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Soylent halts sales of its powder as customers keep getting sick

latimes.com

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Re: Soylent halts sales of its powder as customers keep getting sick

#61

Post by jaworrom »

throwaway898908 wrote: post #14

Not putting solid food into your system for long periods of time (months, years) will destroy your ability to digest solid food when you start refeeding. I've seen people in eating disorder facilities who have lived on diets of liquid food (historically Ensure, basically the same thing) who have not defecated for months, and when they start eating again suffer for weeks and weeks from horrendous constipation, often r…

Not to mention, a major part of digestion begins in the mouth. Saliva breaks food down and prepares it to be broken down in the stomach, so that it can be assimilated in the intestines.

When you consume liquid calories, you miss out on this important part of the digestive process (and subsequently lose out on absorbing a portion of the nutrients), unless you are "simulate chewing" or leave the liquids in your mouth long enough for the salivary enzymes to "get to work."

Granted, this doesn't mean you can't survive off of liquid calories, but digestive issues are bound to happen. Nutrient-dense, whole foods should always be the first option.

Re: Soylent halts sales of its powder as customers keep getting sick

#62

Post by phowat »

enneff wrote: post #34
djsumdog wrote: post #11

I'm really amazed by all the supporters on here. When I first heard about Soylent, I thought it was a terrible terrible idea. I mean, there's so much to food. It's not just eating it, it's all the flavours and ingredients and cooking with friends and loved ones and parties and such. I'm guessing most people on here use it as a supplement + regular food, but when I saw it originally, it seemed like it was intended to…

Believe it or not, some people are just not really into food. Just like some people are not into music or sports.

I'm really not into food. I force myself to eat. If it wasn't for me trying to bulk up I'd eat just one meal a day and be fine. I force myself to eat 2800 to 3000 calories per day and it's a HUGE pain in the ass. Since I first heard about Soylent I wished they'd start selling Here in Brazil. This report doesn't change that.

Re: Soylent halts sales of its powder as customers keep getting sick

#63

Post by thejacenxpress »

soyiuz wrote: post #57

The name "soylent" comes from Soylent Green, a 1973 sci fi film about overpopulation, where people survive by eating mass-produced plankton, which later turns out to be made out of old people. Naming a product "soylent" has always struck me as borderline sociopath. In this light, the company’s slogan "healthy, convenient, affordable food" is an outright mockery of its costumers.

Wrong, it came from the book Make Room! Make Room! by Harry Harrison in which "Soylent Green" is based off of.

However, in the book the soylent is not made from people. The movie added that for....drama

Re: Soylent halts sales of its powder as customers keep getting sick

#64

Post by sanswork »

ojkelly wrote: post #56
nemo44x wrote: post #44

A well cooked meal and wine - my greatest joys in life. Simple, romantic and fulfilling. Add butter. Add cream. A beautiful pan sauce from a well timed reduction. A cool glass of white wine in the hot kitchen as all the flavors come together. The scent of fresh cut shallots still lingering as the garlic in the pan sweats. I don't judge anyone for making food and drink a footnote in their life. I enjoy cooking as much…

As someone with a herb allergy, I cook basically every single meal I eat. It gets old quickly. Take away is almost a non option bar the maccas cheeseburger. Soylent is one of the most freeing things for me. It means I don't need to worry about my next meal, and I can just gulp down an tasty drink. Sure I love a well cooked steak, but sometimes you need a break from cooking.

Guessing you're in Australia by the maccas. Which Soylent do you drink? I've tried multiple flavours of a few local ones and they all universally taste like liquid sawdust.

Re: Soylent halts sales of its powder as customers keep getting sick

#65

Post by jonathanjaeger »

The latest version of Soylent powder is the best-tasting version to date and I get no uneasy feeling from it. The original powder versions I could more easily believe gastro issues, so I'm surprised this is cropping up now rather than before, but I guess it could be ingredient/allergy-specific.

I tend to eat 3000 calories to maintain my weight so Soylent is great for my busy schedule. I'm still eating 1500-2000 calories of regular food per day, which is certainly enough. I don't get why people keep harping on the all-or-nothing idea behind Soylent. Most people advocate this as part of a balanced diet.

Even if Soylent isn't perfect, I'd rather down something the FDA considers a food than an excess of weight gainers/protein bars/protein powder supplements filled with ingredients I don't want. That being said, I could throw oats, protein powder, peanut butter, milk, and a banana in a blender.. but that's not necessarily something I want to do consistently.

I also consider Soylent a bang for the buck when looking at things at price per 100 calories. Soylent 2.0 is far tastier, but I find it annoying that you have to get a ton of heavy bottles shipped to you and it's more expensive.

Re: Soylent halts sales of its powder as customers keep getting sick

#66

Post by musesum »

Have gone through a few cases of Soylent 2.0 with no issues. I use to drink a few a week as a sporadic meal replacement. Now, I mix my own variation with casein protein and trehalose.

Intestinal flora tweak?

When I switched to a modified ketogenic diet, it took a few days to adjust. I now start the morning with coffee mixed with butter and caprylic acid (refined MCT oil).

Advice was: ease into it; too much, too soon, can lead to disaster pants.

[EDIT] switched order

Re: Soylent halts sales of its powder as customers keep getting sick

#67

Post by foobarextreme »

As someone who used to body build and experiment with different stacks and stuff being pushed at the "health" food store, it doesn't need an FDA pass to make you explode for every output channel. Once ate two chef jays bars and then a 4 pack of red line, it was an intense experience of extreme fluid projectiles from all corners.

Re: Soylent halts sales of its powder as customers keep getting sick

#68

Post by mapt »

contingencies wrote: post #51
deepGem wrote: post #26

Man, this is a bummer. As much as I hate the concept of Soylent as food, I see it as the only way to scale food production for the growing population, without killing our planet. The other options are still in the labs. Artificial tissues for instance. Vertical farming is one alternative, but that is again fraught with massive energy consumption. I hope Soylent gets to solve this.

It's a fair concern, though many people forget that reducing food wastage is a great way to scale too: Roughly one-third of food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted globally, which amounts to about 1.3 billion tons per year. http://www.fao.org/docrep/014/mb060e/mb060e00.htm At Infinite Food we are working to offer a broader, home kitchen-like degree of choice in personalized hot meal preparation, but usi…

Actually, one-third is a pretty small number in the grand scheme of things. Drop it down to zero (asymptotically difficult) and carrying capacity rises by 50%.

Switch the meat eaters over to grain & legumes (with minimal fresh vegetables), and it rises by something in the 200-1000% range.

Re: Soylent halts sales of its powder as customers keep getting sick

#69

Post by fusiongyro »

djsumdog wrote: post #11

I'm really amazed by all the supporters on here. When I first heard about Soylent, I thought it was a terrible terrible idea. I mean, there's so much to food. It's not just eating it, it's all the flavours and ingredients and cooking with friends and loved ones and parties and such. I'm guessing most people on here use it as a supplement + regular food, but when I saw it originally, it seemed like it was intended to…

I absolutely love food and I'd say a significant amount of my hobby budget goes into food and cooking supplies.

I was an early Soylent supporter because my wife and I were curious about it and thought it might be inexpensive and sensible to replace our lunch meals with it. If we both worked through lunch, hilariously, we could have had an extra hour to spend cooking dinner.

Not every meal of my day needs to be a fine dining experience.

Also, my wife was pregnant, and having a lot of random food aversions. The idea of something you could just sort of mindlessly drink was appealing to her.

She tried it once and really hated it. I tried it twice and also really hated it. So it didn't stick for us, but I liked the idea of it. I brought it to the place I was working at the time and one of the engineers there really took to it, ate all the rest of it over the course of a few weeks. Different strokes.

Re: Soylent halts sales of its powder as customers keep getting sick

#70

Post by intrasight »

I get why some people want to "let someone else decide what I eat" - life has too many decisions already after all. But I've gone the smoothy route, where I have the main ingredients of Soylent but with the added benefit of fresh fruit and veggies. I have one or two smoothies each day, so it's at least half of my caloric intake.

However, this time of year I just love the fresh vegetables available at the farmers market at great prices. Some go into smoothies but most I bake or stirfry. I eat with rice or beans and that's my dinner most every day.

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