9 ms·

Soylent Shipping Delay Root Cause Analysis

73 points by dankohn1 11y ago

Confiks 11y ago
I hope that more companies come to understand that a problem analysis like this one inspires customer confidence instead of bringing failure to light, reducing confidence.
nilkn 11y ago
On a side note, I was one of the early recipients of Soylent 2.0, and I was incredibly impressed with the product. As many have noted, the taste is similar to milk left in a bowl of cereal. It errs on the enjoyable side of neutral, unlike powdered Soylent 1.5, which fell on the unenjoyable side of neutral. The texture is also completely smooth -- the powdered versions were always grainy to me no matter how much I tried shaking. I have a personal rule of never drinking Soylent more than once in a day and never two days in a row. But I consider it a worthwhile, affordable, and extremely convenient addition to my diet.
- rubicon33 11y ago
  Can I ask - Why do you have a personal rule of never drinking Soylent more than once in a day, and never two days in a row?
  - nilkn 11y ago
    A few reasons: (1) I figure that at best Soylent has the nutrients that we know we need, but not the ones that we don't know we need. Over-reliance on Soylent might mean missing out on these nutrients, even if the health effects of doing so are very delayed. (2) I've read reports on how the simple act of chewing food has an effect on digestion and other processes. (3) Pure Soylent may not cultivate gut flora in the same way as normal solid diets do. (4) I enjoy cooking and don't want those skills to atrophy because it's so much easier to just grab a bottle of Soylent. (5) The rule also encourages me to go out with friends or invite people over more. It's not a hard and fast rule -- it's just something I generally try to abide by, both as a risk-minimizing mechanism and as a general effort to force me to enrich my life more.
    - baddox 11y ago
      > I figure that at best Soylent has the nutrients that we know we need, but not the ones that we don't know we need. Over-reliance on Soylent might mean missing out on these nutrients, even if the health effects of doing so are very delayed. Why is it any more likely that your traditional diet provides the nutrients that we don't know we need?
      - chillwaves 11y ago
        Because the traditional diet is closer to what we have eaten as a species for tens of thousands of years.
        baddox 11y ago
        We haven't known much about nutrition for most of the last ten thousand years, and I don't think we know all that much even now. Malnutrition used to be (and still is, in many places) the norm.
        fernly 11y ago
        What "traditional diet"? The diet that supported hunter-gatherers was very different from that of early agriculturalists, which was different again from urban populations pre-refrigeration and pre-transport (refrigeration + railroads + ships changed _everything_ about food availability), then post-WWII eating has been steadily changing every decade in an ongoing revolution of food packaging and branding, and in the steady globalization of cuisines. There is no "traditional diet". And to say, without evidence, that there has to be something "better" about the typical person's random food choices than a manufactured product like Soylent is a blatant example of the Naturalistic fallacy.
      - yazaddaruvala 11y ago
        Note: I'm not the parent but like them I like, and consume Soylent and I agree that once a day is probably a good rule of thumb. I'll try and explain the parent's perspective in my words. Soylent is deterministic. In-fact Soylent's goal is to be deterministic and as such will only become more deterministic as time progresses. Any two Soylent's will be the same. Traditional food on the other hand, especially through variety, is by its nature non-deterministic. Example: You happen to be a patron of an icecream parlor. Today you buy/eat mango icecream, unknown to the parlor the mangoes happened to be from the east coast of Mexico. Tomorrow you buy/eat "the same" mango icecream, but these mangoes happened to be sourced from the west coast of Mexico. Was it the same? This example, doesn't even account for the variety involved with "traditional food", which only increases the stochastic nature of its nutritional properties. Having defined that (hopefully we agree on the axioms), we can continue on to discuss the nature of problems where "we don't know [what] we need". Until we know what we need, the optimal strategy to satisfy an unknown goal is through non-determinism (again, hopefully we agree). Based on the above: I'll try to make a more succinct argument: Given that Soylent contains everything we know we need. And we know we don't know everything we need. Then only consuming Soylent guarantees we do not satisfy all of our needs. We must then consume things we do not know, to increase the probability of satisfying all our needs. P.S. I am all for scientific experiments to better determine the unknowns and turn them into knowns. However, as long as there are any unknowns, the above points still hold.
- rblatz 11y ago
  My question is why you chose Soylent over more tried and trued meal replacements like Ensure?
  - saturdaysaint 11y ago
    I thought was an interesting question, so I Googled, and there are actually some pretty convincing replies on Soylent's forums - http://discourse.soylent.com/t/comparing-soylent-to-existing-nutritional-products/431 http://discourse.soylent.com/t/comparing-soylent-to-existing...
    - rblatz 11y ago
      Thanks, I'll check it out.
  - dsp1234 11y ago
    Compare the Ensure[0] nutrition facts with Soylent 2.0[1]. Note specifically that 1 Ensure is 220 calories vs Soylent's 400, so you'll need to basically double everything on the Ensure's nutrition facts page. I don't take either Ensure or Soylent (and I'm not sure that USDA recommendations for a 2k calorie diet are that good). It appears that Ensure tries to match a 100% USDA recommendation for caloric profile (at 9 servings per day fat/carbohydrates almost add up to 100%), while providing way over the recommendations on vitamin/minerals (~225% for most, close to 500% for a couple). On the flip side, Soylent appears to try to hit the vitamins/minerals 100%, while having a high fat, low carbohydrate profile (175% fat, 60% carbohydrates). On the whole, it looks like they are not really replacements for each other, other than in the broad category of "meal replacements" since the caloric profile, and serving sizes are so far away from each other. Personally, I'd go with the high fat, low carbohydrate version since I've found that those types of meals (in general, not specifically for "meal replacements") tend to keep me more satiated for longer periods of time. [0] - https://ensure.com/nutrition-products/ensure-original#vanilla https://ensure.com/nutrition-products/ensure-original#vanill... [1] - http://files.soylent.com/pdf/soylent-nutrition-facts-2-0-en.pdf http://files.soylent.com/pdf/soylent-nutrition-facts-2-0-en....
  - iopq 11y ago
mrbig4545 11y ago
I still can't believe Soylent is a thing. What is wrong with food? People who want this make no sense to me. None at all.
- SippinLean 11y ago
  Good question. I use Soylent as a meal replacement once a day. It's easier than cooking when I'm very busy during the day, very cheap, and I like knowing I'm getting some essential vitamins.
  - rblatz 11y ago
    Or you could just buy Ensure, which has no trouble shipping and is available at nearly every grocery store and pharmacy. I don't get Soylent's appeal, and I don't understand what unmet needs in the market it is meeting. My best guess, people that want to feel like they are "hacking" eating. Which is really just different marketing for a meal replacement shake.
    - tunesmith 11y ago
      Soylent is not the same as Ensure - if you google soylent vs ensure, you'll see a lot of differences.
    - zacwest 11y ago
      So your argument against it is, "somebody else already made something similar so why bother"?
      - rblatz 11y ago
        No, my argument is I don't understand all the excitement here at HN for Soylent. It doesn't seem novel or exciting, but a lot of people act like its the best thing ever invented. I then attempted to guess at the reason, which is that it's marketed towards techies and hackers in the startup scene, which ensure isn't. Other replies have given me additional information which I'm going to go over. Your's was setting up a straw man argument.
jimrandomh 11y ago
Summary: Bottles on the production line sometimes got jostled making them splash Soylent onto the exterior, resulting in mold on the outside of the package. They halted shipping and expect to resume on the 8th.
tibbon 11y ago
Soylent seems to be under more scrutiny than any other food product I have ever seen. And at the same time, they are being more transparent, and showing more responsibility than any other food company I've seen. We've all gotten new food at some point that had gone bad; and yet I assume most of those companies just kinda shrug it off as long as it's below a certain threshold.
- emmab 11y ago
  Most food products you do not eat as regularly so it is much less dangerous if there is a problem with them.
  - cblock811 11y ago
    Except meat and vegetables. How many contaminations have happened with Salmonella or E. Colli that were more dangerous, and so wide spread that product recalls were required. I'm also not sure how many people are actually consuming Soylent multiple times a day, but I would love to know the ratio of one-off orders to subscriptions. Might be interesting.
    - Asbostos 11y ago
      You don't eat meat and veges from the same farm and same processing plant every day. There's a wide variety. Also, food poisoning is always a risk when eating but it's not a life-shortening or baby-deforming kind of risk like, say mercury or lead overdose can be. Farmed products can have these contaminants but not usually consistently in every meal just because they're from varied sources.
bostonpete 11y ago
> we conducted physical and visual inspections, along with microbial tests, of 2,000 bottles in our distribution center and found only two bottles with the same defect Wouldn't this put them well above the industry standard rate of 1 in 10,000 bottles quoted earlier in the article?
eachro 11y ago
Why is the powder still v1.5 and not 2.0 yet?
- nickff 11y ago
  They are entirely different products, with different ingredient lists. From what I understand, 2.0 is not able to be powdered, and 1.5 is not able to be stored as a liquid for long.

73 points by dankohn1 11y ago

I hope that more companies come to understand that a problem analysis like this one inspires customer confidence instead of bringing failure to light, reducing confidence.

nilkn 11y ago

On a side note, I was one of the early recipients of Soylent 2.0, and I was incredibly impressed with the product. As many have noted, the taste is similar to milk left in a bowl of cereal. It errs on the enjoyable side of neutral, unlike powdered Soylent 1.5, which fell on the unenjoyable side of neutral. The texture is also completely smooth -- the powdered versions were always grainy to me no matter how much I tried shaking. I have a personal rule of never drinking Soylent more than once in a day and never two days in a row. But I consider it a worthwhile, affordable, and extremely convenient addition to my diet.

rubicon33 11y ago
Can I ask - Why do you have a personal rule of never drinking Soylent more than once in a day, and never two days in a row?
- nilkn 11y ago
  A few reasons: (1) I figure that at best Soylent has the nutrients that we know we need, but not the ones that we don't know we need. Over-reliance on Soylent might mean missing out on these nutrients, even if the health effects of doing so are very delayed. (2) I've read reports on how the simple act of chewing food has an effect on digestion and other processes. (3) Pure Soylent may not cultivate gut flora in the same way as normal solid diets do. (4) I enjoy cooking and don't want those skills to atrophy because it's so much easier to just grab a bottle of Soylent. (5) The rule also encourages me to go out with friends or invite people over more. It's not a hard and fast rule -- it's just something I generally try to abide by, both as a risk-minimizing mechanism and as a general effort to force me to enrich my life more.
  - baddox 11y ago
    > I figure that at best Soylent has the nutrients that we know we need, but not the ones that we don't know we need. Over-reliance on Soylent might mean missing out on these nutrients, even if the health effects of doing so are very delayed. Why is it any more likely that your traditional diet provides the nutrients that we don't know we need?
    - chillwaves 11y ago
      Because the traditional diet is closer to what we have eaten as a species for tens of thousands of years.
      - baddox 11y ago
        We haven't known much about nutrition for most of the last ten thousand years, and I don't think we know all that much even now. Malnutrition used to be (and still is, in many places) the norm.
      - fernly 11y ago
        What "traditional diet"? The diet that supported hunter-gatherers was very different from that of early agriculturalists, which was different again from urban populations pre-refrigeration and pre-transport (refrigeration + railroads + ships changed _everything_ about food availability), then post-WWII eating has been steadily changing every decade in an ongoing revolution of food packaging and branding, and in the steady globalization of cuisines. There is no "traditional diet". And to say, without evidence, that there has to be something "better" about the typical person's random food choices than a manufactured product like Soylent is a blatant example of the Naturalistic fallacy.
    - yazaddaruvala 11y ago
      Note: I'm not the parent but like them I like, and consume Soylent and I agree that once a day is probably a good rule of thumb. I'll try and explain the parent's perspective in my words. Soylent is deterministic. In-fact Soylent's goal is to be deterministic and as such will only become more deterministic as time progresses. Any two Soylent's will be the same. Traditional food on the other hand, especially through variety, is by its nature non-deterministic. Example: You happen to be a patron of an icecream parlor. Today you buy/eat mango icecream, unknown to the parlor the mangoes happened to be from the east coast of Mexico. Tomorrow you buy/eat "the same" mango icecream, but these mangoes happened to be sourced from the west coast of Mexico. Was it the same? This example, doesn't even account for the variety involved with "traditional food", which only increases the stochastic nature of its nutritional properties. Having defined that (hopefully we agree on the axioms), we can continue on to discuss the nature of problems where "we don't know [what] we need". Until we know what we need, the optimal strategy to satisfy an unknown goal is through non-determinism (again, hopefully we agree). Based on the above: I'll try to make a more succinct argument: Given that Soylent contains everything we know we need. And we know we don't know everything we need. Then only consuming Soylent guarantees we do not satisfy all of our needs. We must then consume things we do not know, to increase the probability of satisfying all our needs. P.S. I am all for scientific experiments to better determine the unknowns and turn them into knowns. However, as long as there are any unknowns, the above points still hold.
rblatz 11y ago
My question is why you chose Soylent over more tried and trued meal replacements like Ensure?
- saturdaysaint 11y ago
  I thought was an interesting question, so I Googled, and there are actually some pretty convincing replies on Soylent's forums - http://discourse.soylent.com/t/comparing-soylent-to-existing-nutritional-products/431 http://discourse.soylent.com/t/comparing-soylent-to-existing...
  - rblatz 11y ago
    Thanks, I'll check it out.
- dsp1234 11y ago
  Compare the Ensure[0] nutrition facts with Soylent 2.0[1]. Note specifically that 1 Ensure is 220 calories vs Soylent's 400, so you'll need to basically double everything on the Ensure's nutrition facts page. I don't take either Ensure or Soylent (and I'm not sure that USDA recommendations for a 2k calorie diet are that good). It appears that Ensure tries to match a 100% USDA recommendation for caloric profile (at 9 servings per day fat/carbohydrates almost add up to 100%), while providing way over the recommendations on vitamin/minerals (~225% for most, close to 500% for a couple). On the flip side, Soylent appears to try to hit the vitamins/minerals 100%, while having a high fat, low carbohydrate profile (175% fat, 60% carbohydrates). On the whole, it looks like they are not really replacements for each other, other than in the broad category of "meal replacements" since the caloric profile, and serving sizes are so far away from each other. Personally, I'd go with the high fat, low carbohydrate version since I've found that those types of meals (in general, not specifically for "meal replacements") tend to keep me more satiated for longer periods of time. [0] - https://ensure.com/nutrition-products/ensure-original#vanilla https://ensure.com/nutrition-products/ensure-original#vanill... [1] - http://files.soylent.com/pdf/soylent-nutrition-facts-2-0-en.pdf http://files.soylent.com/pdf/soylent-nutrition-facts-2-0-en....
- iopq 11y ago

mrbig4545 11y ago

I still can't believe Soylent is a thing. What is wrong with food? People who want this make no sense to me. None at all.

SippinLean 11y ago
Good question. I use Soylent as a meal replacement once a day. It's easier than cooking when I'm very busy during the day, very cheap, and I like knowing I'm getting some essential vitamins.
- rblatz 11y ago
  Or you could just buy Ensure, which has no trouble shipping and is available at nearly every grocery store and pharmacy. I don't get Soylent's appeal, and I don't understand what unmet needs in the market it is meeting. My best guess, people that want to feel like they are "hacking" eating. Which is really just different marketing for a meal replacement shake.
  - tunesmith 11y ago
    Soylent is not the same as Ensure - if you google soylent vs ensure, you'll see a lot of differences.
  - zacwest 11y ago
    So your argument against it is, "somebody else already made something similar so why bother"?
    - rblatz 11y ago
      No, my argument is I don't understand all the excitement here at HN for Soylent. It doesn't seem novel or exciting, but a lot of people act like its the best thing ever invented. I then attempted to guess at the reason, which is that it's marketed towards techies and hackers in the startup scene, which ensure isn't. Other replies have given me additional information which I'm going to go over. Your's was setting up a straw man argument.

jimrandomh 11y ago

Summary: Bottles on the production line sometimes got jostled making them splash Soylent onto the exterior, resulting in mold on the outside of the package. They halted shipping and expect to resume on the 8th.

tibbon 11y ago

Soylent seems to be under more scrutiny than any other food product I have ever seen. And at the same time, they are being more transparent, and showing more responsibility than any other food company I've seen. We've all gotten new food at some point that had gone bad; and yet I assume most of those companies just kinda shrug it off as long as it's below a certain threshold.

emmab 11y ago
Most food products you do not eat as regularly so it is much less dangerous if there is a problem with them.
- cblock811 11y ago
  Except meat and vegetables. How many contaminations have happened with Salmonella or E. Colli that were more dangerous, and so wide spread that product recalls were required. I'm also not sure how many people are actually consuming Soylent multiple times a day, but I would love to know the ratio of one-off orders to subscriptions. Might be interesting.
  - Asbostos 11y ago
    You don't eat meat and veges from the same farm and same processing plant every day. There's a wide variety. Also, food poisoning is always a risk when eating but it's not a life-shortening or baby-deforming kind of risk like, say mercury or lead overdose can be. Farmed products can have these contaminants but not usually consistently in every meal just because they're from varied sources.

bostonpete 11y ago

> we conducted physical and visual inspections, along with microbial tests, of 2,000 bottles in our distribution center and found only two bottles with the same defect Wouldn't this put them well above the industry standard rate of 1 in 10,000 bottles quoted earlier in the article?

eachro 11y ago

Why is the powder still v1.5 and not 2.0 yet?

nickff 11y ago
They are entirely different products, with different ingredient lists. From what I understand, 2.0 is not able to be powdered, and 1.5 is not able to be stored as a liquid for long.