It has been interesting looking at this whole thing from the outside, but there are too many unknowns in my perspective. The fact that he isn't going on with this experiment with regular doctor check ups is crazy.
I love the attitude he has about Soylent, the whole disrupt food industry type thing is like hacker culture invading health science. However, it should be done in a controlled scientific approach. Kickstarter is probably going crazy trying to figure out if they should approve his application.
The rebuttals seem pretty weak. The only substantive criticisms made were already addressed or changed. Most of the "point made" basically amount to name calling.
According to her website her education consisted of one year at Chapman University (possibly it was more than one year but her About isn't clear). Chapman does have a food science program but not a medical school (according to Wikipedia)
The whole article is no more than a glorified appeal to authority/audacity from a so called expert nutritionist who, it turns out, pimps detox and other homoeopathic diets fads on her website.
> But Rhinehart's claims are completely untested, have never been included in a clinical trial, and his diet isn't being monitored by a doctor.
All true, but not actual refutations. Most people's diets are not monitored by a doctor, after all, and most foodstuffs have not been put through clinical trials despite being cocktails of unknown thousands of compounds and are believed to be safe merely because they don't seem to be too poisonous.
> His self-experiment is ludicrous
Absurdity heuristic, check.
> and most likely dangerously unhealthy.
'most likely'? I'm guessing this is a guess, and not any sort of informed comment based on a meta-analysis etc.
> While the diet is essentially trying to be like the medical food that is injected into a patient's stomach when they have a feeding tube, Jay Mirtallo of Ohio State told the Washington Post that these are "very complex products, in terms of making sure you get them in a form that’s palatable but that stays in a form that’s bioavailable to the body." He continued, "some of the products are very difficult to get into a liquid form and may lose their potency when they do that, or could interact with other substances that keep them from being absorbed completely."
His Soylent is also pretty complex looking, last I saw one of his posts, and also prepared shortly before eating.
> however, I see a red flag for a potential eating disorder."
Insinuation of mental issues, check.
> Stella Metsovas's response: It's no surprise that a fasting state produces endorphins. The fact of hemoglobin being brought up so casually alerts me to how novice the experimenter must be.
My god! He's using biological terms! What a novice.
> SMR: Are you sure the author is using real olive oil (insert satire)?
Click the link; it's merely reporting that some olive oils are sold as higher quality than they are, others are not as excellent as they could be. Moronic reply.
> SMR: Definitely caught my attention here and wondered if I should review the rest of the post. Is he suggesting the cocktail will provide him with the appropriate nutrients for endurance running?
Er, should an improvement in diet not have some sort of effect? Suppose Rhinehart saw his distance go down; would SMR be ignoring the effect - or triumphantly implying the diet was unhealthy and that was proof?
> SMR: Note: Mean Corpuscular Hemoglobin Concentration (MCHC) was on the lower end of range, dated 1/7/13, prior to this experiment.
Implying...?
> SMR: Should we have a roundtable discussion about this? What a stupid, ridiculous statement.
Right, because there are no studies showing differences in metabolic rates, or demonstrating differences in response to exercise...? What a stupid, ridiculous statement (by SMR).
> SMR: As an avid cook, I can tell you the author wasn't spending 2 hours a day on food preparation and cleanup.
As an avid reader, I can tell you that SMR has apparently never actually timed total time devoted to food prep, never read historical novels or economists' estimates of time devoted to food, or had an informed thought in this whole page.
> FYI: cultures that have lived healthiest and longest without disease, base their life on foraging, cooking and consuming quality foods.
Great! I'll keep that in mind the moment I become a hunter-gatherer! Thanks for the advice!
> SMR: Living on fast-food isn't cheap.
Price out 2000 calories of fast food and get back to us.
> SMR: The authors interpretation of calorie restriction (CR) is hugely inaccurate. [It's true, the latest studies about caloric restriction indicate that it doesn't seem to work in primates, even after a 25-year study]
Quibbling. It may not 'reverse', but it does slow aging in many rat studies (and all sorts of other animal studies). The primate studies are interesting, but all the ones I've read are still in progress... And the in-progress human studies show benefits on some dimensions, as would make sense since Americans are lardy-lardba...
Anyone can call themselves a "Nutritionist". I bet she'd never be qualified to be a Dietitian, now would she enjoy being hampered by ethics and knowledge.
> RRB: I used to spend about 2 hours per day on food.
> SMR: As an avid cook, I can tell you the author wasn't spending 2 hours a day on food preparation and cleanup.
As a reader, I can tell you that the author said 'on food', which includes time to eat, not the '2 hours a day on food preparation and cleanup' that the nutritionist mis-states.
> Nutritionist Explains Why The 'Stop Eating Food' Diet Is Dangerous And Unhealthy
> RRB: olive oil for fatty acids
> SMR: Are you sure the author is using real olive oil (insert satire)?
> RRB: Some people can eat all they want and never gain weight, others can't shed pounds no matter how hard they try. The trick is in the genome, though both extremes are uncommon. 23andme is awesome!
> SMR: Should we have a roundtable discussion about this? What a stupid, ridiculous statement.
There is a part of me that thinks it's a bit like a parody of ycombinator - "I'm too doing to much entreprenerism" to have time to eat.. still, each to their own..
17 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 47.5 ms ] threadI love the attitude he has about Soylent, the whole disrupt food industry type thing is like hacker culture invading health science. However, it should be done in a controlled scientific approach. Kickstarter is probably going crazy trying to figure out if they should approve his application.
Edit: Oh jesus, the banner that says "ALL DISEASES BEGIN IN THE GUT". That she can play at "practicing medicine" is horrible.
http://stellametsovas.com/about/
All true, but not actual refutations. Most people's diets are not monitored by a doctor, after all, and most foodstuffs have not been put through clinical trials despite being cocktails of unknown thousands of compounds and are believed to be safe merely because they don't seem to be too poisonous.
> His self-experiment is ludicrous
Absurdity heuristic, check.
> and most likely dangerously unhealthy.
'most likely'? I'm guessing this is a guess, and not any sort of informed comment based on a meta-analysis etc.
> While the diet is essentially trying to be like the medical food that is injected into a patient's stomach when they have a feeding tube, Jay Mirtallo of Ohio State told the Washington Post that these are "very complex products, in terms of making sure you get them in a form that’s palatable but that stays in a form that’s bioavailable to the body." He continued, "some of the products are very difficult to get into a liquid form and may lose their potency when they do that, or could interact with other substances that keep them from being absorbed completely."
His Soylent is also pretty complex looking, last I saw one of his posts, and also prepared shortly before eating.
> however, I see a red flag for a potential eating disorder."
Insinuation of mental issues, check.
> Stella Metsovas's response: It's no surprise that a fasting state produces endorphins. The fact of hemoglobin being brought up so casually alerts me to how novice the experimenter must be.
My god! He's using biological terms! What a novice.
> SMR: Are you sure the author is using real olive oil (insert satire)?
Click the link; it's merely reporting that some olive oils are sold as higher quality than they are, others are not as excellent as they could be. Moronic reply.
> SMR: Definitely caught my attention here and wondered if I should review the rest of the post. Is he suggesting the cocktail will provide him with the appropriate nutrients for endurance running?
Er, should an improvement in diet not have some sort of effect? Suppose Rhinehart saw his distance go down; would SMR be ignoring the effect - or triumphantly implying the diet was unhealthy and that was proof?
> SMR: Note: Mean Corpuscular Hemoglobin Concentration (MCHC) was on the lower end of range, dated 1/7/13, prior to this experiment.
Implying...?
> SMR: Should we have a roundtable discussion about this? What a stupid, ridiculous statement.
Right, because there are no studies showing differences in metabolic rates, or demonstrating differences in response to exercise...? What a stupid, ridiculous statement (by SMR).
> SMR: As an avid cook, I can tell you the author wasn't spending 2 hours a day on food preparation and cleanup.
As an avid reader, I can tell you that SMR has apparently never actually timed total time devoted to food prep, never read historical novels or economists' estimates of time devoted to food, or had an informed thought in this whole page.
> FYI: cultures that have lived healthiest and longest without disease, base their life on foraging, cooking and consuming quality foods.
Great! I'll keep that in mind the moment I become a hunter-gatherer! Thanks for the advice!
> SMR: Living on fast-food isn't cheap.
Price out 2000 calories of fast food and get back to us.
> SMR: The authors interpretation of calorie restriction (CR) is hugely inaccurate. [It's true, the latest studies about caloric restriction indicate that it doesn't seem to work in primates, even after a 25-year study]
Quibbling. It may not 'reverse', but it does slow aging in many rat studies (and all sorts of other animal studies). The primate studies are interesting, but all the ones I've read are still in progress... And the in-progress human studies show benefits on some dimensions, as would make sense since Americans are lardy-lardba...
Anyone can call themselves a "Nutritionist". I bet she'd never be qualified to be a Dietitian, now would she enjoy being hampered by ethics and knowledge.
> SMR: As an avid cook, I can tell you the author wasn't spending 2 hours a day on food preparation and cleanup.
As a reader, I can tell you that the author said 'on food', which includes time to eat, not the '2 hours a day on food preparation and cleanup' that the nutritionist mis-states.
> Nutritionist Explains Why The 'Stop Eating Food' Diet Is Dangerous And Unhealthy
> RRB: olive oil for fatty acids
> SMR: Are you sure the author is using real olive oil (insert satire)?
> RRB: Some people can eat all they want and never gain weight, others can't shed pounds no matter how hard they try. The trick is in the genome, though both extremes are uncommon. 23andme is awesome!
> SMR: Should we have a roundtable discussion about this? What a stupid, ridiculous statement.
this nutritionist seems to provide more mockery than explanation, for a large serving of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty_and_doubt
Honestly, he could have accepted that he doesn't know anything about Soylent because nobody really does.
After doing keto, all nutritionists seem untrustworthy Monsanto slaves to me now.