Is this unrelated to the mold contamination people were reporting?
yeah, different issues
Soylent Thinks It Found What Was Making People Sick: Algae
41–50 of 341 posts
Re: Soylent Thinks It Found What Was Making People Sick: Algae
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's hilarious and scary. Can you imagine the reactions if any other (non Valley?) food business had this approach to food safety?
Obesity rates have tripled in 3 decades, I don't think we can blame Soylent for that, but clearly something major has gone terribly wrong with the industrial food system and it's approach to food safety. That's the hilarious and scary thing. I don't worry too much about what's going on at some small scale esoteric meal replacement startup.
The problem isn't safety, it's poor alignment of incentives.
Food companies optimize for palatability and against satiety. Then they brag about it, advertising that you will never eat just 1.
Why do they do this? Because the food market is saturated and getting people to consume more is a good growth strategy.
Re: Soylent Thinks It Found What Was Making People Sick: Algae
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
> What a silly game to play when people's health is at stake. This is an important observation, and one that deserves some serious and deep reflection.
>"This is an important observation, and one that deserves some serious and deep reflection" From my perspective as someone who studied drug development and testing heavily in university, and now works as a programmer for medical ehr (hospital) software, I don't particularly think they're being unethical. The typical Phase 1 trial for a NME (new molecular entity; a new novel drug) is basically giving young dudes some…
Can you expand on how HIPAA and PHI impact testing? That sounds interesting and important.
Re: Soylent Thinks It Found What Was Making People Sick: Algae
#44Sounds like they have a bug in their "food stack" and this modification is like printf debugging - if no one gets sick then it was the algae, otherwise they will need to continue poking around to figure out what's wrong. What a silly game to play when people's health is at stake.
> What a silly game to play when people's health is at stake.
There always is residual risk. Some new ingredient tested at small scale might work for 99.9% of people, 0.1% has some intolerance, allergy, negative interactions with drugs or whatever.
That's far better than lactose tolerance levels for example and yet we're not panicking over the presence of lactose in food. We just learn from problems and label appropriately, after the fact.
And in most cases those problems don't even have lasting effects, they just cause discomfort for a few hours/days, in some small fraction of people. Sure, that might not be optimal, but not a catastrophe.
Re: Soylent Thinks It Found What Was Making People Sick: Algae
#45Sounds like they have a bug in their "food stack" and this modification is like printf debugging - if no one gets sick then it was the algae, otherwise they will need to continue poking around to figure out what's wrong. What a silly game to play when people's health is at stake.
They've been playing this game from the start. I remember the original announcement blog post talking about how he figured out the formula through trial and error. We can eat small amounts of poison and never notice that it's damaged our bodies, for example. Who knows what the long term effects are.
It's suggested that out digestive system is strongly linked to our intelligence. One could argue that it could either increase or reduce our capacity to cope. Possibly even change our species or provide use with a new system of organs that would make use depent on a centralized food source.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1834002/#!po=1....
Truly fascinating stuff!
Re: Soylent Thinks It Found What Was Making People Sick: Algae
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
> What a silly game to play when people's health is at stake. This is an important observation, and one that deserves some serious and deep reflection.
>"This is an important observation, and one that deserves some serious and deep reflection" From my perspective as someone who studied drug development and testing heavily in university, and now works as a programmer for medical ehr (hospital) software, I don't particularly think they're being unethical. The typical Phase 1 trial for a NME (new molecular entity; a new novel drug) is basically giving young dudes some…
The stakes for medicine are very different. There is much more incentive to try a drug that may or may not work when compared with the potential gain of eating an experimental food.
Re: Soylent Thinks It Found What Was Making People Sick: Algae
#47I'm still amazed people pay for this shit when fully-regulated formulated meal replacements have been around for years.
What do you mean by "fully-regulated?" I guess, can you clarify why the examples you've using differ from Soylent's regulation?
Re: Soylent Thinks It Found What Was Making People Sick: Algae
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
Soylent will be using pulverized cricket protein in their next evolution of the product. It's so sustainable after all. In fact, it will be so sustainable and good for you that it will become a moral imperative, eventually enforced by law, that citizens consume (20%, 50%, 85%) of their daily caloric intake from Soylent sources unless religious or medical restrictions prevent them from doing so.
The downvoting is interesting. Perhaps they are not familiar with the efficiency of crickets as a protein source. Big Cricket Farms [1] in Youngstown, Ohio is moving in this direction. Partnership with Soylent would be a natural fit, since the physical characteristics of culinary crickets are still intimidating, whereas pulverized cricket protein poses no stigma. [1] http://bigcricketfarms.com/
I think that the downvoting is more likely tied to your outlandishly wild claims as fact of both cricket usage in Soylent and that the government will force consumption of it. Neither of those claims are at all verifiable or likely within any basis of reality.
Re: Soylent Thinks It Found What Was Making People Sick: Algae
#49Sounds like they have a bug in their "food stack" and this modification is like printf debugging - if no one gets sick then it was the algae, otherwise they will need to continue poking around to figure out what's wrong. What a silly game to play when people's health is at stake.
I'll let them alpha test their product in other guinea pigs. When none dies, I'll buy it.
Re: Soylent Thinks It Found What Was Making People Sick: Algae
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
Soylent will be using pulverized cricket protein in their next evolution of the product. It's so sustainable after all. In fact, it will be so sustainable and good for you that it will become a moral imperative, eventually enforced by law, that citizens consume (20%, 50%, 85%) of their daily caloric intake from Soylent sources unless religious or medical restrictions prevent them from doing so.
The downvoting is interesting. Perhaps they are not familiar with the efficiency of crickets as a protein source. Big Cricket Farms [1] in Youngstown, Ohio is moving in this direction. Partnership with Soylent would be a natural fit, since the physical characteristics of culinary crickets are still intimidating, whereas pulverized cricket protein poses no stigma. [1] http://bigcricketfarms.com/
You are surprised people downvoted you stating that it will become a moral imperative to eat food in sludge form?
Note that I'm not talking about the crickets at all there, I'm talking about eating a thick nutrient shake as a major source of calories.