Condensing your diet to pills.

[Sherlock]

Good Day. My first post on this forum and from a preliminary check did not indicate this has been a discussion before.

 

The development of diet pills of the last while has been orbiting around the idea of being a weight loss pill. Strip away appetite and give the body what it needs. Oddly enough in this day and age we haven't managed to get that right and they often have rather unpleasant side effects long term.

So what about a full diet supplement? Forget about the weight loss side of things which appears to be just messing everything up. Surely we must understand the human body enough by now to be able to know what it's exact dietary requirements are.

 

For the last few months I've been taking a vitamin supplement because I realized my diet isn't quite balanced enough. I'm not one to care for food. I like to make food fast, eat it fast and move on. So I've come to thinking; why not just get rid of food altogether?

 

I know a lot of people wouldn't be overly keen on the idea, with meal time being important family time etc. but for someone like me who just wants to get on with things can this not be a reality?

 

I realize the importance of keeping the digestive system active at all times so I would see the sense in having a supply of fruit/fiber every day. With the digestive track still moving and a system of quick snacks worked out can keep feelings of hunger out.

 

Any thoughts on this? A series of tablets every day giving the perfect diet might seem like a vision of sci-fi future, but really I see no reason why our modern science techniques and knowledge can't be enough to work this out.

 

[John Cuthber]

They would need a lot of pills or rather big ones.

To get 2500 Calories a day would take something like half a pound of fat (or roughly twice that weight of carbohydrates or proteins).

[the asinine cretin]

I think it could be possible with super futuristic technology. Pills (or some other, less bothersome means of assimilation) would provide a set of micronutrients. An ecology of nanites would inhabit the body (surface of skin, hair, mouth, nose, lungs, digestive tract, bloodstream) and as a system they would coordinate in the synthesis of the macronutrients required for your optimal health. Some might generate building blocks using oxygen, nitrogen, CO2, solar energy, and ambient H2O; some might manage various "farms" of bacteria insight your body; some would recycle dead skin, hair, and secretions from the body (maybe no more crapping and peeing!). Basically some ridiculous sci-fi augmentation and vast improvement of the body's natural metabolic capabilities. With sufficiently sophisticated augmentation of this kind it might be possible to subsist on pills. (Or something more automatic like invisible airborne nanites made ubiquitous in the environment that are attracted by and incorporated into a person's nano systems on-demand. The augmented body - with already much lower input requirements - would then absorb from the environment whatever components it is unable to generate. Alternatively, clothing could be capable of supplementing the body's internal systems. Periodic injections might work. A patch. One's bed sheets. Or maybe we'll just subsist on enriched drinking water.)

Just throwing something out there. haha.

Edited April 18, 2012 by the asinine cretin

[Moontanman]

Good Day. My first post on this forum and from a preliminary check did not indicate this has been a discussion before.

 

The development of diet pills of the last while has been orbiting around the idea of being a weight loss pill. Strip away appetite and give the body what it needs. Oddly enough in this day and age we haven't managed to get that right and they often have rather unpleasant side effects long term.

So what about a full diet supplement? Forget about the weight loss side of things which appears to be just messing everything up. Surely we must understand the human body enough by now to be able to know what it's exact dietary requirements are.

 

For the last few months I've been taking a vitamin supplement because I realized my diet isn't quite balanced enough. I'm not one to care for food. I like to make food fast, eat it fast and move on. So I've come to thinking; why not just get rid of food altogether?

 

I know a lot of people wouldn't be overly keen on the idea, with meal time being important family time etc. but for someone like me who just wants to get on with things can this not be a reality?

 

I realize the importance of keeping the digestive system active at all times so I would see the sense in having a supply of fruit/fiber every day. With the digestive track still moving and a system of quick snacks worked out can keep feelings of hunger out.

 

Any thoughts on this? A series of tablets every day giving the perfect diet might seem like a vision of sci-fi future, but really I see no reason why our modern science techniques and knowledge can't be enough to work this out.

 

 

I just ate a piece of strawberry cake made with fresh strawberries locally grown that disagrees with you and makes a rather impressive argument for real food...

[Sherlock]

They would need a lot of pills or rather big ones.

To get 2500 Calories a day would take something like half a pound of fat (or roughly twice that weight of carbohydrates or proteins).

 

Indeed, last time I checked some diet pills were around 278 calories each. Working with the logic that the pills came supplied with only that amount of value we'd all be looking at about nine pills per day just to stalk up on that requirement alone. Pure raw powdered down vitamins may not be the way to do at all at this rate.

 

I just ate a piece of strawberry cake made with fresh strawberries locally grown that disagrees with you and makes a rather impressive argument for real food...

 

...ehh that sounds... great/slightly horrible. I'll stick to the fudge cake flavored pill tho.

 

I think it could be possible with super futuristic technology. Pills (or some other, less bothersome means of assimilation) would provide a set of micronutrients. An ecology of nanites would inhabit the body (surface of skin, hair, mouth, nose, lungs, digestive tract, bloodstream) and as a system they would coordinate in the synthesis of the macronutrients required for your optimal health. Some might generate building blocks using oxygen, nitrogen, CO2, solar energy, and ambient H2O; some might manage various "farms" of bacteria insight your body; some would recycle dead skin, hair, and secretions from the body (maybe no more crapping and peeing!). Basically some ridiculous sci-fi augmentation and vast improvement of the body's natural metabolic capabilities. With sufficiently sophisticated augmentation of this kind it might be possible to subsist on pills. (Or something more automatic like invisible airborne nanites made ubiquitous in the environment that are attracted by and incorporated into a person's nano systems on-demand. The augmented body - with already much lower input requirements - would then absorb from the environment whatever components it is unable to generate. Alternatively, clothing could be capable of supplementing the body's internal systems. Periodic injections might work. A patch. One's bed sheets. Or maybe we'll just subsist on enriched drinking water.)

Just throwing something out there. haha.

 

Some really interesting concepts there. I'm quite intrigued by building this in-body ecology system. Just imagine sending your child to get their Vibrio Carbohydratum shots. I get the feeling we'd be waiting ten times longer for the 'ethics police' to clear it than for science to develop it.

With the idea of clothing and bed sheets I have only one worry... what if it attracts bugs?

[CharonY]

I see several issues with that. Disregarding the enjoyment of food (and I mean food, not the processed crap), in many cases the precise nutrient requirements are actually not that well known. I remember reading a few studies suggesting that health outcomes were better when fulfilling vitamin C requirement with fruits rather than pills, indicating that there is quite a lot of micronutrients that we would miss out on. Also there is the question of adsorption. We have during the course of our evolution adapted to certain nutrient forms, a powder may have quite different uptake rates than we would have from real food. As such the concentration requirements are not clear. Also I wonder what it would do to our bacterial systems.

Simply put, we do not know enough about the precise requirements we actually have to be certain that a totally artificial food would satisfy all of them.

[the asinine cretin]

I see several issues with that. Disregarding the enjoyment of food (and I mean food, not the processed crap), in many cases the precise nutrient requirements are actually not that well known. I remember reading a few studies suggesting that health outcomes were better when fulfilling vitamin C requirement with fruits rather than pills, indicating that there is quite a lot of micronutrients that we would miss out on. Also there is the question of adsorption. We have during the course of our evolution adapted to certain nutrient forms, a powder may have quite different uptake rates than we would have from real food. As such the concentration requirements are not clear. Also I wonder what it would do to our bacterial systems.

Simply put, we do not know enough about the precise requirements we actually have to be certain that a totally artificial food would satisfy all of them.

 

I'm aware of those types of issues, but my thing is pure fantasy and assumes super futuristic nanotech and a substantially re-engineered humanity. It's not supposed to be feasible any time soon. The network of nanobots would know the body's requirements and they would be capable of interfacing directly with cellular metabolism and wouldn't be remotely comparable to a present day vitamin supplement. Wait.. I guess this isn't the Speculations board. My bad.

 

Ponies brought me here.

 

/wordsalad

Edited April 20, 2012 by the asinine cretin

[Nathan Flinn]

The problem is that there is more to feeding behavior than just consumption. You mention fiber to keep the digestion busy (although there are other reasons for fiber, that's a good point). The optimal diet pill will have to have very carefully designed schedules. Normally your circadian rhythm takes care of that (that's why jet-lags feel so bad for digestion -- they are). But I am not sure that you can entrain the circadian clock with pills. It actually takes pleasure of eating. (Also a part of the reason for the "French miracle" -- outdated.) And this is just one aspect of why "real" food can hardly be substituted with anything but food.

 

But in principle it is possible as is a substitute for sex (why waste time?).