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Soylent on the latest Vice piece

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Re: Soylent on the latest Vice piece

#181

Post by timr »

adventureartist wrote: post #140
timr wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dude, say what you will about PandoDaily, but it is not OK to have rats running around in a food prep facility. The health department in SF will shut down restaurants for less.

I hope you realize there are more rats in more restaurants and food factories than you think, and that health departments nationally, while quick to cite, fine, and demand changes to your pest control, really understand that rodent problems happen, and don't shut you down for a rat. Rat infestation... yes.

In San Francisco, vermin is considered a "major violation", and requires immediate shutdown:

http://www.sfdph.org/dph/EH/Food/score/Violation.asp

Re: Soylent on the latest Vice piece

#182

Post by toomuchtodo »

MarcusVorenus wrote: post #162
djur wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think it is "trivial" to make a bland substance taste good without substantially changing the nutritional makeup of that substance, there are a lot of diet food companies who would like to have a chat with you and make you fabulously rich. Jamba Juice would like to know the secret, too. Most things that innately taste good -- stuff that you could drop in a blender and drink and it'd still be agreeable -- are f…

I guess I should have said it would be trivial to make it tastier for my own non-demanding taste buds. I could just add a few drops of stevia and I'd be good to go, but I see how it could be a challenge to make something that pleases most people. "Fatty" is not a synonym for unhealthy by the way. A lot of people consider high fat/low carb diets to be healthier than the reverse.

OP here. I'm currently on the keto diet; fat, in moderation, fat is definitely not unhealthy.

The problem is, McDonalds meals are not healthy, full stop:

Mcdonald's - Big Mac Meal With Fries and Coke With No Onions

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/food/calories/mcdonalds-big-mac-...

1130 Calories, and 67 grams of sugar. Call me when McDonalds modifies their meals to consist primarily of protein/fat calories.

Re: Soylent on the latest Vice piece

#183

Post by sneak »

mdisraeli wrote: post #159
sneak wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why doesn't Ensure have a good webpage showing us these options and educating us on how to choose? There's more to "product" than what's in the bag.

Because pharmaceutical/clinical nutritional sales have very little at all to do with websites! In our tech focused, Business to consumer / mass business market, it is easy to forget about hands-on sales. These products, remember, have lots of legislation around them, very strict instructions on when they are appropriate to be used, training is required in order to really use many of them properly, and so on. That ten…

Because a million bucks in nerdy preorders without any marketing to speak of suggests that there's a large underserved market.

Re: Soylent on the latest Vice piece

#184

Post by yetanotherphd »

mcphilip wrote: post #143
tptacek wrote: post #2

Wow. Exactly the right response. I would never have paid any attention to Soylent's agreement with a large HACCP-certified manufacturer before, but Vice's story actually made that relevant to me. They might actually pick up customers from this shitstorm. Argh! But, well played.

It's hard to imagine the type of person that would be on the fence about Soylent that would be ok with it after reading this article. Hopefully the "it was beta" excuse for producing Soylent in an unhealthy environment won't fly outside of SV culture. If anything, it should bring up serious doubts about the integrity of a team that, when faced with overwhelming demand and flush with investor cash, stoop to a level of…

My guess is you are also inherently troubled by what soylent is in itself, regardless of how it is made.

On the one hand I'm deeply suspicious of replacing food with something that is in a very approximate sense "equivalent". But he does make an excellent point that making healthy "food" convenient could prove to be a great boost to public health.

Re: Soylent on the latest Vice piece

#185

Post by unclebucknasty »

enraged_camel wrote: post #87
md224 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm glad to see so many people disagree with me. It means I'm on the right track. Does anyone else find this "first they ignore you" style of belief-reinforcement to be vaguely troubling? Don't get me wrong, you shouldn't just believe your critics without further inquiry, but the presence of critics shouldn't be used as supporting evidence in and of itself . You risk creating a kind of insular belief system where a…

It's a form of self-delusion whereby you start from a place of supreme self-assurance and the existence of critics only serves to further your confidence. I mean, make no mistake: the parent not only has no idea what he's talking about, his thinking also suffers from multiple logical fallacies. Let's go through a few of them. 1. Eating together civilizes people. It's emotionally and socially edifying. Sure. Who said…

>Who said you need to consume your Soylent all by yourself?

Well, no one. But, you know, if you're kind of in a "I want the convenience of eating my food from a pre-mixed sack" mode, it's not illogical that you may be less social with your mealtimes. "Hey, bring your sack over to my place and we'll gulp them down in 5 minutes together!"

>It's kind of like aging: because it kinda just happens, we have accepted it as a normal thing. But that doesn't mean it is normal

I am trying to think of something that "kinda just happens" 100% of the time with no effort, but that's not normal. Isn't that the definition of normal?

Re: Soylent on the latest Vice piece

#186

Post by onezeno »

rdl wrote: post #120
hawkharris wrote: post #84

Many startups put the word "utilize" in their press releases to sound fancier and more official: "This...prompted us to utilize more robust packaging." You can always say "use" instead of "utilize" to avoid buzzwords and sound more conversational. In fact, there are only a few specific cases (mostly in science writing) where "utilize" is necessary: http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/use-versu...

This is also incredibly common among company/field grade military officers trying to appear "educated". I use "use" when something is put to its intended or designed use; I use a shirt by wearing it. I utilize a shirt by wrapping it around my arm, as a pressure dressing, to stop bleeding.

I was in enlisted Air Force and the term is annoyingly over utilized there as well.

Re: Soylent on the latest Vice piece

#187

Post by mixmastamyk »

TillE wrote: post #112
mixmastamyk wrote: post #58

Looking forward to a low-carb version, anything in the works?

For the same price (easily under $10/day), frozen vegetables and chopped meat. Just add spices and a bit of oil. Dump it all in a rice cooker if you're really pressed for time. Not as trivially portable as a bottle of soylent, but otherwise superior in every respect.

Yep, I already do that.

Re: Soylent on the latest Vice piece

#188

Post by johnpowell »

jebus989 wrote: post #33

The fact a rat was spotted in a dusty old warehouse isn't really worth addressing. From what I've learned so far, the only factor letting this product down for me is the price. I'd guess $65/w is around what I'm spending on food now. Do we have any idea of their margin? Is the price expected to decrease once they get a decent production line up?

The rat does concern me. From the video they have a huge warehouse and 95% of it is for kickball and interviews. They mix they shit in a room Dexter wouldn't even kill in. Why not mix it in someones kitchen? It would be cleaner, mine is.

Re: Soylent on the latest Vice piece

#189

Post by Erwin »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #182
MarcusVorenus wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I should have said it would be trivial to make it tastier for my own non-demanding taste buds. I could just add a few drops of stevia and I'd be good to go, but I see how it could be a challenge to make something that pleases most people. "Fatty" is not a synonym for unhealthy by the way. A lot of people consider high fat/low carb diets to be healthier than the reverse.

OP here. I'm currently on the keto diet; fat, in moderation, fat is definitely not unhealthy. The problem is, McDonalds meals are not healthy, full stop: Mcdonald's - Big Mac Meal With Fries and Coke With No Onions http://www.myfitnesspal.com/food/calories/mcdonalds-big-mac-... 1130 Calories, and 67 grams of sugar. Call me when McDonalds modifies their meals to consist primarily of protein/fat calories.

Don't get fries. Don't get a drink with sugar added. Definitely don't get a milkshake or cookies.

The burger itself is fine. You wouldn't go to Subway for a nice sandwich and drink a liter of Coke afterwards and a bag of chips and complain about how unhealthy it is.

Here you can get some nice fresh crispy raw carrots instead of fries.

Re: Soylent on the latest Vice piece

#190

Post by rdl »

onezeno wrote: post #186
rdl wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is also incredibly common among company/field grade military officers trying to appear "educated". I use "use" when something is put to its intended or designed use; I use a shirt by wearing it. I utilize a shirt by wrapping it around my arm, as a pressure dressing, to stop bleeding.

I was in enlisted Air Force and the term is annoyingly over utilized there as well.

Otoh there are some awesome contributions to the English language like "waivered" and in general a lot of nouning and verbing.
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