Using human kibble to do n of 1 science

A friend of my recently started making her own soylent (a food replacement) and has sent me the ingredients for some. I’m excited, as a tend to eat crappy when I get stressed. I’m also excited because, if you make your own soylent, you can do some interesting modifications.

Does protein or fat make you personally feel fuller? Obviously, there are studies that say one or the other, but there is really no easy way to generalize to yourself. With DIY soylent, you can do one week high protein low carb, one week low protein high carb, and one week high fat low protein. Record your observations and as long as the weeks are pretty similar you can tell what makes you feel fuller. Think you might be low on iron? Think iron might be giving you diarrhea? Kick it up or down for a week and you can immediately tell. Do you prefer liquid or dry food? With the version of soylent we are using, it’s pretty easy to cut the water in half and make some (very strange) tortillas. Want to test your food allergies? Just add/subtract items on weeks you anticipate will be similar and monitor your stool. Interactions effects might be harder to look for and really doing some kind of objective recording over the course of multiple weeks would be ideal, but for ‘close enough’ tests , this is enough.

It’s rare that you have such a simple platform to really play with how your body feels based on what you eat. I think the soylent people and their total failure at business are really missing out on an extremely interesting opportunity. I’m excited to try it out, and if I find anything interesting I’ll definitely post it.