to another week of the diet, when I could eat aaaaall the fruits and veggies I wanted, I didn't feel full.
Then, I wonder if I could ever feel full and satisfied with Soylent, when it probably just tastes like carbohidrates, when what makes my taste satisfied are vegetables and fruits, mostly….
Salve sig.Rob, come sta andando la sua dieta e la sua salute?? Mi piacerebbe provare anch'io questa dieta. Se tutto va bene, se lei sta in salute, spero che si diffonda questa dieta anche a beneficio di milioni di persone che soffrono la fame e milioni di bambini che muoioni malnutriti. Poi ci sono anche monaci eremiti e asceti di clausura di stretta osservanza che farebbero questa dieta.
Cordiali saluti
[...] “Em alguns países, as pessoas morrem por conta da obesidade; em outros, de fome”, argumenta ele. Diante desse dilema, Rob decidiu pesquisar a possibilidade de criar um elixir nutritivo essencial, o Soylent. Transformando sua cozinha em um laboratório, Rob substituiu frutas, verduras, carnes e massas por um punhado de pós de diferente textura, cor e cheiro. Combinando compostos químicos, ele chegou a uma fórmula que supostamente tem todos os ingredientes que o corpo precisa pra tirar energia e permanecer saudável. “Eu só queria ser saudável e gastar o mínimo possível com comida”, ele disse em seu blog. [...]
[...] How I Stopped Eating Food [...]
A man is what he eats, has already been said, but now we can add: A man is what he drinks! It 'a matter of personal choice to do each according to his freedom.
Course of time, money and overweight due to eating not feel more talk! On Ash Wednesday, Christians believers hear this sentence: "Dust you were and dust you shall return" Living on Powder intelligently calibrated should not be so traumatic! Life can offer millions of other attractions and satisfaction so that we are also told, "Do not live by bread alone man" to say that you can not deny diabolical temptations and instead you can take the ideas dictated by the Holy Spirit, if learn to tune in on your own wave that comes from heaven! The result was surprising: both the body and the Spirit would both be fed abundantly!
I'm totally into this. I'm single, live alone and I hate making breakfast. I'd love to have an all-in-one meal replacement that would actually keep me full for more than an hour. Whenever I'm feeling too lazy to cook, I always end up eating junk. 'Soylent' sounds like a fantastic alternative. I'm going to be monitoring this closely!
[...] Whilst ruminating over my predicament and trying to find a way to fix myself, to deal with it, my friend posted a link to someone’s blog on her Facebook. His name is Rob Rinehart and he talked about how he stopped eating food. His blog is here http://robrhinehart.com/?p=298 [...]
Think you are missing something here – sure you got all you needed as nutrients – but what about the nutrients required to maintain the ecosystem within you? When the beneficial bacteria populations take a hit from your formulaic diet – what will happen? How does your genetic signals respond to the lack of environmental triggers such as food? I am no expert but coming from a cross section between biology and programming it definitely feels like your training pre-ordained you to think about the digestive system like simple rather than complex system. Unfortunately, having one's genome is not enough to completely map the downstream cellular interactions on the protein/cellular/organismal level, and when things goe wrong you won't want to debug them (or god forbid you might not have a chance to…)
Can you please share with us how to make it or where to buy it?
Ha quanto tempo sua alimentacao foi alterada? Ela fornece elementos para aquisicao de reserva de gordura corporal?
Rob puts the "Oy!" in Soylent.
Hey everybody. Instead of telling him all the things he forgot and that he is killing himself,maybe you should applaud him. He is doing something that many people only wish they could do. Sure, things need to be tweaked here and there for others, and I believe he said that…so say good job to the man. I think this would be very good and I would love to try this. It COULD cut costs in my house for me and my wife,but I would still have some food and normal meals around for my son. I applaud you good sir. I hope everything works for you and I would love this.
The problem is that this is not a credible article and some statements he makes does not make any sense.
Then go away.
[...] a blog post called “How I Stopped Eating Food,” Rob Rhinehart describes how he created a food substitute that still provides the body with everything it needs to live [...]
[...] a blog post called “How I Stopped Eating Food,” Rob Rhinehart describes how he created a food substitute that still provides the body with everything it needs to live [...]
[...] a blog post called “How I Stopped Eating Food,” Rob Rhinehart describes how he created a food substitute that still provides the body with everything it needs to live [...]
Interested in follow-up/future posts
You are an insane person, spreading "woo" via the Internet. Eat (or don't) whatever YOU like, but please, do not lead others into starvation. Sorry, take this trash over to HuffPo; they love made-up "science" there.
Uh oh- scare quotes! We got us an expert right here.
[...] drink, containing all essentials nutrients, which he calls “Soylent.” Rob Rhinehart tells [...]
[...] a blog post called “How I Stopped Eating Food,” Rob Rhinehart describes how he created a food substitute that still provides the body with everything it needs to live [...]
I have to agree with epicurus, encouraging others to join in your experiment seems a little irresponsible especially as qualified dieticians/people have said this lack of food can lead to weakening of the digestive organs, IBS and leeky gut syndrome. All of which can be devastating!
At least suggest eating some low calorie fibrous foods (broccoli etc) to keep your digestive tract moving. boiling vegetables takes no more than 3/4 minutes and i think could prove to be very beneficial.
Also research curcumin
Also Iwould recomend Pea protein isolate as a vegan alternative to whey. It also tastes distinctly better than hemp protein, which makes me wretch!
[...] To get another opinion, we spoke with health expert and nutritionist Stella Metsovas and asked her to respond to Rhinehart’s blog post, “How I Stopped Eating Food.” [...]
[...] To get another opinion, we spoke with health expert and nutritionist Stella Metsovas and asked her to respond to Rhinehart’s blog post, “How I Stopped Eating Food.” [...]
[...] a blog post called “How I Stopped Eating Food,” Rob Rhinehart describes how he created a food substitute that still provides the body with everything it needs to live [...]
[...] Why am I asking these questions, which my preschooler would find bleedingly obvious were I to put them to him? Because apparently there is a man out there who wants to render them superfluous. [...]
[...] Rhinehart, programador informático de Atlanta (Estados Unidos), explicó en su blog los motivos por los que ya no iba a comer más y simplemente se [...]
I'd really like to try this, because I struggle with an eating disorder. I've nearly been hospitalized a few times because I hate food, and even if I try to eat normally I find it extremely difficult. I'm unsure if this would be safe for somebody with an eating disorder combined with a fast metabolism. Could somebody please clear this up?
Get over your fear, a lot of people rely on their idea that they are weak or just born that way. I tend to disagree your aversion for food came from something and you need to bite the bullet and face your fear in the face. It's not until we think we're gonna die that we truly learn to live (in my case anyway). You don't have to start with food but, find something you're scared of and go do that first, if it's spiders go hold a tarantula, if it's heights go dive off the high dive. It will change your life and I can promise you that. Then learn to eat (don't learn to eat fast food though, that shit is gross)
[...] To get another opinion, we spoke with health consultant and nutritionist Stella Metsovas and asked her to respond to Rhinehart’s blog post, “How we Stopped Eating Food.” [...]
[...] tenemos disponibles, por los nutrientes equivalentes a los mismos. Este programador americano noslo cuenta en su blog, con todo lujo de [...]
LOL. You're a bad liar and an even worse writer.
Sir,
If three days of an iron-free diet was what it took to give us iron-deficiency anemia, the human race would be extinct.
[...] inofensivo” en español-. En esta entrada plantea el tema y su decisión de dejar de comer (How I Stopped Eating Food –Como dejé de comer comida-) y en esta otra evalúa sus sensaciones tras dos meses de pruebas [...]
Rob, your fresh bloods are not excellent. Your MCV declined and is now borderline indicating likely B12 and/or folate issues.
You also need to crap more. Faeces is not just food but also parts of broken down red blood cells.
While I get the idea and applaud your research and attempt at the perfect nutrient mix, I think you will eventually have real issues with lack of trace minerals if you overlooked something as key as iron.
Keen to see how you fare in a month or 2
My latest MCV is identical to my previous results, at 99.0. The only noticeable change between the results are lower triglycerides. In fact, before the diet my MCV was much lower at 94.2. Are you sure you’re reading in chronological order?
[...] PS: Se você é nutricionista ou interessado no assunto e quer julgar por você mesmo, aqui está o blog do Rob Rhinehart. [...]
Greetings, could (the poster/developer of this idea) eMail me with details on how I could do what you did. AND could taylor it for a male, or provide a link or two if you could for me review information that would work for me should I be able to do what you did?
[...] completed a one month trial, he’s considering the implications. He reports on Vice and on his blog that he can run longer, that his skin is healthier, that he has more energy than ever before. [...]
The idea of one cure all that works for everyone sounds phenomenal! But, as it sounds like you've discovered, people are very different in their individual needs and what makes them feel good. I just want to offer a suggestion on how to combat this. Not knowing how the ingredients are mixed together, I'm curious of it is possible to mix up different bases that consist of the very basic dietary needs everyone has but vary the macros. Then, mix up several different "additives" that complete the formula for different needs. For example, the bases are all the same but labeled by their individual percentage distribution of macros, carbs/protein/fat, 50/30/20, 40/40/20, 50/20/3, etc. personally, I vary these values in my personal diet on a daily basis depending in my activity. Further, the additives can be labeled in such ways as female aged 20-30, female aged 30-40, male aged…. Etc. you may be a ways off of this as far as production is concerned but it may be helpful to keep in mind while conducting trials.
Hello Rob,
Nice opinion and move on this motive. But I gotta tell you, food is a CULTURE. It's an exciting (maybe one of the most) component of your life.
I can't believe you called food as a waste.
Congratulations on finding a diet, but I still think you're fucked up; you're missing so much from just doing this.
Regards,
Dude, you just invented formula milk!
[...] How I Stopped Eating Food <<A lot of people have asked what I think about the guy who gave up food for a nutrient-packed drink, so here it is. My first thought: Why the *bleep* would anyone want to give up food? Food is awesome! Second: Having all the nutrients you need to survive is not the same as having all the ones you need to thrive. I don’t think we even know all the nutrients that fight all the different kinds of cancers that exist, so how could they really all be in there? I’m skeptical. (Rob Rhinehart) [...]
So, all that thought and effort, and you use common foods and ingredients to create a meal replacement beverage. Sounds cutting edge. The medical and food industry must be knocking down your door.
[...] Smettere di mangiare pasti tradizionali, e alimentarsi utilizzando esclusivamente le sostanze nutritive che servono al nostro organismo, sotto forma di polvere. Sembra quasi una follia se concepita in questi termini ma è l’originale esperimento condotto su sé stesso da Rob Rhinehart, programmatore di software di Atlanta, che ha creato un cocktail da bere, fatto di polveri ricchi di principi nutritivi di cui il corpo ha bisogno, raccontando l’esperienza sul suo blog. [...]
[...] I mean, really. [...]
So we are the first animals to seperate ourselves from other animals, by shaving animal hair. Next we will be the first animals to not intake food, and stop shitting. Why not just eat food, in moderation? Nature is natural for a reason. Money saved? Sure. Time saved? I guess. All that time went into typing all of this, and your conducted research. You say po-tay-toe, I say po-tah-to. You're member of the ape family. Deal with it. They do. I do.
sooooooooo SILLY!
Nutritional science in the last twenty years has demonstrated that colorful plant foods contain a huge assortment of protective compounds, mostly of which still remain unnamed.
Well, my question is when will the mass production start? I am with you on the subject of time being wasted on the consumption of food, plus it's not that easy to have a well balanced meal every single time. I guess the other question is if there will be slight variations of the formula for people who work out intensely, or their job requieres using brain vs hands, or if the person is just a couch potato.
[...] I thought that I'd share this with you. Blog post that describes how he started and how he feels: How I Stopped Eating Food : Mostly Harmless Blog post with ingredients: What’s In Soylent : Mostly Harmless To someone like me, who's [...]
I find this concept intriguing, and being opened minded has proven to be not only informative, but fun. Those who know me always miss my age and ask, "Where do you get your energy?" I signed on to see how I may continue personal growth and health. I will be 72 next month!
[...] at 5:45 on March 25, 2013 by Andrew Sullivan Rob Rhinehart is giving up traditional forms of food: I don’t want to lose weight. I want to maintain it and spend less [...]
Check out the Business Insider article mentioned in the comments. It's clear the author ("rob") has no idea what he is talking about.
[...] biology. The perfect storm of circumstances led to his idea to create the ideal liquid diet and stop eating traditional food altogether. Is it a good idea that, if widely adopted, could end world hunger and reduce the impact on our [...]
Almost everything known about dietary requirements is based on difficult studies in which some component is removed. These studies are tough in rats, and very difficult indeed with human subjects. For an adult to do what you're doing for a month might be entertaining. Indeed there might be health benefits, but for anyone to keep eating (drinking?) the same marginally-documented brew daily for years would be foolish, and to suggest that others do so (in the absence of compelling evidence for safety) is poor judgment. You simply don't know whether there may be trace factors in your brew that will be cumulatively toxic, nor whether there may be dietary components missing in the diet, which you will require over the long run.
This is called a SUPPLEMENT. Not a safe, effective supplelment but, a supplement. There is no substitute for real, whole foods which our bodies require. This will lead to illness or mal-nutrition. This is similar to having a feeding tube which is not sufficient for everyday, active life. I'm truly amazed at how many people are willing to be led by a young kid who has no real knowledge, trainging or idea of the importance of real food and real calories. And all the people who have serious health issues who are asking this guy, Rob Rhinehart, for advice or help…please don't put your faith in his "invention". This is truly dangerous. (and for all of the other ignorant people here: a naturopath is a doctor, trained and licensed. ND=Naturopathic Doctor). Try research, try educating yourselves…don't follow absurd ideas.
[...] his blog post called “How I Stopped Eating Food” Rhinehart describes how he had been living on the stuff for 30 days. He’s now gone two [...]
Haven't read all the numerous comments………. but what about fiber?
What is happening to your digestive tract, I wonder…..hmmmm..
Good luck when the problems begin. Sincerely.
Freud:
“[the adult ego] finds itself compelled to seek out those situations in reality which serve as an approximate substitute for the original danger, so as to be able to justify, in relation to them, its maintaining its habitual modes of reaction. Thus we can easily understand how the defensive mechanisms, by bringing about an ever more extensive alienation from the external world and a permanent weakening of the ego, pave the way for, and encourage, the outbreak of neurosis.” XXIII, 238.
[...] what the Soylent guy, whose name is Rob Rhinehart, says he did was … well, let him explain it, in the piece he wrote a month into the experiment that he performed on [...]
I want to know haw to get Soylent recipe. Can somente tell me where?
[...] being inspired by Rob Rinehart’s ‘Soylent’ I decided to change my juice recipe with these goals in [...]
You've prolly heard this before but I'll say it anyways.
Here's some ideas :
Fastfood chain – a healthy one <3
Cook book – extremely minimalist
What an interesting concept. I find it fascinating, and it's a huge leap in science. What I think is that, just like in Wall-E, that Soylent comes flavored. This way we wouldn't get bored of it. For instance, a few drops of menthol for a mint flavor. Now here's my only concern. If this does get mass produced, conspiracies may not be so far-fetched. It wouldn't be too hard to add chemicals into the mixture to dampen intelligence, and therefore create a more obedient society. I'm not saying that it's going to happen or will ever happen, I'm saying that it's easier to do, as the results will be en masse and not localized. Another thing I'd like to point out is that, what if one gets the mix wrong? For instance, particular chemicals are very lethal when overdosed by just a few micrograms, such as Vitamin D and A. If one's scale were to be off, or one adds more due to human error, results could be potentially disasterous. Also, how would you prevent the mix from traveling through your system as fast as liquids normally travel? I feel as if, while a breakthrough in science, it shouldn't be a substitute for food. It's a highly interesting concept, and my inner urge since childhood to be a test subject or lab rat makes me want to try it for science. However, I think that in a practical application, Soylent should be used when needed, and not replacing food. I can very much see it being extremely beneficial to society, reducing the need for agricultural space, etc. which takes up a huge amount of land to sustain the human population. With your product, I do imagine a future where hunger is near eliminated, and land space can be used for other purposes. Still, while economically and medically beneficial, I find the idea disconcerting. I feel as if it's going to be one of those ideas that will further science to a whole new level, and appear to make life easier, but then again, so did a lot of things in science fiction movies and novels, and then they ended up failing, killing humanity, or causing some massive problem. And the more and more I learn about this, the more and more it seems like one of them was brought to life. Still, if I wasn't 15 and broke, I'd do this experiment, for science. Because that's what I live for. To further science. And I'd love to be the beta tester.
share your recipe for the cocktail hour,please
[...] See: http://robrhinehart.com/?p=298 [...]
How do I get ahold of something like this? or do I have to make it frin raw materials?
[...] ha pasado por la cabeza, excepto a Rob. En su blog Mostly Harmless y en concreto en su entrada de How I Stopped Eating Food empieza este curioso experimento llamado [...]
I THINK YOU ARE A GENIOUS
[...] a blog post titled “How I Stopped Eating Food,” Rob Rhinehart posits that “traditional food” isn’t necessary and as long as [...]
[...] http://robrhinehart.com/?p=298 [...]
I would like more info on this!
Modern Day Star Trek Food Replicator :
Soylent + Resequenced Protein + Makerbot Replicator
My blood sugar runs low too. Glad to see it is better for you now. It is no fun having low blood sugar.
While I think the implications here are for a good cause, I would be very curious to see what happens 6 months down the road. The chilliness and slight gain after a month is indicative of a lowered metabolism, much like a starvation response. I know I can't 'warn' anyone off of anything, but inside I'm pleading for this to stop. Naturally you can run a lot more if you're running off of stress hormones (and adrenals are burning hard, engaging your body to 'findfoodfast'). I felt really great when I 'dieted down' and would consequently have to burn faster harder to continue to 'feel great'. My life crashed 10 years later; my body gave up after caloric restriction, despite all the 'nutritious food' I no longer had the energy to assimilate. Perhaps in supplement form you may get all you need, but what prompted me to write anything is the physical trends you are describing: alertness, fast increasing mileage, feeling cold, and a little weight gain/water retention (either are indicative of stress). I am not intending to aggressively attack this method, as I understand it is quite convenient for your lifestyle; I truly hope this only brings good things. But I really worry about bringing this to the limelight for young women/men who are considering the weightloss bandwagon because they have an aesthetic ideal, or twisted relationships with food and just want to eliminate it, rather than learn to love/appreciate it.
[...] How I Stopped Eating Food What’s In Soylent Two Months of Soylent [...]
[...] reading How I stopped Eating Food, a very thought-provoking experiment where Rob Rhinehart stops eating real food and simply mixes a [...]
[...] How I Stopped Eating Food. “I haven’t eaten a bite of food in 30 days, and it’s changed my life. . . . After [...]
Buuuuuuuuuuuullshit!
It's so obvious.
I think it would be helpful if you explained what foods you ate before you started eating Soylent.
Thanks
JUST DRINK AN ENSURE WITH REVIGOR TWISE A DAY AND A BANANA AND 2 EGGS ONCE A DAY AND A CENTRUM SILVER CHEWABLE ONCE A DAY. AND HLA/GLUCOSAMINE.
…… april fools, right ?
[...] See on robrhinehart.com [...]
[...] We don’t need food – just what’s in the food? [...]
[...] un post en su blog personal con el título “How I Stopped Eating Food”, Rob Rhinehart cuenta lo que le llevó a [...]
[...] me superpowers. I held my nose and tepidly lifted it to my mouth, expecting an awful taste…. How I Stopped Eating Food : Mostly Harmless __________________ "Nothing is more curious than the almost savage hostility that Humour [...]
What do you fill your former eating time with now? What happens when friends go out to dinner, to a bar or have snacks? Your reaction to having to eat is bizarre. I can certainly understand wanting to cut down on the expense of it, but that can be done without resorting fully abandoning food.
[...] Guy stops eating food and begins whipping up science experiment meals using raw chemicals? Hmmm… [...]
[...] How I Stopped Eating Food [...]
So how do I get either the recipe to make my own soylent or, purchase packets. I would like to try this to see if my body has the same benefits.
YES PLEASE!
[...] give me superpowers. I held my nose and tepidly lifted it to my mouth, expecting an awful taste. How I Stopped Eating Food : Mostly Harmless __________________ "Nothing is more curious than the almost savage hostility that Humour [...]
[...] científicas. Hay incluso quien considera que no es necesario comer alimentos y ha fabricado un brebaje con lo necesario para subsistir. Pese a los enormes controles sanitarios, los fraudes alimentarios [...]
[...] científicas. Hay incluso quien considera que no es necesario comer alimentos y ha fabricado un brebaje con lo necesario para subsistir. Pese a los enormes controles sanitarios, los fraudes alimentarios [...]
[...] científicas. Hay incluso quien considera que no es necesario comer alimentos y ha fabricado un brebaje con lo necesario para subsistir. Pese a los enormes controles sanitarios, los fraudes alimentarios [...]
How does soylent fair in terms of being anti-angiogenesis.
[...] científicas. Hay incluso quien considera que no es necesario comer alimentos y ha fabricado un brebaje con lo necesario para subsistir. Pese a los enormes controles sanitarios, los fraudes alimentarios [...]
[...] científicas. Hay incluso quien considera que no es necesario comer alimentos y ha fabricado un brebaje con lo necesario para subsistir. Pese a los enormes controles sanitarios, los fraudes alimentarios [...]
[...] Hay incluso quien considera que no es necesario comer alimentos y ha fabricado un brebaje con lo necesario para subsistir. Pese a los enormes controles sanitarios, los fraudes alimentarios [...]
[...] The Soylent guy experiment [...]
I'm not going to believe this exists until I can make it myself.
Peer-reviewed evidence. Recipe or gtfo.
Yes, you can absolve yourself of legal responsibilities.
[...] the future has arrived. We have now ushered in the era of Soylent – the magical, lightly foamy, urine-colored food alternative. Rob Rhinehart, whose post on his [...]
[...] “In my own life, I resented the time, money and effort the purchase, preparation, consumption and clean-up of food was consuming,” Rhinehart explains on his blog. [...]
[...] Rob Rhinehart’s Soylent. [...]
[...] I applied to test Rob Rhinehart’s Soylent. If you haven’t heard about Soylent, it is basically a cheap meal replacement shake-like [...]
I got what you mean, saved to bookmarks, great site.
[...] -email FMI: english, exams, holiday -the plan -organize things at home -read about food How I Stopped Eating Food [...]
Please send me your formula I just had sleve bypass and I've been on liquids going on 2 months I don't want to go back to solid foods
Spot on with this write-up, I honestly feel this website needs a great deal more attention.
I’ll probably be returning to read more, thanks for the information!
[...] Acid reflux can get worse from eating food. Many people like to eat at a fast pace and eat a lot of [...]
i've got a problem right out of the gate: " researched every substance the body needs to survive"
that has been done repeatedly over time, and has always changed.
we don't know what we don't know, until we stumble upon it by accident.
What about the psychological implications? Eating a decent range of tasty and nutritious food is essential for good mental health.
How about your social life? Do you do to partys or meals out with others?
I think living of supplements can put you at high risk of an eating disorder, especially if your energy intake is too low. Anorexia nervosa doesn't only affect teenage girls,.I'm a 31 year old straight man and I've suffered from anorexia for a couple of years and it's difficult to get out of – this is my second recovery attempt!
You haven’t eaten a bite of food in 30 days, yo gotta be kidding me
I am very interested to see how this works out for you in the long term. Once you establish a good baseline formula, it can be tweaked on an individual basis for various applications. As you say, there are a great many people who are pressed for time who make terrible nutritional choices, and this would be a good way to ensure a decent baseline in the morning, when most are rushing to work or school.
I have had to laugh at a lot of the shrill commentary, but it doesn't surprise me, as adherents to whatever nutritional regimen seem to become highly emotionally invested. I appreciate that you are trying to approach this in a scientific manner, having admitted that you are not an expert in the field. On the other hand, Gary Taubes has written extensively on the myriad bad science in the field, so large grains of salt are needed when approaching the advice of any so called expert.
I look forward to more results and I have signed up to recieve updates.
Good Luck Rob.
手アークのその他の使用は、直線は比較的小さく、fortableブランドでスタイリッシュな靴は常にされて今、カタログの演奏は、先生がカバーを介して、今日のレッスンはまだ私の仲間ではないと私は移動している保つみましょうすべての年齢や性別の人々に好まれたことがありましたそれらは、ブランドからは、我々は、革新的なレクリエーションにスープラ、一般的な余剰を入れ、およびPF Flyersyoke'され彼らは調合が手早くいる認定にあまり説得力のある化学物質なったシングル、ダブル、偽ライン、オープンワイヤを持って、破線、エッジライン、尾根、シームライン、装飾ライン、同時に靴のペアで使用することができますが、あなたはあなたの体は物理的に健康を保つためにウォーキング用軽量スニーカーを使用することができますつだけに固執しないでください
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I have these health problems that cause me occasionally go on to a liquid diet. During which I drink 6 pediasures a day. I shall keep this in mind for the next time a flare up occures seeing as how a handmade mixture may be more beneficial for me. However the only thing I find of great concern is your lack of excriment. Part of my problem is my digestive track basically shuts down and gets backed up occasionally. This is primarily due to a trigger such as not drinking enough water or consuming too much sugar which dries out the colon and backs that up then backs everything up to the stomach and stops moving. I wonder if there was a way to make a mixture that was high in fiber. I would definatly go on this diet if it ment I wouldn't have to worry about my health problems the rest of my life, but I am watchfull now as to how it will effect your digestive track in the long run.
I struggle with food in so many different ways, the guilt of being full when you know others are going to sleep and wakening up hungry, the waste with commercial food manufacturing, the idea of good food and bad food…any new concept based around food, and more importantly a source of nutrition for the masses is worth looking at with an open mind. Thanks for looking Rob, I hope that you, and others like yourself can find a new healthy affordable waste free approach to… food.
Very quickly this website will be famous among all blogging visitors,
due to it’s good content
Both a workmate and myself have been reducing the amount of food we are eating for the last two weeks and minimalising everything by over half. As you mentioned in your post, that the key is balance. Like when you had this issue of missing (iron) Hemoglobin.
I also want to know, do we really need all that extra sugar and total crap in our diets? I know that over the years we are simply creating a world of unfit human beings, and realistically takeaways and the sort, have only been operating for the last 100 years and look how fat society is.
Look at some of the old movies from say 50's – 60's for example "King of Kings". There is no man or woman that is obese like there is today and honeslty, I think we can blame our fast pace life and market to capitalise on that which McDonals, Burger King etc has done.
Anyway, fantastic read and will definately now try modify my diet for testing like yourself has done. Cheers.
” also want to know, do we really need all that extra sugar and total crap in our diets?”
Sugar = energy. The only other source of energy is fat that is turned into ketones.
[...] give me superpowers. I held my nose and tepidly lifted it to my mouth, expecting an awful taste. How I Stopped Eating Food : Mostly Harmless __________________ "Nothing is more curious than the almost savage hostility that Humour [...]
ingredients?
You said it doesn't harm animals? Does it contain animal products? If so, what can be substituted in? I'm an ethical vegan, and I might try this…