this post was submitted on 27 Jan 2025
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Part 3
Moving on to sulphur, sodium, chloride and potassium, this is actually getting a little bit outside my wheelhouse and further into dietitian / biochemist territory, so take all the following with a grain of salt (pun very much intended).
Sodium, potassium and chloride all serve really important functions in cellular metabolism, as well as being essential for the nervous system. A lot of public health messaging (and advertising) tends to focus on "sodium bad", but it isn't quite that simple. Most people on a western diet get too much, but you do actually need it to live. There's also some research indicating that the ratio of these might be at least as important as actual amounts.
If we go by WHO recommendations for total sodium intake of less than 2000mg / day, we're a little over at 2311.4mg. This is actually -way- better than the average USAmerican. Might run into some problems later down the line, but honestly better off than most western diets. The WHO also recommends a potassium intake of >3510mg / day, which puts the ratio at โค 0.6 mg/mg Na:K. With our potassium intake of 3721.9, we're actually pretty much bang on. Surprisingly, no real issues here.
Chloride is tied quite tightly to sodium, given that our main source is salt (sodium chloride). EU food safety suggests an adequate intake of 3100mg / day, which we're apparently getting about half of. However, I'm missing some data on the chloride content of the cereal here, the only data I have is from the whole milk. Given that chloride deficiency from diet is pretty rare in adults, I'm kinda going to hand wave this one and say we're probably fine.
Since our main dietary source of sulphur is protein, sulphur ties heavily in to amino acid balance, which I'll go into next.
Conclusion: Mineral-wise, this is inadvisable. Probably not fatal in the short term, but likely very unpleasant in the medium to long term. You'll probably end up with some kind of digestive problems at the very least, bad breath, and maybe some skin and eye issues. Long term, maybe immune system and blood sugar issues. Note that I haven't gone into carbohydrates and sugars yet, so that's a maybe.
This is amazing and thank you for letting me know you updated. Definitely think the sugar and carbs will be the big problem
Do you have thoughts on meal replacements?
Plenty. I have actually tried soylent. Before I got into nutrition properly though and I haven't done any kind of thorough analysis on them. In my personal experience they're .. fine? .. flavour wise pretty bland and neutral, better if you blend them with some fruit or something. The sensation after having one was pretty weird though. Like, you've just taken in a ton of nutrition, but you don't feel "full" -- just kind of not hungry. It's also a lot of liquid that hangs around in your stomach for longer than it feels like a liquid should.
Nutrition wise, off the top of my head, I don't think they're a bad idea, at least conceptually. Lifestyle wise they're a pretty good solution to the "no time / skill to cook a decent meal" problem that a lot of people run into. They're also good for those "need to eat but don't want anything" moments. I'd hesitate to have them for every meal because IIRC they do lack a couple things (fibre, maybe?) but once or twice a week shouldn't be a massive deal.
I'd have to do a ton more work to break down the actual nutrition, value for money and any other possible knock-on effects though. Off the top of my head there might be long-term issues with digestion and possibly oral health, but that's just a guess.
Interesting, thank you. You sound like you know your stuff and you had concluded that the Total thing was "very unpleasant" in the long term. I was into Soylent myself and actually tried to subsist mostly on it for about a year when life circumstances changed my path. I was wondering if I had inadvertently exploded my kidneys or whatever with my own personal Soylent experiment.
It sounds like Soylent is a little better than Total and I'm curious as to why
It's been a while, and like I said, I haven't done proper analysis (that would probably be another three or four days work at this rate) but from memory soylent is a lot closer to an actual meal (at least an attempt at a complete protein, a reasonable amount of carbs, essential fatty acids, a wider variety of micronutrients) even before you add whatever liquid you're using. Total is just fortified wheat flakes, sugar, honey and salt. Pragmatically, if you absolutely had to subsist on one of them, I'd say soylent is probably the less-bad option, but I wouldn't recommend either.
Thank you!