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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

#811

Post by computerphage »

arcadeparade wrote: post #697
eriknstr wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least he's been eating his own product almost exclusively when at home according to that blog post. This gave me a positive impression at the start of the blog post and I was agreeing with what he said initially, but then it went downhill. I would not want to get rid of my kitchen and I would absolutely never replace my food with Soylent, especially now that I've heard of all the people getting sick from it. Also,…

The prion disease rumours circulating on Twitter about Soylent are really disturbing.

Prion disease has a case-fatality rate of 100%. That's not an estimate or approximation and it's not rounded up. They are also untreatable.

There are only five well studied prion diseases (because of their rarity). Two are exclusively heritable: fatal-familial insomnia and Gerstmann–Sträussler–Scheinker syndrome. One, Kuru, is transmitted via cannibalism.

The incubation times are extremely long. Some estimates for Kuru go up to 20-50 years.

The most prevalent form of prion disease in humans is new variant Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (nvCJD) or Human Mad Cow which has a lag of about 10 years based on CDC data. It is transmitted by eating tainted beef products. Let me stress that this is extremely rare: there have been 3 confirmed cases in the United States.

It is extremely unlikely that Soylent is a vector for prion disease, especially since it's been vegan since version 1.2 and never contained beef as an ingredient. Even if it somehow contained tainted beef, given that it's been available for less than 3 years, it's extremely unlikely that any cases of nvCJD (of which there have only a few in the last decade) or any other cases of prion disease were caused by Soylent.

There is good reason to question the safety of Soylent given its record but "prion disease rumors circulating on Twitter" are utterly ridiculous.

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

#812

Post by paavokoya »

ddeck wrote: post #720
delecti wrote: post #564

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That gizmodo article's only "source" of nutritionists is from this article [1] (another article on the same site). That article's only source of nutritionists is someone who just called them up before Soylent was even on the market, and while none of those nutritionists had examined the product. Many cats and dogs will eat the same food source almost exclusively for most of their lives without any ill effect. Obvious…

In addition, I'd also point out that the term "nutritionist" doesn't even mean anything is most jurisdictions, as highlighted by the following anecdote: "A demonstration of the ease in which it is possible to become an accredited nutritionist can be seen in Dr Ben Goldacre's successful application to have his dead cat Hettie accredited as a certified professional member of the American Association of Nutritional Cons…

   I'd also point out that the term "nutritionist" doesn't even mean anything is most jurisdictions
As someone who is living with someone becoming an accredited "Nutritionist" I can assure you this is not the case. There is an extreme amount of scientific research and cellular biology that is studied. This may not be the case for all nutritionist courses, but to dismiss an entire field because of one case is extremely ignorant.

BUT.. this is Hacker News where coders go to confirm each other's biases about the world at large and remind each other how much knowledge you can have by sitting behind your work desk.

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

#813

Post by sliverstorm »

espadrine wrote: post #470
fintechie wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you lose allicin you lose some nice properties (antimicrobial, antiinflammatory, etc): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10594976

Aren't you severely grinding it with your teeth, saliva, and gastric acids anyway? (Honestly asking, I have no idea.)

Right, but teeth are natural and a mortar and pestle are not /s

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

#814

Post by sbov »

lifebeyondfife wrote: post #331
andy_ppp wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Do you tend to swallow raspberries whole, or chew them first?

From my experience, when people vomit after eating it comes up pretty recognizable.

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

#815

Post by computerphage »

arcadeparade wrote: post #737
lexhaynes wrote: post #711

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate on these rumors?

Read on Twitter a while ago about a guy who ate almost nothing but Soylent for two months and started getting joint pain and trembling, and was falling over a lot. Then there was a comment by someone on Reddit who started having seizures and anxiety and blamed Soylent. Seems crazy that people are just eating nothing but this stuff for months on end and not thinking about the consequences.

It's outrageously unlikely that either of those people had a prion disease. See my reply to your previous comment for details. The median duration of CJD (which is the most similar to nvCJD and the best proxy for the statistic I could find easilty) is 4 months. That's duration of the disease before death. If the commenter had those symptoms because of prion disease, I'd estimate a greater than 50% chance he'll be dead by February. Again, it's extremely unlikely that he had prion disease.

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

#816

Post by uryga »

abm2205 wrote: post #731
uryga wrote: post #714

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not trying to make a fuss out of it, but i feel like using "brah" - assuming the users gender - is something we should try to avoid. unless you know the poster, in that case disregard this.

not trying to make a fuss out of it, but i feel like assuming the users use of "brah" is gendered is something we should try to avoid. unless you know the poster, in that case disregard this.

i feel honored that this was the first comment you decided to write on HN. love seeing quality discussion like this, keep em coming!

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

#817

Post by nickbauman »

welanes wrote: post #554
n72 wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The founder of Soylent clearly believes he's an expert in many, many fields: http://robrhinehart.com/?p=1331 BTW, anyone know a good word for this attitude? I wouldn't call it hybris, though it's closely related. It's a mix of arrogance, over confidence, ignorance, plus more and very prevalent in SV.

> BTW, anyone know a good word for this attitude? Got you, brah - Dilettantism: a person having a superficial interest in an art or field of knowledge without investing the usually required effort. See also: dabbler .

I was going to say "amateurish" but I think your "dilettantism" is spot-on.

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

#818

Post by enraged_camel »

dasil003 wrote: post #750
enraged_camel wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>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 not the same as anything we've evolved to eat over the last X million years. How different is it? That's hard to say,…

This is science-worship attitude that is prevalent among a certain type of personality, usually a person who prizes their own logical thinking and objectivity, and thus more easily misses their own biases. Essentially you're using "natural" as a dog whistle that says my argument is wrong and the Soylent CEO is right. But the only reason you feel that way is because he fits the sort of engineer-type logical thinker wh…

>>I say nutritional science is still in the dark ages and therefore we don't have evidence to conclude a pile of molecules is the same as traditional food

What you say is wrong, though. We have a pretty good understanding of how food works and what our bodies need. How do you think hospitals feed comatose patients? They do it either via a feeding tube (liquid food), or through an IV (fluids containing glucose, salts, amino acids, lipids and micronutrients).

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

#820

Post by aianus »

untog wrote: post #16
kartD wrote: post #5

Still waiting for the facts, but I'm pleasantly surprised and impressed by Soylent's response. I think they're doing the right thing.

Why would you be pleasantly surprised? They have a product that's making people sick - telling you not to eat it is literally the bare minimum they could do. They haven't even issued a recall, given refunds...

> given refunds

They'll give you a refund for basically any reason. Just email them and say "I don't like it" and they'll give you a refund. You don't even have to ship it back.

That's always been the refund policy, by the way, it's not related to this incident.

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