[ekianjo]

You did not mention the placebo effect though. That's the largest weakness of such an experiment. Your brain may be convinced (without you being strictly conscious about it) that Soylent is good for you and trigger all kind of benefits that you assessed yourself.

That's why clinical trials are running in double-blind modes, to remove as much as possible the placebo effect. A self-assessed experiment is, and will always be, meaningless.

[sgarman]

After reading the opening paragraph and seeing how excited the author was to try this I couldn't help to think about the placebo effext. With all the bogus diets out there they show results in 2 weeks and then fail miserably I can't help to think longer testing periods are needed.

[shanedanger]

Obviously you didn't read the whole thing; search for the word "placebo" and you'll find my discussion of it under the section called "Potential Weaknesses In The Data".

[ekianjo]

I read the whole thing but I did not notice it as being very prominent, while it's the number ONE "FAIL" point of your experiment.

[raverbashing]

Well, they can't use a placebo for that, you'll starve the placebo group.

You could provide a different meal replacement powder and compare the results (provided the subjects don't know which one looks like what)

[stcredzero]

We don't need to re-research nutrition starting from verification of macronutrients. The placebo could be an imbalanced mix of macronutrients. That way, you would expect malnutrition, not starvation.

[ekianjo]

> You could provide a different meal replacement powder and compare the results

Yeah, you could at least do that.