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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

#771

Post by thefucnjosh »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #639
leshow wrote: post #632

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You don't need to point at things there's actually evidence. "Neuroimaging studies in obese subjects provide evidence of altered reward and tolerance." Reward seems to me the most underrated, and extremely powerful form of cognition effecting behavior. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21999689

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

#772

Post by webmaven »

daxorid wrote: post #662
mtberatwork wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Deferring to experts is a poor substitute for thinking for yourself. Not deferring to experts when you posses surface level knowledge (or less) of a subject is a sure-fire way to shoot yourself in the foot.

In this particular case, the experts have not only been wrong, but been deadly wrong for the last thirty years. Nutrition has been revealed to be woo-woo pseudoscience after mountains of recent research has debunked the lipid hypothesis for heart disease. Reinhart has NO obligation to heed the "wisdom" of people who have been killing us with sugar for decades now. We should have nothing but contempt for these charlat…

Nutrition experts aren't the ones responsible for the prevalence of sugar and starches in our diet, though:

http://www.whale.to/a/light.html

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

#774

Post by squeaky-clean »

Musonius wrote: post #753
squeaky-clean wrote: post #723

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The only person to respond with a real answer! Thank you! An actual product with an unflavored version that's low in sugar. Sadly I see no option to have it shipped to the US on their website.

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

#775

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#776

Post by M_Grey »

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…

There are two broad types of Soylent fans... the ones who would normally eat dog shit otherwise, and those who struggle with obesity or anorexia. The former case just doesn't know better, and the latter case is ill and wants an easy solution to a complex problem. Neither group reacts well to reality or criticism of their pet slurry.

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

#777

Post by ghaff »

freehunter wrote: post #672
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…

I subscribe to Blue Apron, one of those companies you describe that deliver ingredients. I'm thinking about canceling because it takes so damn much effort to cook their meals. I have to chop my own garlic, where I would just use garlic powder or minced garlic before. I have to prepare my own kale, which I would just get kale with the stems removed before. I have to fry my own sage, which... well I would never use a g…

I tried Blue Apron. It was OK but their meals were definitely reasonably involved to prepare. For example, one of their meals was some sort of gourmet hamburger that took way more work than I would normally put into making a hamburger and I wasn't even all that impressed by the final result.

On the one hand, it can be kinda nice getting everything you need for a new recipe delivered to you. But I have a pretty well-stocked larder and a binder of recipes I make semi-regularly so it didn't really solve a problem I have. (And it's not inexpensive either.)

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

#778

Post by greglindahl »

leshow wrote: post #683
greglindahl wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Turning 10 calories of corn into 1 calorie of beef is not the way to save the planet. A large fraction of corn and soybeans are fed to animals. If you want to talk about non-food usage, that's a different issue.

Using a computer, having running water, driving a car, etc are all wasteful activities. And yet in every other instance people seem happy to simply reduce their use to "save the planet". But vegans say you can't reduce meat consumption, you must eliminate it. This seems a stark contrast to everything else, if your argument is environmental damage.

I'm not a vegan, but I know several vegans who would disagree with your over-generalization. Please don't hijack this sub-thread.

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

#779

Post by __jal »

daxorid wrote: post #662
mtberatwork wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Deferring to experts is a poor substitute for thinking for yourself. Not deferring to experts when you posses surface level knowledge (or less) of a subject is a sure-fire way to shoot yourself in the foot.

In this particular case, the experts have not only been wrong, but been deadly wrong for the last thirty years. Nutrition has been revealed to be woo-woo pseudoscience after mountains of recent research has debunked the lipid hypothesis for heart disease. Reinhart has NO obligation to heed the "wisdom" of people who have been killing us with sugar for decades now. We should have nothing but contempt for these charlat…

Great, so you've discounted one tradition of food advice, although it is far from clear whom, exactly, you're discounting - you start talking about what sounds like dietitians, but end talking about what sounds like processed food manufacturers. But never mind.

Now you have a search problem. Which dilettante do you want to listen to? A techie making a protein shake that makes people sick is far from your only option. As best I can tell, most folks tend to choose diet fads based on a messy set of priors and an aesthetic judgement about the surrounding marketing.

It makes market sense to me that something like Soylent would find a niche; there is a segment that finds eating a hassle, and so an anti-food with hints of Jetsons-food-capsule, from-the-future marketing has a place alongside all the other goofy food fads.

I just don't see any reason to rank Soylent any higher than macrobiotic hyperlocal kale wonder-juice, either. (I do rank both higher than the colloidal silver thing; as far as I know, neither turns you blue.)

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

#780

Post by aianus »

another_account wrote: post #755
squeaky-clean wrote: post #723

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

The same one serving of Slimfast[1] has less than 10% of my daily calories, less than 2% of daily carbs, and between 35% and 110% of daily vitamins.

I don't see how it's a competitor to a drink (Soylent 2.0) that has exactly 20% of all macros and micros.

[1] http://slimfast.com/products/advanced/shakes/creamy-chocolat...

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