I’ll start with vitamins, because that’s what the product is marketed based on. Vitamin A immediately stands out to me. There are two kinds of vitamins, water soluble and fat soluble. Vitamin B is a great example of a water soluble vitamin. If you’ve ever had a vitamin B supplement, then gone for a pee later, you might have noticed it being -really- yellow. That’s excess vitamin B. Because it’s water soluble, your body will just excrete any excess that you don’t need; there’s very little danger of it building up in your system.
Vitamins A, D, E and K, on the other hand, are fat-soluble. This means they get stored in your body and used as needed, so it is technically possible to overdose on these over a long enough timeline. Vitamin D and E poisoning from diet is pretty rare, but Vitamin A is kinda famous in nutrition circles. Every first year nutrition student learns about Vitamin A toxicity killing most of Mawson’s antarctic expedition. Those were pretty extreme circumstances, but so is living on nothing but fortified cereal.
1383.6ug is nearly twice the RDI. According to Horowitz, daily vitamin A over 50,000IU (1ug vitamin A = 3.33IU) can cause poisoning over time, with acute toxicity kicking in at a single dose of 1,000,000IU or more. Our 1383ug maths out to 4610IU. Probably won’t feel great, but it’s a fair way short of fatal.
Let’s do the other vitamins while we’re on the subject. The essential vitamins are A, C, D, E, K, and the B group. A, we’ve covered. C is water soluble, so we’re fine to blow right past the RDI there. For vitamin D, the maximum suggested is 4,000IU / day, where 1IU = 40ug. At 9.1 serves, we’re getting 1.63ug, or 65.2IU. Nowhere near the danger zone, but with an RDI of 5ug, we’re at risk of deficiency. Dietary vitamin D deficiency is unlikely to straight up kill a person, especially if if they’re getting enough sunlight, but is a risk factor for osteoporosis and other issues later down the line.
Vitamin E toxicity kicks in at about 1000mg / day, but can take years to develop. Our 9.1 serves gives 65mg. Fairly safe on that front.
Vitamin K isn’t mentioned in the NIP at all, and I get the feeling it isn’t well understood (the NRV section on it contains a lot of unknowns, and doesn’t list an RDI – 120ug / day is the US recommendation). However, there probably isn’t any significant amount in our cereal given the main sources are green leafy veg, some cheeses and plant oils. Vitamin K is important for blood clotting, with adverse effects starting at <10ug / day. Although humans can’t synthesise it ourselves, apparently our gut flora can, at least to some degree. I don’t think enough is known about this to really say how long it’d take to kill a person, but if our test subject starts bleeding profusely, we’ll know why.
B group vitamins we’re fine for. Like I said above, we can go way beyond RDI and the excess will be excreted. Even being short on B5 and B7 per serve works out okay; with the amount we’re eating, we’re getting 5.8mg / day B5, and 62.8mg / day B7. Above RDI in both cases, and we’ll just pee the surplus out.
So yeah, vitamin-wise, it’s plausible. Can’t say I’d recommend it though.
Let’s move on to minerals. Most of these we don’t need a ton of, apart from calcium, but they are important for catalysing certain chemical reactions in our bodies, like how iron helps bind oxygen to red blood cells. We’ll skip chloride, sulphur, potassium and sodium for the moment, those are special cases that need a bit more explanation.
We’re under for chromium, copper, manganese and zinc, and well over RDI for calcium, iodine, iron and seleneium. Just over for molybdenum and phosphorus.
Mineral deficiencies and excesses can be just as dangerous as vitamins. Iodine is necessary for thyroid function, but excess can cause bloody diarrhea and siezures, for example. Thankfully we’re well below the danger threshold of 1mg/day. Excess calcium isn’t considered particularly risky; there’s some evidence suggesting it’s a risk factor for brain lesions and vascular disease, which may start to become a problem at around 2000mg/day (we’re getting just over that), but probably depends on other pre-existing risk factors and there’s a lot of unanswered questions. The current advice is to stick to about half what we’re getting in this exercise, but I can’t really say when or if our test subject would die from a fatal brain lesion.
Selenium overdose can be straight up lethal (~3mg/kg bodyweight in rats), but we’re a fair way below that at 0.5mg / day total. However, this level has been flagged as probably being the maximum allowable intake in humans. Side effects of excess selenium include bad breath and teeth, arthritis, skin and nail issues, and liver dysfunction. Probably not immediately fatal, but pretty dicey and could get very unpleasant.
Despite getting over 900% RDI of iron, we’re not in much danger of excess there either; iron poisoning usually doesn’t happen just from diet; it’d take a huge dose all at once to be fatal. Especially since most of the iron here is non-heme (supplements and fortifications are usually made from plant sources because they’re cheaper), which doesn’t absorb anywhere near as well. Although the upper limit is 45mg from all sources, it’s unlikely to be deadly at least in the short term as the liver regulates iron uptake; excess will get excreted, for the most part. Worth noting that this system can get overwhelmed in the long term (similar to how excess sugar causes diabetes), and in the short term it can cause some pretty nasty digestive effects; constipation, abdominal pain, nausea, and in extreme cases stomach ulcers.
Molybdenum isn’t much concern, especially since we’re not much past RDI and excess from diet is usually excreted. Same with phosphorus; the upper safe limit is around 4000mg / day; below that it isn’t usually a concern in people with healthy kidneys.
Chromium is an interesting one, we don’t actually have much data on it. None of the studies into chromium requirements are considered good enough to base an RDI on, so the adequate intake (AI) is based on the amount that healthy people tend to get. Near as we can figure it does something with glucose and insulin. Deficiency is really rare in humans; you might end up with some blood sugar issues over a long enough timeline by not getting enough, but really this one is a big fat shrug.
Copper and manganese are similar. We don’t know enough about them to set an RDI. Copper deficiency is likewise pretty rare, but can cause vascular, skeletal and nervous system problems, as well as anaemia, believe it or not. Manganese deficiency is rare enough that we don’t actually know what it does, beyond skin and cholesterol issues. Another shrug here. There just isn’t enough data.
And finally Zinc. This one we do know about. Deficiency here can impair growth, pregnancy outcomes, (neither of which are particularly relevant in our case), but also importantly immune function. More sever deficiency can cause alopecia, diarrhoea, low appetite and lesions. Interestingly, high iron and calcium intake can decrease zinc absorption. Given the excessive amount of iron and calcium we’re getting here, this would be one to watch.
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 ≤ 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.
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.
Part 2
I’ll start with vitamins, because that’s what the product is marketed based on. Vitamin A immediately stands out to me. There are two kinds of vitamins, water soluble and fat soluble. Vitamin B is a great example of a water soluble vitamin. If you’ve ever had a vitamin B supplement, then gone for a pee later, you might have noticed it being -really- yellow. That’s excess vitamin B. Because it’s water soluble, your body will just excrete any excess that you don’t need; there’s very little danger of it building up in your system.
Vitamins A, D, E and K, on the other hand, are fat-soluble. This means they get stored in your body and used as needed, so it is technically possible to overdose on these over a long enough timeline. Vitamin D and E poisoning from diet is pretty rare, but Vitamin A is kinda famous in nutrition circles. Every first year nutrition student learns about Vitamin A toxicity killing most of Mawson’s antarctic expedition. Those were pretty extreme circumstances, but so is living on nothing but fortified cereal.
1383.6ug is nearly twice the RDI. According to Horowitz, daily vitamin A over 50,000IU (1ug vitamin A = 3.33IU) can cause poisoning over time, with acute toxicity kicking in at a single dose of 1,000,000IU or more. Our 1383ug maths out to 4610IU. Probably won’t feel great, but it’s a fair way short of fatal.
Let’s do the other vitamins while we’re on the subject. The essential vitamins are A, C, D, E, K, and the B group. A, we’ve covered. C is water soluble, so we’re fine to blow right past the RDI there. For vitamin D, the maximum suggested is 4,000IU / day, where 1IU = 40ug. At 9.1 serves, we’re getting 1.63ug, or 65.2IU. Nowhere near the danger zone, but with an RDI of 5ug, we’re at risk of deficiency. Dietary vitamin D deficiency is unlikely to straight up kill a person, especially if if they’re getting enough sunlight, but is a risk factor for osteoporosis and other issues later down the line.
Vitamin E toxicity kicks in at about 1000mg / day, but can take years to develop. Our 9.1 serves gives 65mg. Fairly safe on that front.
Vitamin K isn’t mentioned in the NIP at all, and I get the feeling it isn’t well understood (the NRV section on it contains a lot of unknowns, and doesn’t list an RDI – 120ug / day is the US recommendation). However, there probably isn’t any significant amount in our cereal given the main sources are green leafy veg, some cheeses and plant oils. Vitamin K is important for blood clotting, with adverse effects starting at <10ug / day. Although humans can’t synthesise it ourselves, apparently our gut flora can, at least to some degree. I don’t think enough is known about this to really say how long it’d take to kill a person, but if our test subject starts bleeding profusely, we’ll know why.
B group vitamins we’re fine for. Like I said above, we can go way beyond RDI and the excess will be excreted. Even being short on B5 and B7 per serve works out okay; with the amount we’re eating, we’re getting 5.8mg / day B5, and 62.8mg / day B7. Above RDI in both cases, and we’ll just pee the surplus out.
So yeah, vitamin-wise, it’s plausible. Can’t say I’d recommend it though.
Let’s move on to minerals. Most of these we don’t need a ton of, apart from calcium, but they are important for catalysing certain chemical reactions in our bodies, like how iron helps bind oxygen to red blood cells. We’ll skip chloride, sulphur, potassium and sodium for the moment, those are special cases that need a bit more explanation.
We’re under for chromium, copper, manganese and zinc, and well over RDI for calcium, iodine, iron and seleneium. Just over for molybdenum and phosphorus.
Mineral deficiencies and excesses can be just as dangerous as vitamins. Iodine is necessary for thyroid function, but excess can cause bloody diarrhea and siezures, for example. Thankfully we’re well below the danger threshold of 1mg/day. Excess calcium isn’t considered particularly risky; there’s some evidence suggesting it’s a risk factor for brain lesions and vascular disease, which may start to become a problem at around 2000mg/day (we’re getting just over that), but probably depends on other pre-existing risk factors and there’s a lot of unanswered questions. The current advice is to stick to about half what we’re getting in this exercise, but I can’t really say when or if our test subject would die from a fatal brain lesion.
Selenium overdose can be straight up lethal (~3mg/kg bodyweight in rats), but we’re a fair way below that at 0.5mg / day total. However, this level has been flagged as probably being the maximum allowable intake in humans. Side effects of excess selenium include bad breath and teeth, arthritis, skin and nail issues, and liver dysfunction. Probably not immediately fatal, but pretty dicey and could get very unpleasant.
Despite getting over 900% RDI of iron, we’re not in much danger of excess there either; iron poisoning usually doesn’t happen just from diet; it’d take a huge dose all at once to be fatal. Especially since most of the iron here is non-heme (supplements and fortifications are usually made from plant sources because they’re cheaper), which doesn’t absorb anywhere near as well. Although the upper limit is 45mg from all sources, it’s unlikely to be deadly at least in the short term as the liver regulates iron uptake; excess will get excreted, for the most part. Worth noting that this system can get overwhelmed in the long term (similar to how excess sugar causes diabetes), and in the short term it can cause some pretty nasty digestive effects; constipation, abdominal pain, nausea, and in extreme cases stomach ulcers.
Molybdenum isn’t much concern, especially since we’re not much past RDI and excess from diet is usually excreted. Same with phosphorus; the upper safe limit is around 4000mg / day; below that it isn’t usually a concern in people with healthy kidneys.
Chromium is an interesting one, we don’t actually have much data on it. None of the studies into chromium requirements are considered good enough to base an RDI on, so the adequate intake (AI) is based on the amount that healthy people tend to get. Near as we can figure it does something with glucose and insulin. Deficiency is really rare in humans; you might end up with some blood sugar issues over a long enough timeline by not getting enough, but really this one is a big fat shrug.
Copper and manganese are similar. We don’t know enough about them to set an RDI. Copper deficiency is likewise pretty rare, but can cause vascular, skeletal and nervous system problems, as well as anaemia, believe it or not. Manganese deficiency is rare enough that we don’t actually know what it does, beyond skin and cholesterol issues. Another shrug here. There just isn’t enough data.
And finally Zinc. This one we do know about. Deficiency here can impair growth, pregnancy outcomes, (neither of which are particularly relevant in our case), but also importantly immune function. More sever deficiency can cause alopecia, diarrhoea, low appetite and lesions. Interestingly, high iron and calcium intake can decrease zinc absorption. Given the excessive amount of iron and calcium we’re getting here, this would be one to watch.
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 ≤ 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!