As much as I share the fantasy of perfectly balanced, easy to prepare "bachelor chow", I hope he doesn't damage himself.
Bad as it sounds, I hope he does. That would be the equivalent of "failing fast", I guess.
Here's the worse outcome: he goes happily for some time, inspires some people to follow his lead, the group grows ... 5 or 10 years down the line - bam, they all end up with some irreparable damage to their health ...
No I didn't think so. If Soylent Dude and his merry band of poor cooks can prove our current nutritional understanding wrong by dying five to ten years from now, then they should.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/animals-and-us/201106/wh...
In her early 30's, Staci's health started going downhill. After twelve years of strict vegetarianism, she began to suffer from anemia and chronic fatigue syndrome, and she experienced stomach pains for two hours after every meal. "I was completely debilitated," she tells me. "Then I changed the way I ate."
The point here is not to bash vegetarianism, but to point out that it took her 12 years to develop health issues. And that's with vegetarianism, that is often considered a very healthy way to eat. So I would expect more potential hazards from something new, untried and untested.
After 12 years of no health issues, and with a low general reason to believe that vegetarianism causes health issues, I'd be slow to attribute the reversal to the thing the person thinks worked.
(I would also expect more potential hazards from something new, untried, and untested, but I've signed up because I like the idea and am willing to risk it. Fortune favors the bold.)
What do we know about completely eliminating fiber from the diet for an extended period of time? Or what do we know about chewing food being beneficial for dental health? It was mentioned he hardly poops on Soylent - were there prolonged studies on this subject?
Willingness to risk is something I respect, anyway.
When put to the test by a pair of scientists who replicated the diet though, they found few ill-effects - except at one point where they were hitting a nutritional deficiency, but corrected it by putting semi-rotten fish product (which is a dish in Inuit cooking) into their diet - because it turns out that provided certain key nutrients.
The human body can handle some surprising and varied diets, a lot simply evolved by trial and error over a long period. With modern technology, we should be able to "fail fast" over a much shorter time.
Probably more importantly: anyone putting that much thought into what they eat, what the effects of it are etc. is already doing 10x the thinking of most people about their nutrition.
I know a bit about Inuit and their diet - I've read "My Life with the Eskimo" by Vilhjalmur Stefansson
http://www.amazon.com/Life-Eskimo-New-Vilhjalmur-Stefansson/...
Stefansson and another explorer, Andersson, participated in an experiment where they did not eat anything but meat for a year - and remained in excellent health
http://inhumanexperiment.blogspot.com.au/2009/09/two-brave-m...
But I haven't heard about the 'rotten fish' and specific nutrients that can be obtained from it ...
"Rakfisk", a Norwegian variation, could be left to ferment up to a year. Iceland has Hákarl, - fermented Greenland shark that is also left for 6-12 months: "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%A1karl containing ammonia (the process is used because it is poisonous when fresh).
My total guess is that it's more about having access to a wider range of types of food throughout the winter, when many other dietary choices disappear. Traditional food in the Nordic countries at least is very centered around processing that allows for longer term storage, and I'd guess Greenland has much the same.
No, it took her twelve years to admit to and respond to health issues. They presented very early on. She was simply on a terrible diet, and was deficient in iron. No mystery, no "unknown unknowns", just a very simple, straightforward, common deficiency we've known about for decades.
It's not about your body suddenly running out of a nutrient five years down the line. It's about your body starting to repair and build structures that need to last for years while missing key ingredients.
As a random example, people can develop osteoporosis after years of drinking diet soda.
citation?
6 weeks on some combination of stuff that contains good things like olive and fish oil and other nutrients can't be as bad as the 'supersize me' diet, and even he managed to survive for 30 days...
hardly scientific or even "common-sense" evidence of any long-term viability.
You do realize there is a substantial difference between drinking it and injecting it right? You are talking about the side effects of completely bypassing the entire GI system and providing for all nutrition through an IV.
I mean look at the warnings on what is basically the next step, TPN http://www.merckmanuals.com/professional/nutritional_disorde... . He is basically drinking almost exactly this. Look at all those scary scary warnings. Some of them are IV dependent, but things like "Metabolic bone disease, or bone demineralization (osteoporosis or osteomalacia), develops in some patients given TPN for > 3 mo. The mechanism is unknown. Advanced disease can cause severe periarticular, lower-extremity, and back pain. Temporarily or permanently stopping TPN is the only known treatment." and such are probably some odd nutrient problems.
Any nutritionist will tell you that there just isn't a great long term complete meal replacement. If this guy has one that is great, but he has done nothing to prove it yet. I mean he isn't even completely replacing meals, and has only been doing it for 6 weeks. Which is shorter than some people have done entirely cabbage based diets. Heck he could have subsisted on beer for this long. ( http://blogs.menshealth.com/health-headlines/the-beer-diet/2... )
It is sort of like some blog post claiming to have solved scaling and not actually had any real workload. I mean sure it doesn't look completely broken at a glance, but it hasn't been shown to even work yet. Come back in a year or two when you've dealt with some load (or merely a couple years of drinking the same thing in this case).