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

#621

Post by athenot » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 1:40 PM UTC

I understand the time-saving aspect of this product. I understand that one's schedule can be so intense that taking the time to cook & eat is impossible, though I posit that the mental down-time offered by meals is beneficial to better process what we're thinking about throughout the day (disclaimer1: I can't back this up with data as I only have anectodal evidence).

But the real issue I have is diet monotony. We live in an era of convenience and have forgotten about how fruits and vegetables yield their harvest in seasons. When most fruits/vegetables are in season, you might eat volumes of them, then never eat any for the rest of the year. Some indeed can be kept for a few weeks/months.

The same is true with meats: larger animals would be consumed on a less frequent basis than smaller ones.

Disclaimer2: I'm not a nutritionist, I just enjoy traditional foods.

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

#622

Post by JoeAltmaier » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 1:40 PM UTC

mpg33 wrote: post #590

rl12345 wrote: post #572

Soylent’s product itself has zero novelty in it. Meal Replacement Powders (MRPs) have been around for decades and are popular among the bodybuilding crowd. The only “innovation” Soylent has brought to the table was being the first company to market MRPs to geeks and hipsters -- and that's it. Personally, I've never tried their product because the ingredients they use seemed average/fudged at best (and I tend to avoid…

I'm not even a "foodie" person and the idea of just eating these meal replacements all the time seems like being in "food prison."

Because once you start Soylent you cannot possibly stop, or skip a drink and go out and eat with friends? Or cook dinner sometimes? Nonsense.

I'd call a steady diet of fast food a 'food prison'. That's the addictive stuff that ruins your health.

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

#623

Post by SippinLean » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 1:41 PM UTC

dave_sullivan wrote: post #609

anExcitedBeast wrote: post #585

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tip: if you care about maximizing the quality of your dietary supplement, research and buy each ingredient individually, and then mix it all up yourself. That defeats my primary use case for MRP: not needing to think about nutrition. I hate cooking, I hate cleaning, and eating out all the time feels wasteful. I just want quick, healthy meals with a decent shelf life.

> not needing to think about nutrition. I hate cooking, I hate cleaning, and eating out all the time feels wasteful. I just want quick, healthy meals with a decent shelf life. As I've come around to thinking of the human body as more of a system than a binary switch (sick/not sick), I've come to appreciate that natural food sources have a lot of nutrients in them that are hard to get with manufactured foods. There's…

naturalistic fallacy

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

#624

Post by delecti » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 1:48 PM UTC

DanBC wrote: post #568

delecti wrote: post #564

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That gizmodo article's only "source" of nutritionists is from this article [1] (another article on the same site). That article's only source of nutritionists is someone who just called them up before Soylent was even on the market, and while none of those nutritionists had examined the product. Many cats and dogs will eat the same food source almost exclusively for most of their lives without any ill effect. Obvious…

> Many cats and dogs will eat the same food source almost exclusively for most of their lives without any ill effect. Where "without any ill effect" includes tooth decay, obesity, and death from kidney damage among others.

Certainly not all cats and dogs experience all of those things. All you've done is highlighted the possibility for a nutritionally unsuitable meal source. Obviously it's possible to construct a food which does not meet our nutritional needs, many Americans have managed that themselves. That does not however dismiss the existence of pets which live long and healthy lives, or the possibility of an analogous fodo source for humans.

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

#625

Post by minikites » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 1:48 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #613

rl12345 wrote: post #572

Soylent’s product itself has zero novelty in it. Meal Replacement Powders (MRPs) have been around for decades and are popular among the bodybuilding crowd. The only “innovation” Soylent has brought to the table was being the first company to market MRPs to geeks and hipsters -- and that's it. Personally, I've never tried their product because the ingredients they use seemed average/fudged at best (and I tend to avoid…

If someone marketed this type of product as a reasonably nutritious meal on the go as an alternative to grabbing a Big Mac or a soggy slice of pizza, it would be utterly unobjectionable--and no one would pay it the slightest mind. So instead we get this narrative around meal replacement for Silicon Valley types who are too busy advancing Western civilization with a Facebook for Farmers to have time to eat.

In the USA, we love to aspire to be other, "better" people. It's why some poor people vote against their own interests to cut taxes on the rich (thinking that one day they'll be wealthy enough to benefit from it), it's why Uber is a "revolutionary" and not a regulation-dodging jitney cab service, it's definitely what's powering much of tech bubble at this point, and Soylent is but another example of all this in action.

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

#626

Post by harveywi » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 1:49 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #613

rl12345 wrote: post #572

Soylent’s product itself has zero novelty in it. Meal Replacement Powders (MRPs) have been around for decades and are popular among the bodybuilding crowd. The only “innovation” Soylent has brought to the table was being the first company to market MRPs to geeks and hipsters -- and that's it. Personally, I've never tried their product because the ingredients they use seemed average/fudged at best (and I tend to avoid…

If someone marketed this type of product as a reasonably nutritious meal on the go as an alternative to grabbing a Big Mac or a soggy slice of pizza, it would be utterly unobjectionable--and no one would pay it the slightest mind. So instead we get this narrative around meal replacement for Silicon Valley types who are too busy advancing Western civilization with a Facebook for Farmers to have time to eat.

What's wrong with skipping a meal? (While we're on the subject, what's right about it?) Folks have been sold a solution to a problem that does not exist. Marketing and its various permutations wins again.

The use case of this aptly-named "Soylent" product is a load of hooey. When the military starts using meal replacement powders instead of MREs, then I will reconsider my position on this issue.

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

#627

Post by amarka » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 1:49 PM UTC

akvadrako wrote: post #356

kaishiro wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Maybe they're not shills, just folks trying to expose themselves to new ideas and possibly caught out by some that upturn their current views.

Sometimes they might not understand, so they reach out and converse with others: "I don't understand why anyone would X, because Y has always worked for me." What's so wrong with that conversation and assume they're shills?

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

#628

Post by kaishiro » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 1:49 PM UTC

nemo44x wrote: post #78

mbenjaminsmith wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Deconstructed essence of cuisine"? I couldn't agree more. Food is one of the most accessible luxuries. The most expensive meals, with fine wine, cost less than most business class tickets (to wherever). On the other hand, a soft cooked egg on a piece of toasted bread after a workout can be just as delicious and costs pennies, available to all. Next they're going to tell us they've found a way to eliminate that pesky…

I agree so much! Many chefs, when asked what they love most the answer is simple. It's almost always some form of an egg. Great food doesn't have to be expensive or with win or be complex. In fact, very often the best things are simple and fast. We live in an era where these things are readily available and they're really easy to make and to be delicious thanks to an abundance of spices and endless styles of fats. I…

Well I accept :) Give me the Matrix's gruel tomorrow and I'm sold for life.

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

#629

Post by kaitai » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 1:49 PM UTC

the_duke wrote: post #598

Shivetya wrote: post #591

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but cooking good meals is so damn easy, there are even companies which will deliver the ingredients to very nice meals if you want to cook them. anecdotal at best, but a friend years ago was diagnosed with adult diabetes and told he had to change his diet. this guy never cooked. part of his transition was cooking classes provided as part of his diabetes counseling. he discovered a world of quick and easy meals, many…

Cooking still takes time. For anything decent, you need AT LEAST 30 minutes, usually more like 60+. And then comes the cleaning of pots, pans, filling the dishwasher. That's a WHOLE HOUR I could be wasting my time on HN instead!

I'm sitting here eating my scrambled-eggs breakfast taco. Fry eggs, fry taco (for decadence), add veggie condiments that are already prepared, eat. I even use a cast-iron skillet so I don't have to wash it, just rinse & leave on the burner a minute. 10 min.

Cookbook author Melissa Joulwan has an algorithmic approach to weekly meal prep that results in delicious and easy weekday meals, if you're willing to make the "cook 2 hrs on weekend + cook no more during the week" trade-off. It's not the mere minutes that Soylent promises, but for some folks reading this it might be useful. It's paleo so easy to adapt to high protein/low carb/high veggie/whatever floats your boat here.

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

#630

Post by grapeshot » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 1:50 PM 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.

Engineer's Disease.