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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

#451

Post by joeyspn »

rando832 wrote: post #437
fintechie wrote: post #340

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_ingredient "An active ingredient (AI) is the ingredient in a pharmaceutical drug that is biologically active. " Does it also reduce the amount of rainbows and unicorns? Your own wikipedia link does not say eating garlic is helpful to humans.

Sorry, I meant "active compound"...

> Your own wikipedia link does not say eating garlic is helpful to humans.

As you may know, you shouldn't look in wikipedia for that kind of information... here you go:

"Recent studies support the effects of garlic and its extracts in a wide range of applications. These studies raised the possibility of revival of garlic therapeutic values in different diseases. Different compounds in garlic are thought to reduce the risk for cardiovascular diseases, have anti-tumor and anti-microbial effects, and show benefit on high blood glucose concentration."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4103721/

But the point here is (in case you missed it): eating smashed food != eating raw food

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

#452

Post by tedmielczarek »

kelseydh wrote: post #421
skuhn wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

A cautionary tale that produces a fast-growing company now worth at least $100 million dollars? I'll take it.

Silicon Valley is littered with the corpses of overvalued cautionary tales.

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

#453

Post by pjc50 »

NumberCruncher wrote: post #342
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…

>> 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.

Our office has the traditional free soda .. and, amazingly, free fruit. Delivered by local grocers. Not that a crate of bananas in winter is "local".

I'd quite like to have a good portable locally sold lunch option that doesn't have bread of some sort in, but the only option seems to be soup.

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

#454

Post by dspillett »

Alex3917 wrote: post #38
ag56 wrote: post #28

> Soylent said there shouldn’t be any issues with its premade drinks, which cost slightly more than just the powder. Interesting. I tried the premade drinks (Soylent 2.0) a couple of months ago and within an hour had stomach cramps and was forced to retreat to the bathroom. Unlike a software bug it's mentally very hard to forgive -- I love the idea of Soylent but doubt I will ever try it again, in any form. Serious q…

> There are a limited number of ingredients, all of which are surely well documented and tested. There isn't really any bright line between edible and poisonous. E.g. if you buy a bunch of field guides, the exact same plants and mushrooms will be listed as edible in some books and poisonous in others. There are lots of species that are widely considered poisonous, but many people eat them anyway without any ill effec…

> the exact same plants and mushrooms will be listed as edible in some books and poisonous in others

"Every mushroom is edible, but some only once." -- Czech proverb (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mushroom_hunting#Safety_issues)

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

#455

Post by philjohn »

LoSboccacc wrote: post #419
skuhn wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

Or it could be the move to using Soy protein in 1.6 (and the bars) and some people are sensitive to that level of it.

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

#457

Post by dimino »

ng12 wrote: post #113
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…

> 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…

But do you understand that based on the way I was raised, eat was the thing you did because if you didn't you'd literally die?

There is no cultural value to food, for me. There is no social value that I find appealing about food.

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

#458

Post by joeyspn »

sambe wrote: post #408
fintechie wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you lose allicin you lose some nice properties (antimicrobial, antiinflammatory, etc): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10594976

But those properties may not be relevant to you when consuming garlic anyway. The vast majority of such studies are showing the properties in isolation (petri-dish). People love to extrapolate that to "garlic prevents colds", but it doesn't follow. I'm not going to pay to read the full article in this case but you at least have to be careful about this.

> But those properties may not be relevant to you when consuming garlic anyway.

Many of this properties are well known (not so well understood). I posted a random quick example, but there are also studies in vivo (rodent models and humans).

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4103721/

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

#459

Post by dimino »

dasil003 wrote: post #178
Meegul wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

Anyone who struggles with digestion and still decided Soylent was a good idea probably deserves at least in some part the gastrointestinal stress that ensued.

There will never be "conclusive" science regarding how and what we eat without experimentation. Soylent is, regardless of how the founders frame it, an experiment. A fairly successful one, at that.

Obviously not completely successful, given that this story is about them utterly failing, but that failure is temporary. They will recover.

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

#460

Post by dimino »

greglindahl wrote: post #238
cknoxrun wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You literally don't understand how someone could draw the conclusion that the same materials produce the same energy, regardless of form?

That concept utterly eludes you?

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