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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

#151

Post by jklinger410 »

chc wrote: post #145
jklinger410 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>We are constantly exploring the frontiers of food technology, with an aim to engineering foods which are more nutritious, efficient, and affordable than ever before.

Right on their index

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

#152

Post by nommm-nommm »

Retric wrote: post #137
_23sd wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Alcohol on a full stomach will delay Alcohol absorption which leads to delayed intoxication peaks and for many people higher Alcohol consumption. "Beer before liquor, never been sicker; liquor before beer, you're in the clear." Granted the real issue is drinking more liquor because you don't notice how much liquor you have already drunk.

I think a better example would be mixing alcohol and caffeine http://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/fact-sheets/caffeine-and-alcohol....

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

#153

Post by darawk »

glenda wrote: post #102
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…

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.

Ya, and there's nothing wrong with that. I wouldn't fault anyone for choosing not to use Soylent because of this.

But there seems to be a weird sort of vitriol in the reaction here that doesn't seem like it happened to Chipotle. Perhaps because people see it as an example of the overconfident arrogance of 'tech people'. I'm not sure. But it seems deeply misguided to me.

Yes, something has gone wrong. Yes, they are having trouble figuring out exactly what it was. But so did Chipotle. So do lots of other food companies when things like this happens. Would it be great if this didn't happen? Absolutely. But it's not unprecedented and it isn't at all clear to me that their processes and controls are substantially inferior to the industry standard.

And secondly, they market themselves as a sort of radical new approach to food. They expressly cultivate that image of transformation and self-experimentation. Anyone willing to use a product like that should be more tolerant of bugs than average, IMO. If I got sick from Soylent I might stop drinking it, but I wouldn't say they shouldn't have made the thing in the first place.

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

#154

Post by sowhatquestion »

jorblumesea wrote: post #118

The fact that Soylent is classified as a "Nutritional supplement" is absurd. No inspections, no accountability.

This is false. Soylent is classified as a food, and has to follow the same FDA requirements as any other food.

"Soylent is not in violation of any product-safety standards or requirements, and is manufactured in FDA-approved facilities that follow federally regulated current Good Manufacturing Practices (cGMP)."

Source: https://faq.soylent.com/hc/en-us/articles/204197379-Californ...

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

#155

Post by andy_ppp »

chc wrote: post #145
jklinger410 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not sure that's true; I've dabbled with the idea of ordering it a few times but thought it's probably best to wait a little bit more. Maybe I'll wait forever or maybe soylent will lead to an end of the destruction caused by industrialised farming, who knows.

Despite this hiccup I'm glad they are making the attempt to be able to feed the world a well balanced diet (isn't that the plan?).

Other food manufacturers specialise in trying to poison you in the longer term with salt, sugar, flavour packs, fructose, "low fat", MSG, anemic vegetables, mercury tuna and antibiotic meat.

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

#156

Post by _23sd »

frenchy wrote: post #129
_23sd wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Heme-bound iron is better absorbed by the body than other sources of iron, which is why sometimes vegetarians are anemic despite the high quantity of iron in vegetables. Much of the the known mechanics of digestion are molecular, but that's mostly due to the fact that we have a lot better scientific tools to deal with things on a molecular level than we do with macro-molecular constructs.

Okay, but you're still talking about how a particular nutrient interacts with the digestive system in a particular way. I don't assume there's any evidence that eating meat increases the absorption rate of iron from plants as well, for example. The hypothesis I responded to was a component of algae reacting with another chemical to create a product that some people are sensitive to.

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

#157

Post by vehementi »

glenda wrote: post #102
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…

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.

Are you suggesting there exists a restaurant that nobody has ever gotten sick from eating at?

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

#158

Post by ng12 »

TillE wrote: post #139
ng12 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chipotle's issues were sanitation related. Soylent's problem was people being allergic to an ingredient they didn't know they were allergic to.

You (and Soylent) have absolutely no idea whether that's true. Which is the problem.

I believe Soylent has a pretty good idea. They know what changed in their formula, they know the difference between the products receiving complaints and the products not, and they have evidence from other companies (Honey Stinger) who had similar issues.

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

#159

Post by _23sd »

nommm-nommm wrote: post #152
Retric wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alcohol on a full stomach will delay Alcohol absorption which leads to delayed intoxication peaks and for many people higher Alcohol consumption. "Beer before liquor, never been sicker; liquor before beer, you're in the clear." Granted the real issue is drinking more liquor because you don't notice how much liquor you have already drunk.

I think a better example would be mixing alcohol and caffeine http://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/fact-sheets/caffeine-and-alcohol....

That would be interesting if caffeine did affect the metabolism of alcohol. The points here are more about perception than any chemical mechanism as originally described:

>It very well not have been the algae but the reaction of the algae that occurred when another chemical's concentration was increase and caused a second or third order reaction.

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

#160

Post by Spooky23 »

Xisiqomelir wrote: post #19

I'm still amazed people pay for this shit when fully-regulated formulated meal replacements have been around for years.

Why the focus on liquid diet?

There are plenty of good meal replacement options like trail mixes and other snack mixes that fill this niche without the science experiments.

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