This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again

Re:This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again by stouset on Wednesday March 13, 2013 @08:16PM (#5372162)

First, we don't know what the components of a healthy diet are. We thought we did decades ago, but were blissfully unaware of micronutrients (and, as I understand it, infant formula from around this time made a bunch of babies have developmental disorders as a result). Second, we're quickly realizing that nutrition is significantly more than the sum of its parts. Nutrients taken together as opposed to separately can have significantly different effects. Calories in also doesn't necessarily equal calories absorbed.

It's a crappy analogy, but imagine this guy was trying to construct a human body out of parts. He's wired up a brain, muscles, blood vessels, nerves, a lymphatic system, and all the rest to a skeletal system. What do you think his chances of success would be?

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Re:This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again by mikeash on Wednesday March 13, 2013 @08:22PM (#5372206)

Is there any reason to think that "separately" is the preferred way? As for not knowing the components of a healthy diet, that objection applies equally to taking in food the normal way, so I really don't see the relevance. If we don't know enough to build a proper slurry that contains everything, then we don't know enough to build a proper normal diet that contains everything.

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Re:This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again by stouset on Friday March 15, 2013 @03:50PM (#5382589)

One other aspect I ignored in my earlier post is that the digestive tract actually needs solid mass in order to perform peristalsis. Hospitals have to avoid giving patients a liquid diet for too long, or else the digestive tract basically just stops — and it's a pain in the ass to restart.

Additionally, we have only the faintest idea how this might affect gut bacteria, which is an enormous component of both our digestive system as well as immune system. Without giving them our "table scraps", what happens to them?

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Re:This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again by bravo on Thursday March 14, 2013 @02:16AM (#5373369)

This is just a small example, but I know that Vitamin C inhibits calcium absorption. That's pretty well known among athletes.

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