Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Soylent halts sales of its powder as customers keep getting sick

latimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 1001 posts

Re: Soylent halts sales of its powder as customers keep getting sick

#151

Post by blubers »

shas3 wrote: post #7

I suffered very unpleasant nausea after eating bars from a particular shipment of Soylent food bars. Soylent is now forever (or at least in the near future) associated for me with those bouts of nausea. That's the unfortunate thing about nausea, one episode related to a particular food can ruin that food forever for you.

The Garcia Effect[1]! Always found it interesting that even if you consciously absolutely know the food is fine, the aversion remains. And (like you mention) unlike typical "conditioning", a single occurrence can trigger the effect. Definitely does fade though, otherwise I suspect many fewer people would drink screwdrivers. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conditioned_taste_aversion

Re: Soylent halts sales of its powder as customers keep getting sick

#152

Post by joshschreuder »

yladiz wrote: post #4

> “Our tests all came back negative for food pathogens, toxins or outside contamination,” the company wrote. If that's true, then it could be part of the formulation that causes a small percentage of people to get sick. Maybe it's akin to how cilantro causes some people to have a very alkaline taste when they eat it.

Ah yes, the cilantro / coriander tastes like soap thing... completely ruins a whole bunch of delicious foods for me :(

Re: Soylent halts sales of its powder as customers keep getting sick

#153

Post by PeCaN »

LordHumungous wrote: post #130

I'm a big fan of Michael Pollan's manifesto: Eat food . Not too much. Mostly plants. The idea being that processed foods cannot hope to match the nutritional profile found in whole foods, particularly plants. This soylent stuff is about as processed as food comes, so I'm inclined to be very skeptical of it's healthfulness.

…you'd rather eat random shit out of the ground that has been found to not kill you, than to eat something based on studying humans and their nutritional needs?

I mean, I can't say I like soylent much but you're just stupid if that's the argument against it.

Re: Soylent halts sales of its powder as customers keep getting sick

#154

Post by LordHumungous »

logicallee wrote: post #122
rjurney wrote: post #121

Soylent is a bad idea. Your body needs unidentified parts of plants that make you live a decade or more longer if you eat them every day, called phytonutrients. You're just killing yourself by eating shit, may as well eat fast food it has as many nutrients. Fuck soylent, eat a mcburger. Tastes better, same effect.

Could you kindly expand on your a comment a bit to be more substantive, especially near the end (write more clearly the point you are making) and then I would like to respond to the points you raised. Realize you feel strongly about it. :)

Is there a no swearing rule on HN?

Re: Soylent halts sales of its powder as customers keep getting sick

#155

Post by carrja99 »

warfangle wrote: post #140
djsumdog wrote: post #11

I'm really amazed by all the supporters on here. When I first heard about Soylent, I thought it was a terrible terrible idea. I mean, there's so much to food. It's not just eating it, it's all the flavours and ingredients and cooking with friends and loved ones and parties and such. I'm guessing most people on here use it as a supplement + regular food, but when I saw it originally, it seemed like it was intended to…

I'm still curious why the soylent thing has hit it off in the HN crowd and not, say, Slimfast. Which is basically the same thing but with more production hardening. Maybe fragile masculinity? IDK.

Ha this is on my mind every single time someone brings up Soylent. Seriously, it's a joke. Some kid makes a knock off slimfast meal supplement and HN is all "Goddamn genius is disrupting meals. This is the future man!"

This would make a great Black Mirror episode.

Re: Soylent halts sales of its powder as customers keep getting sick

#156

Post by 1457389 »

logicallee wrote: post #122
rjurney wrote: post #121

Soylent is a bad idea. Your body needs unidentified parts of plants that make you live a decade or more longer if you eat them every day, called phytonutrients. You're just killing yourself by eating shit, may as well eat fast food it has as many nutrients. Fuck soylent, eat a mcburger. Tastes better, same effect.

Could you kindly expand on your a comment a bit to be more substantive, especially near the end (write more clearly the point you are making) and then I would like to respond to the points you raised. Realize you feel strongly about it. :)

You need to take the stick out of your ass. Give me a break I thought this was "hacker" news. You can't respond to comments unless they adhere to some kind of courtesy code?

Re: Soylent halts sales of its powder as customers keep getting sick

#157

Post by toasterlovin »

cko wrote: post #132
greatjones wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but I'll never understand that feeling of "ugh, I need to eat, guess I'll have a Soylent". It sounds like you have either more free time or a more a steady work schedule then their target user.

I have all the free time in the world and I have that "ugh do I really need to eat again?" I find it hard to hit 2500 calories daily to not lose weight.

Honestly, what the other poster said: whole milk.

2400 calories per gallon, well balanced between protein, fat, and carbs (you might say that it is ideally formulated to feed large mammals :P). The best part is that it is readily available every where and super cheap (< $3 per gallon).

Re: Soylent halts sales of its powder as customers keep getting sick

#158

Post by greglindahl »

duaneb wrote: post #110
djsumdog wrote: post #11

I'm really amazed by all the supporters on here. When I first heard about Soylent, I thought it was a terrible terrible idea. I mean, there's so much to food. It's not just eating it, it's all the flavours and ingredients and cooking with friends and loved ones and parties and such. I'm guessing most people on here use it as a supplement + regular food, but when I saw it originally, it seemed like it was intended to…

I'm anorexic. This shit is amazing.

There are a lot of products, like Ensure, which have a much longer researched track record than Soylent. It's more than sticking a few things into a powder.

Re: Soylent halts sales of its powder as customers keep getting sick

#159

Post by UnoriginalGuy »

logicallee wrote: post #122
rjurney wrote: post #121

Soylent is a bad idea. Your body needs unidentified parts of plants that make you live a decade or more longer if you eat them every day, called phytonutrients. You're just killing yourself by eating shit, may as well eat fast food it has as many nutrients. Fuck soylent, eat a mcburger. Tastes better, same effect.

Could you kindly expand on your a comment a bit to be more substantive, especially near the end (write more clearly the point you are making) and then I would like to respond to the points you raised. Realize you feel strongly about it. :)

I'm not them; HN's comment policies on civil discourse are largely about what can say (and call) other users, that doesn't apply to the person above as they're top of their own thread (i.e. it impossible for them to be targeting another user of HN). Swearing in and of itself isn't against the site's policies.

Only thing in the comment policy you could even call up is "gratuitous negativity" but I'd argue their comment provides enough value (e.g. phytonutrients) to just call it negative rather than gratuitously negative.

I'd recommend you yourself review the policy before calling out others: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Soylent halts sales of its powder as customers keep getting sick

#160

Post by aaron-lebo »

warfangle wrote: post #140
djsumdog wrote: post #11

I'm really amazed by all the supporters on here. When I first heard about Soylent, I thought it was a terrible terrible idea. I mean, there's so much to food. It's not just eating it, it's all the flavours and ingredients and cooking with friends and loved ones and parties and such. I'm guessing most people on here use it as a supplement + regular food, but when I saw it originally, it seemed like it was intended to…

I'm still curious why the soylent thing has hit it off in the HN crowd and not, say, Slimfast. Which is basically the same thing but with more production hardening. Maybe fragile masculinity? IDK.

I wouldn't attribute it to some kind of nefarious gender issue.

It's as simple as marketing, which does matter. Slimfast in it's name implies a diet drink, not food replacement. Most people would never even consider them in the same arena and that's due to simple marketing by the very companies that produce them.

Post reply on HN