The shake may well not be an optimal awesome diet -- I'd bet it won't be -- but billions of humans survive on non-optimal, awesome diets. The idea that the incredibly varied, constantly evolving, often appalling diets of the whole world all fulfill whatever criteria are necessary for human survival, but that this shake doesn't is magical thinking.
Especially when you consider that -- thread title notwithstanding -- the guy eats a few regular meals a week. What are these magical micronutrients that we don't know about, that are present in sufficient quantities to sustain humans in all traditional diets, but which are needed in such quantities that shake guy isn't going to get them?
I, personally love food way too much for this to work for me... I've been working on my diet, and getting to a point where some of my Metabolic Syndrom issues are now getting better (can feel my feet again)... most of that has been from a pretty high fiber, low carb intake. Almost no processed sugars or rich starches (bread/pasta/rice/potatoes). I do have a savory crepe a couple times a week (essentially a low-carb sandwich wrap. I also eat lots of greens, and have been eating 2-3 pieces of fruit a day. It's hard enough not binging out on pasta, let alone only eating a couple times a week.
Billions of people get sick because they don't have a diet varied enogh. Specific, well studied examples abound.
If you want to use some kind of idiosyncratic definition of "sick" that pronounces somewhere between a substantial minority and a majority of the world as "sick" at any given time, I guess I can't stop you. But as a practical matter, we're comparing shake-guy's food to the other foods that people actually eat, not to whatever your idea of the best diet in the world is.
In my opinion: the use of supplemented food like this will only improve our understanding and increase the speed at which those models are made.
By approaching the problem from BOTH sides we can create the most full expression of what is needed and why.
Still I dislike this excuse because: you run the risk of missing micronutrients every single day on a traditional diet, too.
Your body doesn't care if you forgot a micronutrient due to carelessness or if it simply wasn't in the profile of the whole foods you ate. Missing is missing. Eating popcorn, soda and fast food for a week straight means you miss a lot of important nutrients. And yet you survive.
Let the pioneers have fun and play and learn, that's what I say!
I think the actual criticism is more along the lines of "It's so complicated that it's incredibly unlikely this guy has been truly successful."
> "Let the pioneers have fun and play and learn, that's what I say!"
Which is all well and good when they're merely experimenting on themselves. But this guy has gone from tinkering to claiming success and safety and begun distribution.
That's beyond tinkering and well into tampering.
He should absolutely feel free to tinker and explore and even publish his recipes and personal data for anyone similarly-motivated to build upon. But there's a line between doing that and doing what he's begun, the way he's begun it.
What we don't do is go all "hurr durr it's too complicated, let's not even try".
If nobody has a right nutrition model today(1), including exeprts doing this whole life, somebody who just read a few books has no chance to cover everything that has to be covered long term. Or in other words, don't you think that military with practically infinite funds wouldn't already use his drink or equivalent for all extreme circumstances, if something like that were enough?
(1) Because biology is darn complicated, like in "we still don't even know all the bacteria that live in our bodies." Not to mention organic chemistry 3-d effects like in http://folding.stanford.edu/