Rob Rhinehart

It's riding a wave of novelty, but it's hard to argue that it's actually solving the problem that it claims to (busy/lazy, want healthy food-substitute).

The post doesn't actually tell you much about the nutrition without evidence about levels of actual nutrient absorption, but a quick google scholar search finds that calcium inhibits iron and copper absorption, especially in the presence of phytates [0,1] (which Soylent contains from the oat flour) and that zinc, manganese, and iron have similar uptake pathways and limit each others absorption by competing for use of those pathways [1,2]. No idea if there's any other interactions, but it doesn't seem like a good idea to rely on this stuff much for nutrition.

Aside from that, he vetted the formula by an uncontrolled, unblinded study with a sample size of n=1 (i.e. trying it himself for a few months), and he says on his blog that he "started having joint pain and found [he] fit the symptoms of a sulfur deficiency. This makes perfect sense as [he] consume[s] almost none, and sulfur is a component of every living cell. Sulfur is hard to miss in a typical diet so the FDA would have little reason to recommend it. A typical male physique has 140g of sulfur, making it the sixth most abundant element in the human body. Ten grams of sulfur from Methylsulfonylmethane cured me right away, and I now consume 2g/day." [3]

In that same post, he says that "After three months I should be finding deficiencies, and I did", and makes major…

He seems to be very conscious that this is in effect an experiment, that might be risky as well. E.g. from his site (
http://robrhinehart.com/):

"I am reticent to provide exact brand names and instructions because I am not fully convinced of the diet's safety for a physiology different than mine. What if I missed something that's essential for someone of a different race or age group"

But he is interested in actually gathering more data, even if not exactly formally enough for a proper study:

"So…I'll just ship you some of my batch. If you are willing to consume exclusively soylent, and get a CBC, chem panel, and lipid blood test before and after the week and share your results with me it's on the house. Bonus points for getting a psych evaluation before and after. The brain is an organ. I can ship it worldwide but it would be nice if you were in San Francisco so we can meet in person."

Further down on his blog, he has also posted PDF's of his bloodwork.

While he certainly does not have sufficient evidence of general safety and effect, he is aware of that and seems to be actively interested in learning about any flaws in what he's done so far.

> The burdon of evidence should be even greater when it's a non-natural source, as Nassim Taleb argues in Antifragile

This, to me, is ridiculous. A vast range of dangerous poisons are readily avaiable in nature.

I used to pick a lot of mushrooms, and can safely identify perhaps a dozen types common where I grew up. But every…

There's no science here. This so-called experiment is worthless IMHO.

Feeding people all-liquid diets to keep them alive is well known. That's what happens to coma patients and lots of work in creating enteral nutrition products has been done. Given that people's lives depend on this that's a good place to start (take a look at, for example, Jevity [3]). And the people who make that stuff worry about keeping your gastrointestinal system working, the right balance of everything needed to keep a (in this case, sick) person alive, how to keep the product from spoiling, etc.

So, he's not creating something new.

The other argument against the existing products is price. Here's a quick comparison. He claims that it costs him $155 per month [1]. If he were to live on Jevity 1.5 he'd need to drink 4.2 cans per day at a cost of $57/24 per can (it's sold in packs of 24 cans [2]) or $9.98 per day which is roughly $300 a month. (If he ups the kcal to 2,000 a day from the 1,500 he was on then he'd need to drink 5.6 cans a day which is $400 a month).

So, he'd be spending 2 to 2.5 times what he currently is. But he'd be spending it on a product that's been quality controlled and tested.

Is there any indication that he can fundamentally change the economics of this type of food? I don't think so. Especially when you factor in all the work that the makers of Jevity etc. are doing at that price point (the QA, the distribution, the packaging).

And certainly not enough to meet all his…

Hi, this is Romeo Stevens, cofounder of MealSquares. We’re really interested in feedback.

Since Soylent is a similar product in our space, I wanted to discuss some points made by Rob Rhinehart in his post "The Fallacy of Whole Foods": http://robrhinehart.com/?p=874

Rob likes to compare Soylent to medical meal replacements. But medical meal replacements have taken a long time to mature. For example, it took a while for professional nutritionists to realize maybe they shouldn’t pump newborns full of soybean oil [1]. This may sound silly today, but that was the best nutritionists could do based on the science available to them. And that's the problem I see artificially constructed meal replacements running in to--if you do the best you can based on the science available, that still may not be enough.

Different forms of the same nutrient do seem to affect the body differently. We see negative health outcomes from substances such as beta-carotene, vitamin E, and folic acid in supplemental form [2], while high levels in whole foods demonstrate no such harms. So bioavailability is complicated, and for whatever reason whole foods seem to have consistently healthier profiles than supplements.

Many examples of strong nutrient synergy have been discovered. Vitamin D and calcium, vitamin C and iron, the fat soluble vitamins and dietary fat are some of the most well established. It seems likely that we've still got more to discover. Rob himself seems to acknowledge this in his…

You have some choice quotes, but here's the smoking gun:

>Soylent is perfectly balanced and optimized for your body and lifestyle, meaning it automatically puts you at an optimal weight, makes you feel full, and improves your focus and cognition.

Not just easy and healthy. No. Perfectly optimized... Automatically puts you at an optimal weight They've toned down the language since saying this, but I think anyone has good reason to be upset over such claims.

Tim Ferriss gave a platform to Soylent on his blog recently, which is one of the best things you can have happen for your product: http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelellsberg/2012/01/11/the-tim-ferriss-effect/ Rhinehart wasn't very grateful, simply because Ferriss showed some healthy skepticism. Here's the whole event:

http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2013/08/20/soylent/

http://robrhinehart.com/?p=874

http://www.flickr.com/photos/timferriss/9684046788/

One of the last things Ferriss says? I don't want you to fail and explicitly stated otherwise in my piece... That mimics the same attitude a lot of us here have.

Being skeptical of bogus claims isn't the same thing as dismissing something. Or calling it a toy. That accusation is a dismissal of reasonable skepticism.

Haha, most excellent.

One thing that I'm only now (and stupidly late) realising is that tech journalism almost never critiques new trends.

Sure there are some gut "this fucking sucks" but there is never a real effort to provide some critical thinking about the PR emanating from whichever source.

For example, soylent is the brain child of someone who has possibly crippling [OCD](http://robrhinehart.com/?p=1331) (Having been blighted by it for most of my teenage and childhood.) It looks like one of his coping mechanisms.

I'm sure its a great product, but I wouldn't want to emulate someone's OCD lifestyle. Yet we are asked to "emulate the habits of these successful XXX" without stopping to ask, are they happy?

Yet no one seems to ask the question: "is this good?" or "whats the logical outcome?" They just seem to be keen to breathlessly relay the PR line, possible with a pithy snap reaction.

I'm not suggesting a flame war for every press release, just a health helping of critical thinking, and some research.