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Soylent Thinks It Found What Was Making People Sick: Algae

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Re: Soylent Thinks It Found What Was Making People Sick: Algae

#141

Post by jklinger410 »

st3v3r wrote: post #72
darawk wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can say the same thing about the food in any restaurant. I really don't understand the hate that's directed towards this product. Nobody was seriously injured, it was a relatively small number of people that got sick. Soylent is trying to do something more ambitious than other packaged food manufacturers. It's not unreasonable to expect there to be some small hiccups. If you can't tolerate that, then don't buy it…

"Soylent is trying to do something more ambitious than other packaged food manufacturers" No, they aren't. There is nothing special about what they're trying to do compared to any other packaged food manufacturer. That's why they shouldn't be cut any more slack than any other manufacturer. "It's not unreasonable to expect there to be some small hiccups." It entirely is. If this happened to Twinkies, people would be l…

You are being purposely obtuse and have clearly done no research into Soylent if this is your real opinion.

Re: Soylent Thinks It Found What Was Making People Sick: Algae

#142

Post by harveywi »

st3v3r wrote: post #81
harveywi wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is wrong with reasonable speculation? You just speculated about why I was downvoted.

Nothing in your post was close to reasonable.

Just because an idea makes one uncomfortable ("eating sludge", "efficient and sustainable nutrition impacting public policy", etc.) does not make it unreasonable, least of all unreasonable for discussion. The opposite should be true.

Re: Soylent Thinks It Found What Was Making People Sick: Algae

#143

Post by amelius »

darawk wrote: post #69
glenda wrote: post #4

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.

You can say the same thing about the food in any restaurant. I really don't understand the hate that's directed towards this product. Nobody was seriously injured, it was a relatively small number of people that got sick. Soylent is trying to do something more ambitious than other packaged food manufacturers. It's not unreasonable to expect there to be some small hiccups. If you can't tolerate that, then don't buy it…

> You can say the same thing about the food in any restaurant.

But Soylent is supposed to be consumable on a daily basis, so long-term effects are important. Remember the documentary Super Size Me, which tested long term effects of food from a certain fast-food restaurant? [1]

[1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0390521

Re: Soylent Thinks It Found What Was Making People Sick: Algae

#144

Post by _23sd »

catenthusiast wrote: post #127
_23sd wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What products would those be? Most meal replacement shakes marketed in the US are for people trying to lose weight, so they have far less calories and fat than a meal for people just trying to eat healthy.

Have you heard of Ensure?

Yeah, I even wrote a paragraph bashing it (or at least, people claiming that it's a product of serious medical research) last time we had a Soylent thread. It has a lot more sugar and carbs than most people would want to eat regularly, which makes it more suitable as a temporary food replacement or a snack than a lunch staple.

Re: Soylent Thinks It Found What Was Making People Sick: Algae

#145

Post by chc »

jklinger410 wrote: post #140
glenda wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do stop going to a restaurant once I or someone I know has gotten sick there. Look at Chipotle for instance, they are dealing with similar contamination related problems.

Soylent is marketed as an innovative beta-style product. Users should expect hiccups. This is not the same for a bulk of consumer restaurants.

I don't think most people even have a concept of a "beta-style food," so it seems pretty unreasonable to expect them to infer that from Soylent's marketing.

Re: Soylent Thinks It Found What Was Making People Sick: Algae

#146

Post by darawk »

amelius wrote: post #143
darawk wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can say the same thing about the food in any restaurant. I really don't understand the hate that's directed towards this product. Nobody was seriously injured, it was a relatively small number of people that got sick. Soylent is trying to do something more ambitious than other packaged food manufacturers. It's not unreasonable to expect there to be some small hiccups. If you can't tolerate that, then don't buy it…

> You can say the same thing about the food in any restaurant. But Soylent is supposed to be consumable on a daily basis, so long-term effects are important. Remember the documentary Super Size Me, which tested long term effects of food from a certain fast-food restaurant? [1] [1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0390521

Ya, I agree. Long-term effects are important. But AFAIK there's no indication of any long-term harm from Soylent. There's only an indication that a particular batch may have been contaminated.

This suggests not that they were careless in choosing their formulation or research, but that there was an error in the manufacturing process. This is something that can happen to any company, and has many times. Should they fix it? Yes. But I don't think they should be held to a higher standard here than anyone else.

Re: Soylent Thinks It Found What Was Making People Sick: Algae

#147

Post by nommm-nommm »

_23sd wrote: post #114
DINKDINK wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if no one gets sick then it was the algae, otherwise they will need to continue poking around to figure out what's wrong. Chemistry and biology doesn't work like this. This is excessively simplistic/reductive. Food is a concoction of elements of chemical composition (naturally and/or synthetically produced). The reaction of one chemicals is _dependent_ on all of the other chemicals present and the quantities of the…

Can you give any examples of reactions between food ingredients making people sick? The usual reasons that foods make people sick are quite specific to an ingredient: digestive issues usually stem from inability to digest a particular sugar, and allergies arise from food-specific antigens. Neither is created or modified when you mix two foods together, or digest one in the presence of the other.

Taking a multivitamin on an empty stomach makes me vomit. I don't have the same reaction when I take it on a full stomach. I also sometimes feel very ill if I drink black tea on an empty stomach.

Re: Soylent Thinks It Found What Was Making People Sick: Algae

#148

Post by greendragon »

st3v3r wrote: post #78
the8472 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which have very little data supporting them as safe/effective sources of O3. Someone has to be the first to gather the data.

That shouldn't be paying customers.

Unless a lot of their customers are vegan.

Re: Soylent Thinks It Found What Was Making People Sick: Algae

#149

Post by sosuke »

insaneirish wrote: post #112
jobu wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really doesn't seem like a huge deal to me. People are complex and sometimes have allergies or reactions to foods that they don't even know or understand. A neighbor of mine has an allergy to MSG and it took him years to realize it. He's still does trial-and-error on new foods to determine which ones contain MSG as part of their "natural flavors" (sometimes with painful results). The difference here is that Soylent i…

> A neighbor of mine has an allergy to MSG and it took him years to realize it. I'd really like to see him take a double blind test to see if it's actually true. Saying you have an allergy to monosodium glutamate is a lot closer to saying you have an allergy to monosodium chloride (i.e. table salt) than it is to an actual food allergy. You need glutamate to live [1]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glutamate_(neur…

From personal accounts, ones I've only read about, it seems that sensitivity to things like MSG, ingested orally, are completely possible. But the reactions are small enough to never require any medical attention or further study. No anaphylaxis for instance. Anyhow, since the reactions aren't large enough to be measured in an acute way there is no allergy. However when lay-people speak about how they have reactions to something they eat you might often encounter them using the term allergy in a sense that doesn't require caring a steroid injectable.

In essence they have proved through research that MSG causes no allergic reactions. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19389112/ But they can't say there are no reactions at all. (last paragraph http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/nutrition-and-he...)

It might be MSG causing a headache or eating too much salt in a single meal but either way the symptoms are avoided by elimination of that from their diet. No deaths, no acute reactions, no more study needed. It hurts when you do that? Stop doing it.

Re: Soylent Thinks It Found What Was Making People Sick: Algae

#150

Post by artimaeis »

DanBC wrote: post #15
jobu wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really doesn't seem like a huge deal to me. People are complex and sometimes have allergies or reactions to foods that they don't even know or understand. A neighbor of mine has an allergy to MSG and it took him years to realize it. He's still does trial-and-error on new foods to determine which ones contain MSG as part of their "natural flavors" (sometimes with painful results). The difference here is that Soylent i…

> People are complex and sometimes have allergies or reactions to foods that they don't even know or understand. That's fine, but Soylent marketed the product as being suitable for everyone even if they had allergies. Soylent's words: > "For anyone that struggles with allergies, heartburn, acid reflux or digestion, has trouble controlling weight or cholesterol, or simply doesn't have the means to eat well, soylent is…

Link to Soylent's words there? I'm not finding anything with a Google search.
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