Soylent halts sales of its powder as customers keep getting sick • Hacker News Board

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

#301

Post by benlambert » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 7:14 AM UTC

mulletbum wrote: post #39

beedogs wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He just told you what he lived through, and you're asking for a citation? Never change, HN.

"Not putting solid food into your system for long periods of time will destroy your ability to digest solid food when you start refeeding" That is an unscientific statement based on no citation. Top it off, I have personally lived of Soylent for a year. I go out to eat only a couple times a month and I do not die from horrendous suffering everytime. In fact, nothing changes.

"Your statement is unscientific because anecdotally I've had no problems with it"

Where's your citation backing up your suggestion that it's safe?

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

#302

Post by greatjones » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 7:16 AM UTC

tluyben2 wrote: post #253

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.

Somehow this seems like an American thing or maybe people in other places make less of a spectacle of it? Always having too little time, always working and being proud to plan every minute of every day (recently Marissa Mayer and Bill Gates and someone else from the US said in interviews they have every minute of every day planned; sounds like pure hell but he) seems very American. This Soylent thing fits in there. W…

> Somehow this seems like an American thing or maybe people in other places make less of a spectacle of it?

I think there is more acceptance in certain cultures, for example, to skip lunch because it's a busy day. Having worked globally and in multiple industries, I don't believe it's an American only thing although probably more common there. I see it as more of an industry thing, and each industry seems to have it's own use case for a product like Soylent. i.e. the programmer 'in the zone' and not wanting to stop for dinner or the investment banker running on a few hours of sleep due to an upcoming pitch.

> Always having too little time, always working and being proud to plan every minute of every day

I'm not sure how that was implied, but that does not represent the typical American workforce in my view.

> entrepreneurs in Asia/Aus/EU they seem to be always eating elaborately

I would be surprised to hear these types of individuals don't deal with skipped meals or lack of time based on what's going on in there life/work like their counterparts in other countries do.

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

#303

Post by Evgeny » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 7:17 AM UTC

nsxwolf wrote: post #222

ng12 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Soylent is for meals you don't care about but need This is the problem. That concept is completely foreign to a lot of people (me included). The combination of my body's needs and the way I was raised lead me to view each meal as an opportunity to be enjoyed, never a chore. Something I observed in the weightlifting community: there are people who need to worry about dieting (cutting) and people who worry about eati…

How can you eat 5,000 kcal a day and not be a huge fat pig? How many miles a day do you need to run to burn that off? I used to be a normal weight, but I had to eat 1,200 kcals and run 4 miles a day.

How can you eat 5,000 kcal a day and not be a huge fat pig? How many miles a day do you need to run to burn that off?

On the days when I lift weights I eat close to 5K calories, sometimes even a little more, depending on the commute. All of my daily commute is by bike, including taking my kid to and from the kindergarten, and later to some extra activities (welcome to Denmark), which can be anywhere between 20 and 35 km total for the day.

I'm 178 cm and weigh around 79 kg.

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

#304

Post by nemo44x » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 7:19 AM UTC

isaacn wrote: post #84

nemo44x wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this why we invented the "sandwich"?

+1. I could eat a sandwich every day for every meal. I don't, but I certainly could.

A focus on fat in the morning, then vinegar in the afternoon and finally umami in the evening would serve me well. All between 2 pieces of appropriate bread.

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

#305

Post by adamlett » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 7:19 AM UTC

elcct wrote: post #296

slg wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the biggest flaws of the tech industry is the belief that being a tech expert is enough to disrupt other industries in which they don't have any expertise. Sometimes they get lucky and it works despite something like Uber's or Airbnb's total ignorance of the law. Sometimes it fails like with numerous cryptocurrency companies relearning why the finance industry has so many dang regulations. Seems like Soylent i…

There really must be a law for everything? That's a slave mentality right there.

Not quite. It's not that there must be a law for everything, it's that there are laws for many things, and often for good reasons. It's not that we always need to regulate new things because new means risky. It's that many new things are actually old things in new guises, and we already know (or should know) what to be concerned about.

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

#306

Post by kaishiro » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 7:20 AM UTC

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 equally amazed how every Soylent article that passes through HN has people that seem to be genuinely offended that some people enjoy Soylent/the idea of Soylent and don't want their lives to revolve around "the beauty of food and social blah blah". It's wild.

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

#307

Post by Quarrelsome » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 7:23 AM UTC

elcct wrote: post #296

slg wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the biggest flaws of the tech industry is the belief that being a tech expert is enough to disrupt other industries in which they don't have any expertise. Sometimes they get lucky and it works despite something like Uber's or Airbnb's total ignorance of the law. Sometimes it fails like with numerous cryptocurrency companies relearning why the finance industry has so many dang regulations. Seems like Soylent i…

There really must be a law for everything? That's a slave mentality right there.

no, law is social contract between peers, not slave=>master.

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

#308

Post by briandear » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 7:23 AM UTC

summarite wrote: post #220

Matachines wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time Soylent is on HN people say this. Why don't people understand? It's so simple: Soylent is for meals you don't care about but need. It's not a) the ONLY food you can eat or b) supposed to replace all meals. I order a box of Soylent bottles every few weeks—they come in handy while working or for a quick breakfast or if I have little time and am hungry. I also cook meals with my girlfriend a few times a week…

That's probably just me but a lifestyle where you have no time to take a break (or meet friends/colleagues) and eat doesn't sound very healthy and not very desirable either. I understand the desire to optimise eating times and life overall, and sometimes there's a lot of work that seems important, but at the point where you drink a supplement rather than eat it seems there's no life left in what should be more than j…

Why is this getting downvoted? It is incredibly sad when meals need 'replacing.' I understand once in awhile, but it seems like people are habitually making meal replacement a viable lifestyle choice.

It IS sad, downvotes or not.

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

#309

Post by coleifer » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 7:28 AM UTC

slg wrote: post #278

Animats wrote: post #196

Soylent made such a big deal of being a "tech company", and boasted about their overdesigned web infrastructure for a business that did two transactions a minute. What they didn't have is advanced technology on the production side. They write about "sending samples out" to external labs. It's not like they had an automated lab constantly sampling their production line and posting the results to the web. There are pro…

One of the biggest flaws of the tech industry is the belief that being a tech expert is enough to disrupt other industries in which they don't have any expertise. Sometimes they get lucky and it works despite something like Uber's or Airbnb's total ignorance of the law. Sometimes it fails like with numerous cryptocurrency companies relearning why the finance industry has so many dang regulations. Seems like Soylent i…

You're laying the schadenfreude on a bit thick, don't you think?

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

#310

Post by _23sd » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 7:31 AM UTC

I guess one great thing about Soylent threads is bringing all the urban myths around nutrition out into the open. People in this thread believe everything from "people on liquid diets don't poop!" to "if you put some berries in a blender and drink it, you're getting entirely different nutrition from eating the berries raw!" That second one is a bit of a strawman, but it shows how absurd claims that crushing or grinding foods ruins the nutrition sound.

But the main one I want to call out is "Ensure is well-researched", which seems to have reached self-perpetuating status. Go ahead, type terms related to Ensure into PubMed or Google Scholar. I would cite a particular one if any of them turned up anything. The most prominent independent examination of Ensure's nutritional value (that I've found) came when Abbott was forced to settle with the FTC in the late 90s for falsely advertising Ensure as doctor-recommended and useful to drink with an already healthy diet.[0] If you're not interested in reading it, the FTC's main complaints were over false claims about doctor recommendations and the fact that Ensure's advertising compared a single can to a multivitamin.

[0] https://www.ftc.gov/sites/default/files/documents/cases/1997...