Official consumable substance of the Semantic Apocalypse?

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jamesA01

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« Reply #15 on: September 14, 2013, 12:26:58 pm »

There's no reason we can't manufacture the actual ingredients in vegetables on a mass scale, a lot faster, more efficient and more refined than actually planting the seeds and waiting for the sun and the soil to do it for us.

Excepting vested interests, friend.
The agricultural industry has a LOT of money. They could probably fight any number of legal battles that they knew they would lose, but simply do it for so long that the new developers go bankrupt. Or, at least, delay developing technology for decades (see: alternative fuels). Over what? I don't know, but I'm sure they could find something.

Well, from what I gathered from the Soylent blog, the food industry already manufacturers LARGE quantities of vital nutrients, it just puts them in different products. Also, did you see the vegetable powder link I posted? I don't think the food industry could really get away with halting this kind of work forever. We've got the internet and we're becoming more and more aware all the time. They won't scam me with their hippie bs about 'nature' being all pure and wholesome!

Kellais

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« Reply #16 on: September 15, 2013, 12:16:15 pm »
There is at least one real problem with only getting your "food" through liquids - your teeth. Chewing and bitting is a very important part of keeping your mouth healthy. Especially your teeth (and gums). Also your saliva has some important functions that also only get into action if you have the food in your mouth for long enough.

I'm very sceptical about this. Not saying that it is all BS (because i obviously haven't tried it or have any inside data) ... but there are already so many nutrition supplements that have been hailed as "the end all be all" of nourishment that were "disproved" by studies that i will wait for a more thorough research into this product before i forsake the traditional intake of food.
Just look at all those supplements for athlets...for example all those protein shakes that promise you more muscles etc etc ... i recently read a research paper done by a handful of professors of the appropriate fields that clearly shows that the intake of more protein does nothing for muscle growth...they even have hints that too much protein can actually hinder muscle growth.

I also have experience with a handful of so called nutrition supplements of the last couple of years that have been distributed via other means than retail (snowball like systems) that have promoted themselves as perfect complements or even replacements to the traditional food intake. All of them have dropped of the face of the earth because they could not hold what they promised.

Would it be awesome if all about Soylent is true and we have found the "holy grail" of foods? Sure it would. Is it likely? I doubt it.

As for positive effects of said products for some of the customer-base...well, unfortunately, this is no proof that it works. Remember, placebo-effect aka the power of the mind is a very powerful tool. If you believe in Soylent with all your heart it indeed can have a positive effect without it being the product itself that helps you. Just wanted to throw that out there.

Anyway, it will be interesting to see how this product will continue. Maybe it IS the holy grail of foods...
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Madness

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« Reply #17 on: September 15, 2013, 05:06:00 pm »
Well, from what I gathered from the Soylent blog, the food industry already manufacturers LARGE quantities of vital nutrients, it just puts them in different products.

Point. We've significantly altered our consumption with additives and irradiation, not to mention next-level advancements like genome sequencing, etc in an effort to compensate for a diet we lost because industrial agriculture is the only option for our problems of scale... which leaves me very incredulous. But there are prevalent historical examples of nutrient deficiency so it is also possible that they are saving us from ourselves...

Also, any species we harvest in an industrial manner already experiences a feed system. However, this is evidently problem-filled for those species and ourselves in our continued consumption of them.

There is at least one real problem with only getting your "food" through liquids - your teeth. Chewing and bitting is a very important part of keeping your mouth healthy. Especially your teeth (and gums). Also your saliva has some important functions that also only get into action if you have the food in your mouth for long enough.

james mentioned that chewing gum was common.

I'm very sceptical about this. Not saying that it is all BS (because i obviously haven't tried it or have any inside data) ... but there are already so many nutrition supplements that have been hailed as "the end all be all" of nourishment that were "disproved" by studies that i will wait for a more thorough research into this product before i forsake the traditional intake of food.

I think the conversation can move to include generalizations beyond Soylent.

No matter what we eat, it's something that was conceived, researched, implemented, and embodied by people up to and including ourselves. Unless you're fortunate enough to inherited the nomadic lifestyle of your forebears, but honestly, the game is everywhere now and many of the few isolated environments left are built in laboratories.


Would it be awesome if all about Soylent is true and we have found the "holy grail" of foods? Sure it would. Is it likely? I doubt it.

As for positive effects of said products for some of the customer-base...well, unfortunately, this is no proof that it works. Remember, placebo-effect aka the power of the mind is a very powerful tool. If you believe in Soylent with all your heart it indeed can have a positive effect without it being the product itself that helps you. Just wanted to throw that out there.

Anyway, it will be interesting to see how this product will continue. Maybe it IS the holy grail of foods...

The need for sustenance persists.

Unless you've achieved a measure of self-sufficiency than we are subject to a similar illusion. There are all sorts of easy paranoias to adopt. And james' intial points about the common consumption still stand. I'd make some difference arguments about tact - disseminating the why and how of practical instruction about growing, caring, and consuming food - but, perhaps, there are/will be arguments about the benefits and/or advantages of feed for humans.
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Kellais

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« Reply #18 on: September 22, 2013, 12:35:46 pm »

james mentioned that chewing gum was common.

I know he did. I am not convinced that chewing gum solves the problem. It's too soft. We need more challenge, chewing wise, than this. The force of the pressure on our teeth and gums is critical...not only that you chew something.

Quote

I think the conversation can move to include generalizations beyond Soylent.

No matter what we eat, it's something that was conceived, researched, implemented, and embodied by people up to and including ourselves. Unless you're fortunate enough to inherited the nomadic lifestyle of your forebears, but honestly, the game is everywhere now and many of the few isolated environments left are built in laboratories.

Sure. Did i somehow imply that it can not?
And yes, it most probably is. Why is that a problem? I know we are not eating like our forebears..especially not like our forebears from before large scale industrialization...BUT why are we so sure that this is a problem? I mean it is not as if those forebears were that much healthier than we are. We live 80 on average, they lived around 30 years if that. I know that there are more factors to that than simple food intake...but still.
And you can try to take in less industrialized food without going the "extreme route".

Quote

The need for sustenance persists.

Unless you've achieved a measure of self-sufficiency than we are subject to a similar illusion. There are all sorts of easy paranoias to adopt. And james' intial points about the common consumption still stand. I'd make some difference arguments about tact - disseminating the why and how of practical instruction about growing, caring, and consuming food - but, perhaps, there are/will be arguments about the benefits and/or advantages of feed for humans.

Not sure i get what you are responding to (as you answered to a quote by me)? Care to elaborate?
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« Reply #19 on: September 23, 2013, 05:54:28 pm »
I know he did. I am not convinced that chewing gum solves the problem. It's too soft. We need more challenge, chewing wise, than this. The force of the pressure on our teeth and gums is critical...not only that you chew something.

I wonder if the Soylent community has addressed this?

Sure. Did i somehow imply that it can not?
And yes, it most probably is. Why is that a problem? I know we are not eating like our forebears..especially not like our forebears from before large scale industrialization...BUT why are we so sure that this is a problem? I mean it is not as if those forebears were that much healthier than we are. We live 80 on average, they lived around 30 years if that. I know that there are more factors to that than simple food intake...but still.
And you can try to take in less industrialized food without going the "extreme route".

I felt you were highlighting some disadvantages of Soylent that weren't mutually exclusive from the common intake.

Most of the detractions you voiced about Soylent might equally be voiced about consensual (if there is a majority at all) ingestion. I was thinking specifically about the "food pyramid" that was conceived and popularized, possibly with malicious intent, but most certainly without the understanding we enjoy today.

Has that been revised? Yes and no. But doesn't your perspective discount popularized notions of diet as much as it does Soylent?

Not sure i get what you are responding to (as you answered to a quote by me)? Care to elaborate?

Apologies, I simply used your words as a waystation in the ongoing dialogue.

I, again, felt that your arguments could easily be applied to consensual and popularized diets. Clearly, there are a whole range of diets the world over. Examples of longevity don't exactly pervade popular culture or enjoy mass embodiment (few jump on the Japanese or Mediterranean diets). I think james was right to highlight that most people don't come close to hitting the dietary requirements (and likely, those themselves are in need of revision).

I didn't/don't want opinions reflecting your own to limit the discussion (not that it has). I often try and take a more pervasive perspective in order to tease insight from ambiguity. Also, I like to consider as many perspectives as I can.

I am interested in your thoughts specifically, Kellais, but also in how we might consider the alternatives together (or, more specifically, how we might consider how considering the alternatives actually distorts, discounts, or negates our own personally-held conceptions).
« Last Edit: September 23, 2013, 05:55:59 pm by Madness »
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Royce

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« Reply #20 on: March 17, 2014, 10:55:37 pm »
Ram Dass(Richard Alpert) talks about this Indian guy whose total input for fifteen years was two glasses of milk. He had lots of energy, slept two hours a night, and weighed 90 pounds. He was in exellent shape.

"All you have got to do is find one guy who is doing it, and it makes a shambles of of the whole trip. The relation of mind to matter is so much more exquisite, and the only way man is able to play with these games is when he has extricated his awareness from his thinking and sensing. Then his awareness becomes just like a laser beam, and it develops a kind of power that is capable of things we do not attribute as possible to human beings. For that power to be developed, however, Buddha points out you must extract yourself from attachment. That is a very tricky concept- what it means to be free of attachment. In the same way you watch your senses, you watch your eyes see and you watch the desires being manifested, but you no longer identify with your own desires"

"There are many very, very clear documented instances in India of a being who is buried alive for a period of time and after a year or two is brought back and they come out of the state of trance they have been in, and there they are- and they were put in an airproof box. One of them when asked, "well, how did you breath?" said, "my cells had enough oxygen to keep my brain and my heart muscle alive, and that was all that was necessary". They had put him in the earth in a box, and there were some ants, and the ants had eaten away part of his arm. He had been in this trance, see......... So where are human drives, let alone our social motives? I mean, do you not need air and food? I mean, after all, we assume those are all necessary."

If these anecdotes are true, there is much we do not know about health.

Callan S.

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« Reply #21 on: March 18, 2014, 02:59:41 am »
An 'airproof' box that...ants got into.

QI had some material about french peasants going into a sort of hybernation over winter - I'm willing to grant some really strange biology in humans.

But airtight yet also ants got in? Hope I'm not dreadful for that heightening my skepticism.

Royce

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« Reply #22 on: March 18, 2014, 10:19:44 am »
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But airtight yet also ants got in? Hope I'm not dreadful for that heightening my skepticism.

Lol. Your skepticism is most welcomed ;) Maybe airproof in India means "airproof". Like 90% tight maybe?

I would suggest that either way, if you lay in a coffin underground for a year or more, it is pretty amazing to be alive and well without food and water.

Of course, maybe Ram Dass is exaggerating in other areas of this story since he fumbled a bit with it not being airtight. They might have been in that coffin for less than a year too, and so on. Anyway, just imagine how a regular western mind would react to such a scenario. Being buried alive. Most likely they would freak out within minutes. We do not at all learn how to train your mind the way they do over there. We think we are our thoughts, and they do not. So they do not get freaked out by thoughts.

I am of course speaking of highly trained beings here. Not even suggesting any right or wrong way. Could there be something in having this immense mind/body control that leads to these guys doing these (for us) "supernatural" acts?

I mean for a westerner to find himself in a scenario like this, he has to fall into a coma, and even then he gets nurture through plastic tubes.

You even have this phenomena called inedia, which is a practice where you live without food, only sunlight is needed. This phenomenon has been obscured by silly westerners who think they could just drop food and lie in the sun all day. Some have died in the attempt.

So I might suggest that mental training is something we in the west can learn a lot from, because I refuse to believe that non of these anecdotes are true. There is a vast amount of them.

Madness

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« Reply #23 on: March 18, 2014, 10:30:38 am »
Quote
But airtight yet also ants got in? Hope I'm not dreadful for that heightening my skepticism.

Lol. Your skepticism is most welcomed ;) Maybe airproof in India means "airproof". Like 90% tight maybe?

I would suggest that either way, if you lay in a coffin underground for a year or more, it is pretty amazing to be alive and well without food and water.

Of course, maybe Ram Dass is exaggerating in other areas of this story since he fumbled a bit with it not being airtight. They might have been in that coffin for less than a year too, and so on. Anyway, just imagine how a regular western mind would react to such a scenario. Being buried alive. Most likely they would freak out within minutes. We do not at all learn how to train your mind the way they do over there. We think we are our thoughts, and they do not. So they do not get freaked out by thoughts.

I am of course speaking of highly trained beings here. Not even suggesting any right or wrong way. Could there be something in having this immense mind/body control that leads to these guys doing these (for us) "supernatural" acts?

I mean for a westerner to find himself in a scenario like this, he has to fall into a coma, and even then he gets nurture through plastic tubes.

You even have this phenomena called inedia, which is a practice where you live without food, only sunlight is needed. This phenomenon has been obscured by silly westerners who think they could just drop food and lie in the sun all day. Some have died in the attempt.

So I might suggest that mental training is something we in the west can learn a lot from, because I refuse to believe that non of these anecdotes are true. There is a vast amount of them.

This could necessitate a new topic quickly but the take-away for me is the mental training - and I've been exposed to many of these thoughts before.

There is a documentary called Eat the Sun, by the way, Royce, in case that isn't what you are talking about.

Anecdote isn't a great argument but realistically I think it is science's responsibility to explore these things?

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Royce

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« Reply #24 on: March 18, 2014, 12:41:12 pm »
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There is a documentary called Eat the Sun, by the way, Royce, in case that isn't what you are talking about.

Have not seen that one, will see if I can find it anywhere.

Quote
Anecdote isn't a great argument but realistically I think it is science's responsibility to explore these things?

At should at least be very interesting to pursue this as a scientist. So far I have only encountered skeptics claiming it is fraudulent and impossible to live on light. I must admit that to me it sounds really far out too. Do you know if there has been scientists who have looked at this scientifically? I mean studied them in their own environment. It would not work to let lose James Randis hell hounds and put a guru in a lab with a lamp, just to see if he would survive on light :)

P.S I thought about starting a new thread, but the first post had some elements of food/health in it, so I just put it here.
« Last Edit: March 18, 2014, 12:48:46 pm by Royce »

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« Reply #25 on: March 18, 2014, 02:29:54 pm »
Eat the Sun - I didn't check it out and I'm sure you can find it online but you can watch the movie directly on their site for a fee (and you can watch the trailer, if nothing else).

I've actually read somewhere that our eyeballs can photosynthesis to some extent... I'd have to dig to find that.
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Wilshire

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« Reply #26 on: April 06, 2015, 06:19:43 pm »
Years later, any update on whether this works James?

The new site is spiffy, so they obviously have made some money: http://www.soylent.me/

Monthly subscription for $255 to totally replace all your food intake (>3 "meals"/day). Almost seems worth it.
« Last Edit: April 06, 2015, 06:45:16 pm by Wilshire »
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dragharrow

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« Reply #27 on: April 27, 2015, 06:06:10 pm »
Ok. I only skimmed this thread so far but I'll actually read it at some point and weigh in. Until then I just wanted to chime in with the fact that I eat soylent and I'm a huge fan.

I don't eat it exclusively but I rely on it heavily. I've never liked eating at all and have a tendency to go for long stretches without eating anything. It's just too gross a process for me. So yeah I use it to supplement the few meals I feel like consuming. It's a huge improvement to my nutritional intake but basically anything edible would be. In any case, I dig it.

Fuck food. I'm over food.

« Last Edit: April 27, 2015, 06:08:02 pm by dragharrow »

Wilshire

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« Reply #28 on: April 27, 2015, 06:11:07 pm »
Really? That reads rather sarcastically (imo), but if your serious then I'm curious.

Some comments have, to me, seemingly ridiculous claims of this stuff making a drastic improvement on their health. I don't by this. However, something that is marketed as a total food replacement and has been sold for some time now, I'd think it at least has no major negative side effects. Is that true?

What's your experience? How long have you been "eating" this stuff, and how much of your total nutrition intake comes directly from it?
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« Reply #29 on: April 29, 2015, 03:47:17 pm »
What I really want to know WHY on earth would they call this Soylent, given the connotation it has in pop culture? I know I'm  being paranoid but that alone freaks me out about it. I feel like one day reading MSN, my eyes are going to gloss over the headline, "Man arrested for duping customers into eating human remains over a period of years."

Also, my limited exposure to the field of nutrition suggests that it's one of the most emotionally charged communities and rife with confirmation bias. I just can't trust any one source to get the cocktail right. I think I'm just gonna stick to eating fruit for breakfast, drinking tea daily, and various combinations of starch, meat, and cheese (maybe trying to cut out the cheese). Kudos to anyone legitimately reaping benefits out of this, though.