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Soylent halts sales of its powder as customers keep getting sick

latimes.com

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

#311

Post by madaxe_again »

jonmc12 wrote: post #244
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…

I'm not sure the reports say its contamination. Its possible the powder is just incompatible with the digestive system of some people in same way as, say, leafy vegetables or carrageenan affect some people's digestion but not others. Soylent may be recalling because they don't want to be liable in the _possibility_ of contamination. However, over time, they may find they can make the best product that is compatible w…

From the description I'm willing to bet its polyphenols and some of their customers are sensitive - feed me two pots of green tea and I'll projectile vomit.

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

#312

Post by lazzlazzlazz »

greglindahl wrote: post #158
duaneb wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Look up Ensure's nutritional label. It's just sugary flavored water. It's calorie dense nothingness for people who have trouble keeping anything more complex down.

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

#314

Post by masklinn »

coleifer wrote: post #309
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…

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

Seems to be just the right thickness.

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

#316

Post by vidarh »

summarite wrote: post #223
Taek wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eating a meal takes a lot of time. You've got to prepare it, clean up afterwards, and take your mind off of whatever you are doing. Or you have to order it, and then still usually there's some cleanup and interaction. The liquid Soylent is about as disruptive as drinking water. That's really useful to me when I'm sucked into a programming challenge or research task. Sometimes I'll go 3-4 days doing nothing but work a…

If that's a regular schedule for you - Don't you feel you're missing out on living life?

I wondered if maybe I was missing out at some point, but after pushing myself to do other stuff, what I quickly realised was that I do what I do because it is what I enjoy.

It is not necessarily less "living life", just different choices.

Of course, that assumes you do it because you're working on things that excite you and interest you because you enjoy them.

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

#317

Post by samdung »

One of our rules in our gym is 'Don't trust anyone that tries to sell you any powder.'

I always wondered why my fellow Hacker News readers went ballistic against Theranos but remained coy about Soylent. I guess we are just as much 'sheeple' as anyone else.

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

#318

Post by reacweb »

briandear wrote: post #289
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…

AirBnB and Uber are as ignorant of the law as a medicinal marijuana dealer selling in Texas.

IMHO, Uber has accumulated enough years of practice of law circunvention and political lobbying to earn some expertise badges. Maybe they were ignorant, now they are not.

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

#319

Post by andy_ppp »

_23sd wrote: post #310

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 grindi…

The blending idea I've not seen any research to back up what you have said.

Surface area of absorbing fructose could logically affect your body (think Higher GI), as could enzymes in saliva. So while it's the same stuff you might well absorb it in worse ways for your body...

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

#320

Post by lmm »

dasil003 wrote: post #178
Meegul wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by unnatural? What is in Soylent that isn't natural ? Food in and of itself is just a mix of different chemicals - be they from plants, animals, or other sources. But at the end of the day, a molecule of glucose from a plant is identical to a molecule of glucose created synthetically.

This attitude is exactly bothered me about the CEO of Soylent when he was first doing PR about the product years ago. It's not a question of being "natural" per se, it's the question of trace elements and how our body metabolizes food. Food is not just a pile of molecules, it's a particular organization of molecules. How your body digests it matters. A bunch of milled and refined powders of macronutrients is simply n…

Given that a) our ancestors lived a very different lifestyle and b) we would like to live long past child-raising age, which is where evolutionary benefits to longevity would mostly end, a diet similar to our ancestors is by no means a safe option.
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