- You know whats an irreversible waste of time, money and effort? Eating food you take pleasure in eating. I mean, wouldnt you rather just ingest a tasteless form of sustenance for the rest of your life and never have to go through that tedious rigmarole of opening and eating a pre-made sandwich or enjoying a huge hungover fry-up ever again? Rob Rhinehart – a 24-year-old software engineer from Atlanta and, presumably, an impossibly busy man – thinks so.
I went into this thinking I was going to absolutely disagree with this argument. While I wouldn't want to go on this diet, I think it is an interesting idea and deserves to be studied further. I also don't think it will catch on but you never know. Also, only a bachelor would come up with something like this. No way would a girlfriend put up with eating an energy drink everyday for who knows how long.
I think it was mk who said that biology is so multifaceted that something like this likely wouldn't work. We don't fully understand the interplay of our biological systems. Chances are he's missing something in his estimation. It will be interesting to see what comes of it.
Yeah, it would be pretty unbelievable if he was getting everything that he 'needed' for the healthiest diet. However, I put 'needed' in quotes, because it's tough to even establish what that means. I work in research, and we have often joked that if we were locked in the lab, we could just survive by drinking our cell culture media. That's pretty much sugar water, some amino acids, electrolytes, and serum from cow fetuses. So in that respect, this is a science that has been going on for quite some time. Maybe I should send him some culture medium. I probably tastes similar. But with the fetal cow serum, it probably is much healthier, and it keeps in the refrigerator for months. Why does he make it everyday? Why doesn't he just freeze down servings and thaw them as needed? Don't get me wrong; I do think that if we did something similar to this and only ate one 'normal' meal a day, we'd all probably be better off for it. But as a complete replacement, it's total guesswork. You could replace two meals a day with a huge assortment of more simple concoctions and improve your health.There are drawbacks: It doesn't keep long after mixing with water, so I still have to make it every day.
Probably because it takes longer to thaw something than to mix it with water?Why does he make it everyday? Why doesn't he just freeze down servings and thaw them as needed?
Yeah, you are probably right. I suppose I pictured him mixing it every day, but he probably just makes pre-measured aliquots of the powder. Still he said "I still have to make it every day", which sounds more than just stirring it into water. Maybe because the fish oil. If that's the case, he should freeze it.
Why would any of these body parts go by the wayside? Teeth aren't muscles and don't require exercise, so it's not like they'd atrophy. His stomach, liver and intestines are all involved in the digestive process which is still required for the body to synthesize useful proteins out of the things he's ingesting, whether it's "real" or not. Kidneys are involved with waste removal which, true, wouldn't get as much use as a result of him not taking in as much waste material, but he's clearly still going to have waste material from his body, albeit perhaps not as much. Even if you drink nothing but water the body still filters it out as urine which is a major function of the kidneys. Do you think it'd be detrimental to the body to only ingest his concoction? Why? He can still eat socially, he says so in the interview. That said, does one need to eat in order to socialize with friends and family? You can still sit around drinking nutrient-slush and enjoying company every bit as well as a roast turkey and potatoes, couldn't you? As for bringing his own... what do vegans do? What do people with allergies do? Peoples' lifestyles are already a lot more varied with regards to diet than they were a few decades ago. Can we really fault him for not just eating what everyone else eats?
Yeah, it's going to be interesting to see some sort of follow up on this.
I read his initial blog post a few days ago, it looks really interesting honestly. I would do this myself but I'm worried about missing nutrients, notably choline was absent from his original stack. There are minor mutations among the population that leave a minority of people unable to synthesize certain nutrients from precursors, but it's fine because those nutrients are readily available in food so there is no significant effect. I expect as he expands his consumer base, some of these problems will appear, and they won't be immediately apparent. I'm a little disappointed by his pivot towards nootropics. I understand it's the next logical step but there's a lot of quackery in that field. I think it would be better if he perfected his original goal before he moved on to more experimental things. Once this becomes a consumer product, I'll be interested. Until then I will leave the guinea pigging to someone else.
Good luck. Let's hope the side effects don't turn you in to SmallPaul.
I feel like this article is sensationalized. I feel a lot of VICE is sensationalized. First let's start with the writer:
No, I don't feel I'm being "trolled". I feel it's unprofessional that as a journalist, you're using words like "trolled". This is why I despise the Daily Dot, and how it tries to please the "hip techy crowd".
No, a pure nutrition food doesn't sound "bulimic" to me. Everyone knows the only function of food is nutrition.
Cravings, and pleasure from eating are just evolutionary side effects to get us to eat, and to want to eat. All but the most blind religious know this.
And oh man, this title. "This man thinks he never has to eat again"? Are you fucking kidding me? More like "Man decides to start eating pure nutrition food. Doesn't like spending time indulging on meals." Now onto the idea. A 100% PRACTICAL, 100% NUTRITIONALLY FOOD ISN'T A NEW IDEA. IT'S NOT REVOLUTIONARY. IT'S USED IN FICTION ALL THE TIME. IT'S USED IN REAL LIFE ALL THE TIME. Guess what kind of food they use in aid efforts? Food that tastes like shit, but is PURELY sustaining. Has anyone here watched Firefly? In the very first episode, it's about the main character, Mal, selling a nutritional bar that is said to taste like crap, but'll keep you alive for weeks. It's pure vitamins, fat, calories, etc. Then again, Joss Whedon is a genius. Point being, this isn't revolutionary, and this writing style is atrocious.
Boy, you have a lot of anger about stuff that doesn't matter and isn't the focus of the article.
This is fascinating. If it's sustainable in the long-term - and across a variety of people (everyone has a different metabolism and therefore different nutritional needs, of course) then this could be the killer thing that can change food forever. Turning eating from a necessity into a recreational or social activity could have a major impact on economics, health, world hunger, entertainment, plumbing, everything. When you think about it, what are the things that every person works to have at baseline? A house, and enough food. If we could mass-produce enough of this cheap substance it could completely eliminate at least one of those needs from an economic perspective. Cost of living would go down dramatically - groceries, kitchen stuff, food preparation, these all take a lot of time and money out of households. I'm not fully ready to give up my lifestyle of eating 2 or 3 solid meals a day, but I am prepared to accept evidence as it surfaces from health experts and the medical community. If drinking a cheap, mostly-tasteless nutrient slush a few times every day is enough to sustain an average person, or even provide health benefits then I would happily give it a go. I'd still probably eat "real" food but that's mostly because I like the taste and not for any particular philosophical reason.