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Comment by salemh | Hacker News Reader

Not sure whats wrong with blending some protein powder (ON is tasty), a full avocado, spinach if your feeling frisky, whole-milk if your feeling more frisky (higher fats / a bit more protein) for a near-meal replacement (near, nothing compares to whole foods).

~400 cals or so.

Or taking it further with blending/vitamixing (so you keep the fiber) veggies.

I thought this was the most hilarious article I've read. And it was not sarcastic...

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What exactly does whole food offer that a meal replacement doesn't? Are we talking nutrients? Because those can be replaced. Are we talking about the form? Because form shouldn't matter much to a digestive track that is built to dissolve and pulverize food. So what makes "whole foods" so much better?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5369778

Better discussion then I can espouse. Small summary, we don't necessarily know why whole foods > substitutes, but they are, ergo risk of non-intake of whole foods doesn't make sense for some anecdotes of a few startup folks.

Take whole foods. Break them down. Gas chromatograph them. Match nutrient content artificially. I don't understand how that doesn't work.

And if Soylent would actually have some experts on their team (be it bio, medical or nutritional, even a chemist!), they could actually do that, or be told why that wouldn't work.

(I wonder for instance if gas chromatography would keep in tact the larger complex molecules, but I don't know much about it either)

> Not sure whats wrong with blending some protein powder (ON is tasty)

Quoting from the list of ingredients for ON[1], this is wrong: Natural and Artificial Flavors, Acesulfame Potassium.

[1] http://www.optimumnutrition.com/products/100-Whey-Gold-Stand...

Your claim is not backed by any evidence at all. There is nothing special or magical about "whole foods". And what is wrong with what you just mentioned is that now I need to keep fresh fruits and vegetables and milk on hand, those spoil. Your proposed meal replacement is also incredibly deficient in over half of known vitamins and essential minerals. Take my default challenge for the "oh its so easy to get all your vitamins and minerals" people: put together a recipe for me that gives me 100% of all my vitamins and minerals. When you actually try doing this, you will realize how unreasonable it is.

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