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

#751

Post by DanBC » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 3:52 PM UTC

debaserab2 wrote: post #198

jedberg wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think of something you have to do every day that you don't like to do. Like flossing maybe? Some people really enjoy flossing. Some people don't. If there were a device I could put in my mouth and in 30 seconds everything were flossed, I would totally do that. But some people would think, man how can you do that and take all the enjoyment out of flossing? Sometimes when I'm working, I run to the fridge, grab whatever…

> Some people really enjoy flossing. Who does exactly? Food, to me, represents more than replenishment of nutrition. It represents meeting and understanding my coworkers. Learning more about my significant other or unwinding with this person to talk about our week. Even when it's not a social situation, for me it's a treat. I completed some work and now I should treat myself by revitalizing my body with a substance t…

> It's such a fundamental part of being a human being I can't at all relate to seeing it as a mechanical process such as flossing

I mean, I agree with you and everything but you're saying "this thing is so important to me I cannot understand other people". There are a reasonably large number of people who would be very happy if they only ever ate a bowl of cereal and a banana for breakfast every single day for the rest of their life. I don't understand it, and I wouldn't like it, but I don't want to prevent them the comfort they get from that.

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

#752

Post by Musonius » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 3:52 PM UTC

dankohn1 wrote: post #633

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 h…

Huel is better

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

#753

Post by Musonius » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 3:53 PM UTC

squeaky-clean wrote: post #723

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…

Find me a MRP that has: A balanced amount of nutrients, and not just 600% protein and 10% of everything else. Isn't loaded with sugar so it tastes like a dessert. Isn't filled with artificial sweeteners so it tastes like a fake dessert. And isn't nutritionally designed for body-builders / children / elderly. I wouldn't mind switching away from Soylent. With articles like this, and their spammy marketing for their new…

Huel

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

#754

Post by batbomb » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 3:54 PM UTC

nether wrote: post #31

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…

Rhinehart asserted from the start that Soylent was meant to replace shitty meals like the Big Mac consumed at your desk alone. There was and still is a lot of misunderstanding about this. One of his interviews took place at some LA hipster fried chicken place. He's not antifood or antisocial.

https://vimeo.com/107941191

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

#755

Post by another_account » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 3:54 PM UTC

squeaky-clean wrote: post #723

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…

Find me a MRP that has: A balanced amount of nutrients, and not just 600% protein and 10% of everything else. Isn't loaded with sugar so it tastes like a dessert. Isn't filled with artificial sweeteners so it tastes like a fake dessert. And isn't nutritionally designed for body-builders / children / elderly. I wouldn't mind switching away from Soylent. With articles like this, and their spammy marketing for their new…

Slimfast and Complan off the top of my head. And those two have been around for decades. MyProtein sell simular stuff that is more balanced than whey protein + whole milk for a meal replacement. Also, whey + whole milk + instant oats lets you control the macros fairly well, assuming your getting all your micro-nutrients from real food elsewhere. And this is without looking on google. Id bet there are many many more. All the own-brand versions of slimfast for example.

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

#756

Post by ksherlock » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 3:56 PM UTC

Klathmon wrote: post #552

jonathanstrange wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

For me it's the storage. Lettuce goes bad, fruits rot, bread gets moldy, all within a short timeframe. I buy some Soylent and it will be good there for a while. So when I'm hungry and we are out of bread, now it's a 30 second meal vs a 30 minutes or more to run to the store.

> Soylent halts sales of its powder as customers keep getting sick

>I buy some Soylent and it will be good there for a while.

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

#757

Post by huac » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 3:57 PM UTC

wcchandler wrote: post #738

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…

This is definitely something I'm facing. I have a pretty deep interest in farming and have a bunch of approaches for "disrupting" it. But you know what my hangups are? Penetrating the culture and getting involved with the industry. Case in point -- where's the best place to buy zoysia seeds? Amazon? eBay? Some random mom and pop place with a ecommerce page? No. The best place to go is to "Bill" who is friends of frie…

Sounds like there's asymmetrical information, a great place for a startup to break into. Or create a better marketplace for seeds!

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

#758

Post by mixmastamyk » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 4:00 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.

"Fake it 'till you make it."

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

#759

Post by a_c_s » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 4:01 PM UTC

bigchewy wrote: post #691

DavidHm wrote: post #673

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When we make mistakes in making a website, people get frustrated. When we make mistakes in food, people die. Not every industry can accept the "move fast and break things" mantra.

well, sorry to say this but healthcare operates in a way that puts individuals at risk for the benefit of moving medicine forward. For example, surgeons tend to be at at their prime in their early to mid 40s. Getting operated on by a typical 35 year old is flat out dangerous, statistically speaking, but we allow it because to get better, people have to practice their craft.

The surgeon example is one of 'move slowly and accept necessary risk' not 'move fast and break things'.

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

#760

Post by api » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 4:02 PM UTC

slg wrote: post #278

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…

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…

"like with numerous cryptocurrency companies relearning why the finance industry has so many dang regulations."

My wife is into architecture and told me once that "every building code has a tombstone." Every building code is there because someone (or sometimes lots of people) died. Same with vehicle and road regs, etc.

I had a lawyer tell me almost the same thing about equity, finance, and contract law: every standard provision in e.g. a VC deal and every financial regulation is there because somebody perpetuated a fraud or someone got screwed. Many are also there to compensate for large-scale systemic failure modes like runaway financial bubbles that occurred in the past.

These systems are clunky and crufty and ugly and sometimes there is some value in "disrupting" them, but at the same time I think any would-be disrupters have to understand that the content of these laws and customs is the outcome of an evolutionary "Red Queen's race" lasting centuries or more. The code base is ugly but there's a lot of value and information captured in it.