51–60 of 341 posts
someone should inform the author of this article that algae aren't plants
AlgaVia uses "microalgae", which, according to Wikipedia[1] are plants.
Sounds 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.
Let's remember that these are the same rocket surgeons who neglected to include iron in their original formula. Trial-and-error, with someone else's health as the stakes, is apparently the name of the game here.
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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.
You can also eat small amounts of poison and become immune. Everything will be damage in large quantities. And some common things probably do long term damage (e.g. any amount of charring on meat) but we never question them.
My point was that he created the formula through trial and error (I distinctly remember he said he'd put whatever amount he read online was correct and then if he felt sick he'd adjust the amount down; but "getting sick" is a rather extreme indicator). That is, at least prior to investment money (which I hope was at least partially spent on testing the stuff for safety), his safety claims were based off "I didn't get sick in the short term" without any real data on the medium to long term effects.
I mentioned small amounts of poison only as an anecdote that his trial and error testing could potentially have been harming him without him knowing it. That is, it's simply an anecdote to demonstrate that the "safety tests" he had done up until that blog post were themselves anecdotal at best.
I haven't been following soylent since and assume (and hope) that since he took on funding that he then followed up with proper scientific procedures. But people ate his stuff based on that initial blog post, so...
Part of the issue is their desire to keep the product vegan. Instead of using known-safe, health-promoting sources of polyunsaturated (O3/O6) fats like fish oil, they use algal sources, which have very little data supporting them as safe/effective sources of O3.
Someone has to be the first to gather the data.
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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.
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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.
We can blame the paint industry and the cotton industry for the food industry's mistakes. Paints & stains used to be made from "drying oils" (soybean oil, linseed oil, etc), now they're made from petroleum. Cotton production creates a lot of cotton seed as a waste product.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drying_oil
Instead of going quietly into the night, the seed oil industry now sells "vegetable oil" for human consumption. Crisco was made from hydrogenated cottonseed oil until it was reformulated in 2007. IMHO, Crisco is still not appropriate for human consumption.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisco
Charlatanism: it's what's for dinner.
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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.
Hardly. People tend to enjoy Soylent. Even some troops prefer to use Soylent rather than eat MREs.
Clearly there is a market for this 'super convenience' food/drink if people are still willing to buy this product after it made them sick. Even when their own stomach is the guinea pig. The company could do with better marketing though, reading things like this: In 2013, he raised capital to turn his full attention to Soylent, which he named after the science fiction novel that served as the basis for the 1973 movie…
I'm more aggrieved by the marketing (from day one) being a variation of "techies too busy to cook for themselves" It's not even a suggestion to drink it once in a while, when you're indeed unable to eat something else. It's an invitation to replace all meals with a prepared drink. It feeds on, and enables, the perpetually-busy/all-nighter culture of SV.
At least, that's how the marketing is hitting me.
I'm still amazed people pay for this shit when fully-regulated formulated meal replacements have been around for years.
Do you have examples that are both not full of sugar and available to the general public at a reasonable cost?
Somehow the marketing folks for Soylent have been able to convince a lot of people that they ACTUALLY NEED a fully balanced meal replacement consisting of synthetic food upon which someone may subsist indefinitely. That's a feat of marketing, but apparently little else.