FourFire comments on Soylent Orange - Whole food open source soylent - Less Wrong
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Comments (103)
3 is complex (hence the contention). One of the useful outcomes of testing soylent will be providing decent evidence on this. There are definitely some non-trivial issues going on in that several substances cause no problems in high quantities in whole foods but show signs of toxicity in small amounts from supplements (manganese, vitamin A). I am paranoid about not absorbing nutrients or poisoning myself, so I am sticking to whole foods until I see some blood panels.
4: His claim about maltodextrin being slower than sugar to absorb is wrong and can be disproved in 30 seconds with a trip to wikipedia. This does not give me faith in his process.
Protein intake is woefully low for anyone who exercises regularly.
Fat intake is contentious. One camp holds that PUFAs are bad and the other that SFAs are bad. There is little debate that MUFAs are good for you, so olive oil is a good choice. One possible modification to my shake is using skim milk and replacing the lost fat with olive oil, but this eliminates the fat soluble vitamins present in the milk which then complicates the recipe significantly trying to add them back in. I get my MUFAs in the rest of my diet by cooking in coconut milk a lot. I'm not worried about the PUFAs in the sunflower seeds because sunflower seeds have the highest concentration of vitamin E of almost any food by weight. It is highly doubtful the PUFAs are oxidizing in such an environment.
Note that on point #4: his exact words are "[...] Short chains get metabolized very quickly, leading to a 'sugar rush', and long chains can be difficult to digest. I use only oligosaccharides, like Maltodextrin, for Carbohydrates. [...]" and from the wikipedia page on maltodextrin "[...]Maltodextrin is easily digestible, being absorbed as rapidly as glucose,[...]" However metabolism != absorption and "[...]Maltodextrin is typically composed of a mixture of chains that vary from three to seventeen glucose units long.[2] [...]" Something which tells me that Maltodextrin will take longer to be metabolized than Disaccharides.