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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

#231

Post by lsc »

grzm wrote: post #186
lsc wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I certainly think that it's a marketing thing; while gender identity I'm sure plays a role as it does in most marketing, it's not the whole story. There are already meal replacement drinks targeted at manly men; muscle milk is one of the more well known brands. I think that the difference is that this stuff was uniquely (and probably irresponsibly[1]) marketed towards nerds. - It's not advertised, as the shakes I men…

"There are already meal replacement drinks targeted at manly men; muscle milk is one of the more well known brands." Huh. I've always gotten the impression that Muscle Milk is a protein supplement (though it's got carbs, too), not really a (full nutritional) meal replacement.

that how it is marketed. My assertion is that the difference is largely marketing; that we don't know enough about nutrition to make a realistically complete long-term meal replacement, making them both "something you might drink sometimes instead of eating something, but something you wouldn't want to live off of long-term"

Of course, I'm no doctor (but then, neither is Rob Rhinehart,) and it is possible research has progressed further than I know; but personally? I wouldn't take the word of a software engineer on this.

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

#232

Post by [deleted] »

summarite wrote: post #220
Matachines wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time Soylent is on HN people say this. Why don't people understand? It's so simple: Soylent is for meals you don't care about but need. It's not a) the ONLY food you can eat or b) supposed to replace all meals. I order a box of Soylent bottles every few weeks—they come in handy while working or for a quick breakfast or if I have little time and am hungry. I also cook meals with my girlfriend a few times a week…

That's probably just me but a lifestyle where you have no time to take a break (or meet friends/colleagues) and eat doesn't sound very healthy and not very desirable either. I understand the desire to optimise eating times and life overall, and sometimes there's a lot of work that seems important, but at the point where you drink a supplement rather than eat it seems there's no life left in what should be more than j…

[deleted]

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

#233

Post by peterwwillis »

dahart wrote: post #95
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…

> I don't judge anyone for making food and drink a footnote in their life. I believe you that you're trying not to be judgemental, but FWIW, your statement equating eating soylent to making food and drink a footnote in life sounds at least presumptuous if not judgemental. I love cooked meals too, but I can easily see the value in a quick, controlled meal with a proper balance of macros, it's not a stretch to understa…

Do you not cook every meal because you don't have the time, or because it's simply easier to buy something? Because I bet you have the time.

Anyway, you don't have to cook to eat a nutritious meal that you make yourself. Nuts and dried fruit is a good meal supplement, as are greens, chopped veggies, homemade granola bars, bread with peanut butter, hard boiled eggs, etc. Even a glass of milk, honestly. All of these things can be eaten on the go, and when balanced against the rest of your daily diet, can be healthy as well as delicious.

You probably do laundry at some point. And even if you pay someone to do your laundry, you probably at least take the five minutes to gather up your laundry and bring it to your taskrabbit. Those same 1-5 minutes can be used to grab simple healthy food from your pantry or refrigerator. And there's probably over 1,000 five minute meal recipes out there. You don't even have to pop down to the market to pick uo ingredients anymore. And civilizations around the world have been making on-the-go food for millennia.

Honestly, the time argument is very improbable. Proof: you have time to comment on HN.

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

#235

Post by bertiewhykovich »

Jommi wrote: post #148
jaworrom wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 l…

Source?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saliva#Digestion

It's not clear that salivary digestion is categorically different from non-salivary digestion -- it works on compounds the rest of the GI tract also deals with -- but as a matter of degree, as a matter of the extent to which your food is digested, it certainly seems important. 30% is nothing to sneeze at.

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

#236

Post by nemo44x »

greglindahl wrote: post #217
nemo44x wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Also, note that all of this can be done without meat.

Indeed it can. There are vegetable stocks (and you can make your own if you're really into it) and you can create "fond" from many vegetables. Onion in particular likes to leave sticky bits if you overcook it a bit.

BTW, don't use non-stick pans if you're trying to make a pan sauce! If you really care about cooking at home you should buy some good tools. All-Clad stainless steal is generally good. I have Falk copper but that's probably not a good place to start due to the price. But good cookware matters quite a bit. A cheap $30 pan is OK to boil water in but won't work well for a lot of decent coking.

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

#237

Post by deepGem »

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…

Thank you for bringing this up. I had glossed over this fact. I think a lot of food wastage is also because of regulations around stale food. In my head the solution to solve this at scale is 2 fold 1.To help large food chains/supermarkets avoid this wastage by accurately predicting demand. 2.Bring in regulation to make wastage really expensive. This is my view of course :)

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

#238

Post by greglindahl »

cknoxrun wrote: post #215
greglindahl wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you grind beans and rice into a powder, with other stuff, and cook them, do you think that that's the same as cooking whole beans and whole rice with the other stuff? The answer is no. It's not just about molecules.

Can you please expand on how they are different? A powdered bean or powdered rice contains the same macro and micronutrients. Perhaps the quality of the fiber would be different?

I don't understand why you would think they are the same. Cooking a whole bean vs cooking a powdered bean is different. Digesting a whole, chewed bean is different from digesting a powdered bean. And what happens at the end of your gut is different.

An example of a related principle is "need" vs "what's needed when it's needed". How much vitamin C do you "need"? Oh, wait, it affects iron absorption.

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

#239

Post by Roboprog »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #160
warfangle wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I wouldn't attribute it to some kind of nefarious gender issue. It's as simple as marketing, which does matter. Slimfast in it's name implies a diet drink, not food replacement. Most people would never even consider them in the same arena and that's due to simple marketing by the very companies that produce them.

"Ensure" (I think) is the stuff in a can that they give old people to make them NOT lose too much weight. That sounds close to Soylent.

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

#240

Post by sgdesign »

summarite wrote: post #223
Taek wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eating a meal takes a lot of time. You've got to prepare it, clean up afterwards, and take your mind off of whatever you are doing. Or you have to order it, and then still usually there's some cleanup and interaction. The liquid Soylent is about as disruptive as drinking water. That's really useful to me when I'm sucked into a programming challenge or research task. Sometimes I'll go 3-4 days doing nothing but work a…

If that's a regular schedule for you - Don't you feel you're missing out on living life?

Telling someone they're "missing out on living life" just because they don't do the same thing as you is really condescending.
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