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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

#381

Post by _23sd »

iaskwhy wrote: post #362
_23sd wrote: 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…

I thought the biggest problem with blending stuff is the quantity I'll be having compared to having just one unit of something. For example, I wouldn't eat 3 oranges in a row but I would definitely drink them if blended.

>I wouldn't eat 3 oranges in a row

I would! I tend to go overboard on fruit if I don't stop myself. Apples, oranges, blueberries, cantaloupe, all so delicious...Not always pleasant for digestion and probably a bit of sugar rush, but do you know of any more serious health effects?

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

#382

Post by TeMPOraL »

amelius wrote: post #363
slg wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the biggest flaws of the tech industry is the belief that being a tech expert is enough to disrupt other industries in which they don't have any expertise. Sometimes they get lucky and it works despite something like Uber's or Airbnb's total ignorance of the law. Sometimes it fails like with numerous cryptocurrency companies relearning why the finance industry has so many dang regulations. Seems like Soylent i…

> One of the biggest flaws of the tech industry is the belief that being a tech expert is enough to disrupt other industries in which they don't have any expertise. One of the biggest flaws of consumers is that they can't tell low tech from high tech. Writing a shiny CRUD website is not high tech.

That's not just a flaw of consumers. It seems to be a problem with lots of people in the industry, including programmers, marketers and investors...

Then again, they can make money out of it, so they probably don't care either.

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

#383

Post by stickfigure »

hvidgaard wrote: post #258
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…

I used to do that as well when I was younger. Obviously not with Soylent, that wasn't around then. It works well for menial programming tasks where time is the limiting factor. Incidently, those are the problems where you can for the most part jump out and right back in without too much overhead. But when facing a hard problem, getting up and away from the computer, and cooking a meal always mean I'll solve the probl…

A thousand times this. I remember staying up late to finish programming problems when I was young (and stupid). Now I find the most effective way of solving hard programming problems is to spend an afternoon attacking it and then go to sleep at a normal hour. Magically, an elegant solution - usually quite different from work in progress - appears in my brain while I'm showering.

I do my best work while sleeping, I just need to figure out how to bill for it.

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

#384

Post by orf »

JanezStupar wrote: post #330
Quarrelsome wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no, law is social contract between peers, not slave=>master.

A contract you had no participation in drafting and never signed, yet you are compelled at gunpoint to uphold it. Nice spin tho.

Just like the constitution.

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

#385

Post by laksjd »

JanezStupar wrote: post #330
Quarrelsome wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no, law is social contract between peers, not slave=>master.

A contract you had no participation in drafting and never signed, yet you are compelled at gunpoint to uphold it. Nice spin tho.

As a minor, your parents decided for you, but once you're 18 nothing is stopping you from either trying to re-negotiate the contract (i.e. become politically active) or trying to find a better deal (emigrate). You can also decide to simply unilaterally break the contract (become a criminal) and in practice you could even live without such a contract in a variety of vast areas that are largely uninhabited.

You're not being compelled to accept this contract, but it's such a good deal that few people decide otherwise.

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

#386

Post by Angostura »

jonmc12 wrote: post #244
Animats wrote: post #196

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 pro…

I'm not sure the reports say its contamination. Its possible the powder is just incompatible with the digestive system of some people in same way as, say, leafy vegetables or carrageenan affect some people's digestion but not others. Soylent may be recalling because they don't want to be liable in the _possibility_ of contamination. However, over time, they may find they can make the best product that is compatible w…

It would also be interesting to see whether the suffers are long-term users - there is always the possibility of developing allergies over time. I used to eat and enjoy quite a lot of food that used Quorn as an ingredient - until it started making me vomit uncontrollably.

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

#388

Post by novocaine »

iaskwhy wrote: post #362
_23sd wrote: 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…

I thought the biggest problem with blending stuff is the quantity I'll be having compared to having just one unit of something. For example, I wouldn't eat 3 oranges in a row but I would definitely drink them if blended.

Orange juice has a drastically higher GI than oranges because your body more rapidly absorbs sugar from juice than from pulp. It's not just the quantity.

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

#389

Post by orbifold »

_23sd wrote: post #381
iaskwhy wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought the biggest problem with blending stuff is the quantity I'll be having compared to having just one unit of something. For example, I wouldn't eat 3 oranges in a row but I would definitely drink them if blended.

>I wouldn't eat 3 oranges in a row I would! I tend to go overboard on fruit if I don't stop myself. Apples, oranges, blueberries, cantaloupe, all so delicious...Not always pleasant for digestion and probably a bit of sugar rush, but do you know of any more serious health effects?

Eating too much sugar has serious long term health effects.
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