So, I thought it would be interesting to discuss the practical benefits that would come from stopping eating.

Now that the bold fear mongering lettering caught your attention, let's discuss.

So, I'm not talking about ascetic practices - the buddha already tried, tested, and dismissed that.

I'm talking about switching to only powdered food, thereby foregoing cooking, shopping, eating regular food and worrying about getting the right nutrients etc for example:

Soylent (or similar companies that make basically the same thing) is a powder that contains all the nutrients your body needs (everything that is on the recommended daily allowance).

You mix this powder with water and eat it over about three meals to meet our calorie needs and recommended daily allowances.

The guy who invented this seems to be a borderline crazy futurist, in a cool way. He has this as 90% of his diet and the other 10% is normal food, or "muggle" as some people who made the switch call it.

Switching to soylent would free up a ridiculous amount of time each day (hours), most likely make you healthier, and would help eradicate sensual desire for taste. More time for practice!

So, who is going to join me and make the switch?

Lots of people's reservation for switching is because they like food too much. To me that isn't an issue. I'm more of an eat to live type of guy.

Very interesting idea and seems very pragmatic.

Yeah, because, what could possibly go wrong o_O
After all, nutrition science is something like the best researched field ever, with the least amount of questionable contentions.

It has been quite well researched and lots of people online live solely if not mostly (60-90% of all food intake) off of it.

Most people who do live off of it conclude by saying - it is definitely far better for me than my average normal diet before which just couldn't have been healthy (fast food, eating irregularly, overeating, snacking etc). So they don't really care if it isn't perfect because almost nobody has a perfect diet. This comes closer than most and has lots and lots of people attesting for it (including follow up blood tests).

Spent a long while researching and it definitely seems worth it - obviously I would still allow myself to eat solid food whenever I wanted but this should take off the pressure of *needing* to cook and eat healthily.

That´s a joke, no?
There is a food company selling powdered food called  Soylent?
Do yo know the 1973 movie Soylent Green? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HC5soDYcVo

Not a joke @jojo but I too noticed that. The owner named I after the novel the film was based on. So it isn't made of people!

Exactly!  They guy who invented soylent has minimal knowledge of nutrition and did not do feeding trials before marketing this stuff either.   This guy is the same game who went on record stating that formula is better than breast milk, "As far as safety control and completeness are concerned, formula is actually better.  Nature isn't always best."  This goes contrary to almost every molecule of research regarding formula and breast milk and also contrary to much research that shows breast fed children to be healthier in both short and long term. 

He also states that "canned vegetables are better than fresh ones because fresh ones are decaying."  He completely neglects to mention that the high heat and pressure of canning kills a lot of vitamins, potential dangers of BPA and aluminum contamination, amount of chemicals added as preservatives, and the fact that canned foods are typically of the lowest possible quality, items that were not good enough to be sold fresh.  Source of quotes here: http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/04/the-man-who-would-make-eating-obsolete/361058/ . 

Yes, you can live off of burgers and fries, you can live off of white rice and beans, you can live off of all kinds of things, that does not mean I plan to experiment with my body by eating known garbage food long term.  Although the name also makes me laugh, I would assume it is named Soylent due to the high content of heavily processed soy protein isolate in this stuff. 

Soy protein isolate is about the cheapest protein source around, it has low digestability compared to other foods, men might want to consider that it contains exogenous estrogens (it's those exogenous estrogens that accound for the cholesterol lowering effect but they also promote body fat accumulation and a more girly appearance), and is not a complete protein.  The algal oil is also a very cheap source of oil.  Plus they add a sugar source and a bunch of vitamins. 

If food science actually reliably knew everything about what humans needed to survive and how those things operated in the body, then it might be safer to trust such heavily processed chemical food sources, but we are far from understanding such things and heavily processed foods regularly come out on the losing side of the game when they are researched.  Plus the make of Soylent is signficantly out of touch with even current research. 

Personally, I would not risk my health eating this kind of cheap chemical food, although granted it may be no worse or may even be slightly better than the burgers and fries, cereal, potato chips, ice cream, sugary drinks, cookies and so called (erroneously so) 'health' bars I see some people mostly eating through the day.  If you are already eating total crap, then soylent might be better.   Otherwise, I would stay well away from it, very far away!  If you are pressed for time, you can always train yourself to eat fewer meals, that saves a lot of time.  I too like the idea of something both healthy and convenient, but right now the options are healthy OR convenient, in which case I will be siding with 'healthy.'  Yes eating real food is a bit of hassle, but it's way less hassle than getting sick or being tired all day. 
-Eva 

Oh and here is a link to what is actually in soylent, which I see varies quite a bit from what is insinuated in their marketing campaign on their front page:  http://files.soylent.com/pdf/soylent-nutrition-facts.pdf .  It's a laundry list of chemicals and cheap low quality food sources.  The algal oil is way down the list, way below all the other cheaper oils like canola.  I personally do not see this as a legitmate attempt at a truly healthful food source, it's cheap ingredients with calories and a lot of synthetic vitamins also in their cheapest forms. 

The first ingredient is canola and sunflower oil POWDER.  They make oil into powder by mixing it with sugar and salt.  Oil, sugar, and salt combined together of course taste quite good!   And that fancy algal oil much touted on their front page?  That is so far down the list, it is past all the vitamins and even past cellulose.  Keep in mind that ingredients are listed in the order of most of least.  So there is less algal oil (also in powdered for I might add) than cellulose.  What is cellulose?  It's wood pulp, a common super cheap filler/fiber source.   

The vitamins in this stuff are low quality too.  For instance, they use magnesium oxide as the magnesium source.  Magnesium oxide is the cheapest source of magnesium and has been found hwen tested to have about 4% digestability on average, that makes their 23% of RDA magnesium per pouch claim to be in actuality more like 1% when digestability is considered.  You could get the vitamins in pill form yourself of course, there are many balanced vitamin source systems out there, some with much better quality than in Soylent. 

The Soylent marketing program may talk the talk, but they don't walk the walk, I'm actually surprised at how bad the ingredient listing is, definitely not the best science has to offer but probably a pretty good scheme for keeping ingredient costs as low as possible.  And you have to get them points for superior marketing skills.  Reminds of how Gatorade made a ton of $ by making a drink out of water, sugar and salt and marketing it as 'electrolytes.'  ;-P   

Soylent is like 19.99 dollars a day , right? 

Yesterday, I ate a bowl of grits with a little butter and a little salt, then after about an hour I ran 6.2 miles.  It took five minutes in the microwave. Cost, maybe 20 cents, maybe less.  Of course,  I do crave and cling to grits, but now I am getting corny.

Psi

Well that covers oil and carb requirements but you'll need some other vitamins and minerals plus a protein source for long term survival.  ;-PP  But yeah, $20.00 is steep for actually low income people.  The only real advantage i can see with Soylent is convenience, but there are lots of other meal replacement shakes, Ensure drinks, etc already out there as well that are quite similar in ingredients. 
-Eva

I also just realized that long-term use of this stuff might have your jawbone and the surrounding structures deteriorate for lack of chewing. So this is also a lock-in deal.

Thanks for taking the time to write that up!

I lost weight by simply eating when I'm hungry. This way I don't have to do weird diets. Craving to eat when you are actually not hungry is the problem for most people. The rest have medical situations.

Soylent does not cost 20 dollars per day. It is 9 dollars per day. You can even make your own diy version using organic whole foods and get that down to about 5 or 6 dollars per day with better ingredients if you are scared about bioavailability.

Considering you still eat for fun a few times a week or more, your teeth ans jaw will not erode either.

Considering the whole soy and estrogen problem, that is also incorrect as soy protein isolate removes the harmful phytoestrogens (unsure if this is the correct name), that cause the testosterone issues in men.

As for bioavailability, it seems all the people who have lived off of this mostly (80-90%) have near perfect blood work without and lack of vitamins. I would provide sources however I'm sitting in line waiting for the Eurotunnel at the moment and I'm on my phone.

For more information on whether this is actually healthy please refer to "discourse soylent" and look through the forums.

I think a lot of your information Eva is unfair and not very jjustified (mine probably isn't either considering lack of sources, but I'll try and get those together when I have a computer!).

Also there are other companies which do it better than soylent currently does in Europe. One of which seems to be Mana and another Jakeshake.

The potential benefits oofswitching food sources to this for somebody who doesn't have much free time are huge.

Blood work is a crude indicator of health over the short run  Many people eat crap diets and still  have good blood work for years and years, especially if they are younger.  Many health problems like poor nutritional status do not show in bloodwork until they are advanced. Many nutritional deficiencies do not show in blood work because the body will rob some tissues of resources in order to provide availability to other more important tissues.  

Checking ingredients for Mana here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3ZukUMavkkNOTk4R2NxX1lYRkE/view .
and oringal Jakeshake here: https://jakeshake.eu/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Jake_Original_Nutrition_Facts.pdf

THey are rather similar, but Jakeshake uses more pea protein instead of Soy and used coconut oil which is more shelf stable, I'd probably go with Jakeshake if it was me.  Really these are just cheap sources of oil, protein and sugars mixed with vitamins and minerals.   Most likely better than donuts for breakfast but definitely inferior to real food IMO.  

One of the big problems with nutrition is that although it was once assumed that the RDA was all that was needed, it has been found that elements in real food interact in complex ways when digested.  For instance vitamin C (ascorbic acid) is digested much better in presence of bioflavinoids that are naturally present in fruit than if given as a stand alone isolated for the natural source vitamin http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3414575 .  We are only just staring to piece together a few of those interactions.  But research money is scarce these days because such things can't be patented and big pharma sees no money in it.  Instead, if you get sick from some unknown deficiency, they are happy to sell you patented expensive pills for it so there is no reason for them to help you get healthy from something they can't make money from.  But the current state of vitamin supplements is poor, most of the supplements are chosen for the cheapness of source, not the bioavailability and digestion of the product.  For these replacement shakes, they are using the absolute cheapest source for all vitamins, some with very poor bioavailability.  

Plus all things needed for human health are not yet understood.  People had the dream in the 70s that we could just take pills for all our nutritional needs and become more healthy but that did not pan out in testing.  In fact, much research has repeatedly shown that taking artificial vitamins leads to increased chance of disease, even when the studies are controlled instead of just correlational: http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/07/the-vitamin-myth-why-we-think-we-need-supplements/277947/ .  Why is not understood but it could be that isolated artificial vitamins do not work as expected compared to natural sources.  We just don't understand enough about our bodys' processes.

In fact recently, there has been much talk in recent years about how much vitamin production happens via gut bacteria (that would be the same gut bacteria that the founder of Soylent hopes to kill off with his product, as stated in his interview which I linked in a previous post): http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9167138 , http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22940212 .  Humans are not able to synthesize many vitamins but gut bacteria are clearly able to do so.  Recent research has shown that transfer of gut bacteria from healthy animals to sick animals can improve health of the sick animals.  And proper gut bacteria is crucial to neonatal development of proper health and the immune system and probably continues to affect the immune system throughout life.  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3937713/ .  The balance of gut bacteria types has been strongly implicated in obesity issues: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-gut-bacteria-help-make-us-fat-and-thin/ .  Natural populations of humans have been found to have a more diverse gut bacteria and some that appear to ameliorate common American healthy problems like kidney stones: http://www.techtimes.com/articles/47066/20150419/gut-bacteria-amazonian-tribe-reveals-new-information-human-microbiome.htm .  Personally, I don't think it's a good idea to attempt to kill off all gut bacteria via artificial food sources as the founder of Soylent says he wants to do. 
-Eva

Eva, that was very helpful. Thank you for all the effort to type that out.

So, I'm going to test out Jake shake for a while probably about 80% of my diet and see how that goes. Despite my comments, I am still very sceptical. However I have had stomach issues for a couple of years and know for a fact I don't chew my food enough, probably the cause, and I'm certain I don't meet all my requirements despite my veggie wholefood based diet.

I also think humans can and do survive off of pretty poor things and the body is more robust than we give it credit for. I think all the time and effort that is placed on optimising nutrition is just as ridiculous as soylent advocators considering are still poor knowledge of how nutrition works.

Although the RDA is, to my knowledge sufficient to keep diseases at bay..haha. I'll probably keep 20% of my diet as fresh fruit and veggies and see what happens.

If I start feeling bad or worse for wear than I do now (I eat a pretty healthy diet) than I'll make the switch back.

However as my time will become more and more cut back over the next few years I've got to find ways to prioritise my time. Hopefully this jakeshake 80% thing should help me out.

I shall report back in a few months!

Thanks again

Might want to consider a food elimination program to identify food intolerances.  I did that and although a hassle, was well worth it when I was able to end 43 years of fairly bad asthma, and various allergies to cats, many raw fruits, pollin, etc.  Now I can go to anyone's house who has cats and I can eat whatever fruit I want.  And I can run and play as much as I like with no asthma and no medicines.  All thanks to eliminating wheat.
 
Common food intolerances come from dairy, wheat, nightshade family plants, soy, tree nuts, peanuts, eggs, etc.  You can find lists on line along with lists of foods least likely to cause intolerances.  Intolerances tend to show more gradually than actual allergies so you won't always feel ill right after eating the food, it can just be a feeling of tiredness, lingering malaise, stomach or intestinal probs, skin rash/psoriasis, etc that lingers for days or weeks.  Dairy and wheat are two common ones that people tend to feel better not eating but differnet people have different tolerances so what works for one might not work for another.  Most of the foods we currently eat have been developed just over the course of the last few hundred years or sometimes only in the last few decades.  They contain novel proteins and enzymes that are sometimes bioactive even after passing through the stomach.  Human evoluntionary adaption has been far slower than our forced evolution of our food sources.  Long term studies of new food sources are simply not done.  End result is that some people are dangerous maladapted to some of the food they are eating.  In a cruel twist of fate, it seems often the food you are most addicted to and have an immediate negative reaction to the idea of skipping it tends to be the food that is causing the problems.  Good news is the addiction usually passes after a few days of not eating it and then you wonder why it was such a big deal earler.  

For meal replacement, I would do one good meal a day of real food.  For other meals, my front runners for health drinks right now are Vega One and Shakeology.   
-Eva

Well, as long as we're all comparing our successes w/ weight loss (which is not much different that a "whose is bigger" contest), I'll go on record as having lost 100 pounds a couple of years ago using the Take Shape For life program. The key for me was that its safety and efficacy are proven in independent clinical trials. It's not hyped up bullshit. It just works. And it's easy & convenient (yes, I have more time for meditation now). Top that off with its major focus on long term health instead of just a diet mentality of getting to a certain weight and then quitting. I've gone from 280 to 180 and have kept that weight off for 2+ years. I learned new habits of health, which slowly have replaced my old habits of disease.

It cost me $12.00 a day, compared w/ Soylent's $20.00 a day (quoted from above). The meal replacements were tasty, I got to eat 6x a day and I wasn't hungry.

That said, if you're already at a healthy weight, I advocate a proper dietary regimen based on mostly whole, natural foods. I still eat the occasional meal replacement when I'm on the go but I mostly eat whole foods at this point, and focus on vegetables and fruits, high quality proteins and healthy fats.

I agree with Richard Zen that most people eat to satisfy cravings, deal with stress, or fill a perceived hole in their lives. That's a recipe for obesity.  Hmmm, craving - doesn't that sound familiar?? Almost like it's the cause of suffering or something.

Having this replace meals in life in general is not very appealing to me, but one application where it could be very useful, and quite relevant to this community, might be home retreats. Normally the task of organizing, shopping for and preparing food might get in the way of the continuity of practice, but with soylent it might be easier to stay in the flow.

This probably very much depends on the person though: for me cooking involves a mental shift where I need to start doing and planning. For other the process of cooking might itself be very meditative. And ofcourse it could be argued that especially when it's harder to stay in the continuity that actually makes it a good practice.

Anyway, just some thoughts.  

We haven't figured out everything that the human body needs and we don't know the full composition of every food. So we can't make complete supplements. (I'm saying this as a scientist.)


So three is more time for practice?

Eating wholesome food IS practice.

This is true of most addictions. They are to fill a space that could be filled by better desires. I would say that it wasn't letting go so much as enjoying food more because I noticed the increased pleasure when I ate when actually hungry. That pleasure will get you to eat less because you want to savour food instead of just getting more. Even Thanissaro's instructions to enjoy the breath to "get more allies on your side" is just another way of replacing a worse desire with a better one.

  Haha, me too, different symptoms, but eliminated wheat, which seems to have eliminated chronic knee and elbow pains, stomach problems, etc.  

And when you really think of it, wheat is a grass, I know we eat the seeds of it or whatever, but grass!

This stuff is so cheap, food for the masses, follow the dollar trail,  and the price of different forms of wheat is way out of proportion to what it is worth, cakes . doughnuts crackers,cookies, pretzels,,///.......  all grass clippings... Mulch.  Sugar soaked Mulch!!!  

If it tastes good spit it out!  

Psi

This thread is full of silly stuff. 

- The only soy product in Soylent is soy lecithin, and it's at the end of the list so there's likely very little in there.  The protean source seems to be rice protean.  (Note that there also aren't any lentils to be found, despite the name.)

- Whoever said Canola oil is bad for you is crazy, it's one of the healthiest cooking oils you can use.

- In spite of the long looking list of ingredients, Soylent is essentially the same as eating sweetened buttery oatmeal with a multivitamin.

- The algea oil is meant to be a vegan-friendly source of omega-3's.  They were using fish oil before, so the website makes a big deal out of the algea oil since it's new.

- Eva needs to be less dramatic about vitamin absorption rates, haha.

Ok, I feel better now.

EDIT: One more thing - wheat is not bad, you all just believe in voodoo. Psi, by your logic eating almonds is eating trees, and eating lettuce is eating weeds. If it tastes good, that's natures way of telling you to eat more of it, so anything that tastes good in it's natural form (like whole wheat) is good for you. I'm off to eat a box of wheat thins and enjoy my healthy joints.

What I meant by if it tastes good, spit it out is in reference to junk food, sweets and whatnot, not natural whole foods, and the like.  And, hey eat some sweets every once in a while, so what , right?  Nature's way of telling us it is good by taste does not work with human made stuff, life out of balance.

And, you are right, wheat is not necessarily bad for anyone, but it is if  person has celiac disease or gluten sensitivity.

And fruit is the ovaries of trees!!!  The horror of living.  Life feeds on Life.  For the carrots , it is the holocaust. 



Tool

"Disgustipated"

And the angel of the lord came unto me, snatching me up from my place of slumber. 
And took me on high, and higher still until we moved to the spaces betwixt the air itself. 
And he brought me into a vast farmlands of our own midwest. 
And as we descended, cries of impending doom rose from the soil. 
One thousand, nay a million voices full of fear. 
And terror possesed me then. 
And I begged, 
"Angel of the Lord, what are these tortured screams?" 
And the angel said unto me, 
"These are the cries of the carrots, the cries of the carrots! 
You see, Reverend Maynard, tomorrow is harvest day and to them it is the holocaust." 
And I sprang from my slumber drenched in sweat like the tears of one million terrified brothers and roared, 
"Hear me now, I have seen the light! 
They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! 
Damn you! 
Let the rabbits wear glasses! 
Save our brothers!" 
Can I get an amen? 
Can I get a hallelujah? 
Thank you Jesus. 
Life feeds on life feeds on life feeds on life feeds on........ 

This is necessary

Carrots care not, but rabbits do.  Thus I eat carrots, not rabbits.

I'm not sure if you were just pulling their legs or not, but any of the refined, hydrogenated vegetable oils are really bad for you. Pure, unsalted butter, ghee, cold-pressed oils & animal lard are the way to go!

Tim, if you have started the experiment, we would love to know how it's going so far.

Keep us updated.

Love & metta,
Yash

Cleve Backster's research would seem to indicate otherwise. The idea that something is good because it's natural is something that can be easily shown to not be true, but I know you meant that humorously, so I'll leave that alone.

I wish this sort of food tech were known to be reliable and safe, as I'm all for it. I'm tired of the tyranny of food. It's an ancient idea that is ripe for being turned on its head. Seeing as how I live on very simple foods, and have reduced my consumption by over half of what it had been a year ago, I really like the idea of being able to relegate food, eating, preparation, etc to a small corner of my life. I hope that either this Soylent is proven to be safe and effective, or someone comes up with something that is.

But I'll still have to go out on my birthday for Indian food, so here's to traditional food!

My cousin has cerebral palsy and has had to "eat" through a feeding tube for over half his life.  They just use a formula for this.  Long term liquid diet has actually been around for a long time for people with injuries or disabilities that make it so they can't eat, so this isn't anything new, really.  I'm sure there are studies done on how this kind of nutrition matches up.

If you wish to make counter claims, at least include some research, science or something. 
I noticed later that they have different formulations, one for dry powder and one for the liquid.  Soy is very high in ingredient listing for one of them, I think it was the liquid, which probably explains why the website brags about soy so much.  Yeah I too was wondering where all the soy was at on that listing!  They do not give sources for some of the stuff though, modified starch and whatnot can come from a variety of sources. 
What is yoru source for this info?  Are you assumign because it is unsaturated?  Actually canola has come under increasing fire for its unhealthfulness, most of it is GMO, bred from poisonous rapeseeds and still contains some of the toxins, high heat in processing destabilizes unsaturated fates like rape seed and produces high amounts of transfat, typical article explaining it here: http://authoritynutrition.com/canola-oil-good-or-bad/ .  The one thing that can be said about canola/rape seed oil though is that it is very very cheap to produce and has neutral taste, probably because it has to be deodorized to remove its natural stink which supposedly is quite nasty.  
Ironically, with the exception of the algal oil, soylent has a very similar ingredient listing to lifestock feed.  http://fixyourgut.com/soylent-2-0-review/  This article also explains further issues with its vitamin and mineral content.
Algal oil is probably the one thing no one is complaining about.  The main problem is most of the rest of it. 
Have you done any research on synthetic vitamin absorption rates yourself?  I suggest you do so before you challenge my numbers.  Many synthetics have very very low absorption.  It's people who just blindly trust in the manufacturers and do not research or check that why they can get away with such bs in our food sources. 
I stopped eating wheat and got rid of 40 plus years of rather bad asthma.  For the first time in my life EVER, I could run and do sports and just lay down with completely free and normal lung function.  Constant suffication does teach pain tolerance but it's one lesson I am happy to leave behind.  And no more meds, I don't even carry them in my purse any more.  Improvement kicked in within 24 hours of giving up wheat, in 2 days, I could ditch the meds, and in about 3 months, all traces of congestion were gone.  Although my digestion has always been great and I am clearly not celiac, wheat is clearly very very bad for me. 

There is some good research behind it too.  DPP4 enzyme is responsible for inactivating circulating wheat and diary peptides.  Such peptides are scientifically proven to be bioactive, there is not debate on that one, the only debate is if the effect is powerful or not.  These peptides like to bind to morphine receptors which are all over the body including in the gut.  Binding at the morphine receptor changes functioning of the cell (just as binding with more powerful regular morphine does, but just a weaker version)  DPP4 enzyme is variable depending on genetics of the person, but heavy metals like mercury are shown to strongly inactivate them as well.  Chemical contamination is much higher in many populations in the industrial age.  Plus wheat and diary consumption is much higher, its in almost everything now.  PLus the type of cows we use in recent times have different peptides and potential more difficult to digest than the more hardy versions we once used.  (see A1 vs A2 cows)  End result is that DPP4 enzymes can be overwelmed in many people resulting and high levels of circulating exogenous bioactive peptides.  It's not voodoo, it's science. 

Can't stand the idea of giving up wheat and diary?  Hate the idea and react viscerally to it?  Remember that the bioactive peptides bind with MORPHINE receptors, ie they are addictive.  Many people have found out by giving up wheat and dairy for a few weeks just to see what would happen.  If nothing, one can always go back to eating it.  But most won't even consider living without them for even one day, that's now addictive they are.  
That logic would hold true in most cases for any NATURAL foods.  But humans are not able to digest grains of wheat in their natural state, it just passes through intact and the plant likes that way because we would poop them out and then they would grow.  Natural wheat is not something anyone eats.  Current wheat was created in the 60s.  Ever notice how the 'amber waves of grain' in the song are no longer present?   Current wheat is dwarf wheat with doubled chromosmes and novel types of proteins the body is not adapted for.  It's lower in minerals than the old Einkorn wheat.  It's also processed differently and celiacs have been shown to react much more strongly to the new wheat.  Even bread used to be slowly fermented with the old school yeasts.  Yeast partially digests the proteins in the wheat, making them more nutritious for us.  Current fast rise yeast does a much inferior job of it.  Also, we once soaked all grains to remove the phytic which is an antinutrient, but no one does that any more.  In short, whole wheat is not at all a natural food source for humans, it's impossible to digest in natural form, but the current versions all the more so.   It is hypothesized that humans had to resort to grain sources more and more though when populations exceeded what the natural environment was able to support.  Hence we had to start farming to survive and we had to learn to make things that were once inedible into something we could survive on.  Humans have made some genetic adaptations to such new sources but industrialization and very rapid changes in food sources since the 60s have far outstripped that adaptation.  Nuts and lettuce are mostly natural (if you don't count the breeding programs) but wheat consumption sure the heck is not.  
-Eva 

Hope you won't take this the wrong way Eva, but I have to ask -

It seems almost everything we can think is unhealthy for we humans to eat. So just what do we eat if we're going to cease consuming wheat, dairy, not to mention all the other things that have been demonstrated to be bad for our health?

Also, unless I'm mistaken, dairy has been a part of the human diet for quite a long time now. Yet it doesn't seem to have been detrimental to the health of humans. Yet now we hear it is to be avoided. What am I missing?

You are simplifying down what I said.  I did not say I thought wheat and diary are bad for EVERYONE.  What I said was if your digestive enzymes for those foods are too low for your consumption rate, due to things like heavy metal poisoning, genetics, and eating a ton of wheat and diary, THEN you might have probs. 

For dairy being part of the diet 'for a long time now' that's only been true for select parts of the world and it also has likely not been long enough for full biological adaptation which takes at least 100s of thousands of generations or more, evolution is slow.  As it is now, 75% of the world is lactose intolerant currently, so dairy adaptation for humans is weak at best.  Used to be that people stayed in the same place generation after generation which helped with adaptation to a single environment and consistant food sources, but now with the mix of genetics from all over the world, how do you know your genetics are well adapted when 75% of the world is clearly not adapted?  And those adaptations were for cows with different proteins, that did not take hormones nor antibiotics, and ate grass instead of garbage, all of which alters the proteins and contents of the milk produced.

Most people here are probably going by what they have been told on TV (mostly by the food manufacturers themselves who carefully select the research that is to be done) and seen since they are born, that seems normal to them and is what most people do, but those things are not science nor are they natural or healthy.  They are only the current trend and what you are accustomed to. 

As for 'everything' we eat being unhealthy, most things in the grocery store were developed just in the last 40 years or so, obviously there will be zero adaptation to GMOs and heavily modified plants grown in depleted soil, using pesticides and artificial fertilizers, and then separated with mechanical and chemicals means into constituent parts, often with high heat and pressure which actually denatures the amino acids themselves (research on animal feed shows high heat and pressure alters amino acid forms and reduces digestability quite a bit, yielding lower weights and production in animals but research is not done for humans), and sometimes the foods are further modified to make them last forever or have better 'mouth feel' or temperature tolerance (ex 'modified food starch') and also mixed with misc chemicals for the same reason.  Most vitamins and all enzymes are also killed in this processing.  Is it really any surprise that the body is not adapted for such substances? 

Manufacturers want you to buy more and more stuff, that is how they make their money, plus they want high profit margins.  The trick is to use cheap as possible food parts that never go bad (not even the mold with eat it), then they flavor it with state of the art chemical flavors designed to trigger the reward parts of the brain.  They actually hook people up to MRIs and have them eat the food and see what happens!  Certain scan results have been found to indicate the food will sell well and many top sellign junk food items were developed using this method.  An insider has said that so far, this method has worked for all products.  (sorry, can't find that article on that one but heres links to other similar info:  http://www.theblot.com/what-bliss-point-besides-reason-addicted-doritos-7716219 and http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/07/18/brain-imaging-confirms-food-addiction.aspx )

A few hundred years ago, not long when it comes to evolution, humans ate fruits, vegetables, and meat and grain. The grain was very different grain processed and grown in very different ways from what we have today.  Even the fruits and veggies and meats are different now but they are still the closest we have to natural.  The further you get from natural, the more trouble you will tend to have.  70% of Americans take prescription drugs (1 or more), does that sound like natural health to you?
-Eva

So, I went with Jake Shake (www.jakeshake.eu).

I currently have 39 meals sitting in my living room (I ate my first one yesterday, it was rather pleasant, not bad at all - tasted like unsweetened cake mix with some flaxseeds in it).

Jake Shake seem to be the most professional and ingredient-conscious out of the bunch and they recommend slowly transitioning (over 2-3 weeks) if you plan to eat all your meals as Jake.

This I shall try.

Most likely I'll end up eating 2 out of 3 meals per day as Jake and the rest social eating.

Will update in a couple of months to let you all know how it's going with my health and the extra free time this will give me for my practice.

PS

I think most people take nutrition too seriously. The buddha regarded food as sustenance for the body, nothing more. It is a tool to keep us running well so we can meditate well.

If this soylent/jakeshake stuff does that without me feeling worse than I do now (I feel fine), then I'm definitely going to continue.

Thanks everybody for taking part in this discussion, it's been very helpful.

I didn't mean to imply that I thought you were say wheat and dairy are bad for everyone. I re-read what I posted, and while I'm not sure how I accomplished this feat of simplification, I sincerely did not mean any offense.

It was meant as a sincere question

Ok Pawel, you're probably trolling, but I'm gonna bite the bait just so people who read this don't misinterpret.

Soylent doesn't contain the harmful substances in soy that give you man titties.

Unfortunately, troll and trolling have become very loaded lanuage. I think we should give Pawel the benefit of the doubt for just having fun and playing around.

Besides, what's so bad about man mammaries? He could get more dates or feed a hungry child!

I am suspicious of bs marketing on that one.  Soy protein isolate DOES contain isoflavones, which are the estrogen mimics of concern.  http://www.isoflavones.info/isoflavones-content.php .  Yes, the processing does reduce them by about 50% but the statement 'does not contain' would not be accurate.  Considering the maker of soylent is on record saying that canned vegetables are healthier than fresh and that formula is healthier than fresh breast milk, I would not blindly accept statements from this person as being 100% truthful, scientific, and correct.  The logic and science behind many of his statements seem almost nonexistant. 
-Eva

No offense taken, sorry if I came off as a bit harsh, I have a tendency in that department.  And as for your earlier question about what to eat, I would say human bodies were likely designed to eat meat, vegetables, and fruits in their natural as possible state, ie minimal processing, cooking with regular temperatures yes, but not with super machines of intense heat and pressure that modify the basic structures and properties of the items in question well beyond normal cooking and then mixing with tons of chemicals, etc, the latter being most of what is in the grocery store these days unless you stick to the so called outer edges of the aisles where all the real food is typically located. (of course one must occasionally venture into the inner aisle sanctums for things like toilet paper though :-)
-Eva
-Eva    

Dude, there are just so many potential issues with that reasoning!  First of all Gautama was not omniscient, nor did he claim to be.  He was likely going mostly via common sense of his era, an era before knowledge of specific vitamins and minerals was known.  And although I am not an expert in the ancient food habits of that era, most likely all that was available back then was rice and natural foods, meats, vegetables, and fruits, the very similar kind of thing as I am advocating for consumption as most likely to be healthy (as long as you go light on the rice).  Gautama would not have spent time advocating against unhealthy crap processed chemical foods if such did not even exist in the first place and if neither did knowledge of such dangers.   Not to mention that it's hard to really say what Gautama said about food because we only know what was supposedly written down later out of memories of others long after his death.  He may have had tons more to say about food but it was not memorized as the most important and guarded for posterity, we have no way of knowing.  But interestingly, I did read that supposedly that Buddhists were allowed to ask for meat in that time, "if you were sick."  Was meat considered to have some kind of medicinal potential?  And finally, considering Gautama was said to have died from eating toxic food, it might suggestion he was no omniscient expert on nutrition.  ;-P  For these reasons, I personally think it's a bit of a stretcher to look for justification of artificial food drink consumption in the written down words of Gautama.  We have issues in this era that just did not even really exist in his time. 
-Eva

That's a potentially dangerous assumption.  WHile some aspects of blood make up may change easily, like white blood cell count, many aspects of blood composition are carefully regulated by the body, even at the expense of specific tissues.  Because blood is the lifeline of the body, it has priority, plus  standard blood tests only measure simple to measure aspects of blood, not vitamin status etc.  That means that standard blood tests often don't catch problems until they are well advanced.  This is especially true of younger indivudals who can often eat all manner of crap foods for years and years while stil maintaining good blood work for long periods of time.  There are people with all kinds of skin probs, weakness, digestion probs, etc who still have good bloodwork.  Cancer often does not show at all in blood tests.  Blood work is a very crude and insensitive indicator of health, you can be pretty sick, osteoporosis, ulcer, bad digestion, cancer, asthma, etc and still have good bloodwork.   You can't just assume health from bloodwork.  
-Eva