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Comment by fweespeech | Hacker News Reader

http://www.mealsquares.com/nutrition-facts.html

2000 calories of it is 130% of your daily saturated fat...and 126% of total fat.

Eh. Soylent you could get away with eating it all day [theoretically]. MealSquares you need to supplement with other foods due to the fact content or you'll end up screwing your health with that much saturated fat.

http://www.heart.org/HEARTORG/GettingHealthy/NutritionCenter...

Additionally:

> The American Heart Association recommends aiming for a dietary pattern that achieves 5% to 6% of calories from saturated fat. That means, for example, if you need about 2,000 calories a day, no more than 120 of them should come from saturated fats. That’s about 13 grams of saturated fats a day.

Its 6g per square, so you really shouldn't eat more than 2 and get the rest from other sources. At which point, its a minority of the calories you consume.

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Eh, saturated fat isn't great, but it isn't as terrible as we used to think. Check out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturated_fat#Association_with...

To me the problem is the sugar content. It's easily double, even for a large man, and almost triple for a small woman.

The sugar content here does seem higher than ideal, and soylent is about the same.

I'm currently experimenting with making a DIY soylent and I've noticed that if you're trying to get all the carbs from whole-grain, real sources you end up getting a lot of fiber (~50g/day even when doing a relatively low amount of carbs like 35% of your daily calories). A lot of people report feeling bloated and painful from too much fiber. It also adds up in price. So, they supplement with fast-burning carbs like maltodextrin and sugars (soylent is trying out the slower burning sugar isomaltulose).

I'm a little skeptical that something that gets broken down into half fructose and half sucrose exactly like table sugar and HFC is harmless if it just gets digested slowly, that'd be like saying drinking soda is totally healthy as long as you sip on it slowly all day instead of getting too much at once.

If fiber makes you feel bad it means you are not drinking enough water.

Make sure you check out http://www.reddit.com/r/soylent/ and the resources there. Lots of people are experimenting with variations of the Soylent formula/concept.

One of the sources is:

http://www.nhs.uk/news/2014/03March/Pages/Saturated-fats-and...

Which suggests as the guideline and inclues a 20g limit (which the squares are still over):

http://www.nhs.uk/livewell/goodfood/pages/fat.aspx

> Cutting down on saturated fats is only one aspect of reducing your risk of heart disease, stroke and other cardiovascular diseases. Other risk factors include eating too much salt and sugar, being overweight, smoking and a lack of physical activity.

Yes, there is disagreement but no I'm not going to take "disagreement" as "HEY LETS GO OVER THE DAILY LIMIT!!!"

Why does the sugar content seem too high? It looks right for me based on the usual sources. Perhaps it's too high for a weight loss diet, but I don't think it's intended for that.

65 grams of normal sugar if you ate 5 of these meal squares is double the recommended 25-37.5 grams for an adult male. This isn't even counting the sugar alcohol.

The right amount of saturated fat to eat is a major controversy, and I think you're promoting incorrect beliefs here.

It's funny how every single part of nutrition seems to be a major controversy.

So you know better than the NHS, the people who set the guidelines in the US, etc ...?

Yes, but it exceeds the total daily allowance for the NHS, the US equivalent, etc.

There is literally no one that says "Everyone should eat 30g of saturated fat a day"

I don't understand the saturated fat hate. Cultures have existed that have gotten 50% or higher of their total calories from nearly pure animal fat sources. Eskimos (or is the politically correct term Inuit or something else now?) lived on blubber, and only started experiencing the whole heart disease/obesity epidemic when switched to a more "conventional" grain-heavy diet.

I wouldn't trust the USDA to tell me what to eat as far as I can throw them and all of their agriculture lobbyists. RDA's are a joke.

...you mean the people that lived 10+ years less than everyone else, even in the modern era? That is the lifestyle you want to emulate?

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2013/12/18/inuit_life_exp...

Okay. Enjoy.

Did you even read the article that you linked? It's not a great article, but the reasons listed therein have nothing to do with diet.

They actually address this point specifically on their Nutrition page. I am not an expert so I have no basis for comparing your claims to theirs, but it seems like they are at least sensitive to the issue, as it were.

Fats: Those worried about saturated fat content should be assured that our saturated fat (and cholesterol) content derives from healthy sources, not industrially produced fats. Milk, eggs, cocoa butter, and sunflower seeds; these are nutrient-dense and healthy sources of energy. All our sources of fat have shown numerous benefits in long term studies. Lacto-ovo vegetarians have significantly extended life spans compared to people eating normal diets, vegans, and even regular vegetarians. Dark chocolate lowers blood pressure as well as being an antioxidant and nutrient source. Sunflower seeds are a rich source of vitamin E and demonstrate anti-inflammatory properties. Most of our polyunsaturated fat derives from raw sunflower seeds. Given the very high vitamin E content of sunflower seeds, we are confident that our polyunsaturated fat is stable, not oxidized. We will be sourcing our sunflower seeds from the high oleic acid varieties to reduce polyunsaturated fat content further.

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