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

#481

Post by dkersten » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 10:43 AM UTC

e12e wrote: post #468

dkersten wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ignoring the effect on your teeth, it was my understanding that the fibre in fruit helped counteract many of the negative effects of fructose (at least, keeping your insulin in check). I don't have any proof on hand, so perhaps I'm wrong.

There's afaik a rather big difference between freshly squeezed orange juice, and fruit juices that have been pasteurised. I'm not sure there's that big a difference between eating an orange and drinking the juice - other than the simple fact that the orange will contain "more stuff" that is "not sugar" than the juice - hence it'll be easier to increase sugar intake by drinking, say a litre of orange juice a day, and…

Absolutely. I'm assuming eating an orange would have more fibre than a squeezed orange.

Buying "smooth" (no "bits") juice I would assume is missing most of the fibre.

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

#482

Post by ekianjo » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 10:45 AM UTC

n72 wrote: post #477

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…

The founder of Soylent clearly believes he's an expert in many, many fields: http://robrhinehart.com/?p=1331 BTW, anyone know a good word for this attitude? I wouldn't call it hybris, though it's closely related. It's a mix of arrogance, over confidence, ignorance, plus more and very prevalent in SV.

Maybe thats the kind of attitude that makes founders good at taking risks, while more careful people would rationalize themselves out of trying new things ?

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

#483

Post by SquareWheel » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 10:45 AM UTC

htns wrote: post #188

IgorPartola wrote: post #15

Is anyone really surprised that this is happening? Nutrition is hard. Nutritionists don't get it. Would you trust a nutritionist by trade to program your pacemaker? If not, then why do you trust an engineer to formulate your food?

This appears to have absolutely nothing to do with nutrition. It's contamination. People are getting sick hours after eating.

"Our tests all came back negative for food pathogens, toxins or outside contamination."

http://blog.soylent.com/post/152400464282/soylent-bar-powder...

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

#484

Post by StRoy » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 10:47 AM UTC

LoSboccacc wrote: post #428

andy_ppp wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying chewing is as effective as blending? Are you saying saliva doesn't have enzymes in it that might affect things? Point to research or I'll assume you are just making things up! Just to be clear I'm not saying I'm right I'm saying I doubt we have proved it...

I spit in the blender, of course.

Actually that was how some forms of alcohol used to be made, for example sake in Japan.

> The first sake, kuchikami no sake, (口噛みの酒) or "mouth-chewed sake," was made by people chewing rice, chestnuts, millet, and acorns and spitting the mixture into a tub, where the enzymes from saliva converted the starches to sugar. This sweet mixture was then combined with freshly cooked grain and allowed to naturally ferment.

It might seem like a disgusting practice to contemporary eyes, but it does show the power of human saliva and how one should not discount the process of chewing food. Drinking a liquid vs actively chewing, imbibing the chewed food with your saliva, definitely does not lead to the same thing.

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

#485

Post by Spooky23 » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 10:49 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…

It's amazing how the whole marketing aura just goes poof.

Last week, the average commenter would be going on about how the real problem is that people are eating unnecessary food with Soylent.

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

#486

Post by glastra » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 10:50 AM UTC

throwaway898908 wrote: post #14

Not putting solid food into your system for long periods of time (months, years) will destroy your ability to digest solid food when you start refeeding. I've seen people in eating disorder facilities who have lived on diets of liquid food (historically Ensure, basically the same thing) who have not defecated for months, and when they start eating again suffer for weeks and weeks from horrendous constipation, often r…

I get 100% of my daily calorie intake Mon-Fri from powdered food (not Soylent, but a different brand). I shit fat bricks, two to three times a day. No diarrhea, no bleeding, no constipation, nothing.

It's all about proper macronutrient intake and exercise. People on Ensure probably had drastically reduced daily calorie intakes.

Edit:

> your intestines stop moving what little solids there are through you

If you think there are ANY solids in your intestines, you better read on anatomy and human biology.

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

#487

Post by Kiro » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 10:51 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…

> anyone who looks at a field they know very little about and thinks "how hard could it be?".

I don't think the "how hard could it be?" mindset should be discouraged.

Relevant PG article: http://paulgraham.com/schlep.html

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

#488

Post by Chrisjay » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 10:56 AM UTC

n72 wrote: post #477

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…

The founder of Soylent clearly believes he's an expert in many, many fields: http://robrhinehart.com/?p=1331 BTW, anyone know a good word for this attitude? I wouldn't call it hybris, though it's closely related. It's a mix of arrogance, over confidence, ignorance, plus more and very prevalent in SV.

I would call it mania. If I wanted a pejorative, I'd call him euphoric.

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

#489

Post by mcv » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 10:57 AM UTC

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…

Not everybody is the same. Maybe it's not for you, but for people to busy with something else to think about what to eat, soylent is a lot better than fast food, a bar, whatever random crap you have lying around, or skipping a meal.

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

#490

Post by Ygg2 » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 10:58 AM UTC

mapt wrote: post #68

contingencies wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Actually, one-third is a pretty small number in the grand scheme of things. Drop it down to zero (asymptotically difficult) and carrying capacity rises by 50%. Switch the meat eaters over to grain & legumes (with minimal fresh vegetables), and it rises by something in the 200-1000% range.

I don't think it does. Land used for feeding cattle != Land used for farming grains/legumes/vegetables. Plants that we eat require higher quality of land, than ordinary grass.

Also it's not an easy transition. Essentially it's like saying if everyone keeps same distance between car behind and front of them, then there would be little to no traffic jam. I mean sure, that's true, but requires a tectonic change in human behavior.