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Soylent halts sales of its powder as customers keep getting sick

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

#131
post #74

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…

Having entirely lived on Soylent for a full year and having went back to solid foods with no weaning period and no ill effects, I doubt the veracity of your unsubstantiated claims.

As someone with Crohns disease, who has been on an elemental diet not by choice but by necessity, I can assure you it is very much a real world effect.

Unfortunately, we lack a corpus of evidence of long term liquid diet feedings (and intestinal investigations), mainly for ethical reasons, but there is at least one good rat study I could quickly recall: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF01308310 There are, however, countless great articles I suggest you read on liquid diets and their impact on satiety and other important illness recovery markers. One of the important topics for researchers has been how to safely transition patients more quickly to solid food, given some of the less desirable side effects of the liquid food diet.

And yes, I understand that the Soylent team is confident that they've solved, for example, all gastric emptying issues by adding exogenous fibres. I'm positing that for every variable they're convinced they've figured out, they're opening up another potential set of problems that they've not even considered. Their latest opacity on this recall isn't giving me hope that I'm wrong here.

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

#132
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Soylent is for meals you don't care about but need This is the problem. That concept is completely foreign to a lot of people (me included). The combination of my body's needs and the way I was raised lead me to view each meal as an opportunity to be enjoyed, never a chore. Something I observed in the weightlifting community: there are people who need to worry about dieting (cutting) and people who worry about eati…

> but I'll never understand that feeling of "ugh, I need to eat, guess I'll have a Soylent". It sounds like you have either more free time or a more a steady work schedule then their target user.

I have all the free time in the world and I have that "ugh do I really need to eat again?"

I find it hard to hit 2500 calories daily to not lose weight.

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

#133
post #104
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. One of the hardest things when reducing a sauce is to not stop to soon and to not go too far. If you stop too soon you can use a roux or more crudely use flour or starch to thicken the sauce. If you go to far you end up with a glaze. You could add stock or water to thin, however. A well timed reduction, in my opinion, you end up with a sauce that is "nappe". But the trick is knowing when you're there. An intere…

Thanks for expanding. I wonder what kind of sauce you're thinking of when you write all of this... some sort of alfredo sauce for pasta? And Indian curry kind of sauce? Some gravy-like sauce you put on your turkey or chicken? Could you maybe link to a youtube recipe tutorial of some sort which you feel demonstrates this "reduction" to your approval?

No, way more simple! But closest to a "gravy-like sauce". But you have a lot of room for improvisation once you master the basic technique.

One of the beauties of classical French cooking is that it is simple. It is based on this premise of simplicity. One of the easiest things to learn is a "pan sauce". After that you might learn to make the 5 mother sauces which are super simple too.

What this means is you cook the meat, generally on high heat, in a pan with a fat such as oil and/or butter and when it is done you remove the meat and put it aside. The pan will have crisply bits on the bottom. In French, this is known as "fond". This is good stuff!

After you remove the meat and reduce the heat and you put in a "mirexpox" which is usually some onions or shallots, some diced carrots and some fine diced celery. But really, whatever you want! You're using less heat so they just slowly brown for about 4 minutes or so. This is called "sweating".

Now the magic happens. You crank the heat back up and "deglaze" by adding wine, vinegar, water or whatever. What happens is all the bits that are stuck to the bottom of the pan come off. You use a flat edged wooden spoon to help scrape them off and they come off easily. This is where a ton of flavor lives. You keep the heat on high and let your wine or whatever reduce a bit. It cleans your pan too.

Then you add some meat stock - chicken, beef, veal, etc. Stir everything around a bit and let it reduce. It should boil and steam. Over time the water evaporates and you get to a point where you have a thick sauce that isn't too thick but not watery. In some cases you could add a roux (flour and butter mixture) to thicken. Add some herbs like thyme if that sounds good. When it's at the right thickness you take off the heat and pour through a strainer and add some butter and stir to thicken. Discard the parts you used to help flavor the sauce like the carrots, onions, etc. Or keep them if you like them! Up to your taste!

Now you pour over your meat and whatever else. It's pure flavor and dead simple. And this is but one technique you can play on many ways.

You want a link? Google "pan sauce" and dive in. It is the easiest way to make a basic meal into a gourmet meal I think. Steak, pork, chicken or whatever.

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

#134
Coming from the weightlifting world, I saw this as exactly what it is: re-packaged "mass gainer" with some vitamin, flavor, and ingredient tweaks. So revolutionary...

Yeah, a bunch of nerds trying to live off of what is essentially mass gainer/meal replacement - who probably don't even exercise - will probably get sick. Especially when the makers try so hard to be "differentiated" and mess around with the formula.

Y'all fell for this.

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

#135
post #28

> Soylent said there shouldn’t be any issues with its premade drinks, which cost slightly more than just the powder. Interesting. I tried the premade drinks (Soylent 2.0) a couple of months ago and within an hour had stomach cramps and was forced to retreat to the bathroom. Unlike a software bug it's mentally very hard to forgive -- I love the idea of Soylent but doubt I will ever try it again, in any form. Serious q…

> Serious question: why is it so hard for them to find the root cause of these issues? Biology is hard. Humans are really, really variable. Look through the comments on this page - you'll find people who couldn't keep down one bottle, or who love the bottles but can't stand the powder, or who have had zero issues, or who find the entire idea disgusting. And these reactions may also change over time. Medical science c…

[deleted]

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

#136

I had hemorrhoids that would flair up from soy/almond milk or large quantities of corn chips. However, I never had blood loss and it was mostly gone by the time I tried Soylent. After having one drink made with powder version 1.2 or 1.3, I lost about a liter of blood and couldn't move or work on anything that week. Had to switch to yogurt for a month to eat normally again. I think it has to do with jagged precipitate…

What do you mean by unnatural? What is in Soylent that isn't natural? Food in and of itself is just a mix of different chemicals - be they from plants, animals, or other sources. But at the end of the day, a molecule of glucose from a plant is identical to a molecule of glucose created synthetically.

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

#137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really care about food. If I didn't have to eat anymore, that would be amazing! I tried Soylent and it was disgusting, though. Couldn't stomach it.

Honest question: Why not just make yourself a bowl of lentils? Definitely more nutritious than this stuff and very easy to make it bulk/reheat.

More nutritious? Uh... no. I have no idea why you'd think that. The nutrition facts[1] on the powder show that you can basically live on the stuff and receive 100% of your micro and macro nutrients. Which is the whole point.

[1]: https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0421/5993/t/4/assets/Compl...

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

#138
post #28

> Soylent said there shouldn’t be any issues with its premade drinks, which cost slightly more than just the powder. Interesting. I tried the premade drinks (Soylent 2.0) a couple of months ago and within an hour had stomach cramps and was forced to retreat to the bathroom. Unlike a software bug it's mentally very hard to forgive -- I love the idea of Soylent but doubt I will ever try it again, in any form. Serious q…

> Serious question: why is it so hard for them to find the root cause of these issues? Biology is hard. Humans are really, really variable. Look through the comments on this page - you'll find people who couldn't keep down one bottle, or who love the bottles but can't stand the powder, or who have had zero issues, or who find the entire idea disgusting. And these reactions may also change over time. Medical science c…

> Biology is hard. Humans are really, really variable.

Plus Soylent has been presented as a replacement for all other food, and some people use it as such. I would think that would make it more likely that their users would experience problems, since it would mean greater and constant exposure to ingredients that might not cause issues if consumed less frequently.

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

#139
post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Deconstructed essence of cuisine"? I couldn't agree more. Food is one of the most accessible luxuries. The most expensive meals, with fine wine, cost less than most business class tickets (to wherever). On the other hand, a soft cooked egg on a piece of toasted bread after a workout can be just as delicious and costs pennies, available to all. Next they're going to tell us they've found a way to eliminate that pesky…

But what if they introduce the way to make our sexual reproduction activity not causing pregancy? What if they made something you wear over your penis, or a pill that the woman take, so that sexual reproduction activity doesn't comes with all its consequence? Oh! The horror!

I mean I think you're right. You can have it all and we do today. An amazing supply line of ingredients from around the world and endless great recipes and education on technique on the Internet. We can have our cake and eat, both in the kitchen and the bedroom. Rejoice!

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

#140

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'm still curious why the soylent thing has hit it off in the HN crowd and not, say, Slimfast. Which is basically the same thing but with more production hardening.

Maybe fragile masculinity? IDK.

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