CEO of Soylent goes even further off the deep end – going after his microbiome

Well, this is pretty deranged: Soylent CEO Is Lifehacking Water By Pissing In the Sink.  Forget all the wackiness of Soylent and the idea of limiting water intake.  And just look at the part of this on the micro biome

Feces are almost entirely deceased gut bacteria and water. I massacred my gut bacteria the day before by consuming a DIY Soylent version with no fiber and taking 500mg of Rifaximin, an antibiotic with poor bioavailability, meaning it stays in your gut and kills bacteria. Soylent’s microbiome consultant advised that this is a terrible idea so I do not recommend it. However, it worked. Throughout the challenge I did not defecate.

So – he took Rifaximin to kill his gut microbiome because he thought that would help him not defecate.  And then because he did not defecate he concluded that the Rifaximin played some role in such anti-defecation?  OMFG.  This is both bad science and some, well, crazy a*s-sh*t.  I – I – I – I just do not know what else to say.

Hat tip to Andrea Kuszewski.

Author: Jonathan Eisen

I am an evolutionary biologist and a Professor at U. C. Davis. (see my lab site here). My research focuses on the origin of novelty (how new processes and functions originate). To study this I focus on sequencing and analyzing genomes of organisms, especially microbes and using phylogenomic analysis View all posts by Jonathan Eisen