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Zeusthecat

I Had A Random Thought...

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$3 a meal is that cheap where I live.

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I frequent this site quite a bit to have fairly economical cooking - http://www.budgetbytes.com/

 

I don't track my budget as closely as she does and I'm sure I end up spending more because I don't buy spices in bulk and the most convenient store for me is relatively expensive, but I think I'm able to achieve sub-$3/meal pretty often nonetheless.

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My sub-$3 meals are pretty lacking in nutrition (noodles tossed in olive oil, grits with parmesan, rice and whatever's around), so having something cheap with more nutritional value around wouldn't be a bad thing.

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When I'm really sticking to my diet, I can eat extremely healthy for about $5 a day. The biggest hitters in that cost are yogurt for breakfast and cheese. If you buy carbs (bread) that's also more expensive than potatoes or rice.

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Looking at that website, none of those recipes contain all-of-the-nutrients-you-need like a serving of Soylent would. You'd have to make multiple things at once, after which you could easily reach over three bucks a full meal.

 

EDIT: Ah, found the "complete meals" tag. It looks like it averages out at a little under three bucks. Though even then, no guarantee you're getting everything you need. Also half of it looks like junk I wouldn't enjoy anyway. I was hoping I'd found something useful to me. Oh well. ):

 

EDIT EDIT: All this aside, reading up on it, it seems like maybe some people don't think it's good. But it's all so sensationally written on either side that it's difficult to actually get an objective viewpoint.

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EDIT EDIT: All this aside, reading up on it, it seems like maybe some people don't think it's good. But it's all so sensationally written on either side that it's difficult to actually get an objective viewpoint.

That's true for a lot of nutritional health writing, which is why I usually try to find someone who's done it or just try it myself and see how I like it and how it makes me feel.

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It's also a "how much money is my time worth" thing. Sure some of those meals are less than three bucks, but how much time are you spending preparing? If you don't enjoy cooking, paying three bucks for a ready-to-eat meal that's also healthy is a pretty good deal.

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Soylent is neat in theory but from what I recall doesn't actually have a full day's supply of nutrition in it, probably because it was invented by Some Guy On The Internet and not an experienced nutritionist. Some of the early testers had serious malnutrition problems, as I recall.

 

Also,

 

g8u39ie.gif

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I think you'll find both sides relatively frequently. There are definitely plenty who question the nutrition value, but, at least through a cursory google search, I can't find any that provide the actual numbers to back it up. 

 

The worst one I've found seems to only hate it because it's not organic. "Blargh how dare they!!"

 

The biggest common negative seems to be taste.

 

And also that it wrecks your Bowel Movements, at least temporarily? A lot of people don't seem to stick with it as long as it is suggested to get your body used to it, though. People who like it say it does get better.

 

This shit is impossible.

 

EDIT: Dug into it a bit more and I guess the original Soylent was, despite marketing material, not actually meant to completely replace all meals? Like for example, they had less sodium than necessary originally, because "most people get more than enough sodium from other foods and Soylent didn’t need to contribute to that", but that's been changed more recently, among other things (such as making the taste more neutral, removing the oil component, and I'm sure other numbers adjustments). (Also that article says the farts are gone! So that's a thing?)

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I just parsed "dreadnaught" the other day and realized I'd spent my life giving that word less than it's bad-ass worth.

Dreadnaught = dread-naught = dread-nothing = fear-nothing =

"When ye sail outta this harbor in one my tall ships, laddy, ye shall dread naught!"   Bad. Ass.

This whole time I'd been thinking about it as if it is was meant to inspire dread, but etymologically that doesn't seem to hold up. I also like that the the a lack of fear applies to facing not only an enemy but also the ocean, whereas striking fear makes the ship seem only useful in war-time.

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Hah. I don't know of any reports that says it ends farting entirely, although I guess that makes sense that it should be possible to do, since farts as far as I know are produced entirely by the digestion process. But the author is actually comparing the newer version (1.4) to the original version (1.0) that he'd used before and gave him, as he puts it, "horse-killing farts".

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"horse-killing farts".

Have you ever farted do hard you obliterated the horse you were riding?

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Have you ever farted do hard you obliterated the horse you were riding?

Now I'm just imagining a story about a cowboy who has a can of beans for dinner, then the next day farts so hard he breaks the horse's back and has to put it down to end its suffering.

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I just parsed "dreadnaught" the other day and realized I'd spent my life giving that word less than it's bad-ass worth.

Dreadnaught = dread-naught = dread-nothing = fear-nothing =

"When ye sail outta this harbor in one my tall ships, laddy, ye shall dread naught!" Bad. Ass.

This whole time I'd been thinking about it as if it is was meant to inspire dread, but etymologically that doesn't seem to hold up. I also like that the the a lack of fear applies to facing not only an enemy but also the ocean, whereas striking fear makes the ship seem only useful in war-time.

Is there a reason why a world war I era British admiral talks like a pirate?

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Hah. I don't know of any reports that says it ends farting entirely, although I guess that makes sense that it should be possible to do, since farts as far as I know are produced entirely by the digestion process. But the author is actually comparing the newer version (1.4) to the original version (1.0) that he'd used before and gave him, as he puts it, "horse-killing farts".

 

I remember reading a great article, maybe in the New Yorker, by someone who shadowed the creator of Soylent for a week. The farts thing seems to have been a long-term problem, because the body demands a lot of sulphur but if it gets too much or gets it in the wrong way, it'll fart most of it out. For years, apparently, they were just putting the daily value of raw sulphur into the Soylent formula and it was making people's bodies go apeshit with farting. Eventually, the body gets used to getting sulphur through direct ingestion, but it's a huge adjustment process and a strong argument against "supplemental" Soylent use.

 

Like Tegan said, it's invented by an efficiency-focused engineer, so it's had a lot of ugly growing pains that come from not actually consulting nutritionists and dietary science, which is not exactly systemic in its knowledge but is light-years better than using the FDA's recommended dietary requirements as a recipe. It reminds me of this scene from Cosmos:

 

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I just parsed "dreadnaught" the other day and realized I'd spent my life giving that word less than it's bad-ass worth.

Dreadnaught = dread-naught = dread-nothing = fear-nothing =

"When ye sail outta this harbor in one my tall ships, laddy, ye shall dread naught!"   Bad. Ass.

This whole time I'd been thinking about it as if it is was meant to inspire dread, but etymologically that doesn't seem to hold up. I also like that the the a lack of fear applies to facing not only an enemy but also the ocean, whereas striking fear makes the ship seem only useful in war-time.

My favourite consequence of this is that an Afrikaans word for dreadnaught is 'durfal' which means 'daredevil'.

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It reminds me of this scene from Cosmos:

 

Carl Sagan attempted Human Transmutation?

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It is weird to think this needs to be said in 2015 (at large, not here necessarily), but something that is actually very efficient and healthy for delivering nutrition to humans is food. Basically everything else is bad at it and you shouldn't use those things. Centrum is doing fuck all for your phosphorus intake. Don't take supplements! I suggest eating food to supplement your food intake.

 

"help how do i get all my vitamins and minerals?!"

 

Fruits, vegetables, complex carbohydrates and whole proteins.

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