Our knowledge of human biochemistry is very incomplete. We have only a vague idea of how a huge variety of substances that we normally eat on a day-to-day basis affects us.
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The goal of choosing food (besides sensory considerations which are clearly not important here) is to be healthy, not just stay alive. What would be the effect of living on Soylent on your heart disease risk? Cancer? Autoimmune diseases? Thyroid? what, you have no idea..? :-/
Don't these sort of ... cancel each other out?
EDIT: I mean, if we don't know the effects of everything that's in our food right now, how is Soylent any worse?
Don't these sort of ... cancel each other out?
Only if you think solely in terms of black and white.
We certainly have some idea about what different foods and food components do to us. Sometimes there's a bit more clarity, sometimes much less.
Soylent is worse (in this context) primarily because of lack of diversification. While we don't know the exact details of human nutrition, we know that eating a variety of natural foods is generally OK. That's what humans have evolved to eat, at least. You don't need to know each necessary ingredient as long as you ...
Rob Rhinehart's food replacement Soylent now has a crowdfunding campaign.
If you're interested in one or more of these benefits, send in some money! There is also a new blog post.