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

#411

Post by mcv » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 9:16 AM UTC

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.

It's still tech though. Actually, I'd say anything involving computers is still high tech, even when it's not innovative. Shiny CRUD website is not innovative, but it's still on the internet. Well, maybe it's more that it relies on high tech than actually being it.

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

#412

Post by DanBC » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 9:16 AM UTC

vidarh wrote: post #398

mysterypie wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I can see that in the case of Soylent vs Slimfast, customer choice is driven by what marketing says is the intended use. But don't be too quick to dismiss masculinity or coolness factors in product selection. Diet Coke and Coke Zero are essentially the same thing made by the same company (the latter having a slightly different "flavor profile"). Coke Zero exists because some men or many men will not order a Diet…

Coke Zero exists because they decided to try to make a diet version of Coke that actually tastes closer to regular Coke. Diet Coke does not use the regular Coca Cola recipe with sugar replaced, but a tweaked one, on purpose. Compare to e.g. Diet Pepsi, which is to Pepsi what Coke Zero is to Coke, Coca Cola was for decades worried about making something that was too close to the original (hence Tab being their first d…

Have you ever seen the ads for Diet Coke and Coca Cola Zero?

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

#413

Post by xg15 » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 9:18 AM UTC

chucksmash wrote: post #277

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…

FWIW, I can't back this up with a link but I remember a HN thread where the infrastructure was strictly characterized as more of less mostly good enough, not a point of pride

So you have a mostly-good-enough tech to sell a mostly-good-enough product. Then what exactly justifies the $20 mio venture capital?

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

#414

Post by pbhjpbhj » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 9:19 AM UTC

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.

Soylent in its name implies cannibalism ... so it's interesting that the name would sway people away from Slimfast.

How do they differ in ingredients?

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

#415

Post by dagw » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 9:19 AM UTC

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.

Mashed potatoes is a big one for me. Would never eat 5 boiled potatoes, but if I make mashed potatoes out of them I'll happily eat that much and quite possible still want more.

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

#416

Post by jonathanstrange » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 9:21 AM UTC

Matachines wrote: post #85

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…

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 what I don't get. Most people have difficulties keeping their weight in check rather than vice versa, and you can get all kind of snacks, ranging from healthy to extremely unhealthy, practically everywhere. Streets and shops and cafés are plastered with food, the abundance is mind-boggling if you think about it (or come from some really poor country).

How is mixing & drinking a glass of Soylent easier or less time consuming than eating a sandwich with cheese & lettuce? Or an apple?

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

#417

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 9:21 AM UTC

lmm wrote: post #328

benlambert wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Your statement is unscientific because anecdotally I've had no problems with it" Where's your citation backing up your suggestion that it's safe?

One counterexample is enough to contradict the "will destroy" claim in the grandparent.

[deleted]

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

#418

Post by webscaleizfun » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 9:22 AM UTC

Meegul wrote: post #142

LordHumungous wrote: post #130

I'm a big fan of Michael Pollan's manifesto: Eat food . Not too much. Mostly plants. The idea being that processed foods cannot hope to match the nutritional profile found in whole foods, particularly plants. This soylent stuff is about as processed as food comes, so I'm inclined to be very skeptical of it's healthfulness.

Do you believe that there is some chemical (or other) difference between two molecules of, for instance, glucose, solely due to their origin?

We can't actually quantify nor do we fully understand all the vitamins, chemicals & molecules in your average vegetable, or how they are digested and used in your body. It might be bad to peel a carrot prior to eating it, since you lose the nutrients in the skin (that may only exist there) and oxidize the rest of the carrot breaking down other potentially good nutrients, similar to how garlic loses certain multi-drug resistant infection killing abilities when chopped or crushed[1].

If we did have a good grasp of the nutrients that the human body needs, and in what form (particularly to prevent your bowels from shutting down or having mass dieoffs), then something like Ensure, Soylent, etc might be practical with a group of people who were well versed in the science of nutrition designing it, but I do not have that kind of faith with our abject lack of understanding & the present lack of nutritional skills Soylent, and many other processed food companies have shown.

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allicin

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

#419

Post by LoSboccacc » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 9:22 AM UTC

skuhn wrote: post #286

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 think that Soylent will go down as a cautionary tale for anyone who looks at a field they know very little about and thinks "how hard could it be?". Along with Theranos. What Soylent should have built to be worth $100+ million is a way to make a food product tailored to a particular person or group of people that's based on automation and nutritional science. Instead they seem to have a cobbled together amalgam tha…

eh, as the first trying to bring science in food science and use microbiology instead of dietary esoterism I'm willing to give them some slack

sure this turn of people getting sick is worrying, because coming late and sudden hints at contamination, and I hope they can mature enough to go past manufacturing problems

but the data they're collecting will be extraordinary for bringing down the layers of encrusted myths about how the body works.

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

#420

Post by enthdegree » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 9:22 AM UTC

gaius wrote: post #403

nether wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their main product is their ecommerce tech stack. Soylent is a side project.

Because the world was crying out for another "ecommerce tech stack"?

Put on your tinfoil hat, it's conspiracy time...

I think he's referring to this:

https://www.reddit.com/r/soylent/comments/59p4tx/the_latest_...