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

#631

Post by gwbas1c » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 1:50 PM UTC

SippinLean wrote: post #623

dave_sullivan wrote: post #609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

Not really. We still really don't know as much about nutrition than we think we do. That is why eating a varied diet is promoted; because we just don't understand what we need as well as we think we do.

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

#632

Post by leshow » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 1:50 PM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #622

mpg33 wrote: post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You rally against a false dichotomy and then commit one in almost the same breath. There isn't a choice between a "food prison" of fast food or soylent.

The reality is you should probably choose neither.

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

#633

Post by dankohn1 » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 1:53 PM UTC

Just a quick counterargument from a regular Soylent consumer: I drink a coffiest for breakfast every morning and drink two liquid Soylents on days when I don't have time for a nice lunch or dinner. It's convenient, healthy and tastes good. I've never had any intestinal troubles. I use it as a meal replacement, not a complete food replacement.

It sucks that they included this ingredient in their powder and bars that has caused people problems. But HN folks should know that doing startups is hard, and we all make mistakes along the way. Food is obviously a much more sensitive and important application than most mobile apps.

But I expect Soylent to figure out what went wrong, correct it, and keep iterating and improving.

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

#634

Post by orasis » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 1:53 PM UTC

SippinLean wrote: post #623

dave_sullivan wrote: post #609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

and the macro-nutrient focused approach of the last decades is scientistic fallacy.

Mindfully listening to the body will lead to better adaptation than formulaic consumption.

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

#635

Post by kaitai » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 1:54 PM UTC

mpg33 wrote: post #600

rl12345 wrote: post #595

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Personally, I take supplements as a way to complement my normal diet -- not to substitute it. Once in a while, when it's not possible to have a real food meal, those MRPs can be also very handy.

Although I'd imagine a liquid diet where you are mainly only consuming smoothie type beverages has to be less hard on your digestive system just because of the simply fact it requires less effort to break down?

A lot of our digestive flora actually uses "non-digestible" components for sustenance, we're finding. There can be surprising and unexpected side effects to eliminating food components we thought we just excreted. Fiber, for instance, is technically not all digested -- much just passes through -- but it's really important! Other types of fiber are fermented in the gut depending on what bacteria you've got.

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

#636

Post by dkersten » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 1:55 PM UTC

moeffju wrote: post #553

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.

Fructose is low GI, so there is a small insulin response only.

Ah, you are right. I think I'm misremembering. I'm basing most of what I wrote on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM but I watched it years ago and my memory isn't the greatest. (I also didn't fact check the video's content, so... grain of salt and all that, it does seem well sourced though)

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

#637

Post by Chathamization » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 1:55 PM UTC

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…

> 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.

That's not true though. Look at the nutritional information for MRPs compared to soylent. 3 meals on an MRP will give you 21% of your daily value of potassium; Soylent will give you 100%. 3 meals will give you 12% of your dietary fiber from MRPs, 96% from MRPs.

The goal of Soylent is to provide you with all the nutrients you need if you eat it 3 times a day. You can argue whether or not it achieves this goal, but it's not even the aim of the MRPs. You can find some examples of people who tried an MRP only diet online; they're pretty good examples of why MRPs are not the same as Soylent at all.

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

#638

Post by RankingMember » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 1:55 PM UTC

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…

I didn't have any of that issue with the one case I purchased to try a few months ago. Rather, it was just so weird tasting I had to mix the last 6 with chocolate milk to be able to choke them down. They just don't taste good, and I didn't feel full after drinking them. There's something mental about eating food for me where part of getting to feeling full is the effort it takes (manipulating with utensils, chewing) to consume it.

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

#639

Post by JoeAltmaier » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 1:57 PM UTC

leshow wrote: post #632

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #622

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You rally against a false dichotomy and then commit one in almost the same breath. There isn't a choice between a "food prison" of fast food or soylent. The reality is you should probably choose neither.

Fast food is designed to be addictive (salt/fat/sugar triangle), so the dichotomy is not really false. Its possible to be addicted to fast food. I point to obesity in America and draw some supporting evidence there.

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

#640

Post by ghaff » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 1:57 PM UTC

harveywi wrote: post #626

ghaff wrote: post #613

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>What's wrong with skipping a meal?

Absolutely nothing. But it's not uncommon, if you skip a meal, to feel a bit low energy and/or to snack instead. When I'm out doing things, I'll often skip lunch but I may have a granola bar, fruit, some nuts, or something along those lines.