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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

#351

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…

>> Soylent is for meals you don't care about but need Thanks god for creating apples and bananas and thanks the grocery stores for selling them all the year round. And thanks the Germans for putting a bakery on every corner.

Those are not nutritionally complete, fruits go bad and most people don't live next to an open bakery.

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

#352
post #294
post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At that effort level I was hoping you're working on curing a disease or at least something more important than the cloud. :-/

I'm honored that you dug into it. I'm working on decentralization, which I think is a very socially important goal. The cloud is not my ultimate objective, but it's one of the very few short term use cases I see where a decentralized system seems to have the potential to utterly dominate a centralized one. Decentralized tech is very new. It's very hopium, and it's very poorly understood, both by zealots and by non-be…

You may want to visit with a mental health professional and explain your behavior and motivation...

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

#353
post #310

I guess one great thing about Soylent threads is bringing all the urban myths around nutrition out into the open. People in this thread believe everything from "people on liquid diets don't poop!" to "if you put some berries in a blender and drink it, you're getting entirely different nutrition from eating the berries raw!" That second one is a bit of a strawman, but it shows how absurd claims that crushing or grindi…

Analogous to the fact that it is very hard to study the nutrition and long-term effects of Soylent on a big scale, with a diverse set of people, the same seems to be true for "normal" food. How do you even _define_ a "regular diet"? The exact diet varies from person to person, even from week to week!

Even though we've had "normal diets" for way longer, it is impossible to study those effectively without first closely defining the diet in question (which is effectively the same as feeding Soylent, minus the powderization and conservation).

Following that, it should be much easier to closely examine the effects of Soylent on people than it is to study any other non-standardized form of nutrition. And yet every "fact" about Soylent you read is purely anectodal.

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

#354

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…

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…

Why do you buy Soylent instead of Ensure?

https://ensure.com/nutrition-products/protein-shakes-healthy...

Is it cheaper? More complete? Dehydrated?

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

#355
post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This attitude is exactly bothered me about the CEO of Soylent when he was first doing PR about the product years ago. It's not a question of being "natural" per se, it's the question of trace elements and how our body metabolizes food. Food is not just a pile of molecules, it's a particular organization of molecules. How your body digests it matters. A bunch of milled and refined powders of macronutrients is simply n…

Given that a) our ancestors lived a very different lifestyle and b) we would like to live long past child-raising age, which is where evolutionary benefits to longevity would mostly end, a diet similar to our ancestors is by no means a safe option.

s/ancestors/parents. They seem to be living decently long lives, so I'll let someone else experiment with liquid meal replacements for a decade or two, thank you very much.

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

#356

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 equally amazed how every Soylent article that passes through HN has people that seem to be genuinely offended that some people enjoy Soylent/the idea of Soylent and don't want their lives to revolve around "the beauty of food and social blah blah". It's wild.

Maybe they are shills for the food industry? I don't get it either - why are they even reading a Soylent article.

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

#357

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…

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…

> Why don't people understand?

> It's not [...] b) supposed to replace all meals.

That's not how it was advertised during launch and the kickstarter. It was heavily pushed as a sole source of nutrition.

People are only repeating what Soylent said.

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

#358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If there were a device I could put in my mouth and in 30 seconds everything were flossed"... I think what you're looking for is dental floss.

If it takes you less than a minute to floss you're probably doing it wrong. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PreNWWOYfI#t=32s

Eh, flossing is a placebo anyway.

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

#359
post #310

I guess one great thing about Soylent threads is bringing all the urban myths around nutrition out into the open. People in this thread believe everything from "people on liquid diets don't poop!" to "if you put some berries in a blender and drink it, you're getting entirely different nutrition from eating the berries raw!" That second one is a bit of a strawman, but it shows how absurd claims that crushing or grindi…

Everything I do not understand in detail is just an "urban myth".

With nutrition you can safely assume most things you hear are bullshit.

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

#360
post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "if you put some berries in a blender and drink it, you're getting entirely different nutrition from eating the berries raw!" That second one is a bit of a strawman, but it shows how absurd claims that crushing or grinding foods ruins the nutrition sound. Well, for many foods this is 100% true. For instance, it's not the same eating raw garlic, than freshly smashed garlic ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allicin

But does that change the nutritional value of garlic (as opposed to changing just the taste)?

We cannot assume that the environment is innocuous. Our atmosphere is full of nitrogen, oxygen and other chemical compounds able to produce a reaction and modify molecules in any food.
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