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by lvevjo 4408 days ago
I'm bothered by the amount of maltodextrin. (Among other things. But this jumps out at me.) Assuming this is correct:

http://blog.soylent.me/post/68180382810/soylent-1-0-macronut...

That's a lot. As you can see it's the #1 ingredient in Soylent:

http://blog.soylent.me/post/74770956256/soylent-1-0-final-nu...

They claim that the overall glycemic index (with fiber, etc.) is "rather low", but I can't find fasting vs. postprandial glucose readings that would substantiate this. By itself, maltodextrin has a rather high GI. I do see that Rhinehart posted about this concern a while back:

http://discourse.soylent.me/t/effects-of-soylent-on-diabetic...

...but does anyone have more recent info? Without more data, diabetics and prediabetics should best avoid this for now.

edit: A clarification - blood glucose testing won't actually tell you the product's GI, of course. And the important number to look at is glycemic load, but that is easy to calculate given GI. The Soylent folks have not yet shared the GI afaik. (They would need to send it to a lab for testing.) Diabetics should already be monitoring their glucose levels anyway, so I assume they will figure out pretty quickly if this stuff spikes their blood sugar. It's not something you would want to replace all your meals with if that is the case!

Whether or not you are diabetic, it would be a good idea to go to your doctor and get complete bloodwork done before you start using this if you are planning to drink the stuff on a daily basis and especially if you replace the majority of your meals. Get tested for the sort of things they check when you get a physical, but within a few months leading up to the point you start Soylenting. Test again 6-12 months after you start and compare the numbers, then kindly make a spreadsheet or something and share your results.

1 comments

I've heard that they had no nutritionists onboard...
Not that I think Soylent is a good idea, but a nutritionist is not a well defined profession or qualification in the way the a medical doctor is.

So if the people involved in this project consider themselves qualified in the field of nutrition, I don't see how that makes them different to anyone else speaking or giving advice on the subject.

A big organization with lots of money doesn't automatically make a group of people a legitimate authority on anything. After all, you can get all sorts of qualifications in things that are clearly quackery, e.g. homeopathy.

That's false a dietitian has several requirements and while less than a doctor it's on par with a RN. Initial collage level education + test + continuing education credits. http://www.eatright.org/Public/content.aspx?id=6442472286

http://education-portal.com/rn_requirements.html

This is not correct, they have been working with them for a while now:

http://blog.soylent.me/post/61556254347/9-15-weekly-recap

False: perhaps they had no accredited nutritionists. The founder has claimed to have read several texts.
Reading several texts makes one a nutritionist?
Sorry but non-accredited nutritionists don't count as nutritionists.
They do. It's like art. The protected term is dietitian.
This isn't the office, and it's not reddit either.

Please stop it with the Dwight references. I beg of you.

Your karma wallet does the same.