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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

#941

Post by robotbikes »

colordrops wrote: post #394
_23sd wrote: post #310

I guess one great thing about Soylent threads is bringing all the urban myths around nutrition out into the open. People in this thread believe everything from "people on liquid diets don't poop!" to "if you put some berries in a blender and drink it, you're getting entirely different nutrition from eating the berries raw!" That second one is a bit of a strawman, but it shows how absurd claims that crushing or grindi…

Curious what are your thoughts on GMOs.

Wouldn't it be ironic if one of the GMO ingredients in Soylent was causing the kind of allergic reaction that organic activists are always warning about thus proving the hazardness of GMOs. This is sheer speculation but had to share the thought.

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

#942

Post by aianus »

refurb wrote: post #79
bertiewhykovich wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

because the FDA can only regulate food

The FDA regulates more than just food: drugs, cosmetics, vitamins, supplements. How are the getting around it? Is it classified as a supplement? "Not for human consumption"?

> How are the getting around it?

Soylent is just a bunch of FDA-approved (actually, "Generally Recognized As Safe") ingredients mixed together in an industrial vat.

How would you even propose regulating something like that? You'd have to have every restaurant in the country submit every menu item for 'approval'.

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

#943

Post by Roboprog »

moon_priestess wrote: post #871
Roboprog wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously: "Soylent"??? Somebody thought that would be a good name to market mystery food sludge? Just the link title made my WTF-ometer peg when I saw it. As Bullwinkle used to say: "I think I shall now be sick."

The name is obviously ironic.

I'm sure it was. But that's still a bit of a risk. Yuck.

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

#944

Post by paulftw »

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…

Testing is needed at the point where risk is. If something comes from a farm and your job is to decontaminate it - there's point in testing output. If you're running a restaurant you probably don't need your dishwasher to test tap water quality and post results on the website.

Soylent is simply mixing a number of standard powders, most of those already heavily processed.

I think it's quite clear that an ingredient they actually wanted in the formula is causing drama, not that something got contaminated or not up to spec. Testing you suggest would show that "yeah bag contains exactly what we want". But that wouldn't catch the issue of "what we've put in the bag isn't compatible with (some?) human bodies".

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

#946

Post by toomuchtodo »

pmyjavec wrote: post #935
ckozlowski wrote: post #931

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good story. =) So much success in business is still meeting face to face with people, building interpersonal connections, and performing classic networking. When I'm mentoring younger family members and friends, I stress this a lot. I'm not knocking e-commerce, but you cannot underestimate the power that a friendly 5 minute conversation has.

I dare say this is probably what separates very successful people from the rest. It really is not what you know, but who you know, even in 2016.

I think I enjoy the idea of that sort of success far more than the guy banging out code 16 hours a day, 7 days a week.

It takes far more skill and experience to be human than it does to write code.

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

#948

Post by djur »

Chrisjay wrote: post #488
n72 wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As someone who struggled with bipolar for years, his writing reminds me a lot of the shit I used to write in notebooks when manic. I was always convinced I had figured out a way to live a purer, better life without the bullshit everyone else always managed to slog through. And I never even had to sleep, except on the occasional bench in the middle of the day!

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

#949

Post by manglav »

md2be wrote: post #762
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…

You are spot on. Almost 30 years ago the tiger bar meal replacement bar was introduced and 1000s have followed. I'm trying to understand how the tech community doesn't get this? The big natural foods trade show happens a few times a year. It is referred to as NatutalExpo East / West. I've been attending (as a food scientist and entrepreneur) for more than a decade. Food bars are perhaps have the lowest barrier to ent…

Do you have any contact information? I'd be interested in producing a different food bar for a specific market.

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

#950

Post by Evgeny »

ensiferum wrote: post #323
Evgeny wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can you eat 5,000 kcal a day and not be a huge fat pig? How many miles a day do you need to run to burn that off? On the days when I lift weights I eat close to 5K calories, sometimes even a little more, depending on the commute. All of my daily commute is by bike, including taking my kid to and from the kindergarten, and later to some extra activities (welcome to Denmark), which can be anywhere between 20 and 35…

Thats quite a bit of cycling. Don't you think all that cycling is getting into your lifting? I used to cycle about 10km a day and found that it was already hampering leg training at the gym.

I actually changed my approach to lifting a little and now following the principles described by Greg Nuckols in his article about increasing work capacity

http://strengtheory.com/increasing-work-capacity/

So essentially every week I'm doing just a little bit more volume in every exercise, either by adding a little weight, or an extra rep. So far I'm able to do it consistently for a few months so I guess I'm recovering well.

Then of course there is all that "getting used to it" thing where you do something long enough and get into it gradually and increase little by little and you're fine.

I worked originally about 5 km from home and it felt like it was enough cycling there and back. Then I changed my job and now I was 11 km from home so I started combining bike + train for a while because that felt like too much to cycle. Then one sunny day I cycled all the way home. I realized two things: 1) I'm not that tired and 2) I cut 10 minutes off my train + bike commute. So now I bike all the way and save time and money at the same time! Win-win!

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