23 ms·

Soylent Thinks It Found What Was Making People Sick: Algae

199 points by Rifu 10y ago

hammock 10y ago
>Algal flour is a fairly novel ingredient that serves as a vegan replacement for butter and eggs. Derived from algae grown in fermentation tanks and then dried Reminds me of fungal protein, aka quorn aka mycoprotein. They were advertising it as the next big thing in protein sources. Its also grown by fermentation. If you google it, there are safety concerns.
- Cerium 10y ago
  There are safety concerns, but I think there are differences in product maturity. Quorn products have been available since the 80's, and early 2000's in the USA. Over the last ~15 years there have been a couple thousand complaints over the products, but since these are not incident related I would characterize them more like complaints about specific ingredients. Some people get reactions to peanuts, red wine, etc, but we do not consider that the manufacturer is at fault. Thanks for getting me to take a look at Quorn safety. I've been eating it for years, and continue to. Even though I am no longer really a vegetarian I enjoy Quorn products more than chicken based products since Quorn has better product consistency (not fat or gristle bits) than animal sources.
- JoshTriplett 10y ago
  As far as I can tell, the reported "safety concerns" are that if you're allergic to mushrooms, you may be allergic to mushroom-derived protein. That doesn't seem unreasonable, and every product I've seen based on mycoprotein clearly identifies the source as mushroom-based.
- harveywi 10y ago
  Soylent will be using pulverized cricket protein in their next evolution of the product. It's so sustainable after all. In fact, it will be so sustainable and good for you that it will become a moral imperative, eventually enforced by law, that citizens consume (20%, 50%, 85%) of their daily caloric intake from Soylent sources unless religious or medical restrictions prevent them from doing so.
  - harveywi 10y ago
    The downvoting is interesting. Perhaps they are not familiar with the efficiency of crickets as a protein source. Big Cricket Farms [1] in Youngstown, Ohio is moving in this direction. Partnership with Soylent would be a natural fit, since the physical characteristics of culinary crickets are still intimidating, whereas pulverized cricket protein poses no stigma. [1] http://bigcricketfarms.com/ http://bigcricketfarms.com/
    - publicfig 10y ago
      I think that the downvoting is more likely tied to your outlandishly wild claims as fact of both cricket usage in Soylent and that the government will force consumption of it. Neither of those claims are at all verifiable or likely within any basis of reality.
      - harveywi 10y ago
        What is wrong with reasonable speculation? You just speculated about why I was downvoted.
        st3v3r 10y ago
        Nothing in your post was close to reasonable.
        harveywi 10y ago
        Just because an idea makes one uncomfortable ("eating sludge", "efficient and sustainable nutrition impacting public policy", etc.) does not make it unreasonable, least of all unreasonable for discussion. The opposite should be true.
        deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
        10y ago
sevensor 10y ago
Is this unrelated to the mold contamination people were reporting?
- scotu 10y ago
  yeah, different issues
glenda 10y ago
Sounds like they have a bug in their "food stack" and this modification is like printf debugging - if no one gets sick then it was the algae, otherwise they will need to continue poking around to figure out what's wrong. What a silly game to play when people's health is at stake.
- arkitaip 10y ago
  That's hilarious and scary. Can you imagine the reactions if any other (non Valley?) food business had this approach to food safety?
  - jobu 10y ago
    Really doesn't seem like a huge deal to me. People are complex and sometimes have allergies or reactions to foods that they don't even know or understand. A neighbor of mine has an allergy to MSG and it took him years to realize it. He's still does trial-and-error on new foods to determine which ones contain MSG as part of their "natural flavors" (sometimes with painful results). The difference here is that Soylent is a "food replacement". That means it's often the only thing these people eat and a small change to the formulation could be a breaking change for a few of them.
    - DanBC 10y ago
      > People are complex and sometimes have allergies or reactions to foods that they don't even know or understand. That's fine, but Soylent marketed the product as being suitable for everyone even if they had allergies. Soylent's words: > "For anyone that struggles with allergies, heartburn, acid reflux or digestion, has trouble controlling weight or cholesterol, or simply doesn't have the means to eat well, soylent is for you." EDIT: I think this is scumbag behaviour on Soylent's part.
      - jobu 10y ago
        > That's fine, but Soylent marketed the product as being suitable for everyone even if they had allergies. Obviously there are caveats for their allergy claims. The first ingredient in Soylent is soy protein, and while it's not as common as peanut allergies there are definitely people that can't do soy: https://www.foodallergy.org/allergens/soy-allergy https://www.foodallergy.org/allergens/soy-allergy
hacker_9 10y ago
Clearly there is a market for this 'super convenience' food/drink if people are still willing to buy this product after it made them sick. Even when their own stomach is the guinea pig. The company could do with better marketing though, reading things like this: In 2013, he raised capital to turn his full attention to Soylent, which he named after the science fiction novel that served as the basis for the 1973 movie featuring Charlton Heston as a detective who discovers that a new type of food called Soylent Green is made of people. ..certainly doesn't help.
- dictum 10y ago
  I'm more aggrieved by the marketing (from day one) being a variation of "techies too busy to cook for themselves" It's not even a suggestion to drink it once in a while, when you're indeed unable to eat something else. It's an invitation to replace all meals with a prepared drink. It feeds on, and enables, the perpetually-busy/all-nighter culture of SV.
  - dimino 10y ago
    s/busy/lazy/g At least, that's how the marketing is hitting me.
- trhway 10y ago
  > The company could do with better marketing better?! you've just said yourself: >people are still willing to buy this product after it made them sick. you can't do better than that :) They basically hit the same "hi-tech/advanced/futuristic" bullseye in the heads of today youngsters that Campbell soup and other highly processed food industry hit 50+ years ago.
  - ghaff 10y ago
    I find Soylent's marketing eye-rollingly annoying for all kinds of reasons--especially its targeting of (and success with) a Silicon Valley demographic that's too busy to eat because they're writing a social network for penguins that's going to change the world. At the same time, let's not pretend that every meal is a leisurely repast shared with friends or that there isn't a massive industry to deliver pre-made food and prepared food at various levels going back decades. To the degree that Soylent replaces a Big Mac or a frozen burrito it's hard for me to see it as the end of civilization. Even if I also think that people should make the time to cook a relaxed meal at least some of the time.
binarymax 10y ago
Where is the FDA in all of this? I would hope that after the widespread issues with the product, they would have stepped in and blocked shipment until safety studies have been done that comply with regulations.
- nimish 10y ago
  The supplement industry is big in Utah and Orrin hatch has blocked oversight. The upshot is that supplements are barely regulated if at all. The FDA is very limited in what it can do.
  - Caerus 10y ago
    I don't think that applies here. According to the FDA Guidelines [1] (page 4) for a dietary supplement: "Furthermore, a dietary supplement must be labeled as a dietary supplement and be intended for ingestion and must not be represented for use as conventional food or as a sole item of a meal or of the diet" Soylent is clearly marketing it as a meal replacement which should disqualify it as a supplement. 1) https://oig.hhs.gov/oei/reports/oei-01-01-00120.pdf https://oig.hhs.gov/oei/reports/oei-01-01-00120.pdf
    - mikeyouse 10y ago
      It depends how they're structuring everything. They add Omega-3s derived from algae to their product, so that algae is regulated via the supplement standards. The product making people sick appears to be algal flour, which probably falls on the food guidelines. In either case, the essential standard is whether or not it's substantially similar to a product already on the market. The standard is "GRAS" or Generally Recognized As Safe. If you want to sell milk or vitamin C or whatever, you don't need to conduct your own safety studies since both have been sold for years without issue. You just have to ensure that your product is similar enough to the GRAS product to qualify. I actually worked for an Algae Biofuels / Omega-3 company in the Bay Area for a period. The GRAS process wasn't onerous but was actually fairly regimented. We conducted uptake tests and enzyme tests on rats over several different period lengths to ensure that the algal omega-3s we were producing had the same impact as other sources of omega-3. Ours were a slightly different form (Ethyl Esters instead of Triglycerides) so our standard to meet was a little higher. I was on the business side but have an undergrad science background if anyone has any questions. EDIT: Forgot to add a link to the GRAS status of the Algal Flour that Soylent is using: http://www.fda.gov/Food/IngredientsPackagingLabeling/GRAS/NoticeInventory/ucm361155.htm http://www.fda.gov/Food/IngredientsPackagingLabeling/GRAS/No... They did a fair amount of safety testing to determine its status. > In a published 90-day subchronic toxicity study, Hsd:Sprague Dawley rats, (n=10/sex/group) were fed diets of C. protothecoides S106 flour at up to approximately 4,800 mg/kg bw/d for males and 5,400 mg/kg bw/d for females; no adverse effects were observed. In a published 28-day study, Hsd:Sprague Dawley rats, (n=10/sex/group) were fed diets of C. protothecoides S106 flour at up to approximately 7,600 mg/kg bw/d for males and 8,100 mg/kg bw/d for females; no adverse effects were observed. The results of a published bacterial mutation study showed that algal flour (5000 microgram/plate) is neither genotoxic nor mutagenic. Additionally, a published study showed that algal flour did not induce a clastogenic response as evaluated by the bone marrow chromosomal aberration test in mice after a single oral dose (2000 mg/kg bw/d).
jostmey 10y ago
Soylent better be sure that they are right. They just fingered the problem onto another company (TerraVia). What supplier would work with Soylent if it turns out Soylent is wrong?
- MorePowerToYou 10y ago
  Companies that mess up always fix things the first time. Just like Samsung fixed the Note 7 first try. It's not like replacement Note 7s were catching on fire on airplanes or anything... oh wait /s
- macspoofing 10y ago
  Plenty. Food is a cut-throat competitive business.
homulilly 10y ago
someone should inform the author of this article that algae aren't plants
- kjbflsudfb 10y ago
  Would you prefer they complicate the discussion by trying to explain what they are? My understanding has always been that they have many plant-like characteristics, but not all. In fact, they are even a part of the plant kingdom. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/06/070619182508.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/06/070619182508.h...
  - homulilly 10y ago
    Some are, some aren't. Upon further research it does appear the type used in this algal flour are related to plants but many algae species aren't closely related to plants at all. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viridiplantae https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viridiplantae
- Slurpee99 10y ago
  Some algae are, and some are not. For example most green algae are still considered plants.
  - homulilly 10y ago
    Plants generally aren't grouped with green algae despite them having evolved from a common ancestor. I guess it's a bit like the crustacean/insect division, so maybe I was being a bit too facetious.
- munificent 10y ago
  The author does not say all algae are plants. She says the algae used to make algal flour are plants. As far as I can tell, she is correct. AlgaVia uses "microalgae", which, according to Wikipedia[1] are plants. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microphyte https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microphyte
jdavis703 10y ago
Well one of the reasons I liked their products was because of the "algal oil" (no word on if they're going to remove that also). This is basically vegan fish oil, which as a vegetarian is one of the things I've missed.
- rosser 10y ago
  As a long-time vegetarian, I've been buying algae-sourced EPA/DHA capsules for years from a company called Vegetology. They actually, you know, test their product for safety.
teaearlgraycold 10y ago
>Since its introduction in 2013, the protein drink Soylent has become the go-to food substitute Maybe I'm being pedantic, but Soylent is not a protein drink. It's primarily a carbohydrate drink.
- nickff 10y ago
  Is actually more of a fat-drink than a carbohydrate or protein drink.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_(food)#Ready-to-Drink https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_(food)#Ready-to-Drink
Xisiqomelir 10y ago
I'm still amazed people pay for this shit when fully-regulated formulated meal replacements have been around for years.
- harveywi 10y ago
  While the Soylent formula is a modern medical marvel, its marketing is the real secret ingredient.
- haliax 10y ago
  Do you have examples that are both not full of sugar and available to the general public at a reasonable cost?
  - crispyambulance 10y ago
    Any snack that satisfies appetite and doesn't make you sick or fat too quickly would suffice. A bag of nuts, a power bar, fruit, vegetables, canned fish/meat, etc. One can always balance out nutritional intake on subsequent "real" meals. Somehow the marketing folks for Soylent have been able to convince a lot of people that they ACTUALLY NEED a fully balanced meal replacement consisting of synthetic food upon which someone may subsist indefinitely. That's a feat of marketing, but apparently little else.
    - livingparadox 10y ago
      All those examples you've mentioned fill a very different niche than what Soylent is filling. Most people on Soylent aren't looking for something to keep them from getting hungry until they get a more balanced meal. They're looking for a quick, healthy, balanced meal. Soylent fills that desire, your examples do not.
      - crispyambulance 10y ago
        They actually DON'T NEED Soylent, that's simply the magic of marketing. I tip my hat to their marketing skills, however. I never would have thought they could get anywhere selling a bland sludge to affluent consumers as a replacement for food... who would've thought that could work? They did it and did it well for a while at least.
rosser 10y ago
No, I'm pretty sure it was hubris. Proximal cause versus ultimate cause, and all that.
briHass 10y ago
Part of the issue is their desire to keep the product vegan. Instead of using known-safe, health-promoting sources of polyunsaturated (O3/O6) fats like fish oil, they use algal sources, which have very little data supporting them as safe/effective sources of O3.
- the8472 10y ago
  > Which have very little data supporting them as safe/effective sources of O3. Someone has to be the first to gather the data.
  - st3v3r 10y ago
    That shouldn't be paying customers.
    - greendragon 10y ago
      Unless a lot of their customers are vegan.
    - the8472 10y ago
      I do assume the supplier first tested the toxicity on animals. Then soylent did internal tests with the new ingredients and found no problems either. How else are you going to find 1:10000+ problems?
- atomical 10y ago
  http://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/fish-oil-friend-or-foe-201307126467 http://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/fish-oil-friend-or-foe-20... There are other safe sources of omega 3's.
  - briHass 10y ago
    The sources mentioned in that article are ALA, which have conversion rates to the desired DHA/EPA that vary greatly between individuals [1]. Typically, something like 5% of ALA is converted to EPA and even less is converted to DHA. It's better to eat the preformed DHA/EPA rather than relying on the conversion. edit: Harvard health seems to even disagree with themselves: http://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/why-not-flaxseed-oil http://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/why-not-flaxse... [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9637947 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9637947
mmaunder 10y ago
Such an unfortunate name. The 1973 film was set in 2022, so not far off the mark.
- freehunter 10y ago
  But then again the 1973 movie was made in 1973, so there are tens of millions of people who have never heard of it.
deleted 10y ago
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st3v3r 10y ago
Move fast and make people vomit
- tectec 10y ago
  Sounds like a fun roller-coaster
zelias 10y ago
Wasn't Soylent Green also made of "algae-based ingredients"? Perhaps the name of the product is more on-point than we realize...
conjectures 10y ago
Algae? Yeah right. Soylent green is made of people. Seriously though, how can a food supplement (sorry, meal replacement) company expect to prosper with a brand based on a sci-fi movie about cannibalism?
- freehunter 10y ago
  You feel that way because you're on the Internet. I've never seen the movie, it was way before my time, and it exists in the tiniest amount of public consciousness today. The only reason I know what Soylent Green even means is because people on the Internet reference it occasionally. I've talked to quite a few people about Soylent and I've said "you know, like the movie" and most of the time they have no idea what I'm talking about.
  - ConceptJunkie 10y ago
    Besides, it's not called "Soylent Green". Green was the cause of the shock twist in the movie, but there was also Soylent Red and Soylent Yellow in the movie, which were pretty much what Soylent, the product, is trying to become. The name is appropriate in the context of the movie, although I would have never chosen it.
    - conjectures 10y ago
      > The name is appropriate in the context of the movie Only if you don't see a problem with buying from a company whose other product lines include ground up paupers. The name is like a stupid teenage joke which somehow managed to survive onto packaging. Also it's objectively ironic that the problem is related to algae, which is commonly green.
      - joesb 10y ago
        And what are people who hate a product simply because its name resembles some movie 40 years ago? A stupid teenager? Or a stupid adult?
baby 10y ago
I love what Soylent is doing, I have wished for such a meal replacer all my life. I've drank something like 40 bottles of Soylent (which are, so far presumably safe) and they have helped me replace a lot of fast food. Never had problems with them until I started getting nauseous and now I can't drink it anymore. With all these news about people getting sick, I feel a bit silly having beta tested stuff with my own body. And they definitely have lost at least one customer here. But I'm still happy to see them experimenting with such a product. I still want this to happen, I will just not beta test it myself.
- DanBC 10y ago
  > I have wished for such a meal replacer all my life. why aren't any of the very many other products that have existed for years been good enough?
  - resfirestar 10y ago
    What products would those be? Most meal replacement shakes marketed in the US are for people trying to lose weight, so they have far less calories and fat than a meal for people just trying to eat healthy.
    - catenthusiast 10y ago
      Have you heard of Ensure?
      - resfirestar 10y ago
        Yeah, I even wrote a paragraph bashing it (or at least, people claiming that it's a product of serious medical research) last time we had a Soylent thread. It has a lot more sugar and carbs than most people would want to eat regularly, which makes it more suitable as a temporary food replacement or a snack than a lunch staple.
        scdlbx 10y ago
jorblumesea 10y ago
The fact that Soylent is classified as a "Nutritional supplement" is absurd. No inspections, no accountability.
- sowhatquestion 10y ago
  This is false. Soylent is classified as a food, and has to follow the same FDA requirements as any other food. "Soylent is not in violation of any product-safety standards or requirements, and is manufactured in FDA-approved facilities that follow federally regulated current Good Manufacturing Practices (cGMP)." Source: https://faq.soylent.com/hc/en-us/articles/204197379-California-Proposition-65 https://faq.soylent.com/hc/en-us/articles/204197379-Californ...
  - jorblumesea 10y ago
    You just proved my point: cGMP relates to drug safety, not to food consumption. It is not regulated as a food. http://www.fda.gov/Drugs/DevelopmentApprovalProcess/Manufacturing/ucm169105.htm http://www.fda.gov/Drugs/DevelopmentApprovalProcess/Manufact...
muad 10y ago
Does it really make a difference for Soylent at this point? I would imagine their brand is already trashed.
NoGravitas 10y ago
I'm not surprised. Spirulina is sold as a miracle health food, but it makes me toss my cookies.
Balgair 10y ago
Oh boy, another Soylent discussion. Here is what all the off topic discussion will be: Person1) "What is so hard to understand sheeple?! Soylent isn't for all your meals, just ones that you are too busy to eat. Also, it has all the vitamins you need not like all those thousand other bars/drinks!?" Person2) "I'd rather move to the bottom of the ocean than buy Soylent. Why would you ever skip a meal?! Capitalism is the root of all evil including making me miss my dinner!" Folks, we all come at food differently, it's a very personal thing. Just because you feel this way about food, does not mean we all do. It's like people that stand or sit when they are wiping after going #2. We all coexist just fine and none of us know that there is really any other way and are astounded when other people are different. Chill, people, chill, it's food.
- akamaka 10y ago
  You could also say some people like Trump and other people like Clinton, and it's just an opinion. However, one opinion is highly correlated with being more educated. I suspect that the same is true here. The population at large has a very poor level of education about food, and Soylent seeks to exploit that very large business opportunity. I would prefer to see more people with an understanding of healthy eating and cooking.
  - chrisdbaldwin 10y ago
    >The population at large has a very poor level of education We have a general education crisis going on in the United States. We've got some of the best propaganda in the world, and it's making us sick.
  - BigJono 10y ago
    I suspect the intelligence correlation is the other way around to what you're implying. I'm still yet to see any evidence that Soylent or similar products are unhealthy (i.e that it takes more than a good balance of macro and micro nutrients for food to be considered "healthy"), especially when compared to an average western diet rather than an ideal one. I have seen an awful lot of baseless appeals to nature and tradition though, both of which are indicative of low intelligence.
bdcravens 10y ago
Blue Bell in Texas shut down for months due to listeria. Would that put some companies out of business? Maybe, that's ok. This is public health we're talking about. Disrupt. Move fast and break things. Iterate iterate iterate. Fail fast. This may be okay when you're making a better spreadsheet, but not everything can be a startup.
- gohrt 10y ago
  Spreadsheets are used to make real decisions. Spreadsheet bugs kill too.
jasonwilk 10y ago
I'm a fan of Soylent but I wouldn't say things like 'Soylent prides itself on rapid product development—an ideal popularized by Google and Facebook Inc.' Things that are going into my body should not be rapidly developed and released. It's slightly different than Facebook launching a new feature that may or may not break.
- ClassyJacket 10y ago
  Things that go into your body get rapidly developed and released all the time. Ever been to a restaurant with a new item on the menu?
AndyKelley 10y ago
I flagged it because the site started playing audio while I was trying to read. Had to close the tab to make my phone shut up. It was embarrassing and I was unable to read the content.
caogecym 10y ago
We always get latest version of soylent instead of having a way to subscribe a specific version. This is like cloud based service, the upgrade is transparent, you benefits from ingredient upgrade, and you suffer from it. The key here is how fast Soylent can identify and address customer's concerns.
lnanek2 10y ago
That's too bad. I love the algae based DHA-3 fortified milk at the super market. The other option is fish based DHA-3 fortified and I can't stand the taste. It's strange to blame something sold in supermarkets like that.
deleted 10y ago
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jzd131 10y ago
I get sick every time I eat fake eggs made from Algae- this makes a lot of senseto me.
Pitarou 10y ago
Inexcusable. The only reason Soylent have gotten away with it for so long is that the FDA rules for this category of product haven't been written yet. A product shouldn't make people sick when used as intended. So if a product is intended to be consumed as 100% of your diet, it MUST: - contain all known macro- and micro-nutrients necessary for human health - contain nothing that makes you sick when you eat it all the time Soylent failed on both counts: - Early formulations lacked selenium. Beta testers duly developed symptoms of selenium deficiency. - The latest formulation contained algae. Customers duly got sick from consuming more of this kind of algae than humans have ever consumed before. The first mistake might be excused as a beginner's error and a learning experience. But they didn't learn. Luckily, Soylent lives in the land of class action lawsuits. The lawyers are gonna shut these jokers down.
- intopieces 10y ago
  Good lord. The percentage of people who 'got sick' by Soylent was less 0.1% of all consumers. If we went into panic-mode for that kind of result for every product, we wouldn't have any products. The variation in humans is too great to test for everything. "The Lawyers" aren't going to shut anyone down because no one is suing, and if they tried I doubt any judge would allow a class-action lawsuit for a few tummyaches. Soylent lists the ingredients on the box. That the consumers were unaware of their sensitivity to algae is not evidence of misconduct on the part of Soylent.
  - Pitarou 10y ago
    I take your point about the class-action. I also take your point about human choice, as far as it goes, but I still think Soylent is a special case. If I eat ridiculous amounts of pesto and rupture my duodenum, nobody would hold the pesto producer responsible, because that's not the way people eat pesto. But if eating lots of Soylent made me ill, Soylent's makers should, in principle, bear some responsibility, because they know that this is how people eat Soylent. Indeed, Soylent was heavily hyped as something that could be 100% of your diet, and they can't pretend that never happened. The FDA actually DOES require that novel ingredients are tested to the point where 0.1% problems are detectable. I know that the algae isn't a novel ingredient, but if Soylent add it to their formula, it will suddenly comprise a large part of the diet of a large number of people. That is a novel thing in itself, so I would argue that Soylent has some responsibility to make sure what they're doing is safe. If FDA rules say its okay not to, the FDA rules need to catch up. I might be inclined to give Soylent the benefit of the doubt if I thought they had a better attitude. But when they made themselves sick because they forgot humans need selenium in their diet, they didn't say, "Wow! How could we have been so dumb? We need to take more care with people's bodies." It was more like, "Hey, no problem. Nobody died and we fixed it now. Let's move on." These are just the screw ups we know about. What are the odds there are plenty more they managed to hush up? Nobody has been killed or injured so far, but if they don't change their attitude and people continue to live off their swill...
old-gregg 10y ago
Soylent's problem is not a seemingly overlooked ingredient. Their biggest problem is inability to run the continuous food processing loop. What's the point of tweaking the recipe if you can't guarantee the execution and your customers get, basically, randomness for lunch? We had a corporate subscription for Soylent 2.0 drink. The taste varied from batch to batch on the scale from "milk in a cereal bowl" to "sewage water". These issues have been regularly popping up on reddit and their own forums for months now. We have suspended the subscription and I can't bring myself to try another bottle, even though I originally loved the concept and the taste.
- developer2 10y ago
  To be fair, this statement is something that needs to be followed up with hard evidence. Inconsistent flavour between batches does not necessarily mean you're getting different percentages of ingredients. You can't simply blame them for variation in taste; just look at orange juice companies for the amount of chemical manipulation that goes into making a single brand of orange juice taste exactly the same in every batch even though oranges naturally have varying flavors. That is not the kind of science I want behind my food. There are thousands of individuals and organizations out there with the equipment to analyze batches to determine whether the mix is consistent. Why haven't we heard from them? I can't imagine risk of lawsuit for defamation is the only reason. The whole appeal of Soylent is that the formula is public; surely they can't be hiding behind "publishing analysis of our product is exposing our corporate secrets".
  - IanCal 10y ago
    > There are thousands of individuals and organizations out there with the equipment to analyze batches to determine whether the mix is consistent. Why haven't we heard from them? Honest question, why would anyone bother? Who would actually benefit from being able to release a statement about how variable it is?
- brandon272 10y ago
  My main complaint with the 1.5 powder was extreme inconsistency between batches. One batch, which many people were complaining about in the Soylent forums, had a rancid/sour/burnt taste and smell to it. The problem with the formula is that because it has a very bland taste, inconsistency stands out like a sore thumb and your mind works wonders to create an aversion to the whole product. Once I started having the weird tasting Soylent, even the "normal" batches were no longer palatable to me. Soylent staff dismissed these concerns as "normal variation in a plant based product".
print_r 10y ago
I was sure it was going to be "People"
mathattack 10y ago
Here's what I don't get... There is all this bad hype about Soylent. Why not just get one of the dozens of other meal replacement shakes in your average health food store?
- jpindar 10y ago
  Wrong subculture. Health foods are marketed for hippies and athletes and dieters. Soylent is for nerds! /s
  - mathattack 10y ago
    So it's strictly a Marketing game? There's nothing behind the product? I would have thought nerds would be smarter. Or is it something like a hipster beard and hats when it's warm?
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
aj_n 10y ago
Way to casually ruin Soylent Green, Bloomberg!
WalterSear 10y ago
People have been warning us about the green soylent since the 70s.
grondilu 10y ago
I've not often eaten algae, but I do remember it to have the weirdest taste I have ever experienced.
- mrob 10y ago
  Seaweed is a type of algae, and I eat rehydrated dried seaweeds every so often. I wouldn't call any seaweed delicious but they're no worse than the average vegetable. If you eat other seafood you'll probably find the taste of seaweed acceptable.
010a 10y ago
Please fix it and get these products back on the market so I can get my order in.
shepardrtc 10y ago
I enjoyed Soylent when it first came out, but then they started trying to be clever. It was already a complex product and they went crazy trying to replace the fish oil they were using. Around v1.4 it started to taste absolutely disgusting and the consistency was that of slime.
SuicidebyStar 10y ago
I think I found a better alternative to Soylent called "Bertrand" (https://bertrand.bio/ https://bertrand.bio/). It is made out of organic ingredients, tastes solid (just order the one with no flavor, it actually tastes better) and is hopefully more healthy since it is made from "real" natural powderized ingredients. So even if there are nutrition components (e.g. other micro-nutrients) which weren't researched properly till today (quite likely imho), they should still be in the drink since it's not made from artificial components. I'm drinking it for two months now and I'm happy with it. Very convenient, fair price, available in a vegan & gluten-free version and it tastes okay-ish (like oatmeal). P.S.: I'm not affiliated with this company in any way, just a happy customer.
- miranda_rights 10y ago
  Interesting. I like the idea but the macronutrients are heavily weighted towards carbohydrates. For reference, normally 30-35% of your daily calories should be protein, while only 11% of the calories of Bertrand come from protein.
  - SuicidebyStar 10y ago
    That is true, especially the vegan version lacks protein (in comparison to the "active" version). That's why I add rice protein to the drink to get up to 120-150g protein/day. Besides that I add also Acerola powder for more (natural) vitamin C.

199 points by Rifu 10y ago

>Algal flour is a fairly novel ingredient that serves as a vegan replacement for butter and eggs. Derived from algae grown in fermentation tanks and then dried Reminds me of fungal protein, aka quorn aka mycoprotein. They were advertising it as the next big thing in protein sources. Its also grown by fermentation. If you google it, there are safety concerns.

Cerium 10y ago
There are safety concerns, but I think there are differences in product maturity. Quorn products have been available since the 80's, and early 2000's in the USA. Over the last ~15 years there have been a couple thousand complaints over the products, but since these are not incident related I would characterize them more like complaints about specific ingredients. Some people get reactions to peanuts, red wine, etc, but we do not consider that the manufacturer is at fault. Thanks for getting me to take a look at Quorn safety. I've been eating it for years, and continue to. Even though I am no longer really a vegetarian I enjoy Quorn products more than chicken based products since Quorn has better product consistency (not fat or gristle bits) than animal sources.
JoshTriplett 10y ago
As far as I can tell, the reported "safety concerns" are that if you're allergic to mushrooms, you may be allergic to mushroom-derived protein. That doesn't seem unreasonable, and every product I've seen based on mycoprotein clearly identifies the source as mushroom-based.
harveywi 10y ago
Soylent will be using pulverized cricket protein in their next evolution of the product. It's so sustainable after all. In fact, it will be so sustainable and good for you that it will become a moral imperative, eventually enforced by law, that citizens consume (20%, 50%, 85%) of their daily caloric intake from Soylent sources unless religious or medical restrictions prevent them from doing so.
- harveywi 10y ago
  The downvoting is interesting. Perhaps they are not familiar with the efficiency of crickets as a protein source. Big Cricket Farms [1] in Youngstown, Ohio is moving in this direction. Partnership with Soylent would be a natural fit, since the physical characteristics of culinary crickets are still intimidating, whereas pulverized cricket protein poses no stigma. [1] http://bigcricketfarms.com/ http://bigcricketfarms.com/
  - publicfig 10y ago
    I think that the downvoting is more likely tied to your outlandishly wild claims as fact of both cricket usage in Soylent and that the government will force consumption of it. Neither of those claims are at all verifiable or likely within any basis of reality.
    - harveywi 10y ago
      What is wrong with reasonable speculation? You just speculated about why I was downvoted.
      - st3v3r 10y ago
        Nothing in your post was close to reasonable.
        harveywi 10y ago
        Just because an idea makes one uncomfortable ("eating sludge", "efficient and sustainable nutrition impacting public policy", etc.) does not make it unreasonable, least of all unreasonable for discussion. The opposite should be true.
        deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
        10y ago

sevensor 10y ago

Is this unrelated to the mold contamination people were reporting?

scotu 10y ago
yeah, different issues

glenda 10y ago

Sounds like they have a bug in their "food stack" and this modification is like printf debugging - if no one gets sick then it was the algae, otherwise they will need to continue poking around to figure out what's wrong. What a silly game to play when people's health is at stake.

arkitaip 10y ago
That's hilarious and scary. Can you imagine the reactions if any other (non Valley?) food business had this approach to food safety?
- jobu 10y ago
  Really doesn't seem like a huge deal to me. People are complex and sometimes have allergies or reactions to foods that they don't even know or understand. A neighbor of mine has an allergy to MSG and it took him years to realize it. He's still does trial-and-error on new foods to determine which ones contain MSG as part of their "natural flavors" (sometimes with painful results). The difference here is that Soylent is a "food replacement". That means it's often the only thing these people eat and a small change to the formulation could be a breaking change for a few of them.
  - DanBC 10y ago
    > People are complex and sometimes have allergies or reactions to foods that they don't even know or understand. That's fine, but Soylent marketed the product as being suitable for everyone even if they had allergies. Soylent's words: > "For anyone that struggles with allergies, heartburn, acid reflux or digestion, has trouble controlling weight or cholesterol, or simply doesn't have the means to eat well, soylent is for you." EDIT: I think this is scumbag behaviour on Soylent's part.
    - jobu 10y ago
      > That's fine, but Soylent marketed the product as being suitable for everyone even if they had allergies. Obviously there are caveats for their allergy claims. The first ingredient in Soylent is soy protein, and while it's not as common as peanut allergies there are definitely people that can't do soy: https://www.foodallergy.org/allergens/soy-allergy https://www.foodallergy.org/allergens/soy-allergy

hacker_9 10y ago

Clearly there is a market for this 'super convenience' food/drink if people are still willing to buy this product after it made them sick. Even when their own stomach is the guinea pig. The company could do with better marketing though, reading things like this: In 2013, he raised capital to turn his full attention to Soylent, which he named after the science fiction novel that served as the basis for the 1973 movie featuring Charlton Heston as a detective who discovers that a new type of food called Soylent Green is made of people. ..certainly doesn't help.

dictum 10y ago
I'm more aggrieved by the marketing (from day one) being a variation of "techies too busy to cook for themselves" It's not even a suggestion to drink it once in a while, when you're indeed unable to eat something else. It's an invitation to replace all meals with a prepared drink. It feeds on, and enables, the perpetually-busy/all-nighter culture of SV.
- dimino 10y ago
  s/busy/lazy/g At least, that's how the marketing is hitting me.
trhway 10y ago
> The company could do with better marketing better?! you've just said yourself: >people are still willing to buy this product after it made them sick. you can't do better than that :) They basically hit the same "hi-tech/advanced/futuristic" bullseye in the heads of today youngsters that Campbell soup and other highly processed food industry hit 50+ years ago.
- ghaff 10y ago
  I find Soylent's marketing eye-rollingly annoying for all kinds of reasons--especially its targeting of (and success with) a Silicon Valley demographic that's too busy to eat because they're writing a social network for penguins that's going to change the world. At the same time, let's not pretend that every meal is a leisurely repast shared with friends or that there isn't a massive industry to deliver pre-made food and prepared food at various levels going back decades. To the degree that Soylent replaces a Big Mac or a frozen burrito it's hard for me to see it as the end of civilization. Even if I also think that people should make the time to cook a relaxed meal at least some of the time.

binarymax 10y ago

Where is the FDA in all of this? I would hope that after the widespread issues with the product, they would have stepped in and blocked shipment until safety studies have been done that comply with regulations.

nimish 10y ago
The supplement industry is big in Utah and Orrin hatch has blocked oversight. The upshot is that supplements are barely regulated if at all. The FDA is very limited in what it can do.
- Caerus 10y ago
  I don't think that applies here. According to the FDA Guidelines [1] (page 4) for a dietary supplement: "Furthermore, a dietary supplement must be labeled as a dietary supplement and be intended for ingestion and must not be represented for use as conventional food or as a sole item of a meal or of the diet" Soylent is clearly marketing it as a meal replacement which should disqualify it as a supplement. 1) https://oig.hhs.gov/oei/reports/oei-01-01-00120.pdf https://oig.hhs.gov/oei/reports/oei-01-01-00120.pdf
  - mikeyouse 10y ago
    It depends how they're structuring everything. They add Omega-3s derived from algae to their product, so that algae is regulated via the supplement standards. The product making people sick appears to be algal flour, which probably falls on the food guidelines. In either case, the essential standard is whether or not it's substantially similar to a product already on the market. The standard is "GRAS" or Generally Recognized As Safe. If you want to sell milk or vitamin C or whatever, you don't need to conduct your own safety studies since both have been sold for years without issue. You just have to ensure that your product is similar enough to the GRAS product to qualify. I actually worked for an Algae Biofuels / Omega-3 company in the Bay Area for a period. The GRAS process wasn't onerous but was actually fairly regimented. We conducted uptake tests and enzyme tests on rats over several different period lengths to ensure that the algal omega-3s we were producing had the same impact as other sources of omega-3. Ours were a slightly different form (Ethyl Esters instead of Triglycerides) so our standard to meet was a little higher. I was on the business side but have an undergrad science background if anyone has any questions. EDIT: Forgot to add a link to the GRAS status of the Algal Flour that Soylent is using: http://www.fda.gov/Food/IngredientsPackagingLabeling/GRAS/NoticeInventory/ucm361155.htm http://www.fda.gov/Food/IngredientsPackagingLabeling/GRAS/No... They did a fair amount of safety testing to determine its status. > In a published 90-day subchronic toxicity study, Hsd:Sprague Dawley rats, (n=10/sex/group) were fed diets of C. protothecoides S106 flour at up to approximately 4,800 mg/kg bw/d for males and 5,400 mg/kg bw/d for females; no adverse effects were observed. In a published 28-day study, Hsd:Sprague Dawley rats, (n=10/sex/group) were fed diets of C. protothecoides S106 flour at up to approximately 7,600 mg/kg bw/d for males and 8,100 mg/kg bw/d for females; no adverse effects were observed. The results of a published bacterial mutation study showed that algal flour (5000 microgram/plate) is neither genotoxic nor mutagenic. Additionally, a published study showed that algal flour did not induce a clastogenic response as evaluated by the bone marrow chromosomal aberration test in mice after a single oral dose (2000 mg/kg bw/d).

jostmey 10y ago

Soylent better be sure that they are right. They just fingered the problem onto another company (TerraVia). What supplier would work with Soylent if it turns out Soylent is wrong?

MorePowerToYou 10y ago
Companies that mess up always fix things the first time. Just like Samsung fixed the Note 7 first try. It's not like replacement Note 7s were catching on fire on airplanes or anything... oh wait /s
macspoofing 10y ago
Plenty. Food is a cut-throat competitive business.

homulilly 10y ago

someone should inform the author of this article that algae aren't plants

kjbflsudfb 10y ago
Would you prefer they complicate the discussion by trying to explain what they are? My understanding has always been that they have many plant-like characteristics, but not all. In fact, they are even a part of the plant kingdom. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/06/070619182508.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/06/070619182508.h...
- homulilly 10y ago
  Some are, some aren't. Upon further research it does appear the type used in this algal flour are related to plants but many algae species aren't closely related to plants at all. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viridiplantae https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viridiplantae
Slurpee99 10y ago
Some algae are, and some are not. For example most green algae are still considered plants.
- homulilly 10y ago
  Plants generally aren't grouped with green algae despite them having evolved from a common ancestor. I guess it's a bit like the crustacean/insect division, so maybe I was being a bit too facetious.
munificent 10y ago
The author does not say all algae are plants. She says the algae used to make algal flour are plants. As far as I can tell, she is correct. AlgaVia uses "microalgae", which, according to Wikipedia[1] are plants. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microphyte https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microphyte

jdavis703 10y ago

Well one of the reasons I liked their products was because of the "algal oil" (no word on if they're going to remove that also). This is basically vegan fish oil, which as a vegetarian is one of the things I've missed.

rosser 10y ago
As a long-time vegetarian, I've been buying algae-sourced EPA/DHA capsules for years from a company called Vegetology. They actually, you know, test their product for safety.

teaearlgraycold 10y ago

>Since its introduction in 2013, the protein drink Soylent has become the go-to food substitute Maybe I'm being pedantic, but Soylent is not a protein drink. It's primarily a carbohydrate drink.

nickff 10y ago
Is actually more of a fat-drink than a carbohydrate or protein drink.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_(food)#Ready-to-Drink https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_(food)#Ready-to-Drink

Xisiqomelir 10y ago

I'm still amazed people pay for this shit when fully-regulated formulated meal replacements have been around for years.

harveywi 10y ago
While the Soylent formula is a modern medical marvel, its marketing is the real secret ingredient.
haliax 10y ago
Do you have examples that are both not full of sugar and available to the general public at a reasonable cost?
- crispyambulance 10y ago
  Any snack that satisfies appetite and doesn't make you sick or fat too quickly would suffice. A bag of nuts, a power bar, fruit, vegetables, canned fish/meat, etc. One can always balance out nutritional intake on subsequent "real" meals. Somehow the marketing folks for Soylent have been able to convince a lot of people that they ACTUALLY NEED a fully balanced meal replacement consisting of synthetic food upon which someone may subsist indefinitely. That's a feat of marketing, but apparently little else.
  - livingparadox 10y ago
    All those examples you've mentioned fill a very different niche than what Soylent is filling. Most people on Soylent aren't looking for something to keep them from getting hungry until they get a more balanced meal. They're looking for a quick, healthy, balanced meal. Soylent fills that desire, your examples do not.
    - crispyambulance 10y ago
      They actually DON'T NEED Soylent, that's simply the magic of marketing. I tip my hat to their marketing skills, however. I never would have thought they could get anywhere selling a bland sludge to affluent consumers as a replacement for food... who would've thought that could work? They did it and did it well for a while at least.

rosser 10y ago

No, I'm pretty sure it was hubris. Proximal cause versus ultimate cause, and all that.

briHass 10y ago

Part of the issue is their desire to keep the product vegan. Instead of using known-safe, health-promoting sources of polyunsaturated (O3/O6) fats like fish oil, they use algal sources, which have very little data supporting them as safe/effective sources of O3.

the8472 10y ago
> Which have very little data supporting them as safe/effective sources of O3. Someone has to be the first to gather the data.
- st3v3r 10y ago
  That shouldn't be paying customers.
  - greendragon 10y ago
    Unless a lot of their customers are vegan.
  - the8472 10y ago
    I do assume the supplier first tested the toxicity on animals. Then soylent did internal tests with the new ingredients and found no problems either. How else are you going to find 1:10000+ problems?
atomical 10y ago
http://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/fish-oil-friend-or-foe-201307126467 http://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/fish-oil-friend-or-foe-20... There are other safe sources of omega 3's.
- briHass 10y ago
  The sources mentioned in that article are ALA, which have conversion rates to the desired DHA/EPA that vary greatly between individuals [1]. Typically, something like 5% of ALA is converted to EPA and even less is converted to DHA. It's better to eat the preformed DHA/EPA rather than relying on the conversion. edit: Harvard health seems to even disagree with themselves: http://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/why-not-flaxseed-oil http://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/why-not-flaxse... [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9637947 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9637947

mmaunder 10y ago

Such an unfortunate name. The 1973 film was set in 2022, so not far off the mark.

freehunter 10y ago
But then again the 1973 movie was made in 1973, so there are tens of millions of people who have never heard of it.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

st3v3r 10y ago

Move fast and make people vomit

tectec 10y ago
Sounds like a fun roller-coaster

zelias 10y ago

Wasn't Soylent Green also made of "algae-based ingredients"? Perhaps the name of the product is more on-point than we realize...

conjectures 10y ago

Algae? Yeah right. Soylent green is made of people. Seriously though, how can a food supplement (sorry, meal replacement) company expect to prosper with a brand based on a sci-fi movie about cannibalism?

freehunter 10y ago
You feel that way because you're on the Internet. I've never seen the movie, it was way before my time, and it exists in the tiniest amount of public consciousness today. The only reason I know what Soylent Green even means is because people on the Internet reference it occasionally. I've talked to quite a few people about Soylent and I've said "you know, like the movie" and most of the time they have no idea what I'm talking about.
- ConceptJunkie 10y ago
  Besides, it's not called "Soylent Green". Green was the cause of the shock twist in the movie, but there was also Soylent Red and Soylent Yellow in the movie, which were pretty much what Soylent, the product, is trying to become. The name is appropriate in the context of the movie, although I would have never chosen it.
  - conjectures 10y ago
    > The name is appropriate in the context of the movie Only if you don't see a problem with buying from a company whose other product lines include ground up paupers. The name is like a stupid teenage joke which somehow managed to survive onto packaging. Also it's objectively ironic that the problem is related to algae, which is commonly green.
    - joesb 10y ago
      And what are people who hate a product simply because its name resembles some movie 40 years ago? A stupid teenager? Or a stupid adult?

baby 10y ago

I love what Soylent is doing, I have wished for such a meal replacer all my life. I've drank something like 40 bottles of Soylent (which are, so far presumably safe) and they have helped me replace a lot of fast food. Never had problems with them until I started getting nauseous and now I can't drink it anymore. With all these news about people getting sick, I feel a bit silly having beta tested stuff with my own body. And they definitely have lost at least one customer here. But I'm still happy to see them experimenting with such a product. I still want this to happen, I will just not beta test it myself.

DanBC 10y ago
> I have wished for such a meal replacer all my life. why aren't any of the very many other products that have existed for years been good enough?
- resfirestar 10y ago
  What products would those be? Most meal replacement shakes marketed in the US are for people trying to lose weight, so they have far less calories and fat than a meal for people just trying to eat healthy.
  - catenthusiast 10y ago
    Have you heard of Ensure?
    - resfirestar 10y ago
      Yeah, I even wrote a paragraph bashing it (or at least, people claiming that it's a product of serious medical research) last time we had a Soylent thread. It has a lot more sugar and carbs than most people would want to eat regularly, which makes it more suitable as a temporary food replacement or a snack than a lunch staple.
      - scdlbx 10y ago

jorblumesea 10y ago

The fact that Soylent is classified as a "Nutritional supplement" is absurd. No inspections, no accountability.

sowhatquestion 10y ago
This is false. Soylent is classified as a food, and has to follow the same FDA requirements as any other food. "Soylent is not in violation of any product-safety standards or requirements, and is manufactured in FDA-approved facilities that follow federally regulated current Good Manufacturing Practices (cGMP)." Source: https://faq.soylent.com/hc/en-us/articles/204197379-California-Proposition-65 https://faq.soylent.com/hc/en-us/articles/204197379-Californ...
- jorblumesea 10y ago
  You just proved my point: cGMP relates to drug safety, not to food consumption. It is not regulated as a food. http://www.fda.gov/Drugs/DevelopmentApprovalProcess/Manufacturing/ucm169105.htm http://www.fda.gov/Drugs/DevelopmentApprovalProcess/Manufact...

muad 10y ago

Does it really make a difference for Soylent at this point? I would imagine their brand is already trashed.

NoGravitas 10y ago

I'm not surprised. Spirulina is sold as a miracle health food, but it makes me toss my cookies.

Balgair 10y ago

Oh boy, another Soylent discussion. Here is what all the off topic discussion will be: Person1) "What is so hard to understand sheeple?! Soylent isn't for all your meals, just ones that you are too busy to eat. Also, it has all the vitamins you need not like all those thousand other bars/drinks!?" Person2) "I'd rather move to the bottom of the ocean than buy Soylent. Why would you ever skip a meal?! Capitalism is the root of all evil including making me miss my dinner!" Folks, we all come at food differently, it's a very personal thing. Just because you feel this way about food, does not mean we all do. It's like people that stand or sit when they are wiping after going #2. We all coexist just fine and none of us know that there is really any other way and are astounded when other people are different. Chill, people, chill, it's food.

akamaka 10y ago
You could also say some people like Trump and other people like Clinton, and it's just an opinion. However, one opinion is highly correlated with being more educated. I suspect that the same is true here. The population at large has a very poor level of education about food, and Soylent seeks to exploit that very large business opportunity. I would prefer to see more people with an understanding of healthy eating and cooking.
- chrisdbaldwin 10y ago
  >The population at large has a very poor level of education We have a general education crisis going on in the United States. We've got some of the best propaganda in the world, and it's making us sick.
- BigJono 10y ago
  I suspect the intelligence correlation is the other way around to what you're implying. I'm still yet to see any evidence that Soylent or similar products are unhealthy (i.e that it takes more than a good balance of macro and micro nutrients for food to be considered "healthy"), especially when compared to an average western diet rather than an ideal one. I have seen an awful lot of baseless appeals to nature and tradition though, both of which are indicative of low intelligence.

bdcravens 10y ago

Blue Bell in Texas shut down for months due to listeria. Would that put some companies out of business? Maybe, that's ok. This is public health we're talking about. Disrupt. Move fast and break things. Iterate iterate iterate. Fail fast. This may be okay when you're making a better spreadsheet, but not everything can be a startup.

gohrt 10y ago
Spreadsheets are used to make real decisions. Spreadsheet bugs kill too.

jasonwilk 10y ago

I'm a fan of Soylent but I wouldn't say things like 'Soylent prides itself on rapid product development—an ideal popularized by Google and Facebook Inc.' Things that are going into my body should not be rapidly developed and released. It's slightly different than Facebook launching a new feature that may or may not break.

ClassyJacket 10y ago
Things that go into your body get rapidly developed and released all the time. Ever been to a restaurant with a new item on the menu?

AndyKelley 10y ago

I flagged it because the site started playing audio while I was trying to read. Had to close the tab to make my phone shut up. It was embarrassing and I was unable to read the content.

caogecym 10y ago

We always get latest version of soylent instead of having a way to subscribe a specific version. This is like cloud based service, the upgrade is transparent, you benefits from ingredient upgrade, and you suffer from it. The key here is how fast Soylent can identify and address customer's concerns.

lnanek2 10y ago

That's too bad. I love the algae based DHA-3 fortified milk at the super market. The other option is fish based DHA-3 fortified and I can't stand the taste. It's strange to blame something sold in supermarkets like that.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

jzd131 10y ago

I get sick every time I eat fake eggs made from Algae- this makes a lot of senseto me.

Pitarou 10y ago

Inexcusable. The only reason Soylent have gotten away with it for so long is that the FDA rules for this category of product haven't been written yet. A product shouldn't make people sick when used as intended. So if a product is intended to be consumed as 100% of your diet, it MUST: - contain all known macro- and micro-nutrients necessary for human health - contain nothing that makes you sick when you eat it all the time Soylent failed on both counts: - Early formulations lacked selenium. Beta testers duly developed symptoms of selenium deficiency. - The latest formulation contained algae. Customers duly got sick from consuming more of this kind of algae than humans have ever consumed before. The first mistake might be excused as a beginner's error and a learning experience. But they didn't learn. Luckily, Soylent lives in the land of class action lawsuits. The lawyers are gonna shut these jokers down.

intopieces 10y ago
Good lord. The percentage of people who 'got sick' by Soylent was less 0.1% of all consumers. If we went into panic-mode for that kind of result for every product, we wouldn't have any products. The variation in humans is too great to test for everything. "The Lawyers" aren't going to shut anyone down because no one is suing, and if they tried I doubt any judge would allow a class-action lawsuit for a few tummyaches. Soylent lists the ingredients on the box. That the consumers were unaware of their sensitivity to algae is not evidence of misconduct on the part of Soylent.
- Pitarou 10y ago
  I take your point about the class-action. I also take your point about human choice, as far as it goes, but I still think Soylent is a special case. If I eat ridiculous amounts of pesto and rupture my duodenum, nobody would hold the pesto producer responsible, because that's not the way people eat pesto. But if eating lots of Soylent made me ill, Soylent's makers should, in principle, bear some responsibility, because they know that this is how people eat Soylent. Indeed, Soylent was heavily hyped as something that could be 100% of your diet, and they can't pretend that never happened. The FDA actually DOES require that novel ingredients are tested to the point where 0.1% problems are detectable. I know that the algae isn't a novel ingredient, but if Soylent add it to their formula, it will suddenly comprise a large part of the diet of a large number of people. That is a novel thing in itself, so I would argue that Soylent has some responsibility to make sure what they're doing is safe. If FDA rules say its okay not to, the FDA rules need to catch up. I might be inclined to give Soylent the benefit of the doubt if I thought they had a better attitude. But when they made themselves sick because they forgot humans need selenium in their diet, they didn't say, "Wow! How could we have been so dumb? We need to take more care with people's bodies." It was more like, "Hey, no problem. Nobody died and we fixed it now. Let's move on." These are just the screw ups we know about. What are the odds there are plenty more they managed to hush up? Nobody has been killed or injured so far, but if they don't change their attitude and people continue to live off their swill...

old-gregg 10y ago

Soylent's problem is not a seemingly overlooked ingredient. Their biggest problem is inability to run the continuous food processing loop. What's the point of tweaking the recipe if you can't guarantee the execution and your customers get, basically, randomness for lunch? We had a corporate subscription for Soylent 2.0 drink. The taste varied from batch to batch on the scale from "milk in a cereal bowl" to "sewage water". These issues have been regularly popping up on reddit and their own forums for months now. We have suspended the subscription and I can't bring myself to try another bottle, even though I originally loved the concept and the taste.

developer2 10y ago
To be fair, this statement is something that needs to be followed up with hard evidence. Inconsistent flavour between batches does not necessarily mean you're getting different percentages of ingredients. You can't simply blame them for variation in taste; just look at orange juice companies for the amount of chemical manipulation that goes into making a single brand of orange juice taste exactly the same in every batch even though oranges naturally have varying flavors. That is not the kind of science I want behind my food. There are thousands of individuals and organizations out there with the equipment to analyze batches to determine whether the mix is consistent. Why haven't we heard from them? I can't imagine risk of lawsuit for defamation is the only reason. The whole appeal of Soylent is that the formula is public; surely they can't be hiding behind "publishing analysis of our product is exposing our corporate secrets".
- IanCal 10y ago
  > There are thousands of individuals and organizations out there with the equipment to analyze batches to determine whether the mix is consistent. Why haven't we heard from them? Honest question, why would anyone bother? Who would actually benefit from being able to release a statement about how variable it is?
brandon272 10y ago
My main complaint with the 1.5 powder was extreme inconsistency between batches. One batch, which many people were complaining about in the Soylent forums, had a rancid/sour/burnt taste and smell to it. The problem with the formula is that because it has a very bland taste, inconsistency stands out like a sore thumb and your mind works wonders to create an aversion to the whole product. Once I started having the weird tasting Soylent, even the "normal" batches were no longer palatable to me. Soylent staff dismissed these concerns as "normal variation in a plant based product".

print_r 10y ago

I was sure it was going to be "People"

mathattack 10y ago

Here's what I don't get... There is all this bad hype about Soylent. Why not just get one of the dozens of other meal replacement shakes in your average health food store?

jpindar 10y ago
Wrong subculture. Health foods are marketed for hippies and athletes and dieters. Soylent is for nerds! /s
- mathattack 10y ago
  So it's strictly a Marketing game? There's nothing behind the product? I would have thought nerds would be smarter. Or is it something like a hipster beard and hats when it's warm?
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aj_n 10y ago

Way to casually ruin Soylent Green, Bloomberg!

WalterSear 10y ago

People have been warning us about the green soylent since the 70s.

grondilu 10y ago

I've not often eaten algae, but I do remember it to have the weirdest taste I have ever experienced.

mrob 10y ago
Seaweed is a type of algae, and I eat rehydrated dried seaweeds every so often. I wouldn't call any seaweed delicious but they're no worse than the average vegetable. If you eat other seafood you'll probably find the taste of seaweed acceptable.

010a 10y ago

Please fix it and get these products back on the market so I can get my order in.

shepardrtc 10y ago

I enjoyed Soylent when it first came out, but then they started trying to be clever. It was already a complex product and they went crazy trying to replace the fish oil they were using. Around v1.4 it started to taste absolutely disgusting and the consistency was that of slime.

SuicidebyStar 10y ago

I think I found a better alternative to Soylent called "Bertrand" (https://bertrand.bio/ https://bertrand.bio/). It is made out of organic ingredients, tastes solid (just order the one with no flavor, it actually tastes better) and is hopefully more healthy since it is made from "real" natural powderized ingredients. So even if there are nutrition components (e.g. other micro-nutrients) which weren't researched properly till today (quite likely imho), they should still be in the drink since it's not made from artificial components. I'm drinking it for two months now and I'm happy with it. Very convenient, fair price, available in a vegan & gluten-free version and it tastes okay-ish (like oatmeal). P.S.: I'm not affiliated with this company in any way, just a happy customer.

miranda_rights 10y ago
Interesting. I like the idea but the macronutrients are heavily weighted towards carbohydrates. For reference, normally 30-35% of your daily calories should be protein, while only 11% of the calories of Bertrand come from protein.
- SuicidebyStar 10y ago
  That is true, especially the vegan version lacks protein (in comparison to the "active" version). That's why I add rice protein to the drink to get up to 120-150g protein/day. Besides that I add also Acerola powder for more (natural) vitamin C.