My current hypothesis is that them majority of their target market (like their CEO) weren't even born in 1973 when the original movie was released. Even if they've heard of the movie, I doubt they've seen it.
From a marketing perspective, it probably has very little impact either way.
No, that twist exists in the book, too. That twist is even spoiled in the book's title: "Make Room! Make Room!". Soylent Green is always people, book or movie.
(It's a sci-fi exploration of Swift's "A Modest Proposal". It always has been.)
(ETA: Yes, Soylent Red is not people. But the point of the book and movie is Soylent Green's "easy" solution to famine.)
> Nootropics (pronunciation: /noʊ.əˈtrɒpᵻks/ noh-ə-TROP-iks)—also called smart drugs or cognitive enhancers—are drugs, supplements, or other substances that improve cognitive function, particularly executive functions, memory, creativity, or motivation, in healthy individuals.
I think it would fall under that definition. Then again, so would adderall.
>Coffiest also includes 75 mg of L-theanine per bottle to promote relaxation without drowsiness and works in concert with caffeine to boost cognitive performance.
Caffeine seems to be generally accepted by the nootropic community as falling into that category. There's at least as much clinical evidence of caffeine improving cognitive function as many nootropics, so it seems reasonable to me.
The list of nootropics is somewhat fluid, as much of the science behind them is either recent or currently occurring.
Is there an equivalent for a mix of vegetables, fruits, grains, meat, etc? It would make more sense as a complete cheap meal than a powder, except for being perishable.
The closest that I have come across would probably be MealSquares - which still contain a good deal of animal products (milk, eggs) - but they seem to be going for a similar goal as Soylent, but making a 'solid' final product, and using whole ingredients.
They last a good month in the fridge/freezer, and about 2 days on the counter.
http://www.mealsquares.com/nutrition-facts.html
To my mind, the key foods which are healthy, cheap, and easy to prepare are whole milk, cheese, yogurt, and nuts. Last time I checked, they all came out much cheaper per calorie than Soylent.
Not exactly what you asked about, but, if I read you right, they accomplish what you're going for.
I don't understand what that study has anything to do with this. Their conclusion was that fruit and vegetable consumption reduces risk of death and does not mention anything about the why the fruits and vegetables reduce risk OR that said benefits are not reproducible through other nutritional systems.
Because we don't know why. Just like we didn't understand omega fatty ratios a couple decades ago.
So this has everything to do with it. There's more to diet than numbers, yet if you're on a pure Soylent diet, you're clearly not getting some relatively-unknown things that are almost conclusively beneficial to your body.
Absence of proof is not proof of absence. Eat your fruits and vegetables or, statistically speaking, your cardiovascular system will eventually suffer.
Soylent's marketing puts a lot of otherwise smart people at serious long-term health risk.
> yet if you're on a pure Soylent diet... Soylent's marketing puts... people at serious long-term health risk.
Even Rosa Labs doesn't recommend a pure Soylent diet. I liked Soylentconor's comment on reddit the other day, pointing out that the right way to look at Soylent is that it's "just food"[1]
I'm obviously not arguing Soylent is perfect, but it's almost certainly better than what most people eat most of the time, and humanity got here subsisting on, on average, much worse.
> Eat your fruits and vegetables or, statistically speaking, your cardiovascular system will eventually suffer.
You seem awfully certain given that you can't say what "relatively unknown [but] conclusively beneficial" things Soylent is missing.
> You seem awfully certain given that you can't say what "relatively unknown [but] conclusively beneficial" things Soylent is missing.
Some ideas proposed with several sources cited:
* Antioxidants and polyphenols from fruits and vegetables – like Vitamin C, carotenoids, and flavonoids – have been linked to lower cardiovascular disease rates. They’re known to prevent cholesterol and other lipids from oxidizing in the arteries.[14]
* Concentrations of another group of antioxidants, alpha carotene and beta carotene, are also elevated when eating fruits and vegetables[15,16]
* Fruits and vegetables slightly decrease blood pressure[16,17]
* Fruits and vegetables typically contain good doses of magnesium and potassium, both already linked to lower mortality rates[18,19,20]
* Vitamin C, carotenoids, lycopene, and other phytochemicals/phytonutrients (likely some that we haven’t yet discovered) were explained as the success from one mortality study[21]
Lots of that stuff is not in Soylent. It's not very difficult to be awfully certain in my confidence in eating fruits and vegetables.
Again. Soylent's marketing has been extremely dangerous, and your link reinforces that point. Their haphazard marketing yielded unintended consequences, and they shouldn't be rewarded for it.
Your argument seems to be "vegetables have things your body needs. Soylent is not vegetables, therefore Soylent doesn't have these things". I am far from a nutrition expert, but from some googling it sounds like a lot of what you bring up, carotenoids, flavonoids, etc. are converted by the body to vitamin A, which Soylent includes. It also includes magnesium, potassium, vitamin C, and so on.
> from some googling it sounds like a lot of what you bring up, carotenoids, flavonoids, etc. are converted by the body to vitamin A
Are you willing to bet your life that this is all they do? Are you willing to bet your life that those general hypotheses are the only reasons why fruits and vegetables make nearly everyone live longer?
Do you think these engineers truly understand food, or is it possible that there are things we don't know, just like we didn't understand omegas decades ago?
I don't claim to fully know what's going on when I eat berries. Nobody does. But I see extremely strong statistics showing one thing, and Soylent has been marketed in the complete opposite direction, and that is dangerous.
Honestly I don't care what people do. But I care what is marketed to inexperienced consumers.
I'm glad to hear Soylent has broadened their product category with this addition. It seems (to me at least) to be a perfect solution for a morning routine; when we usually have a cup of coffee with breakfast, why not just roll that into Soylent and "save some time" (negligible imo but still a consideration) not to mention it will hopefully improve the taste tenfold.
Ever since I've heard about Soylent I've wanted the company to do well -- I love cooking but oftentimes when I'm hungry I hate having to do prep work and cleanup because it feels like I'm procrastinating the work I actually have to do (and I can't skip eating because being hungry while working just gives sub par performance).
I can't afford Soylent consistently as a student and so have used soy milk and other [gross] concoctions in the past; but, I might have to use this news as inspiration (also taking note from u/sxates to stop by Trader Joes and give their concentrate a shot).
I have great news for you: you don't need to afford Soylent because healthy, cheap, easy to prepare food already exists. Whole milk is my favorite, but if you can't handle milk, cheese, nuts, and yogurt are all zero prep time and much cheaper per calorie than Soylent.
Those also mostly require storage infrastructure not always so readily available - I've lived out of a hotel room with no fridge before. Maybe the person is lactose-intolerant - some friends of mine are. Maybe they are OK with the cost increment for the amount of time it buys them.
Or possibly they simply make personal choices about what they put in their own personal bodies differently than you.
You can always push storage infrastructure off onto grocery stores. Stop by one in the morning, buy your calories for the day, eat them throughout the day.
I get that not everybody is me. I'm trying to provide the viewpoint that we don't need a new product to solve the issue of healthy, zero prep food. Plus, the existing options are way, way cheaper per calorie, which is a pretty important consideration, since most people seem to be resource constrained (including me).
Not everyone has the option of putting infrastructure off onto a cheap, convenient, quick, readily available grocery store either. I've personally been in situations where such was not available. Plus, doing that is almost certain to nullify the intended cost advantages and impose extra time costs.
The viewpoint you endeavor to provide is one we are all aware of. After all, it's the default that Soylent exists to provide an alternative to. Myself, I found Soylent incredibly useful for caloric restriction in ways that whole milk, cheese, nuts, grocery stores, and the attendant required infrastructure are not.
I get that you like Soylent. More power to you. But I don't think most people are already aware of the alternatives to Soylent and how much cheaper they are. For instance, you said, in response to my comment about buying food from a grocery store every day, "doing that is almost certain to nullify the intended cost advantages".
According to Soylent's website, their drink is $2.69 per 400 calories. That same amount of money buys you 1 gallon of whole milk at the grocery store, which is 2400 calories, or a half gallon of organic whole milk, which is 1200 calories.
The numbers are similar for nuts, cheese and yogurt. And I haven't even gotten into eating olive oil, which can get you another 2x reduction in cost per calorie over milk.
That is a 3x - 12x decrease in food cost. In other words, that choice alone can make or break a household's monthly budget. And if food storage is an issue, the savings will pay for a fridge in short order.
Any real grocery store near me will set you back $5-$6 for a gallon of organic whole milk. That's without factoring in that neither of them are along my commute, adding time.
I think most people who are willing to consider Soylent are well aware of the costs of the customary diets they have been eating for many years. I also think that most people who are willing to consider Soylent are looking to optimize differently from you.
1. I know that organic whole milk is more expensive. I mentioned it in my response. It's still 3x less expensive per calorie than Soylent.
2. I understand that going to the grocery store is a non-starter for you, but that is not the case for the vast majority of North Americans, who already source a huge portion of their calories from grocery stores (and have refrigeration). Perhaps being able to get the main component of your diet from a grocery store is a benefit for many people, not a drawback.
3. You keep suggesting that perhaps I am unaware that other people have different priorities than me. But I'm not. I was not addressing all users of Soylent. Instead, I responded to somebody who said that Soylent was too expensive for them by mentioning an alternative which has more or less the same benefits as Soylent, but which is much less expensive.
4. Perhaps there are people interested in Soylent who are trying to optimize differently than you. Maybe somebody has zero extra time and is spending a small fortune on delivered lunches at work, so they're interested in something which is just as convenient but much less expensive. Maybe they don't care that they have to buy supplies at the grocery store (or, crazy enough, maybe they would prefer that to having to remember to replenish online). Maybe they're not fully thought out on the subject yet, but they've heard about this Soylent thing. Maybe the information I shared would be useful to somebody like that.
I did try Joylent. I managed to drink one "meal" but couldn't go through the second one. It's the most disgusting thing I have ever encountered.
I eat a lot of things many people would consider unsavory, including snails, oysters, cheese, etc., things way past their expiration date, and very bad (cheap) Chinese food. But this, no.
I had bought 40 bags of the stuff that sit unused in my cupboard.
Maybe Soylent is way different, I don't know, I didn't try it. But a small pill would be fantastic.
A pill is probably pretty close to impossible. Even pure fat only has 9 calories per gram. 2000 calories is about 8 fl oz which you could (theoretically) drink, but would be a whole lot of pills.
Worse than your typical high quality protein shake? A warm protein shake with room temperature tap water right after the gym is gag inducing. That's my threshold for gross drinks.
I saw the photo of two guys standing in the lab. Somehow I thought it is from Breaking Bad or some other show (I'm not watching it so wasn't sure...). Then I read the description:
> Soylent scientists at work in the food labs refining Coffiest's flavor.
The screenshot is from Breaking Bad. In the scene two scientists overengineer a perfect cup of coffee. The screenshot's inclusion in the article is a (poor) attempt at a joke.
People take sides on Soylent but I'm so glad a company like this exists to just attack the notion of what a meal is. It has such an impact on so many parts of our society including many of the glaring issues like poverty and nutrition.
Personally (and I've tried it) I didn't like their initial strategy of being a 100% meal replacement and feel strongly like it makes a great supplement. I think their new products are more aligned with this and will likely renew my subscription today.
"...here's what makes this campaign great in my estimation - each sample of Coffiest contains three milligrams of a simple alkaloid. Nothing harmful. But definitely habit-forming. After ten weeks the customer is hooked for life. It would cost him at least five thousand dollars for a cure, so it's simpler for him to go right on drinking Coffiest - three cups with every meal and a pot beside his bed at night, just as it says on the jar."
- Fred Pohl and C.M.Kornbluth, "The Space Merchants", 1952.
I am glad to see that Soylent is continuing to name their products after Sci-Fi Future Foodstuffs Of Dubious Safety.
One problem with products like Soylent is that the nutrition label is used for marketing, and as a result they consciously engineer the product to optimize for that.
Nutrition facts labels and recommended daily intakes vary by country, and they're backed up by a lot of bad science and guessing games.
Consider that the USDA recently lifted their recommended maximum intake of cholesterol from 300mg/day (1.5 eggs/day) to no upper limit at all (after 50 years), or that study after study has failed to find any significant benefit from taking daily multivitamins (and to the contrary has found that taking too many, or the wrong kind, can cause liver damage), or that every sugary breakfast cereal and energy drink would seem quite healthy if all you looked at was the nutrition facts label.
I don't think nutrition facts labels are particularly meaningful, so a product sold almost entirely on the basis of how strictly it conforms to those government recommendations isn't of much interest to me.
If you're Soylent, you also have to lean heavily on government recommendations as a form of insurance against lawsuits. There's a lot of risk in encouraging people to eat only your food for every meal of the day, and being able to tell a judge that your product closely adhered to government recommendations is undoubtedly helpful in various litigation scenarios, but I don't think that necessarily forms a good foundation for what people should be eating.
> that every sugary breakfast cereal and energy drink would seem quite healthy if all you looked at was the nutrition facts label.
That is factually false, since their labels do quite accurately reflect that they consist of nothing more than carbs (and a bit of protein, for some cereals). I'm not sure how one would come to a conclusion that energy drinks are good for you from their nutrition label, unless you're assuming sugars, artificial colorings, taurine and caffeine are all healthy compounds.
Those are just two product categories well-known for their manipulation of the nutrition facts label, and there are definitely millions of consumers that think they confer health benefits as a result of how the nutrition facts label was manipulated.
Most people think VitaminWater is healthy, and feel like they're doing something good for their body when they drink it. They'd probably be more discerning and come to a better conclusion about that product if you completely removed its nutrition facts label.
thats because of how the products are marketed, not the nutrition label.
people think vitamin water is healthy because its called vitamin water. because the flavors are called things like "immune booster" "essential" "multi-v" and because they give descriptions on exactly what ailment this drink is designed to combat.
putting 1/2 cup as the serving size for ice cream is manipulating a nutrition label to sell more product, putting truthful information on the label and advertising your product as health food anyways is just dishonest marketing.
Maybe I'm just a third level contrarian, but I don't think one can reject mainstream advice on, for example, saturated fat simply because the USDA changed their mind on cholesterol.
Mainstream medical sources have never claimed to have strong evidence on the link between dietary cholesterol and heart disease, mortality etc. However since the link between serum cholesterol and these things is so string, it seemed prudent to advise limiting dietary cholesterol. However no, with more negative studies, this advice no longer makes sense. But at no point was limiting dietary cholesterol claimed to be as high of a priority as limiting saturated and trans fats.
That said, apart from saturated fats, total calories and protein (for people looking to build muscle) I don't think the rest of the label is useful for most people.
Wow. That name is literally from Frederik Pohl's 'The Space Merchants'. Now that's cojones (Pohl died in 2013). I see I'm not the first to notice this, but it's worth noticing.
I'd try the stuff, if they didn't put 1,6-Dichloro-1,6-dideoxy-β-D-fructofuranosyl-4-chloro-4-deoxy-α-D-galactopyranoside in it. (the brand name is 'sucralose'). That stuff gets everywhere, but I have a nasty reaction to it and really don't appreciate the company lobbying to have it treated like some kind of safe 'sucra' or 'ose'.
>if they didn't put 1,6-Dichloro-1,6-dideoxy-β-D-fructofuranosyl-4-chloro-4-deoxy-α-D-galactopyranoside in it.
Some people prefer it over (2R,3R,4S,5S,6R)-2-[(2S,3S,4S,5R)-3,4-dihydroxy-2,5-bis(hydroxymethyl)oxolan-2-yl]oxy-6-(hydroxymethyl)oxane-3,4,5-triol (IUPAC name for sucrose aka table sugar).
There isn't really any purpose in using full chemical names in informal discussion. Most organic chemicals are pretty complicated, so using the full names just makes it seem like you are trying to scare people who don't know any better.
I guess it's good that they're branching out beyond their initial Soylent brand and trying to get more consumers, especially breakfast users who are used to coffee, but I still don't appreciate the notion that this is somehow better or more efficient than making a meal for yourself, when it's not been proven that it's any better (and may be worse, it's hard to know because it's so new). To me the Soylent brand just seems like a startup version of the supplement shakes that I saw my mom drink when I was a kid, and marketed to a different demographic.
79 comments
[ 2.2 ms ] story [ 156 ms ] thread... I am not the only one bothered by their naming decisions, right?
From a marketing perspective, it probably has very little impact either way.
(It's a sci-fi exploration of Swift's "A Modest Proposal". It always has been.)
(ETA: Yes, Soylent Red is not people. But the point of the book and movie is Soylent Green's "easy" solution to famine.)
edit: i'm referring to the quote saying "So we have two mild nootropics" which i read as counting caffeine as one of them
> Nootropics (pronunciation: /noʊ.əˈtrɒpᵻks/ noh-ə-TROP-iks)—also called smart drugs or cognitive enhancers—are drugs, supplements, or other substances that improve cognitive function, particularly executive functions, memory, creativity, or motivation, in healthy individuals.
I think it would fall under that definition. Then again, so would adderall.
The list of nootropics is somewhat fluid, as much of the science behind them is either recent or currently occurring.
Is there an equivalent for a mix of vegetables, fruits, grains, meat, etc? It would make more sense as a complete cheap meal than a powder, except for being perishable.
It brings to mind the 'diet problem' http://www.neos-guide.org/content/diet-problem for which, if optimizing for price only, often suggests that you eat mainly potatoes.
And there is the venerable Dillburito.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilberito
Not exactly what you asked about, but, if I read you right, they accomplish what you're going for.
But one thing they sure get right is how to market to a niche: all you guys and readers of tech news sites.
It'll be successful, but let's not make it out to be something pioneering, because it's most definitely not.
Anyone who's doing full-Soylent really needs to read this massive meta-analysis:
http://www.bmj.com/content/349/bmj.g4490
So this has everything to do with it. There's more to diet than numbers, yet if you're on a pure Soylent diet, you're clearly not getting some relatively-unknown things that are almost conclusively beneficial to your body.
Absence of proof is not proof of absence. Eat your fruits and vegetables or, statistically speaking, your cardiovascular system will eventually suffer.
Soylent's marketing puts a lot of otherwise smart people at serious long-term health risk.
Even Rosa Labs doesn't recommend a pure Soylent diet. I liked Soylentconor's comment on reddit the other day, pointing out that the right way to look at Soylent is that it's "just food"[1]
I'm obviously not arguing Soylent is perfect, but it's almost certainly better than what most people eat most of the time, and humanity got here subsisting on, on average, much worse.
> Eat your fruits and vegetables or, statistically speaking, your cardiovascular system will eventually suffer.
You seem awfully certain given that you can't say what "relatively unknown [but] conclusively beneficial" things Soylent is missing.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/soylent/comments/4wowtp/why_is_that...
When did they stop marketing it as a full meal replacement?
Some ideas proposed with several sources cited:
* Antioxidants and polyphenols from fruits and vegetables – like Vitamin C, carotenoids, and flavonoids – have been linked to lower cardiovascular disease rates. They’re known to prevent cholesterol and other lipids from oxidizing in the arteries.[14]
* Concentrations of another group of antioxidants, alpha carotene and beta carotene, are also elevated when eating fruits and vegetables[15,16]
* Fruits and vegetables slightly decrease blood pressure[16,17]
* Fruits and vegetables typically contain good doses of magnesium and potassium, both already linked to lower mortality rates[18,19,20]
* Vitamin C, carotenoids, lycopene, and other phytochemicals/phytonutrients (likely some that we haven’t yet discovered) were explained as the success from one mortality study[21]
(https://blog.priceplow.com/vegetables)
Lots of that stuff is not in Soylent. It's not very difficult to be awfully certain in my confidence in eating fruits and vegetables.
Again. Soylent's marketing has been extremely dangerous, and your link reinforces that point. Their haphazard marketing yielded unintended consequences, and they shouldn't be rewarded for it.
Are you willing to bet your life that this is all they do? Are you willing to bet your life that those general hypotheses are the only reasons why fruits and vegetables make nearly everyone live longer?
Do you think these engineers truly understand food, or is it possible that there are things we don't know, just like we didn't understand omegas decades ago?
I don't claim to fully know what's going on when I eat berries. Nobody does. But I see extremely strong statistics showing one thing, and Soylent has been marketed in the complete opposite direction, and that is dangerous.
Honestly I don't care what people do. But I care what is marketed to inexperienced consumers.
Ever since I've heard about Soylent I've wanted the company to do well -- I love cooking but oftentimes when I'm hungry I hate having to do prep work and cleanup because it feels like I'm procrastinating the work I actually have to do (and I can't skip eating because being hungry while working just gives sub par performance).
I can't afford Soylent consistently as a student and so have used soy milk and other [gross] concoctions in the past; but, I might have to use this news as inspiration (also taking note from u/sxates to stop by Trader Joes and give their concentrate a shot).
Or possibly they simply make personal choices about what they put in their own personal bodies differently than you.
I get that not everybody is me. I'm trying to provide the viewpoint that we don't need a new product to solve the issue of healthy, zero prep food. Plus, the existing options are way, way cheaper per calorie, which is a pretty important consideration, since most people seem to be resource constrained (including me).
The viewpoint you endeavor to provide is one we are all aware of. After all, it's the default that Soylent exists to provide an alternative to. Myself, I found Soylent incredibly useful for caloric restriction in ways that whole milk, cheese, nuts, grocery stores, and the attendant required infrastructure are not.
According to Soylent's website, their drink is $2.69 per 400 calories. That same amount of money buys you 1 gallon of whole milk at the grocery store, which is 2400 calories, or a half gallon of organic whole milk, which is 1200 calories.
The numbers are similar for nuts, cheese and yogurt. And I haven't even gotten into eating olive oil, which can get you another 2x reduction in cost per calorie over milk.
That is a 3x - 12x decrease in food cost. In other words, that choice alone can make or break a household's monthly budget. And if food storage is an issue, the savings will pay for a fridge in short order.
I think most people who are willing to consider Soylent are well aware of the costs of the customary diets they have been eating for many years. I also think that most people who are willing to consider Soylent are looking to optimize differently from you.
1. I know that organic whole milk is more expensive. I mentioned it in my response. It's still 3x less expensive per calorie than Soylent.
2. I understand that going to the grocery store is a non-starter for you, but that is not the case for the vast majority of North Americans, who already source a huge portion of their calories from grocery stores (and have refrigeration). Perhaps being able to get the main component of your diet from a grocery store is a benefit for many people, not a drawback.
3. You keep suggesting that perhaps I am unaware that other people have different priorities than me. But I'm not. I was not addressing all users of Soylent. Instead, I responded to somebody who said that Soylent was too expensive for them by mentioning an alternative which has more or less the same benefits as Soylent, but which is much less expensive.
4. Perhaps there are people interested in Soylent who are trying to optimize differently than you. Maybe somebody has zero extra time and is spending a small fortune on delivered lunches at work, so they're interested in something which is just as convenient but much less expensive. Maybe they don't care that they have to buy supplies at the grocery store (or, crazy enough, maybe they would prefer that to having to remember to replenish online). Maybe they're not fully thought out on the subject yet, but they've heard about this Soylent thing. Maybe the information I shared would be useful to somebody like that.
There are other competitor like Queal or Huel
I eat a lot of things many people would consider unsavory, including snails, oysters, cheese, etc., things way past their expiration date, and very bad (cheap) Chinese food. But this, no.
I had bought 40 bags of the stuff that sit unused in my cupboard.
Maybe Soylent is way different, I don't know, I didn't try it. But a small pill would be fantastic.
> Soylent scientists at work in the food labs refining Coffiest's flavor.
Well, not even close.
Personally (and I've tried it) I didn't like their initial strategy of being a 100% meal replacement and feel strongly like it makes a great supplement. I think their new products are more aligned with this and will likely renew my subscription today.
- Fred Pohl and C.M.Kornbluth, "The Space Merchants", 1952.
I am glad to see that Soylent is continuing to name their products after Sci-Fi Future Foodstuffs Of Dubious Safety.
Nutrition facts labels and recommended daily intakes vary by country, and they're backed up by a lot of bad science and guessing games.
Consider that the USDA recently lifted their recommended maximum intake of cholesterol from 300mg/day (1.5 eggs/day) to no upper limit at all (after 50 years), or that study after study has failed to find any significant benefit from taking daily multivitamins (and to the contrary has found that taking too many, or the wrong kind, can cause liver damage), or that every sugary breakfast cereal and energy drink would seem quite healthy if all you looked at was the nutrition facts label.
I don't think nutrition facts labels are particularly meaningful, so a product sold almost entirely on the basis of how strictly it conforms to those government recommendations isn't of much interest to me.
If you're Soylent, you also have to lean heavily on government recommendations as a form of insurance against lawsuits. There's a lot of risk in encouraging people to eat only your food for every meal of the day, and being able to tell a judge that your product closely adhered to government recommendations is undoubtedly helpful in various litigation scenarios, but I don't think that necessarily forms a good foundation for what people should be eating.
That is factually false, since their labels do quite accurately reflect that they consist of nothing more than carbs (and a bit of protein, for some cereals). I'm not sure how one would come to a conclusion that energy drinks are good for you from their nutrition label, unless you're assuming sugars, artificial colorings, taurine and caffeine are all healthy compounds.
It had a full chapter on macro-nutrients.
Most people think VitaminWater is healthy, and feel like they're doing something good for their body when they drink it. They'd probably be more discerning and come to a better conclusion about that product if you completely removed its nutrition facts label.
people think vitamin water is healthy because its called vitamin water. because the flavors are called things like "immune booster" "essential" "multi-v" and because they give descriptions on exactly what ailment this drink is designed to combat.
putting 1/2 cup as the serving size for ice cream is manipulating a nutrition label to sell more product, putting truthful information on the label and advertising your product as health food anyways is just dishonest marketing.
Mainstream medical sources have never claimed to have strong evidence on the link between dietary cholesterol and heart disease, mortality etc. However since the link between serum cholesterol and these things is so string, it seemed prudent to advise limiting dietary cholesterol. However no, with more negative studies, this advice no longer makes sense. But at no point was limiting dietary cholesterol claimed to be as high of a priority as limiting saturated and trans fats.
That said, apart from saturated fats, total calories and protein (for people looking to build muscle) I don't think the rest of the label is useful for most people.
I'd try the stuff, if they didn't put 1,6-Dichloro-1,6-dideoxy-β-D-fructofuranosyl-4-chloro-4-deoxy-α-D-galactopyranoside in it. (the brand name is 'sucralose'). That stuff gets everywhere, but I have a nasty reaction to it and really don't appreciate the company lobbying to have it treated like some kind of safe 'sucra' or 'ose'.
Some people prefer it over (2R,3R,4S,5S,6R)-2-[(2S,3S,4S,5R)-3,4-dihydroxy-2,5-bis(hydroxymethyl)oxolan-2-yl]oxy-6-(hydroxymethyl)oxane-3,4,5-triol (IUPAC name for sucrose aka table sugar).
There isn't really any purpose in using full chemical names in informal discussion. Most organic chemicals are pretty complicated, so using the full names just makes it seem like you are trying to scare people who don't know any better.