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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

#321

Post by cthalupa »

uw_rob wrote: post #271
smt88 wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That still sounds criminal to me.

I'm not sure why you are getting downvoted. People shouldn't even be giving away food that was mixed in a facility that has rats running around.

About 20 million homes each year get rodent infestations. Even more have rats in them, but not at the infestation level. This is not limited to people in poverty or low incomes, either.

Commercial food prep facilities obviously should be held to higher standards, but this facility was basically the equivalent of doing it in their garage for test batch purposes, which I doubt you would bat an eyelash at.

I don't care about the standards they had as a startup before they had a commercial product. I care about the standards they have at the facilities creating the product I would be purchasing.

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

#322

Post by cthalupa »

Frondo wrote: post #308
M_Grey wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about just... eating food? I know, I know... so unpopular, but "Paleo, Macro..." all of that crap? Let it go. Outside of people trying to sell you shit, including books, the best advice you'll ever get is just to eat a relatively balanced diet, keep up fiber intake, and maintain a healthy weight. Whether you prefer or personally thrive more on meaty diets, or eating a lot of barley isn't really that hard to figur…

My favorite two pieces of food advice both come from Michael Pollan: "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants." And: "Don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food."

I hate the second quote. My great-gradmother wouldn't recognize all sorts of delicious cuisine from other culture's as food.

A better one might be "Don't eat anything someone's great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food"

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

#323

Post by miranda_rights »

SuicidebyStar wrote: post #320

I think I found a better alternative to Soylent called "Bertrand" ( https://bertrand.bio/ ). It is made out of organic ingredients, tastes solid (just order the one with no flavor, it actually tastes better) and is hopefully more healthy since it is made from "real" natural powderized ingredients. So even if there are nutrition components (e.g. other micro-nutrients) which weren't researched properly till today (quit…

Interesting. I like the idea but the macronutrients are heavily weighted towards carbohydrates. For reference, normally 30-35% of your daily calories should be protein, while only 11% of the calories of Bertrand come from protein.

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

#324

Post by SuicidebyStar »

miranda_rights wrote: post #323
SuicidebyStar wrote: post #320

I think I found a better alternative to Soylent called "Bertrand" ( https://bertrand.bio/ ). It is made out of organic ingredients, tastes solid (just order the one with no flavor, it actually tastes better) and is hopefully more healthy since it is made from "real" natural powderized ingredients. So even if there are nutrition components (e.g. other micro-nutrients) which weren't researched properly till today (quit…

Interesting. I like the idea but the macronutrients are heavily weighted towards carbohydrates. For reference, normally 30-35% of your daily calories should be protein, while only 11% of the calories of Bertrand come from protein.

That is true, especially the vegan version lacks protein (in comparison to the "active" version). That's why I add rice protein to the drink to get up to 120-150g protein/day. Besides that I add also Acerola powder for more (natural) vitamin C.

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

#325

Post by imtringued »

infecto wrote: post #238
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…

Sorry for the strong language but bullshit. I am sure it has changed over the years but I still have vivid memories of the rodents that ran around the original warehouse they mixed soylent in. It was a joke. They had a bunch of randos mixing powders haphazardly and no sense of proper food prep/sanitation. It was scarier than some of the operations that supplement manufacturers run. I am sure its changed but it blows…

What is going to happen next? Are they going to source their ingredients from farms where all those rodents can run around freely?

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

#326

Post by ClassyJacket »

jasonwilk wrote: post #190

I'm a fan of Soylent but I wouldn't say things like 'Soylent prides itself on rapid product development—an ideal popularized by Google and Facebook Inc.' Things that are going into my body should not be rapidly developed and released. It's slightly different than Facebook launching a new feature that may or may not break.

Things that go into your body get rapidly developed and released all the time. Ever been to a restaurant with a new item on the menu?

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

#327

Post by imtringued »

the8472 wrote: post #250
saurik wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who is pretty badly lactose intolerant, the idea that you are using frequency to make my plight somehow sound worse than that of my friend whom I had to drive to the ER to get a shot of epinephrine while his throat closed up and he started to have a hard to breathing, or of the aunt of someone else I know who has Celiac disease, or to someone whose heart medication will become less effective... the reason…

Maybe it was not the best example, but it was just a stand-in for "ingredient with negative effects for some fraction of the population", of which we have many in the food supply chain, some of which have more serious effects than others as you highlight. But we still do not ban them categorically. I don't see how one can avoid these issues while testing new ingredients. And if we want to explore sustainable food sou…

Maybe they should employ versioning for their products if they change so rapidly.

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

#328

Post by rbobby »

wmil wrote: post #307
binarymax wrote: post #7

Where is the FDA in all of this? I would hope that after the widespread issues with the product, they would have stepped in and blocked shipment until safety studies have been done that comply with regulations.

There's nothing in soylent that isn't "generally recognised as safe" (GRAS). Some people just have intolerances for some plants. Some common plant products are actually quite dangerous. For instance, grapefruit can interfere with the body breaking down Xanax and Valium. But there's no call for the FDA to stop grapefruit farming.

> grapefruit

Try some grapefruit juice and then a coffee... whizzz!!

Grapefruit is very weird :)

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

#329

Post by mrob »

grondilu wrote: post #286

I've not often eaten algae, but I do remember it to have the weirdest taste I have ever experienced.

Seaweed is a type of algae, and I eat rehydrated dried seaweeds every so often. I wouldn't call any seaweed delicious but they're no worse than the average vegetable. If you eat other seafood you'll probably find the taste of seaweed acceptable.

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

#330

Post by emodendroket »

emmab wrote: post #281
emodendroket wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Really? It seems to me like it's Ensure for computer programmers.

Have you tried ensure? It's intolerably sweet (comes in chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, and butter pecan). There's no option for people who want a meal replacement, not dessert. It gives me indigestion every time I drink it. I switched to Soylent because it's a better product than Ensure.

But that's not a revolutionary difference in kind.
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