Soylent halts sales of its powder as customers keep getting sick • Hacker News Board

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

#191

Post by JauntyHatAngle » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 5:30 AM UTC

warfangle wrote: post #140

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'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.

Marketing.

I've never heard of slimfast, and if I had I would immediately discount it because I'm not overweight, nor do I eat badly.

Soylent was simply the first product I heard of that did the meal replacement "with everything you need nutritionally" thing.

Not saying it was the first, just that it was the first I'd heard of it.

Never actually went out and got it, but was close because I was at a time in my life where I was too busy to prepare good meals, (between sports, work and my own side projects).

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

#192

Post by bsder » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 5:31 AM UTC

nemo44x wrote: post #146

BigJono wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe the point is that a sandwich doesn't have the macronutrient ratio most people want and a full range of micronutrients so people don't have to be worried about missing anything important if they decide to eat sandwiches for 2/3rds of their meals.

Isn't this why we invented the "multivitamin"?

Research is increasingly pointing out that vitamin supplements don't work for certain nutrients.

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

#193

Post by kazagistar » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 5:31 AM UTC

greglindahl wrote: post #158

duaneb wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm anorexic. This shit is amazing.

There are a lot of products, like Ensure, which have a much longer researched track record than Soylent. It's more than sticking a few things into a powder.

As far as I can tell, Ensure is just sugary chocolate milk with vitamin pills, ie it has horrible macro-nutrient balance.

Its not like these companies do their own research anyways; its an application of the same nutritional studies everyone else has access too.

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

#194

Post by untog » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 5:32 AM UTC

jedberg wrote: post #129

ng12 wrote: 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…

Think of something you have to do every day that you don't like to do. Like flossing maybe? Some people really enjoy flossing. Some people don't. If there were a device I could put in my mouth and in 30 seconds everything were flossed, I would totally do that. But some people would think, man how can you do that and take all the enjoyment out of flossing? Sometimes when I'm working, I run to the fridge, grab whatever…

That's exactly the alien part, I think. Equating eating to flossing is utterly alien to me. Every meal is a positive thing.

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

#195

Post by zodiac » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 5:32 AM UTC

toasterlovin wrote: post #157

cko wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Honestly, what the other poster said: whole milk. 2400 calories per gallon, well balanced between protein, fat, and carbs (you might say that it is ideally formulated to feed large mammals :P). The best part is that it is readily available every where and super cheap (< $3 per gallon).

Why not shouldn't instead of whole milk?

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

#196

Post by Animats » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 5:32 AM UTC

Soylent made such a big deal of being a "tech company", and boasted about their overdesigned web infrastructure for a business that did two transactions a minute.

What they didn't have is advanced technology on the production side. They write about "sending samples out" to external labs. It's not like they had an automated lab constantly sampling their production line and posting the results to the web. There are production line testing machines for biological contamination and for elemental analysis. About 80% of food plants have in-house testing facilities. What's Soylent got?

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

#197

Post by laser » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 5:34 AM UTC

Meegul wrote: post #136

throwaway101416 wrote: post #102

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.

That's like saying a puddle of human molecular composition is the same thing as a human. As far as biological interactions are concerned, even in digestion, it doesn't appear that molecular quantities behave identically independent of molecular arrangement.

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

#198

Post by debaserab2 » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 5:34 AM UTC

jedberg wrote: post #129

ng12 wrote: 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…

Think of something you have to do every day that you don't like to do. Like flossing maybe? Some people really enjoy flossing. Some people don't. If there were a device I could put in my mouth and in 30 seconds everything were flossed, I would totally do that. But some people would think, man how can you do that and take all the enjoyment out of flossing? Sometimes when I'm working, I run to the fridge, grab whatever…

> Some people really enjoy flossing.

Who does exactly?

Food, to me, represents more than replenishment of nutrition. It represents meeting and understanding my coworkers. Learning more about my significant other or unwinding with this person to talk about our week. Even when it's not a social situation, for me it's a treat. I completed some work and now I should treat myself by revitalizing my body with a substance that tastes good. It's a great motivator.

It's such a fundamental part of being a human being I can't at all relate to seeing it as a mechanical process such as flossing. I can't think of a worse comparison: when you're flossing, you're alone, and if anything anti social. Eating couldn't be any more be the opposite. It's something that all humans can relate to and bond over no matter what your opinions are.

Flossing isn't a part of our culture. Food is a part of every culture.

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

#199

Post by nsxwolf » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 5:35 AM UTC

I ate bad chicken once and it made me really sick. Once!

Here's a product that one should be skeptical of from the get go - it needs to prove itself as being "real food", and now it's made multiple people sick.

It's like Chipotle, but I think worse.

Doesn't help they named it after a horrifying product from a dystopian science fiction movie either.

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

#200

Post by Karunamon » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 5:35 AM UTC

greglindahl wrote: post #173

Karunamon wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Uh, you realize that nutrient absorption means that you can't just eat the molecules that you need and stay healthy? That's why products in the same space as Soylent, like Ensure, have a lot of research involved.

Given the amount of people that are consuming large amounts of this stuff and reporting their progress, I'd have expected any serious nutrient deficiencies to have been reported quite a while ago.