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How I Ate No Food for 30 Days

motherboard.vice.com

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Re: How I Ate No Food for 30 Days

#61

Post by theklub »

justincormack wrote: post #19
LukeWalsh wrote: post #2

It's unfortunate for Soylent to end up in such a situation given how easily it could have been prevented. For me however it does not discount the product in the least, and I would expect a rethinking of the production process to be posted soon in response.

It is not "unfortunate" it is incompetent. They basically do not know what they are doing. Why did they start manufacture when they were not set up properly?

I think they've gotten very lucky that no one has gotten seriously ill from that manufacturing first set up. Hopefully that has and will continue to improve.

Re: How I Ate No Food for 30 Days

#62

Post by fredsters_s »

As a long time beta user I have a bunch of problems with this piece:

- the Oakland space was a temporary location while they were iterating on the beta. Soylent is not manufactured there.

- all the journalists writing about Soylent seem to attribute to Rob stuff that he doesn't actually say: namely that you should only consume Soylent all the time. The point of Soylent is that it replaces transactional eating and makes me healthier. It's not about replacing the eating I do for fun.

- Soylent is a technology company. It's not just positioning. They are iterating towards finding an exponentially better way to do transactional eating using technology. That's the definition of a tech company.

Re: How I Ate No Food for 30 Days

#63

Post by alex_c »

nightski wrote: post #54
arkitaip wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't consider the 30 day test to be remotely significant. Maybe when we're talking about years Soylent can be considered safe...

What about all of the foods in the grocery store than can kill you over years if eaten as a primary source of a diet? Are those considered "safe"? * Not trying to advocate Soylent. Just trying to point out that there are a lot of foods in the grocery store that can kill over time (and many are marketed as full meals intended to be eaten regularly).

That seems like a pretty circular argument. Do you mean the ones that aren't supposed to be eaten as a primary source of a diet? Or do you mean the ones that are, indeed, harmful if they make up too much of your diet?

Either way, I'm not sure how that argument is supposed to build confidence in Soylent.

Re: How I Ate No Food for 30 Days

#64

Post by jlgreco »

nightski wrote: post #54
arkitaip wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't consider the 30 day test to be remotely significant. Maybe when we're talking about years Soylent can be considered safe...

What about all of the foods in the grocery store than can kill you over years if eaten as a primary source of a diet? Are those considered "safe"? * Not trying to advocate Soylent. Just trying to point out that there are a lot of foods in the grocery store that can kill over time (and many are marketed as full meals intended to be eaten regularly).

Eaten that way? Obviously no, they are not safe. That is why you should never suggest that they are eaten that way.... Don't eat only pears; It would be a stupid and dangerous thing to do.

You know why Soylent is receiving more criticism than pears? Because unlike pear vendors, they are suggesting that you eat their product that way.

Re: How I Ate No Food for 30 Days

#65

Post by nightski »

dragontamer wrote: post #40
bowlofpetunias wrote: post #32

EDIT: Unbelievable. Both the title and the link to the article I commented on have been swapped from the PandoDaily article ( http://pandodaily.com/2013/11/12/vice-investigates-soylent-f... ) to the Vice article which PandoDaily referred to, but that tries to give it a positive spin. This goes well beyond whatever policy pg was trying to defend recently. This is deeply manipulative. --- It looks a scam, it sounds lik…

It certainly isn't a scam. However, I went to an engineering school, and have met Food Engineers. Food Engineering is a difficult branch of chemical engineering. You've got regulations, you've got people's lives at stake. The Soylent guys just went at it like a hacker: because thats what they are. They're taking the "startup culture" and trying to apply it to food. And that is incredibly dangerous. Anyone who has any…

The food industry as a whole is one big hack, even with it's fancy regulations and bureaucracy. People are dying constantly due to the failures of the industry. It is nice to see fresh ideas.

Re: How I Ate No Food for 30 Days

#66

Post by moocowduckquack »

tzakrajs wrote: post #35
mikeyouse wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was literally mold on a month-old product. How is it disingenuous to say there are rats and mold?

Because the mold occurred when the packaging was compromised -- this is not related to the conditions of the manufacturing.

It might be related to the rat.

Re: How I Ate No Food for 30 Days

#67

Post by mathattack »

Seems like Soylent is taking advantage if the entire industry loophole called supplements. If the loophole didn't exist, this type of entrepreneurship wouldn't.

Food companies are also doing real experiments. I don't see tasteless goop shakes disrupting the market any more than sport shakes.

EDIT: I stand corrected on the first paragraph. I still believe the 2nd to be true.

Re: How I Ate No Food for 30 Days

#68

Post by Pxtl »

> “You’re not going to feed a booming population with organic farms,” Rob says.

This is a popular misconception. While organic farming requires far more labour than conventional farming and the yields are lower for the same land, it's not actually that much lower. We're talking about a 5-30% drop in yield. Not great, but not "OMG mass worldwide starvation" change. And that's while being vastly more efficient with fresh water.

Think about your average 3rd-world country and ask yourself what's in short supply - land, manpower, or fresh water?

Re: How I Ate No Food for 30 Days

#69

Post by yuvadam »

Soylent might, technically, work. It might be safe and healthy, it definitely looks simple and allows you to forget anything related to grocery shopping, cooking and cleaning up afterwards.

But thinking about the prospect of the future makes me sick to my stomach. Soylent paints a disgustingly frightening dystopia where humans are fed 100% "correct" food to allow them to continue being cogs in the business machine, not stop for lunch during the day in the office, and be able to pull those extra longs evenings and nights to get more work done. Not to mention the vanishing social and human aspects of eating, together with friends and family.

Rob Reinhardt's assertions that organic cultivation of vegetables, fruits and legumes does not scale are downright FALSE, and only serve the Soylent marketing machine.

Soylent is doing nothing more than accommodating to the needs of humanoids who continue the endless pursuit of some vague promise of capitalist fulfillment (work hard, be rich, be happy), ignoring the fact that the direct opposite of such a lifestyle leads to a much more healthier, happier life which remains in touch with our basic, primal human existence.

Re: How I Ate No Food for 30 Days

#70

Post by rjd »

phaed wrote: post #31

Meh. Sensationalist piece. I know Vice and the shenanigans they use to get headlines. I trust none of it.

My initial thought was " Don't most people that go on weight loss diets shake do this anyway?" ... followed by "whats actually different about this product and existing food replacement shake diets?"
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