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Comment by bsimpson | Hacker News Reader

I'd be concerned about the long-term side effects of having little diversity in one's diet. It's been alleged that diabetes is caused by overconsumption of processed sugar and heart disease is caused by overconsumption of red meat. Either of those things in moderation is fine.

Most people don't eat a consistent dose of for instance oat powder every day. It's likely that he's chosen at least one ingredient that is harmless in moderation, but is detrimental to your health over time.

It's also quite possible that there are other things he's underdosing on and hasn't discovered yet (like sulphur before batch #7).

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But the whole point is that soylent is moderation. Everything in it is balanced, so if you eat only soylent, then (in theory) you shouldn't be getting too much of anything.

>It's likely that he's chosen at least one ingredient that is harmless in moderation, but is detrimental to your health over time.

Why do you believe that that is likely?

>It's also quite possible that there are other things he's underdosing on and hasn't discovered yet (like sulphur before batch #7).

Yes, this does seem quite likely. There is probably a significant number of necessary nutrients that nobody even thinks about because they're ubiquitous.

Because there probably hasn't ever been a person who consumed a particular batch of refined nutrients for nearly every meal, and we don't know nearly enough about how the body processes food considering how long we, as a species, have been eating it.

Admittedly, I don't know much about what's in soylent, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if it turns out that eating refined XXX powder in every meal is bad for you, where XXX is an ingredient that he's using to get enough of a particular nutrient.

The problem with that is that fortification is already rampant in premade foods, and so most first-worlders are already eating these refined ingredients in every meal. Moreover, many people take one-a-day multivitamins which in a single dose, contain the same amount (and sometimes more) of the same refined ingredients in a day's worth of soylent.

Extensive studies have been done on the safety and efficacy of multivitamins, and while their utility for healthy people with balanced diets is a matter of debate, their safety (when taken at the recommended dose) is well established.

"Because there probably hasn't ever been a person who consumed a particular batch of refined nutrients for nearly every meal"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Gorske

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