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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

#961

Post by max_ »

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…

I think Soylent's failure here wasn't that they tried to do something that they are not experts at, but rather failed to hire actual experts that could assist them in production.

IMO they had a pretty good idea but tried to execute things in a rather vague way instead of consulting the actual experts in this field.

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

#962

Post by jdavis703 »

jacalata wrote: post #205
jdavis703 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been drinking only protein shakes for breakfast for years, and recently the Coffiest product from Soylent. My poops are coming out just fine (of course I'm having regular solid food for lunch and dinner, and for all my meals on the weekend).

Did you know some people don't even eat breakfast?

Yes I did, I've even gone without breakfast for periods. Unfortunately it seems to kill my ability to focus in the mornings, perhaps because I don't eat that much generally.

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

#964

Post by kuschku »

aRationalMoose wrote: post #471
lmm wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't get why people keep harping on the all-or-nothing idea behind Soylent. Because that's what all Soylent's advertising and messaging has focused on?

No it isn't. Their slogan is something like: Not meant to replace every meal, but it can replace any meal.

The original launch page suggested to only eat it, though, and the founder does exactly that, too prove its viability.

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

#965

Post by contingencies »

DanBC wrote: post #367
contingencies wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a fair concern, though many people forget that reducing food wastage is a great way to scale too: Roughly one-third of food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted globally, which amounts to about 1.3 billion tons per year. http://www.fao.org/docrep/014/mb060e/mb060e00.htm At Infinite Food we are working to offer a broader, home kitchen-like degree of choice in personalized hot meal preparation, but usi…

Are you having any influence on product grading? A large source of food waste is that some vegetables just don't meet over strict supermarket standards, and these are just ploughed back into the ground. One tv show about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVk31Yv9vlg (the farming bit starts at about 5 minutes in)

Here in China food supply channels are not as centralized / supermarket-dominated as in many western environments, particularly the US, UK and Australia, so central grading plays a lesser role. That said, one of our model's features is the ability to adapt recipes based upon available ingredients. For example, we are able to use visually unattractive vegetables for soups or stocks, and more attractive ingredients in visible recipes, or even substitute alternative ingredients (with customer approval) if something in particular is unavailable.

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

#966

Post by n72 »

krick wrote: post #921
jayess wrote: post #784

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I have not set foot in a grocery store in years. Nevermore will I bumble through endless confusing aisles like a pack-donkey searching for feed while the smell of rotting flesh fills my nostrils and fluorescent lights sear my eyeballs and sappy love songs torture my ears. Grocery shopping is a multisensory living nightmare." This kind of writing is insufferable.

Hey, and when writers of newyorker.com do it, it is called "fantastic journalism"…

You seriously can't dustinguish between his writing and that of in the New Yorker?

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

#967

Post by wott »

slang800 wrote: post #832
briandear wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AirBnB and Uber are as ignorant of the law as a medicinal marijuana dealer selling in Texas.

If ignorance gets you a 30-something billion dollar valuation, then maybe it isn't such a bad strategy after all.

That's a Pablo Escobar quote?

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

#969

Post by rpedela »

phillc73 wrote: post #955
HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #882

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is there really anything to "disrupt" and is the market worth it for a startup? I live on a horse farm and as a result, need to buy hay. Our main "hay guy" is a farmer and his son who lives about 1/2 hour away, has great prices and charges a low fee (usually: sometimes he doesn't bother charging) for delivery. There are online hay markets, and Craigslist. They don't bother with any of that. They just ask…

Reading this story I think the opportunity here is in testing the nutrient levels of the hay. He is your hay guy and he provides a fantastic personal service, but is his product of the highest quality for feeding to horses? Even if "highest" is not the correct measure, just knowing the nutrient levels and, in patricular for hay to feed performance horses, the protein level, will greatly assist in formulating a correc…

Do people who buy hay for horses actually have this problem? Do they really care about the highest quality? If they do then maybe it is a good idea (there are other things to consider like market size). If they do not have this problem, then it is a bad idea by default no matter how good it sounds on paper.

The first test of this idea is to interview a dozen or so customers of hay for horses and determine if they really care about quality. And be careful, sometimes people say one thing and do another so you can't necessarily trust their answers to your questions.

If you were an expert in the hay for horses field then you would already know the answer, and that is one reason, among many, why it is hard for non-experts to break into the field.

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

#970

Post by posterboy »

colejohnson66 wrote: post #769
lexhaynes wrote: post #710

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He seems to have obsessive compulsive tendencies so severe that he can't eat food (e.g. "Kitchens are dirty") combined with some narcissism...

> "Kitchens are dirty" I don't get that logic. Your toilet is probably cleaner than your kitchen or phone. Doesn't mean you'd eat off your toilet. Besides, you can always clean your kitchen.

Probably? Like over a 50% chance? How did you reach that estimate?
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