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Soylent halts sales of its powder as customers keep getting sick

• ykm 10y ago
  Halt production? It seems these soylent formulations are versioned. So can't they revert back to an older version till they fix the issue? Or its not as simple as this?
  • nkozyra 10y ago
    Is it the version or the process? This isn't software, you have a lot of mechanisms & parties in play. The biggest thing at risk here is reputation. Let me draw a comparison: how much worse would it have been for Samsung to just halt production of the Galaxy S7 then to race forward and produce a new, still-exploding version?
    • catshirt 10y ago
      rollback both to a working combination? in your analogy, it would be equivalent to Samsung putting its previous phone back into production.
      • nkozyra 10y ago
        Could be; in both situations there's enough external impact on the entire production process that reverting everything back to normal* still means people get sick. * even normal could be in doubt. it's entirely possible this happened before and there weren't enough reports to warrant any concern.
    • rhino369 10y ago
      >how much worse would it have been for Samsung to just halt production of the Galaxy S7 then to race forward and produce a new, still-exploding version? Isn't that exactly what happened and it was a huge disaster.
  • rgbrenner 10y ago
    they don't know what's causing it. If you just revert the formula, that doesn't mean the ingredient causing the problem has been removed. Contaminated soy protein is contaminated soy protein (for ex). Changing the amount of contaminated soy protein in your drink isn't going to fix anything.
    • jfim 10y ago
      The solution is obviously to create $n$ groups for each newly added ingredient in the previous version, randomly assign customers to a group and ship them a version with one ingredient added, then use R's prop.test to analyze the failure rate of the formulations. /s
    • mulletbum 10y ago
      I am one of the people who got violently ill from a bar. I ate numerous bars and boxes of 1.6. I had no issues, I usually eat 2.0 every day. One single bar made me ill, I ate numerous bars before getting ill.
      • deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
• yladiz 10y ago
  > “Our tests all came back negative for food pathogens, toxins or outside contamination,” the company wrote. If that's true, then it could be part of the formulation that causes a small percentage of people to get sick. Maybe it's akin to how cilantro causes some people to have a very alkaline taste when they eat it.
  • Alex3917 10y ago
    There are lots of foods that you can develop a sensitivity to if you eat them more than a couple times per week. So it might not even be a permanent intolerance, but rather something that's more transient. E.g. supposedly if you eat wine cap mushrooms more than twice in a week then you'll be throwing up everywhere, but then you'll be fine again to eat them a week later.
  • joshschreuder 10y ago
    Ah yes, the cilantro / coriander tastes like soap thing... completely ruins a whole bunch of delicious foods for me :(
    • yladiz 10y ago
      Maybe one day they will fix that in the womb before the baby is born, haha! Or there can be some kind of gene therapy that can fix it/subdue it.
• kartD 10y ago
  Still waiting for the facts, but I'm pleasantly surprised and impressed by Soylent's response. I think they're doing the right thing.
  • untog 10y ago
    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...
    • thejacenxpress 10y ago
      It's 0.1% of customers, not a samsung s7. If they are willing to pull their product for 0.1% of customers they will probably announce a refund, give it a week .
      • yread 10y ago
        S7 note sold about 2M phones and less than 200 went poof. So, it's actually 10 times worse
    • kartD 10y ago
      It's not clear why they're getting sick or what percentage of people are getting sick. It's good they're taking it seriously and being cautious. "Our tests all came back negative for food pathogens, toxins or outside contamination,” so it's possible that it affects just a few people but they're still be being careful. And frankly in this case refunds are implied, I would imagine that they would be sued into oblivion otherwise. I just think it's good to see a company take things seriously and act rather than engage in PR. E.g. Theranos, Samsung etc.
    • aianus 10y ago
      > 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.
• tommynicholas 10y ago
  Soylent absolutely doing the right thing, but I'll be upset if I can't get my Soylent as a result of this.
• shas3 10y ago
  I suffered very unpleasant nausea after eating bars from a particular shipment of Soylent food bars. Soylent is now forever (or at least in the near future) associated for me with those bouts of nausea. That's the unfortunate thing about nausea, one episode related to a particular food can ruin that food forever for you.
  • kbutler 10y ago
    It does tend to fade with time - I was violently ill on a long car ride after eating at a fast food restaurant. I couldn't eat there for about a year afterward (but I still won't touch bacon there, a decade later...)
    • catshirt 10y ago
      sounds like it has not faded at all...
  • blubers 10y ago
    The Garcia Effect[1]! Always found it interesting that even if you consciously absolutely know the food is fine, the aversion remains. And (like you mention) unlike typical "conditioning", a single occurrence can trigger the effect. Definitely does fade though, otherwise I suspect many fewer people would drink screwdrivers. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conditioned_taste_aversion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conditioned_taste_aversion
• middleclick 10y ago
  Shouldn't they be offering a refund option? Just saying "stop eating it and let us know" doesn't inspire much confidence.
• djsumdog 10y ago
  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 be someone's only source of food. I think I'll just stick to Quest bars when I'm too busy to eat right. :-P
  • kinkdr 10y ago
    > 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 Food is like sex. There are times for long love making session, times for a orgies in a well equipped dungeon, but there are also timea for a quick masturbation. You can think soylent as the last.
  • themodelplumber 10y ago
    > I think I'll just stick to Quest bars Oooh, protein bar talk! Lately I'm liking EAS Myoplex 30 Chocolate Peanut Butter and NuGo Dark Mint Chocolate Chip. For when I'm uh..."too busy"...
  • nether 10y ago
    Rhinehart asserted from the start that Soylent was meant to replace shitty meals like the Big Mac consumed at your desk alone. There was and still is a lot of misunderstanding about this. One of his interviews took place at some LA hipster fried chicken place. He's not antifood or antisocial.
    • eridius 10y ago
      Really? When Soylent was first announced, I'm pretty sure I read something where Rhinehart was positioning Soylent as the primary source of meals, with the occasional real meal thrown in as a luxury.
      • 10y ago
• themodelplumber 10y ago
  Is it possible they are getting reports based on allergies? I once (cringe) alerted a local bakery to their tainted ingredients that were causing illness, only to discover years later that it was a food intolerance issue on my side. And--same symptoms as reported in this LA Times article. I've also heard that if you eat a lot of something, you can develop an intolerance to it, but am not sure if that's really true, or under what circumstances.
• throwaway898908 10y ago
  Not putting solid food into your system for long periods of time (months, years) will destroy your ability to digest solid food when you start refeeding. I've seen people in eating disorder facilities who have lived on diets of liquid food (historically Ensure, basically the same thing) who have not defecated for months, and when they start eating again suffer for weeks and weeks from horrendous constipation, often requiring further hospitalization. This has happened to me. Your ability to digest basically shuts down, your intestines stop moving what little solids there are through you. Not eating solid food is not good for you. Don't do it.
  • nkozyra 10y ago
    I don't advocate for or against liquid diets necessarily - and I realize this is overtly a throwaway account - but this sounds pretty pseudo-sciency to me, anecdote notwithstanding. At bare minimum, include some citation here.
    • beedogs 10y ago
      He just told you what he lived through, and you're asking for a citation? Never change, HN.
      • XorNot 10y ago
        No he told us about something he claimed to see at a place. A lot of people say the same thing about UFOs.
      • mulletbum 10y ago
        "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.
        • 10y ago
• IgorPartola 10y ago
  Is anyone really surprised that this is happening? Nutrition is hard. Nutritionists don't get it. Would you trust a nutritionist by trade to program your pacemaker? If not, then why do you trust an engineer to formulate your food?
  • greglindahl 10y ago
    Ensure and related products in this space have a lot of research behind them, which Soylent appears to have completely ignored. However, this particular problem appears to be a basic processed food production screwup.
    • nilkn 10y ago
      Where's this research, out of curiosity? Ensure also has a very different nutritional profile than Soylent. Just because it's a liquid food doesn't mean it was designed with the same goals in mind, and all the details suggest it wasn't.
  • LordHumungous 10y ago
    I don't understand why they felt the need to pull the product. Lots of foods don't sit well with certain people, for whatever reason. If it makes you sick then don't eat it. As long as it contains food grade ingredients that are non-toxic then it's not on them.
  • htns 10y ago
    This appears to have absolutely nothing to do with nutrition. It's contamination. People are getting sick hours after eating.
    • SquareWheel 10y ago
      "Our tests all came back negative for food pathogens, toxins or outside contamination." http://blog.soylent.com/post/152400464282/soylent-bar-powder-update http://blog.soylent.com/post/152400464282/soylent-bar-powder...
• Apreche 10y ago
  How come the FDA hasn't taken any action against them?
  • bertiewhykovich 10y ago
    because the FDA can only regulate food
    • refurb 10y ago
      The FDA regulates more than just food: drugs, cosmetics, vitamins, supplements. How are the getting around it? Is it classified as a supplement? "Not for human consumption"?
      • aianus 10y ago
        > How are the getting around it? Soylent is just a bunch of FDA-approved (actually, "Generally Recognized As Safe") ingredients mixed together in an industrial vat. How would you even propose regulating something like that? You'd have to have every restaurant in the country submit every menu item for 'approval'.
• antisthenes 10y ago
  I understand why people get Soylent, but I'm also wondering why people choose to trust a company to provide the powder for them instead of making it themselves. Not only would that save you quite a bit of money (Soylent is a pretty poor value proposition if you need to consume more than 2000 calories), but you would then personally control the freshness of the ingredients. There are so many recipes at diy.soylent.com/recipes and many of them are made from ingredients that combat the main problem of buying food at the supermarket - spoilage and waste, by letting you pre-mix months worth of food that doesn't go bad. And with the money saved compared to actual Soylent you can supplement with whatever fresh foods from time to time. It's not like the nutritional profile of Soylent is hard to achieve - all you have to do is solve a system of equations for the necessary macros and vitamins.
  • iLoch 10y ago
    > I'm also wondering why people choose to trust a company to provide the powder for them instead of making it themselves. Are you really wondering that? The people that buy this stuff are the ones that won't even make themselves a meal. You think they're gonna make the powder themselves?
    • antisthenes 10y ago
      Making the powder yourself is still a time savings of about 80-90% over preparing a complete meal. You can prep a month's worth of powder in the time it takes to prepare 1 meal. So yes, I'm wondering that in addition to wondering whether you read my post.
  • chrisfosterelli 10y ago
    This is just my experience, but in all of the DIY recipes I made I had a really hard time emulating the texture that the bottled Soylent has. The texture is a big deal for me. I think I could likely get closer by forgetting local components and using some of the recipes that require bulk-ordering rarer components online, but if I'm ordering online I might as just well order the official stuff since I only eat it rarely.
  • 10y ago
• nether 10y ago
  Move fast and break things, including people's GI tracts. The fact that Soylent powder is at "version 1.6" and causing these problems points to gross version number inflation. This is a showstopper. Rob Rhinehart asserts that the human body is "just chemicals," yet a vat of elemental hydrogen, oxygen, carbon etc. would seem to behave a little differently from a human body composed of reproducing cells and structured organs. His CS background has made him consider the body a narrowly deterministic system that requires a minimum of sanity-check testing before releasing it upon the world. We're the beta testers here. Real world, physical systems have vast amounts of variability that techies don't seem to appreciate. I won't be surprised to see VC funds starting to require deep involvement of health professionals for companies in the diet/medical space, especially in light of Theranos and now this.
  • agumonkey 10y ago
    `GIt reset head`
  • ohitsdom 10y ago
    "Beta testers" is generous. More like alpha, or even nightly builds.
• hasenj 10y ago
  Might it be soy allergy? I honestly see no reason to halt production entirely just because a small percentage of people are having allergic reaction. Can they not just add an allergy warning?
  • mulletbum 10y ago
    No, because they don't actually know exactly what it is. I drink soylent 2.0 every day of the week. I ate a bunch of bars and boxes of 1.6 without issue. I also got violently ill off 2 separate bars on completely different days. If I had a soy allergy I would not be able to eat 2.0 either.
• deepGem 10y ago
  Man, this is a bummer. As much as I hate the concept of Soylent as food, I see it as the only way to scale food production for the growing population, without killing our planet. The other options are still in the labs. Artificial tissues for instance. Vertical farming is one alternative, but that is again fraught with massive energy consumption. I hope Soylent gets to solve this.
  • jasonlaramburu 10y ago
    Isn't Soylent primarily made from rice and soybeans? These are commodity crops that require huge amounts of fossil fuels (chemical fertilizer, fuel for tractors, transportation, processing) and government subsidies in order to be profitably cultivated.
    • Laforet 10y ago
      Still less of a burden compared to meat and vegetables
    • skuhn 10y ago
      Gotta check the latest release notes [1]. No more rice in Soylent Powder version 1.6. I find the concept of release notes for things I eat pretty discomforting. Not that I would ever put Soylent in my food hole. [1] http://files.soylent.com/pdf/soylent-release-notes-1-6-en.pdf http://files.soylent.com/pdf/soylent-release-notes-1-6-en.pd...
    • nnq 10y ago
      > commodity crops that require [...] government subsidies in order to be profitably cultivated Wait, what?! Why would governments need to subsidize such crops? Can't the price be left to increase a bit, and have the market sort this out more "organically"? Only reason I'd see for the US government subsidizing such crops would be to make your food exports more competitive, a pretty "dirty" tactic in a globalized economy, but at leas it would make sense...
  • greglindahl 10y ago
    Pretty much any vegan diet is sufficiently efficient, if your goal is avoiding killing the planet. No need to eat powder.
• ag56 10y ago
  > Soylent said there shouldn’t be any issues with its premade drinks, which cost slightly more than just the powder. Interesting. I tried the premade drinks (Soylent 2.0) a couple of months ago and within an hour had stomach cramps and was forced to retreat to the bathroom. Unlike a software bug it's mentally very hard to forgive -- I love the idea of Soylent but doubt I will ever try it again, in any form. Serious question: why is it so hard for them to find the root cause of these issues? There are a limited number of ingredients, all of which are surely well documented and tested.
  • Alex3917 10y ago
    > There are a limited number of ingredients, all of which are surely well documented and tested. There isn't really any bright line between edible and poisonous. E.g. if you buy a bunch of field guides, the exact same plants and mushrooms will be listed as edible in some books and poisonous in others. There are lots of species that are widely considered poisonous, but many people eat them anyway without any ill effects. And others that are widely considered edible that people get very sick from eating. Some of the best advice I got from a well-known mycologist is when in doubt about whether something is edible, set up a TV in the bathroom first.
    • Laforet 10y ago
      > the exact same plants and mushrooms will be listed as edible in some books and poisonous in others. Are you serious? Any mycologist or survivalist worth their salt will tell you to avoid any mushrooms you could not identify with 100% certainty because there is no regret if you had them. Some manuals may advocate (in very desperate situations) eating a small piece of an unknown species to see if you have a reaction before consuming more, but that is still pretty dodgy since not all toxins have a short incubation period.
      • Alex3917 10y ago
        Whether something is safe to eat has nothing to do with identification. If you don't know what something is then obviously you shouldn't be eating it.
• pizza 10y ago
  What %? What % of people normally get sick from food? Just curious, not defensive..
  • intopieces 10y ago
    "During our review, we noticed that a handful of consumers (less than 0.1%) who consumed Powder 1.6 over the past several months reported stomach-related symptoms that are consistent with what our Bar customers described."
• nemo44x 10y ago
  A well cooked meal and wine - my greatest joys in life. Simple, romantic and fulfilling. Add butter. Add cream. A beautiful pan sauce from a well timed reduction. A cool glass of white wine in the hot kitchen as all the flavors come together. The scent of fresh cut shallots still lingering as the garlic in the pan sweats. I don't judge anyone for making food and drink a footnote in their life. I enjoy cooking as much as eating but I don't expect anyone else to enjoy either of those, much less both. But I must admit, I sure don't understand the sacrifices of taste, scent, sight, texture and accomplishment for productivity or convenience. Perhaps this is a reduction of the "Chicken McNugget"?
  • asimpletune 10y ago
    Soylent is like birth control for food: it lets you choose whether food is going to be for pleasure or for sustenance. I eat it often because it's healthy, quick, and I actually enjoy it. That said, I also very much enjoy food with family and friends. They're too completely different things though, but previously we had to use the same tools for both needs.
    • nemo44x 10y ago
      Isn't this why we invented the "sandwich"?
      • isaacn 10y ago
        +1. I could eat a sandwich every day for every meal. I don't, but I certainly could.
        • nemo44x 10y ago
          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.
      • deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
• soyiuz 10y ago
  The name "soylent" comes from Soylent Green, a 1973 sci fi film about overpopulation, where people survive by eating mass-produced plankton, which later turns out to be made out of old people. Naming a product "soylent" has always struck me as borderline sociopath. In this light, the company’s slogan "healthy, convenient, affordable food" is an outright mockery of its costumers.
  • thejacenxpress 10y ago
    Wrong, it came from the book Make Room! Make Room! by Harry Harrison in which "Soylent Green" is based off of. However, in the book the soylent is not made from people. The movie added that for....drama
    • soyiuz 10y ago
      I'm aware of the novel. You are missing the point a bit, aren’t you? It wasn't about the origin of the word. What does one make of a company which chooses to name its product after a darkly dystopian piece of fiction?
      • jes5199 10y ago
        One might make that it was a moment of refreshing dark humor in a world where most companies put a giant fake smile rictus and saccharine optimism on everything
      • jcheng 10y ago
        No, the company/product name is inspired by the book, not the movie. Which means they're not sinister, just oblivious. https://faq.soylent.com/hc/en-us/articles/201541809-Why-is-it-named-Soylent- https://faq.soylent.com/hc/en-us/articles/201541809-Why-is-i...
        • soyiuz 10y ago
          Fair enough, but they must have known about the film. A huge chunk of my family perished in the Holocaust. I therefore don't find "dark humor" about forceful mass euthanasia terribly funny. At the very least, using that name shows a measure of immaturity on the part of company's leadership and makes me frankly question their judgment in other matters. Recall for example their early struggles with health and safety inspections. I am hoping to be constructive here, in case someone from Soylent is reading. The name is offensive to some people: why lose even one customer over a clever cultural reference? Why willfully associate your product with population control and cannibalism?
• jonathanjaeger 10y ago
  The latest version of Soylent powder is the best-tasting version to date and I get no uneasy feeling from it. The original powder versions I could more easily believe gastro issues, so I'm surprised this is cropping up now rather than before, but I guess it could be ingredient/allergy-specific. I tend to eat 3000 calories to maintain my weight so Soylent is great for my busy schedule. I'm still eating 1500-2000 calories of regular food per day, which is certainly enough. I don't get why people keep harping on the all-or-nothing idea behind Soylent. Most people advocate this as part of a balanced diet. Even if Soylent isn't perfect, I'd rather down something the FDA considers a food than an excess of weight gainers/protein bars/protein powder supplements filled with ingredients I don't want. That being said, I could throw oats, protein powder, peanut butter, milk, and a banana in a blender.. but that's not necessarily something I want to do consistently. I also consider Soylent a bang for the buck when looking at things at price per 100 calories. Soylent 2.0 is far tastier, but I find it annoying that you have to get a ton of heavy bottles shipped to you and it's more expensive.
  • lmm 10y ago
    > I don't get why people keep harping on the all-or-nothing idea behind Soylent. Because that's what all Soylent's advertising and messaging has focused on?
    • aRationalMoose 10y ago
      No it isn't. Their slogan is something like: Not meant to replace every meal, but it can replace any meal.
      • pinot 10y ago
        "This gun isn't for killing people, but you could"
      • kuschku 10y ago
        The original launch page suggested to only eat it, though, and the founder does exactly that, too prove its viability.
• musesum 10y ago
  Have gone through a few cases of Soylent 2.0 with no issues. I use to drink a few a week as a sporadic meal replacement. Now, I mix my own variation with casein protein and trehalose. Intestinal flora tweak? When I switched to a modified ketogenic diet, it took a few days to adjust. I now start the morning with coffee mixed with butter and caprylic acid (refined MCT oil). Advice was: ease into it; too much, too soon, can lead to disaster pants. [EDIT] switched order
  • dahart 10y ago
    OMG "disaster pants" is from here out going to be in my lexicon.
• foobarextreme 10y ago
  As someone who used to body build and experiment with different stacks and stuff being pushed at the "health" food store, it doesn't need an FDA pass to make you explode for every output channel. Once ate two chef jays bars and then a 4 pack of red line, it was an intense experience of extreme fluid projectiles from all corners.
• intrasight 10y ago
  I get why some people want to "let someone else decide what I eat" - life has too many decisions already after all. But I've gone the smoothy route, where I have the main ingredients of Soylent but with the added benefit of fresh fruit and veggies. I have one or two smoothies each day, so it's at least half of my caloric intake. However, this time of year I just love the fresh vegetables available at the farmers market at great prices. Some go into smoothies but most I bake or stirfry. I eat with rice or beans and that's my dinner most every day.
• thejacenxpress 10y ago
  LA Times did a bad job of reporting this. > warning that a handful of customers reported stomach sickness after consuming it. It's actually less than 0.1% The blog article is clearer: http://blog.soylent.com/post/152400464282/soylent-bar-powder-update http://blog.soylent.com/post/152400464282/soylent-bar-powder...
  • greglindahl 10y ago
    The blog uses the same "handful of customers" language.
    • thejacenxpress 10y ago
      > During our review, we noticed that a handful of consumers (less than 0.1%) who consumed Powder 1.6... Very much acknowledge the blog uses the same 'handful' terminology but they also put a % to it. As much as I hate to think about it, I feel 'handful' sounds like more out of context and a news article would be less dramatic if they reported 0.1% of people were affected.
• GunlogAlm 10y ago
  I wonder if this applies to Huel (https://huel.com https://huel.com), essentially the British version of Soylent.
  • ck425 10y ago
    I've been drinking that breakfast and lunch for a few months and have felt great. Only downside is occasional dehydration if I don't keep my water inkeep up, but that's easy to fix fast and self inflicted.
    • GunlogAlm 10y ago
      Out of interest, if I may ask, did you start using Huel to fix a nutritional deficiency of some sort, or did you simply like the appeal? I've heard a fair few people say they feel generally healthier or 'better' after beginning it, which I find interesting. I've been using Huel on-and-off for a few months — to replace my lunches for a few days each week, or when I don't fancy breakfast, or if I realise I haven't eaten enough calories in a day. I might start regularly replacing my breakfast with it, now.
      • ck425 10y ago
        I tried it out of curiosity, and to see if I could improve my diet. It gives me a lot more energy, especially at work, and my productivity and sleep quality have improved drastically. that said after almost two weeks on Holiday where I didn't drink it much I am struggling to get back into it. The best effect is re-examining my relationship with food. If I over eat or eat rubbish I really notice it now and just that awareness has naturally improved the rest of my diet.
  • ZenoArrow 10y ago
    I've been trying Huel, it's been good so far. If I remember correctly, Soylent has had issues with cadmium that Huel have said hasn't been an issue for them.
• lando2319 10y ago
  I've been on soylent for almost 2 years and I love it. It used to be such a pain working from home and dealing with breakfast, which I usually would skip and lunch which I would be reheating leftovers or whatever I could put together. It's so much better to just crack open a soylent, chug it and move on. It's always consistent I don't have to think about it. I do one 'normal food' meal a day, Mon - Fri.
• dmalvarado 10y ago
  I really wish they didn't name their company 'Soylent'. Soylent Green was a gross concept for a movie, and, unrelated, I really can't stand the sound of the word.
• 010a 10y ago
  I was really sad to see the new bars get pulled. Hopefully they get the issues sorted out and get those back on the market; I'll happily be the first to renew my subscription plan.
• throwaway101416 10y ago
  I had hemorrhoids that would flair up from soy/almond milk or large quantities of corn chips. However, I never had blood loss and it was mostly gone by the time I tried Soylent. After having one drink made with powder version 1.2 or 1.3, I lost about a liter of blood and couldn't move or work on anything that week. Had to switch to yogurt for a month to eat normally again. I think it has to do with jagged precipitates that remain after going through the large intestine. I love the idea of the product, but unnatural food like this has potential to cause unforeseen side effects.
  • Meegul 10y ago
    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.
    • greglindahl 10y ago
      If you grind beans and rice into a powder, with other stuff, and cook them, do you think that that's the same as cooking whole beans and whole rice with the other stuff? The answer is no. It's not just about molecules.
      • cknoxrun 10y ago
        Can you please expand on how they are different? A powdered bean or powdered rice contains the same macro and micronutrients. Perhaps the quality of the fiber would be different?
        • greglindahl 10y ago
          I don't understand why you would think they are the same. Cooking a whole bean vs cooking a powdered bean is different. Digesting a whole, chewed bean is different from digesting a powdered bean. And what happens at the end of your gut is different. An example of a related principle is "need" vs "what's needed when it's needed". How much vitamin C do you "need"? Oh, wait, it affects iron absorption.
• rgrove 10y ago
  I bought a box of Soylent bars to use as occasional between-meal backups, since I sometimes miss a meal while traveling or because I forget to eat lunch. Over the course of a few weeks I ate two or three bars and was fine. Then one day I missed lunch, ate a bar, and about four hours later started feeling nauseous and experienced the worst diarrhea of my life. Let's just say I'm glad it hit me when I was at home, within tightly clenched shuffling distance of a good sturdy toilet. By the next morning I felt fine. I have no known food allergies or sensitivities. On no occasion did I eat more than one bar in a single day, and I don't think I ever even ate bars on two consecutive days. I do remember thinking, while eating that last bar, that it didn't taste quite as good as I remembered the other bars tasting. It seems possible that the bars contained inconsistent amounts of an ingredient and the last one just happened to have a larger amount of whatever did me in. I sure would like to know what it was so I can avoid it in the future.
• booleanbetrayal 10y ago
  "Soylent: Only the finest, bulk-rate Chinese "proteins and lipids" VC money can buy!"
  • owly 10y ago
    What could go wrong????
• heheocoenev 10y ago
  I just started on 1.6 2 weeks ago and enjoying the freedom of this, as well as the ability to control my intake. I need a vegan alternative.
• rjurney 10y ago
  Soylent is a bad idea. Your body needs unidentified parts of plants that make you live a decade or more longer if you eat them every day, called phytonutrients. You're just killing yourself by eating shit, may as well eat fast food it has as many nutrients. Fuck soylent, eat a mcburger. Tastes better, same effect.
  • logicallee 10y ago
    Could you kindly expand on your a comment a bit to be more substantive, especially near the end (write more clearly the point you are making) and then I would like to respond to the points you raised. Realize you feel strongly about it. :)
    • LordHumungous 10y ago
      Is there a no swearing rule on HN?
    • 1457389 10y ago
      You need to take the stick out of your ass. Give me a break I thought this was "hacker" news. You can't respond to comments unless they adhere to some kind of courtesy code?
    • UnoriginalGuy 10y ago
      I'm not them; HN's comment policies on civil discourse are largely about what can say (and call) other users, that doesn't apply to the person above as they're top of their own thread (i.e. it impossible for them to be targeting another user of HN). Swearing in and of itself isn't against the site's policies. Only thing in the comment policy you could even call up is "gratuitous negativity" but I'd argue their comment provides enough value (e.g. phytonutrients) to just call it negative rather than gratuitously negative. I'd recommend you yourself review the policy before calling out others: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  • dualogy 10y ago
    Which "phytonutrients" do you believe we need for better, healthier longevity.. I reckon you're not thinking of the highly beneficial (yet considered by many vegan quacks as non-essential) "brain" nutrients such as co-enzyme Q, B12 + D3, creatine, carnitine, carnosine and abundant-rather-than-subsistence amounts of Docosahexaenoic Acid aka DHA.. (I'll refrain from delving into the countless plant antinutrients that your body also has to counteract on a daily basis..)
• eva1984 10y ago
  Disrupt at its finest.
• LordHumungous 10y ago
  I'm a big fan of Michael Pollan's manifesto: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. The idea being that processed foods cannot hope to match the nutritional profile found in whole foods, particularly plants. This soylent stuff is about as processed as food comes, so I'm inclined to be very skeptical of it's healthfulness.
  • Meegul 10y ago
    Do you believe that there is some chemical (or other) difference between two molecules of, for instance, glucose, solely due to their origin?
    • LordHumungous 10y ago
      I suggest you read In Defense of Food. Long story short there are thousands of complex molecules in whole foods, along with fiber, that are removed when processing occurs.
    • webscaleizfun 10y ago
      We can't actually quantify nor do we fully understand all the vitamins, chemicals & molecules in your average vegetable, or how they are digested and used in your body. It might be bad to peel a carrot prior to eating it, since you lose the nutrients in the skin (that may only exist there) and oxidize the rest of the carrot breaking down other potentially good nutrients, similar to how garlic loses certain multi-drug resistant infection killing abilities when chopped or crushed[1]. If we did have a good grasp of the nutrients that the human body needs, and in what form (particularly to prevent your bowels from shutting down or having mass dieoffs), then something like Ensure, Soylent, etc might be practical with a group of people who were well versed in the science of nutrition designing it, but I do not have that kind of faith with our abject lack of understanding & the present lack of nutritional skills Soylent, and many other processed food companies have shown. 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allicin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allicin
      • pas 10y ago
        Yeah well, there are millions living on processed food. They are pretty much a-okay. Yes, sure, there is probably some difference, but it's marginal. Translated to QALY (quality adjusted life year) I guess it's probably somewhere under 1. Differences in individual biology are much more influential, and matching our own needs contributes a lot more QALYs than eating it as raw as possible or as processed as possible.
• zxcvvcxz 10y ago
  Coming from the weightlifting world, I saw this as exactly what it is: re-packaged "mass gainer" with some vitamin, flavor, and ingredient tweaks. So revolutionary... Yeah, a bunch of nerds trying to live off of what is essentially mass gainer/meal replacement - who probably don't even exercise - will probably get sick. Especially when the makers try so hard to be "differentiated" and mess around with the formula. Y'all fell for this.
• neilsharma 10y ago
  I always have a bottle of soylent in my backpack for emergencies, or if I'm in SF for half a day and don't want to waste $10 on a sandwich I can finish in 3 bites. That said, I'm not a big fan of its macros. I don't really care about following food pyramid guidelines and would prefer something with less sugar, fewer starches, and a different oil blend. I make "life-changing bread" [0] on occasion, and its basically my all-natural soylent alternative (I substitute out most of the oats for more seeds + bran and add protein powder). It doesn't taste great, but that's not the point here. Was looking into getting the powder when my current batch of drinks finish, but I suppose I'll revisit this decision after soylent addresses these issues. Still not sure if soylent actually replaces meals -- I end up chugging a bottle and then buying food most of the time. 400kcals makes for a nice snack, but simply isn't enough food to replace a meal. [0] https://www.google.com/search?q=lifechanging+bread&oq=lifechanging+bread&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l5.1709j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 https://www.google.com/search?q=lifechanging+bread&oq=lifech...
  • babaganoosh223 10y ago
    Maybe checkout http://diy.soylent.com http://diy.soylent.com, some guy made a webapp for you to come up with custom soylent recipes. I made a variant based on Keto chow and it's pretty good.
    • neilsharma 10y ago
      Thanks for the link -- I remember spending a good 10-15 minutes before giving up on the DIY suggestions. There were a few recipes that piqued my interest, but most seemed like a chemical sludge. And since I don't live off soylent, I figured it was too much effort to invest the time/energy in a drink that I consume maybe once a week.
      • thaeli 10y ago
        Check out superbodyfuel.com - they make several formulas of Soylent-style recipes, and cover different macros and allergen avoidance.
• alphanumeric0 10y ago
  There is also the question of bioavailability, which applies to drug as well as vitamin intake. Just because Soylent claims to give you all of these vitamins at once, that does not mean your body is actually adsorbing them all at once. You need a varied diet. You can't just eat one thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioavailability#Factors_influencing_bioavailability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioavailability#Factors_influe...
  • bertiewhykovich 10y ago
    Soylent also uses the cheapest vitamers available. While the jury is still out on the difference between some of these compounds and their natural (read: biochemically native) analogues, it's cause for consideration, and possibly concern. The choice of dl-alpha-tocopherol acetate as a vitamin E seems particularly concerning to me -- there's a discussion thread on that here: https://discourse.soylent.com/t/why-does-soylent-not-contain-gamma-tocopherol-in-addition-to-alpha-tocopherol/24757 https://discourse.soylent.com/t/why-does-soylent-not-contain... While a lot of questionable notions about nutrition circulate in the tech community, this concern doesn't seem without grounds.
  • kazagistar 10y ago
    They specifically mention bio-availability in their promotional material, for what its worth.
  • dimino 10y ago
    I also need balanced humors and the occasional bloodletting, in addition to a "varied diet". You realize what you're saying is completely unrelated to the actual article, right?
• knodi 10y ago
  I love Soylent 2.0 I have it for breakfast everyday for a last 4 months. Haven't had a single issue.
• Animats 10y ago
  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 production line testing machines for biological contamination and for elemental analysis. About 80% of food plants have in-house testing facilities. What's Soylent got?
  • jonmc12 10y ago
    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 with some digestive systems but not others - put a warning on product accordingly. Cheap, accurate testing of foods for compatibility with a broad range of nutrient absorption rates and microbiomes would be key in engineering foods for everyone. But right now it would just make your food really expensive to the extent its even possible.
    • madaxe_again 10y ago
      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.
      • mrob 10y ago
        I wouldn't be surprised if the fact that it's a powder contributes to this. I've vomited from strong green tea on an empty stomach before, but never from green tea with food. Solid food works as a sustained release mechanism for the nutrients/phytochemicals. A sudden burst of polyphenols won't necessarily have the same effect as the same dose spread over time.
• nsxwolf 10y ago
  I ate bad chicken once and it made me really sick. Once! Here's a product that one should be skeptical of from the get go - it needs to prove itself as being "real food", and now it's made multiple people sick. It's like Chipotle, but I think worse. Doesn't help they named it after a horrifying product from a dystopian science fiction movie either.
  • Roboprog 10y ago
    Seriously: "Soylent"??? Somebody thought that would be a good name to market mystery food sludge? Just the link title made my WTF-ometer peg when I saw it. As Bullwinkle used to say: "I think I shall now be sick."
    • elmigranto 10y ago
      I never saw any official explanation, and in my perception it's a joke reference. Anyways, that surely is a talking point in some related conversations, and I guess they went for it for this very reason.
      • skuhn 10y ago
        The name is derived [1] from the science fiction novel that the movie Soylent Green was loosely based on [2]. The book doesn't include the cannibalism aspect of the movie at all. However, one wonders how you could be familiar with the book and wholly ignorant of its much more culturally significant film adaptation. Especially when it makes your product's name totally unappetizing. [1] https://faq.soylent.com/hc/en-us/articles/201541809-Why-is-it-named-Soylent- https://faq.soylent.com/hc/en-us/articles/201541809-Why-is-i... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Make_Room!_Make_Room https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Make_Room!_Make_Room!
        • teddyh 10y ago
          If I recall correctly, that book was also used as a loose basis for a Star Trek (the original series) episode: Season 3, Episode 17: The Mark of Gideon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mark_of_Gideon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mark_of_Gideon
• da23a 10y ago
  I take ADHD medication and as a side-effect, my appetite is suppressed for most of the day (I can eat supper but I am physically incapable of eating lunch) Soylent has been a lifesaver
• muppetcore12 10y ago
  Buy a fucking slow cooker you ignorant muppets
  • sctb 10y ago
    You can't comment like this on Hacker News, and we ban accounts that do so. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
• ericdykstra 10y ago
  I personally avoid "new" food and "meal replacements" in general, because they look like garbage in a bar/mix sold by a profit-seeking company with their own best interests at heart. The only difference between Soylent and Coca Cola or other junk food is that Soylent promises time/convenience, Coca Cola promises happiness, and most other junk food relies on appealing to its taste or popularity. I'd be happy to be wrong if it turns out Soylent is the first manufactured food that ends up beating nature, but I would never bet my health on it.
  • WalterBright 10y ago
    > sold by a profit-seeking company with their own best interests at heart. All the food you eat is sold by profit-seeking companies.
    • cloudjacker 10y ago
      yeah, but they've all been through the congressional hearings where they lie through their teeth, capitulation and settlement by the time I'm eating it.
    • ericdykstra 10y ago
      I'm just making the point that they're not manufacturing garbage in a factory for altruistic reasons. They're just like Coca-Cola, or Kraft, or Nabisco, or any other trash-compacting company that sells their waste on grocery store shelves. All the food I eat is sold by profit-seeking companies, but at least it's food.
      • SquareWheel 10y ago
        >All the food I eat is sold by profit-seeking companies, but at least it's food. Why exactly are meal replacements not "food"?
  • nilkn 10y ago
    Comparing Soylent to soda just because both companies seek to make a profit seems very disingenuous (every company selling you food of any kind seeks to make a profit). It's fine to be on the critical side, but this feels more like completely writing off the very idea rather than just being critical. You're basically defining from the outset, prior to any real consideration, that Soylent is "junk food", despite its nutritional and taste profiles being wildly different from that of any junk food I've ever seen. When you start from such an assumption, you effectively shut down your ability to reason about this new thing in any meaningful way; you will always be inexorably led back to your own premature conclusion.
• tunesmith 10y ago
  I tried this off and on for over a year - huge supporter of the idea to have a basic "fallback" healthy meal option better than the kind of crap we might eat when we're low on ingredients. But I had to stop. No matter what kind of soylent I had, even the liquid, I'd just get horrible indigestion from it - heartburn, even acid reflux. I read all the theories about "oh, you're just not used to the fiber" but I eat plenty of beans and psyllium husk and that's not it. Thought it was the oat protein, but the liquid uses more soy protein instead - no change. And no other foods seem to trigger that consistently for me. I stopped drinking it and the problem went away.
  • chillacy 10y ago
    Same with me. Lots of heartburn from soylent, especially if I ate it as breakfast. I can handle it with solid food or in the middle of the day, but not on an empty stomach.
• nemo44x 10y ago
  Soylent is to food as Theranos is to blood tests. A place the Valley Way has no business in.
• frrp 10y ago
  If you don't have the time to eat properly, the best choice is not to eat.
  • rahrahrah 10y ago
    If you can't make relevant comments, the best choice is not to make comments.
• resfirestar 10y ago
  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/1997/06/c3745cmp.pdf https://www.ftc.gov/sites/default/files/documents/cases/1997...
  • andy_ppp 10y ago
    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...
    • lifebeyondfife 10y ago
      Do you tend to swallow raspberries whole, or chew them first?
      • andy_ppp 10y ago
        Are you saying chewing is as effective as blending? Are you saying saliva doesn't have enzymes in it that might affect things? Point to research or I'll assume you are just making things up! Just to be clear I'm not saying I'm right I'm saying I doubt we have proved it...
• GarrisonPrime 10y ago
  Well shit. I'm almost out and was about to order a new batch. :(
• ivv 10y ago
  Could one think of Soylent as a baby formula for adults?
• samdung 10y ago
  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.
• botexpert 10y ago
  Ate about 50 bars and 10kg of Soylent, didn't feel a thing. Five of my family members ate some amount too, and seemed fine. How are they sure people aren't misattributing this to something else, or just being nocebo about it after the first news reports came? I did have diarrhea a couple of times during last 5 months but why should I attribute it to Soylent? edit: downvoters, if you have any information I don't know, please reply so I don't look like an idiot.
• gaoshan 10y ago
  I've been drinking the pre-made drink (2.0) for about 6 months now. I use it for a quick breakfast (3 or 4 days a week) that I can have during my commute. Never had any issues, tastes great and saves me time in the morning. Not the powder, I know, but I want to chip in with my experience using the bottled liquid.
• ainiriand 10y ago
  Isn't the title a bit misleading? I mean, it is not the powder, it is only the bars. And is not like customers keep getting sick because of the powder, it is the case of some customers who got sick because of a bad ingredient in the bars... Opinions?
• LunaSea 10y ago
  I see that the race for the next Darwin award is tight this year!
• senthilnayagam 10y ago
  suddenly Soylent starts sounding like Theranos
• tudorw 10y ago
  chewing is what stimulates the bile gland, bile is what you need to help with toxins removal, you need to chew, no short cut! http://www.spinelab.co.uk/chewing-is-foreplay-for-digestion-it-gets-the-juices-flowing http://www.spinelab.co.uk/chewing-is-foreplay-for-digestion-... http://www.vivo.colostate.edu/hbooks/pathphys/digestion/liver/bile.html http://www.vivo.colostate.edu/hbooks/pathphys/digestion/live...
  • tudorw 10y ago
    try this, eat what you normally eat, except take twice as long to eat it, after eating sit quietly for the same amount of time and meditate on how awesome you are for getting feeding yourself right.
    • tudorw 10y ago
      -3, nice, https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?q=anorexia+and+perception+of+time&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiJwubG2ILQAhVjLcAKHc2DBYMQgQMIHzAA https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?q=anorexia+and+percepti...
  • jpindar 10y ago
    Can you name any of these "toxins"?
    • tudorw 10y ago
      are you disputing that bile plays a role in the metabolic process that removes toxins ? or are you seeking clarification of what I mean by toxins ?
      • tudorw 10y ago
        https://www.google.co.uk/search?sourceid=chrome-psyapi2&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8&q=what%20role%20does%20bile%20and%20metabolism%20play%20in%20oxidative%20stress&oq=what%20role%20does%20bile%20and%20metabolism%20play%20in%20oxidative%20stress&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i64l3.12547j0j4 https://www.google.co.uk/search?sourceid=chrome-psyapi2&ion=...
• cerved 10y ago
  SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE!
• AimHere 10y ago
  Well actual food value was only a secondary feature of Soylent's product anyways, as witnessed by customers still happily supporting a food company that makes tasteless gunk that makes people ill. The primary selling point was that it allowed the customers to pretend (at least to themselves, if not to anyone else) that they were too busy even to eat food. If you're THAT busy, you must be an important, happening guy, or gal, right? It's one fun facet of the bizarre, upside-down culture in certain parts of the developed world, where work, followed by perhaps housing, are people's primary status symbols. The 21st century really needs an update of 'Theory of the Leisure Class'.
  • rubber_duck 10y ago
    I don't use soylent, but I eat something similar (whey + powdered oats + flavoring + milk). I don't know how to cook well, preparing food and cleaning afterwards is a pure waste of time. Buying this stuff in bulk (for like 2-3 months in one order) lets me mix up a batch that lasts me whole week in one day, lets me accurately track my macros and helps me with having eating discipline (I tend to get overweight if I just eat when I feel like it). It's not that I'm too busy to eat real food - it's that this lets me eat better (I'm quite lean on this diet, feel excellent) and I spend 15 minutes a day on food in total including prep/cleaning and consumption. So I can understand how some people would like Soylent for similar properties.
    • TillE 10y ago
      Joylent and Queal (and others) seem far less weird because they're basically thin instant oatmeal with a multivitamin. It even has real fruit! Fewer weird ingredients, and a fairly nice flavor. It is extremely strange that Soylent has never attempted flavoring. That's a good way of keeping it a niche product for nerds.
      • hobo_mark 10y ago
        I have tried many of them (except Soylent!), and have settled for Joylent, taste and variety were certainly two factors. I've been on it for a month now (it's literally all I "eat", except on weekends) and rotating through different flavours helps the routine.
• vesinisa 10y ago
  Maybe the rats finally got in: https://youtu.be/t8NCigh54jg?t=5m45s https://youtu.be/t8NCigh54jg?t=5m45s Explanation: at least in 2013 they were producing the "food" in an abandoned old factory with disgustingly little care for hygiene. A TV crew caught on film a rat sneaking around in their "production facility".
  • ckdarby 10y ago
    That was 2013 when they were still in prototyping phase. Do the research please.
• givinguflac 10y ago
  Bummer to see this happen, but good on them for taking action. I've been using the premixed liquid bottles for over a year now and love it.
• rubyfan 10y ago
  Anyone know where one could find the symptoms/issues people are reporting?
• matthewhall 10y ago
  Because Soylent is PEOPLE!
• owly 10y ago
  Please please go bankrupt and disappear. Soylent's whole concept is against reality, social eating and a whole food diet.
• facorreia 10y ago
  The got some very trusting guinea pigs, I'll give them that.
• gerbilly 10y ago
  Fun fact: Do you know how vitamins got their name? When the first scientists to study food tried reducing it to its basic components, they concluded that it contained: carbohydrates, fats, protein and minerals. Then, based on this knowledge, they started to feed animals a mixture of these four macronutrients, but they wasted away. Afterwards they began to discover the 'vitamins', so named because they were vital for life. Today we know even more, and have discovered that we don't just eat to feed ourselves, but to feed our microbiome. I can't imagine though that we've discovered everything that is necessary in food for humans to thrive, and we may never do so.
  • agentgt 10y ago
    Futhermore there is also the epigenome with methyl groups complicating things.
• skankhunt42 10y ago
  ...no "Soylent makes you soil yourself" joke yet? Maybe it's actually made from something else than what's written on the label, ya know, just as in the cult classic they probably got the name from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_Green https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_Green ;)
• rl12345 10y ago
  Soylent’s product itself has zero novelty in it. Meal Replacement Powders (MRPs) have been around for decades and are popular among the bodybuilding crowd. The only “innovation” Soylent has brought to the table was being the first company to market MRPs to geeks and hipsters -- and that's it. Personally, I've never tried their product because the ingredients they use seemed average/fudged at best (and I tend to avoid brands that pop out of nowhere with a lot of hype). Tip: if you care about maximizing the quality of your dietary supplement, research and buy each ingredient individually, and then mix it all up yourself.
  • anExcitedBeast 10y ago
    > Tip: if you care about maximizing the quality of your dietary supplement, research and buy each ingredient individually, and then mix it all up yourself. That defeats my primary use case for MRP: not needing to think about nutrition. I hate cooking, I hate cleaning, and eating out all the time feels wasteful. I just want quick, healthy meals with a decent shelf life.
    • rl12345 10y ago
      It requires you a little more upfront work indeed but once you have your stack mixed and stored it gets as practical as with any other MRP.
      • ewzimm 10y ago
        I think it goes against a lot of people's idea of efficieny. Why should each person need to research, source, and mix their own MRP if we have similar needs?
        • fnord123 10y ago
          Because you might not don't trust a company to do a good job at the price point in question.
          • 10y ago
• draw_down 10y ago
  Food -- who needs it! But don't take away my Esc key.
• yanjuk 10y ago
  I would guess the nausea is a learned response due to people forcing the powder on themselves. Perhaps it needs to be introduced gradually with small amounts?
  • FLUX-YOU 10y ago
    I wouldn't be surprised. I can't drink 2 cups of soylent 1.6 by itself. Mixing with bananas, stevia, coconut/vanilla extract lends to a much better taste.
• ommunist 10y ago
  The idea behind this powder is uberidiotic, because we receive most of nutrients from our intestine microflora, and not from food per se. Diet like this destroys microflora, and here it is - diarrhea! But microfloras are unique to their bearers, there are some general types, of course. You cannot standardize food and not harm your microflora at the same time. So on place of Soylent, I'd run tests on volunteers for microflora replacement first, and then feed them powder. Could be like that: Stage one - 3 days on amoxiclav, 3 days fasting and water. This is cleaning fase. You will be sick, and have diarrhea. Stage 2 - 2 weeks on growing Soylent-compatible microflora, something like genetically modified bifiform. Stage3 - You became happy Soylent eater. But remember - from this time further any normal food except Soylent will make you sick.
• Mikho 10y ago
  Lately growth hackers and marketers for some reason consider themself tech companies and disruptors while what they do is just repackage old things that were out there for decades into attractive offering for millennials. Soylent is a mere marketing company having not real innovation on the product side, not to mention questionable ingredients quality.
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• todd8 10y ago
  Soylent isn't the only product available to easily replace meals. Besides the products marketed to bodybuilders and those wanting to lose weight there are meal replacement products from serious pharmaceutical companies. They are readily available; Abbot Laboratories meal replacement drinks, in several varieties, are stocked in my local supermarkets. Abbot Laboratories ($20 Billon in revenue per year, 74,000 employees) has a large list of products, including powered versions, listed on its web site. See http://abbottnutrition.com/brands/products/nutritional-products http://abbottnutrition.com/brands/products/nutritional-produ...
• athenot 10y ago
  I understand the time-saving aspect of this product. I understand that one's schedule can be so intense that taking the time to cook & eat is impossible, though I posit that the mental down-time offered by meals is beneficial to better process what we're thinking about throughout the day (disclaimer1: I can't back this up with data as I only have anectodal evidence). But the real issue I have is diet monotony. We live in an era of convenience and have forgotten about how fruits and vegetables yield their harvest in seasons. When most fruits/vegetables are in season, you might eat volumes of them, then never eat any for the rest of the year. Some indeed can be kept for a few weeks/months. The same is true with meats: larger animals would be consumed on a less frequent basis than smaller ones. Disclaimer2: I'm not a nutritionist, I just enjoy traditional foods.
  • widdma 10y ago
    As an aside "nutritionist" is not a legally defined term. Any quack can call themselves a nutritionist. Some may have had some training, but it's not necessary science based or complete. On the other hand, "dietitian" is a registered and regulated profession of which practitioners have a recognized university qualification. TLDR: be skeptical of nutritionist.
• dankohn1 10y ago
  Just a quick counterargument from a regular Soylent consumer: I drink a coffiest for breakfast every morning and drink two liquid Soylents on days when I don't have time for a nice lunch or dinner. It's convenient, healthy and tastes good. I've never had any intestinal troubles. I use it as a meal replacement, not a complete food replacement. It sucks that they included this ingredient in their powder and bars that has caused people problems. But HN folks should know that doing startups is hard, and we all make mistakes along the way. Food is obviously a much more sensitive and important application than most mobile apps. But I expect Soylent to figure out what went wrong, correct it, and keep iterating and improving.
  • georgefrick 10y ago
    I don't drink the coffee version, but I've otherwise had the exact same experience. It's so nice to have times when I can skip the whole "figuring out food" thing and grab a soylent. I keep a case or so of the pre-mixed liquid bottles around at all times now. At my various clients I generally leave one in the fridge. It's the meal I can eat during a meeting, and feel even less guilty about my Sunday night double cheeseburger.
  • ajamesm 10y ago
    "doing startups is hard, and we all make mistakes along the way" I'd love to see a restaurant use that line. Food safety is hard!
    • codingdave 10y ago
      Or a surgeon. "Sorry, but surgery is hard and we all make mistakes along the way!" The statement is actually true... but you need to hold yourself to a higher standard when your product can have an impact on people's health. Of course, stopping the product while investigating the cause sounds like they are taking it seriously, so hopefully it will all work out in the end. But I'm not worried either way - meal replacement shakes have been around a long time, and despite the marketing, Soylent isn't that different than its competitors. So hit GNC on the way home and get whatever works for ya.
• SCAQTony 10y ago
  Scientifically, will 'Soylent' ever be as good as milk, yogurt, fruit or soup? I don't think so.
  • allemagne 10y ago
    Well, you can survive on Soylent alone, but I'm fairly certain you couldn't survive on milk alone.
    • beagle3 10y ago
      Actually .... babies survive on milk alone, in rare cases for 3 or 4 years. Cow babies survive on cow milk. While it isn't clear (to me) that humans can survive solely on cow milk (pasteurized milk at that, which means many vitamins, minerals and immune related ingredients are gone), but it is not unthinkable. There is another class of food, in addition to milk, that is able to completely support life: eggs. Proof: Live thing comes out of egg without any additional nutrition. Whether it is enough to completely support human life, is, again, unclear - but the answer might very well be "yes".
• jlebrech 10y ago
  Maybe the RDAs of certain nutrients are different from person to person.
• debt 10y ago
  i like that soylent is attempting to hack nutrition itself. i think something like soylent could have a huge image on global public health. hopefully they can figure this out.
• cyphar 10y ago
  Am I the only person who is more than a little freaked out by the name choice for Soylent? Sure, I get the nerdy reference but the main point of the movie is that the products Soylent made are made from people. Why someone would name a company after that is beyond me, not to mention that the founder appears to have a cult-leader-vibe. /shrug
  • FeepingCreature 10y ago
    It's pretty much all about the nerdy reference.
  • deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
• blondie9x 10y ago
  I unfortunately gave up Soylent when it was found to contain high levels of carcinogenic heavy metals. I believe they found it had 10-25x the minimum amount to be considered carcinogenic for arsenic, cadmium, and lead. It's a good idea to make a product that could reduce meat consumption and food waste while helping the environment but maybe this isn't the best way? Maybe helping people and corporations better manage and track food would be a better alternative. Also all the new types of meat alternatives like new veggie burgers, such as those from beyond meat etc are looking really promising and we should support those efforts globally.
  • codezero 10y ago
    Yikes! Where is a write up with these findings if you have one handy. Otherwise I'm off to Google! Found one: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/08/watchdog-group-says-soylents-cadmium-and-lead-levels-violate-ca-law/ http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/08/watchdog-group-says-s...
    • moon_priestess 10y ago
      The Soylent people address this on their site: https://faq.soylent.com/hc/en-us/articles/204197379-California-Proposition-65 https://faq.soylent.com/hc/en-us/articles/204197379-Californ... Really, I think the concern here is quite overblown. For example, Soylent 2.0 contains lead at a maximum rate of 0.010725 µg/mL. The FDA's action level for food intended for infants and children is 0.5 µg/mL (which is 46.62 times higher). Source: https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/csem/csem.asp?csem=7&po=8 https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/csem/csem.asp?csem=7&po=8
  • jly 10y ago
    I highly question the claims that soylent is better for the environment. This product's primary ingredient is soy. Imagine we replaced a good chunk of the currently consumed food with this. That would require field after field of soybean crops. The lack of diversity in this kind of growing would result in an unprecedented level of industrial agriculture, which is one of the great issues we face as a world population. We should be encouraging less monoculture, with larger and more diverse crop variety. It is also possible to do in a sustainable way while still consuming some meat. Large-scale production of products like soylent is exactly the opposite of the direction we need to be going to help the environment. This has some further background material: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/magazine/12policy-t.html http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/magazine/12policy-t.html
• justinzollars 10y ago
  Soylent is a weird cult.
• md2be 10y ago
  I'd bet 90% of coders are within 10 minutes of a whole Foods and btw you might actually find a date there and not the kind that grows on trees.
  • gwern 10y ago
    Possibly you might find a date there. But do you really want to date the sort of person who voluntarily shops at the sort of grocery store which prominently and proudly displays whole shelving units of homeopathic remedies?
    • chris_7 10y ago
      Yes, who cares? No one is making you buy them.
    • md2be 10y ago
      Huh? Sounds like you are a little constipated.
  • sctb 10y ago
    We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12815651 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12815651 and marked it off-topic.
• robertcorey 10y ago
  They should pivot to poisoning as a service.
• mike_ivanov 10y ago
  My impression was that the Soylent products are based on certain assumptions: 1) every human body is about the same, differences don't matter 2) a human body doesn't change much during its lifetime and 3) it's only the average that matters in nutrition, within-diet variance doesn't matter at all. Is that correct? If so, aren't those assumptions.. uhmm.. sort of delusional?
  • MildlySerious 10y ago
    What I would do in their shoes is to focus on being "good enough" for now, and building out the manufacturing and everything required until in a couple years technology is advanced enough to prepare their solution for the individual based on AI, factoring in the things you just mentioned. So my bet is that right now their "one size fits all" solution (when I last checked you could individualize it to some degree) is good enough.
• nickbauman 10y ago
  We understand so little about nutrition. Yet the same people that code for a living also run around saying "don't roll your own crypto" are the people replacing their diets with things like Soylent. It's madness.
• enjoyitasus 10y ago
  I had some the other day!!!
• Mc_Big_G 10y ago
  Too bad you can't short startups.
• keerthiko 10y ago
  There's a lot of anti-soylent in this thread, purporting it as a "holier-than-thou" attitude by tech-bros who are too good to eat "normal food". How ironic. Everyone here has had moments where they need to eat something because they're hungry, but are in the middle of something, a team meeting, in the zone fixing a bug, or just up late at night. The standard solutions are to either be distracted by hunger and keep working, or go eat something junk-like real fast, or prepare super well in advance a series of healthy snacks meant for times like this. Well, not everyone prioritizes organizing emergency meals, or enjoys cooking, or wants to spend time on it. But they still value eating something cost-effective, and at least moderately healthy. For all the people whose default choice is ordering pizza or ringing up Postmates for some junk food, Soylent (while not making people sick) is several orders of magnitude better in terms of cost, convenience AND nutrition. What's wrong with that? Why would you diss that choice so much? Surely you can't believe ordering a Domino's cheese pizza is better than consuming a bottle of Soylent? If your only suggestion is "they should learn to cook/mix their own/pay attention to food" you're missing the point and refusing to empathize. Different people have different priorities and inclinations, and it makes sense for products to be marketed for some set of those without demanding behaviour change.
  • smcdow 10y ago
    What's wrong with that? Soylent is _disgusting_, that's what's wrong with it. It would be hard not to question the judgement of anyone who eats that stuff.
    • michaelborromeo 10y ago
      I'm not a big fan of drinking milk -- it causes digestive issues for me and a lot of other people and doesn't taste great by itself. It would be hard not to question the judgement of anyone who drinks that stuff.
• 415Kathleem 10y ago
  Does anyone else think that Soylent in and of itself is kind of ridiculous? I mean, I'm sorry that people are getting sick, and I'm thankful no one has gotten gravely ill- but come ON. You're seriously too busy to eat your meals now? The only people who would truly be too busy to eat are not the people who work in tech. And I say this as someone who works in tech. The people who would actually need Soylent couldn't afford it. /End rant
• victorhooi 10y ago
  I found Soylent incredibly useful recently when I went through a bout of gastro. It was easy to keep down, and this way I knew I was at least getting some nutrients in. I don't use Soylent as a day-to-day meal. I use it when I am rushing around, and the alternative is McDonalds. The way I see it. 1. It's a fixed 500 calorie intake 2. It's reasonably balanced nutritionally 3. It doesn't have useless junk I don't need (extra oil/fat, preservatives, extra sugar/flavouring etc.). A lot of people seem to say, oh, but what if you miss XYZ nutrient, or, what if there is this other secret nutrient in fresh food you don't have. My question to you is - do you think KFC or McDonalds would have these secret nutrients? Or that the fried-chicken and chips meal you get at the local takeout, or the oily chinese takeout you buy on lazy nights if somehow better for you? If the alternative is other sorts of so-called fast foods - then yeah, I'm going to take the Soylent. Also, people talk about how preparing wholesome, healthy fresh food takes no time...bollocks. When you have a one-year old in your hands crying, you're rushing to pack her bags for daycare, you have another scamp running around chasing the cat (whom you still need to feed, by the way) - the last think you want to do is warm up the stove, cut some veggies, and make up a stir-fry. You want to shove two scoops of powder, shake it with some water and glug it down. Not to mention shopping for groceries. Yes, I love cooking - but I'd like to do it as a enjoyable thing, when I have time/energy. Not something I need to do, even when I'm exhausted, because the alternative is starving, or greasy takeout.
  • kafkaesq 10y ago
    My question to you is - do you think KFC or McDonalds would have these secret nutrients? Beats me. But at least you're placing Soylent alongside its actual competitors.
• pmyjavec 10y ago
  "Meant to be mixed with water or other liquids, the powder has enough fats, carbohydrates and other nutrients to replace a traditional meal, according to the company. People looking for a quick fix, such as software programmers in Silicon Valley, have become devotees." This is one of the saddest things I've read in a long time, I'm not sure if people actually do this but it sounds really sad. If you don't have energy to prepare some food, or find a healthy meal, you're burned out, broke or just lazy, probably burned out. I know this because I've been there. I've read from multiple sources that ~45 million Americans go hungry [1], there is no reason to believe Silicon Valley is exempt from these figures. Are people just substituting Soylent for real meals because they can't afford proper food? America sounds like a really lousy place lately and for the most part, the tech industry doesn't sound like it's helping. 1. http://www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america/impact-of-hunger/hunger-and-poverty/hunger-and-poverty-fact-sheet.html http://www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america/impact-of-hu...
• piyushpr134 10y ago
  Seems like a e-coli contamination!
• 7yagi 10y ago
  Inability to accept limitations of your intellect.
• datashovel 10y ago
  These stories are getting enough press I figure I'll chime in. I've been drinking Soylent since the early days. At times I've almost exclusively drank soylent. Since the first early adopters received their first shipments almost 1 year later than originally anticipated. The one thing that has caused mild indigestion for me was when I was drinking Soylent almost exclusively in combination with energy drinks. Specifically Monster Lo-Carb (1 each morning on weekdays). Once I eliminated energy drinks from my diet the indigestion stopped. Otherwise my personal impression (given my mostly eventless but extensive history with soylent, along with an inability of the company to precisely define the source of the issue) is that a lot of the bad press is a smear campaign. EDIT: Another thing that has crossed my mind is that the American diet is notoriously bad. When switching diet from mostly bad to mostly good a person should expect a change of the composition of the bacteria in their stomach. Which could lead to the sensation / symptoms of indigestion.