Ah, not sarcasm. Courtesy of Julia Galef via Richard Dawkins:
This is the Golgi apparatus, which is a structure in the cell that distributes macro-molecules around the cell. And when Dawkins was at Oxford, there was an elderly professor in the department who was famous for his claim that the Golgi apparatus was illusory, that it was an artifact of observation, that it didn’t actually exist. So one day a visiting professor from the States came to give a talk at Oxford in which he presented new and compelling evidence that the Golgi apparatus was, in fact, real. So, as you can imagine, throughout the whole talk everyone is glancing over at the elderly professor like, “How’s he taking this? What’s he going to say?” And at the end of the talk, the elderly professor marches up to the front of the lecture hall and he extends his hand and he says, “My dear fellow, I wish to thank you. I have been wrong these 15 years.”
I'm most compelled by the whole foods/bioavalibility argument (point 3 here.) and the likely comparative glycemic indices. Like, my marginal cost per meal is still lower on Green (since I've bought half the ingredients for the next months/years/decades), and it's worked for me, but if I were to make a suggestion to past-me, it probably would've been for Orange.
Except... now I think about it, I'm again compelled by my previous "cleanliness" arguments (Green doesn't contain any extras, some of which you don't want). Also, never grocery shopping is really, really nice.
Revised opinion: I know no one to whom I'd recommend Orange over Green. I will try Orange for comparative mental effects. If they're comparable or superior to Green, I'll switch, but I'm personally okay rolling dice wrt long-term health for a performance buff now (choosing Green over Orange reduces my expected life-years, but I'm okay with that if it increases what I get done during them/it gets done sooner so multiplicative effects can start multiplying earlier.).
And, in all seriousness, I've just updated a lot, and appreciate your role in sparking that (even if you didn't mean to).
Also, DIY Green is seriously easy to make. It's something like 2 minutes to put together a batch, which is an absolute godsend when you're pressed for time (like during semester). You need to set up some infrastructure to make that work, but you can do that when you're not under a time constraint.
...Food is complicated. Attempts to make it simple have... apparently made it more complicated. We may have just done this to ourselves (or mealsquares gets going and becomes price-competitive with soylent. Then food will be solved Once And For All and it'll be simple.)
I ramble. tl;dr: thank you (sincerely).
I can see the benefits (Orange has somewhere from 5-12 minutes prep time, and is probably slightly more expensive), but I think I'll stick with the more risk-averse option, especially since I would worry incessantly about whether I'd left out one of the ingredients I knew about, let alone the possible missing nutrients.
But all good thoughts. I am intrigued by your ideas, and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Edit: Sorry, I didn't realize there has been so much discussion on this already! I thought I had just stumbled across some obscure product haha. Anyway, I've been reading through discussions here, on Hacker News, Tim Ferris' blog etc. There's been a lot of talk about whether or not this is truly a "replacement for eating" (or whatever the term is). I think the more interesting question is whether it's a good idea to:
My initial impression is that it is a good idea to use it as a once or twice a day thing.
*The two main problems (digestive issues and headaches) seem to be sufficiently addressed by 1. Adopting it slowly into your diet (over the course of 5 days or so) and 2. Making sure you get enough salt.
Original Post: you could ignore this if you're familiar with Soylent
I've just came across a meal replacement drink called Soylent - http://www.soylent.me/.
It is...
However I really don't have enough information to make any reasonably strong conclusions. Those bullet points above are more vague suspicions than evidence backed knowledge.
So do any of you guys know anything about Soylent or meal replacement drinks/bars/etc.? Are they healthy? Are there things I haven't accounted for?
Also, I'm sorta surprised this isn't more popular. Most people I know hate cooking and cleaning and shopping and spending so much time and money on food. I think most people would be more than happy to have Soylent (or something similar) for a meal or two each day, and then have a big dinner or something. It would save a ton of money and time, and would reduce the amount of fat and sugar in the persons diet. And because you're spending less money on food and consuming less fat and sugar, you could justify eating out or ordering in a splurge meal more often! What do you guys think? Why isn't this more popular? Are people really that afraid of the health effects?
(I'm not being hypocritical. I know that *I've* been asking about the health effects and seem to be worried about them, but I wouldn't think most people would approach this the same way I am. If I lived on an island isolated from other people, was told about Soylent and asked what I think it's popularity is, I would guess it to be very high. I would think people would see that it's pretty nutritious, aren't really any known risks or reason to think there would be risks, and be eager to save time and money by using Soylent).