Prediction: Soylent/Huel is to whole foods as baby formula is to breast milk. We keep thinking "THIS time we've figured out everything a human body needs." Then we keep finding out that things are more complex.

By Kat Woods 🔶 ⏸️ @ 2025-07-27T15:27 (+3)

I'm not against Soylent or Huel. I think they're great as backup meals for when you're strapped for time or energy.

They're almost certainly better for you than most ultra-processed foods.

I just predict that if you lived off of only Soylent/Huel, you'd be like babies raised exclusively off of baby formula.

You will have health issues that you would have avoided had you lived primarily on a diet based on whole foods your body is evolved to deal with.

Nutrition is just too damn complex, and nutrition science is at about the same level as medicine was in the 1860s. We've learned to stop bloodletting, but we're still against washing our hands between surgeries.

Here's an excerpt from In Defense of Food that I found particularly compelling:

“Indeed, to look at the chemical composition of any common food plant is to realize just how much complexity lurks within it. Here’s a list of just the antioxidants that have been identified in a leaf of garden-variety thyme:

• alanine, anethole essential oil, apigenin, ascorbic acid, beta-carotene, caffeic acid, camphene, carvacrol, chlorogenic acid, chrysoeriol, derulic acid, eriodictyol, eugenol, 4-terpinol, gallic acid, gamma-terpinene, “isichlorogenic acid, isoeugenol, isothymonin, kaemferol, labiatic acid, lauric acid, linalyl acetate, luteolin, methionine, myrcene, myristic acid, naringenin, rosmarinic acid, selenium, tannin, thymol, trytophan, ursolic acid, vanillic acid.”