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You can say the same thing about the food in any restaurant. I really don't understand the hate that's directed towards this product. Nobody was seriously injur
by darawk 10y ago
You can say the same thing about the food in any restaurant. I really don't understand the hate that's directed towards this product. Nobody was seriously injured, it was a relatively small number of people that got sick.
Soylent is trying to do something more ambitious than other packaged food manufacturers. It's not unreasonable to expect there to be some small hiccups. If you can't tolerate that, then don't buy it.
People get food poisoning randomly from restaurants all the time. And usually they can never figure otu exactly what it was that caused it, they just carry on and maybe get their rating lowered or license taken away if it keeps happening. Chipotle even just had the same problem.
Yes, they get a bunch of shit for it. But it's not like this is a problem that doesn't afflict the 'normal' food industry as well.
- Shivetya 10y agobecause we crack down on and have to on companies selling food products when people are getting sick. look at all the recalls companies do with just possible contamination. the professional food industry knows damn well there are no acceptable risks. if people are getting sick entire batch numbers are yanked from retail. the one time a big company purposefully ignored resulted in jail time for executives from Peanut Corporation which knew they were selling contaminated product. As in, people are getting sick and they did not pull it
- darawk 10y agoYa, but it seems to me that's exactly what happened here. They pulled the batch numbers that were contaminated. I guess I don't really see the difference. This isn't unprecedented in the packaged food industry, and it doesn't seem like they're handling it any worse than any other company has.
- st3v3r 10y agoIt is in that Soylent used an experimental ingredient which had not been shown to be appropriate for this use.
- nkristoffersen 10y agoWhich ingredient is expiremental? The one that is "generally recognized as safe" by the FDA? Doesn't sound very expiremental to me if the FDA has already fully tested and formulated a rating for it.
- st3v3r 10y ago"Soylent is trying to do something more ambitious than other packaged food manufacturers" No, they aren't. There is nothing special about what they're trying to do compared to any other packaged food manufacturer. That's why they shouldn't be cut any more slack than any other manufacturer. "It's not unreasonable to expect there to be some small hiccups." It entirely is. If this happened to Twinkies, people would be livid. I see no reason that shouldn't be the same response here.
- baby 10y ago> There is nothing special about what they're trying to do compared to any other packaged food manufacturer I'm neutral on this debate, but I think you are wrong here. Soylent is a meal replacer. It is supposed to bring you all nutrients you need in a meal.
- DanBC 10y agoDozens of those already exist and are used everyday in hospitals across the US. They come in a wide variety of types - high and low protein, high and low calorie, with or without fibre, designed for naso-gastric tube feeding or for drinking, flavoured or unflavoured, designed to be eaten on their own or to be mixed with some other food stuff, designed to be eaten cold or hot. The novelty of Soylent is (irresponsibly) marketing these to the public.
- nommm-nommm 10y agoHaven't you ever seen a commercial for meal replacement shakes before? They've been a staple in the diet industry as long as I've been alive. Liquid diets are also a "thing" in medical settings for patients who are unable to take solid foods. Remember "Carnation Instant Breakfast"? That's been around since the 60s. Its really not an original idea.
- baby 10y agoPeople keep saying that, but no one point me to a webpage where I can buy these. (even getting downvoted =) the hate against soylent is strong)
- glenda 10y agoI do stop going to a restaurant once I or someone I know has gotten sick there. Look at Chipotle for instance, they are dealing with similar contamination related problems.
- pstuart 10y agoAnd they've taken active steps to prevent it happening again.
- tptacek 10y agoLook at the graph of CMG compared to MCD or DPZ to see how convinced the market is by this. The Chipotle contamination incident was devastating.
- pstuart 10y agoI'm not suggesting that they weren't damaged by those incidents. 2016 data isn't in yet, but 2015 sales figures show them to be at least holding steady. My point was that the company ultimately aggressively addressed the problem head-on and very well may have saved the company. The public has no long term memory. Let's compare notes in 2018.
- dforrestwilson1 10y agoAnd yet, they are still struggling to fix their reputation and get customers back in the door. http://www.forbes.com/forbes/welcome/?toURL=http://www.forbes.com/sites/maggiemcgrath/2016/10/25/chipotle-whiffs-on-earnings-posting-weaker-than-expected-profit-amid-22-same-store-sales-decline/&refURL=https://www.google.com/&referrer=https://www.google.com/ http://www.forbes.com/forbes/welcome/?toURL=http://www.forbe...
- toast0 10y agoI recently went to Chipotle for I think the first time since the changes[1], and while I'm sure the food is safer, having the chicken cooked offsite ruins the texture. I'm not sure I'll go back any time soon. [1] I didn't stop going because of the incident, I stopped going because I stopped doing what I was typically following with lunch at Chipotle.
- amelius 10y ago> You can say the same thing about the food in any restaurant. But Soylent is supposed to be consumable on a daily basis, so long-term effects are important. Remember the documentary Super Size Me, which tested long term effects of food from a certain fast-food restaurant? [1] [1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0390521 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0390521
- darawk 10y agoYa, I agree. Long-term effects are important. But AFAIK there's no indication of any long-term harm from Soylent. There's only an indication that a particular batch may have been contaminated. This suggests not that they were careless in choosing their formulation or research, but that there was an error in the manufacturing process. This is something that can happen to any company, and has many times. Should they fix it? Yes. But I don't think they should be held to a higher standard here than anyone else.
- M_Grey 10y agoThere's no indication of long-term anything from Soylent, just people screaming that it must be bad, or people screaming that it's the future. It's mostly a ton of anecdote, and no reason to believe that it's particularly harmful, or particularly healthy in the long-term. My feeling? You want to beta-test that with your health, I won't stop you, but I won't join you either.
- WillPostForFood 10y agoAll diet choices amount to beta testing with your health. There is no (known) correct way to eat, so we choose the best we can based culture/health class/news stories/diet gurus/doctors. It is very hard to make the case that eating Soylent (never tried it myself), is meaningfully different from choosing to go macrobiotic, or paleo, or following the food pyramid.
- M_Grey 10y agoHow about just... eating food? I know, I know... so unpopular, but "Paleo, Macro..." all of that crap? Let it go. Outside of people trying to sell you shit, including books, the best advice you'll ever get is just to eat a relatively balanced diet, keep up fiber intake, and maintain a healthy weight. Whether you prefer or personally thrive more on meaty diets, or eating a lot of barley isn't really that hard to figure out. You don't need to chug slurry 24/7, or eschew all carbs to achieve it. Avoid too much of any one thing, avoid too much processed crap (not because it's inherently bad, but because it's usually loaded with salt and sugar), and learn to cook. It's hardly a science, but you have large historical samples of people living that way, compared to a couple years of someone telling you that you can spend the rest of your days drinking the latest gray sludge.
- trprog 10y ago>Soylent is trying to do something more ambitious than other packaged food manufacturers. I have never understood why people think Soylent is doing something so interesting. It is essentially baby formula for adults. And its not like the nutritional requirements of infants are any simpler than adults. The formula industry has existed for decades and has generally done a good enough job of producing products that are able to make up 100% of a human's diet.
- darawk 10y agoIt's not that interesting from a scientific perspective. They're not doing anything that any doctor or biology grad student couldn't do. It's the concept that's interesting. Food is a pretty inefficient thing. In terms of the time we spend consuming it and the resources expended in its production. Soylent is a first step towards a solution to those problems. The theoretical efficiency gain is very high. Of course, Soylent won't achieve that, but the idea is alluring. Personally, I don't want to drink Soylent for all or even most of my meals. I drink it 1-2x per week. I generally feel better after drinking it than after eating a meal, and i'd say say Soylent is healthier than the average meal i'd make for myself otherwise. Aside from that, it's fast, cheap, stays good for a long time and requires no cleanup. All that doesn't mean it's going to change the world, but it is a nice addition to my palette of available foodstuffs.
- WorldMaker 10y ago«You can say the same thing about the food in any restaurant.» Except you also have more accumulated debug time/expertise in a typical restaurant. Soylent tries to do a lot of things from first principles that otherwise people have spent many years building: food supply chains, logistics, recipes, kitchen procedures, etc. Bringing it back to a code analogy, too, most restaurant food is "naturally" a more loosely coupled component model and it is easier to isolate components when debugging (no mayo, hold the lettuce), whereas Soylent is very tightly coupled and it shouldn't be surprising that it may suffer some of the same maintainability concerns in the long run.
- nathanvanfleet 10y agoFood poisoning is bad food prep techniques.Restaurants generally provide food with ingredients within an expected band, prepared in an expected way. Soylent using experimental ingredients in their products and finding out that they are irritating some users is not the same thing. If a restaurant told me they used all sorts of "new" industrial ingredients than I would likely balk. I would not want to be in on that beta program. Especially since, you know, it's likely they are pursuing new ingredients all the time to improve their margins, not the food quality, taste or nutrition.
- infecto 10y agoSorry for the strong language but bullshit. I am sure it has changed over the years but I still have vivid memories of the rodents that ran around the original warehouse they mixed soylent in. It was a joke. They had a bunch of randos mixing powders haphazardly and no sense of proper food prep/sanitation. It was scarier than some of the operations that supplement manufacturers run. I am sure its changed but it blows my mind that this is classified as an ambitious project. Edit: Here is the video. https://youtu.be/t8NCigh54jg?t=5m50s https://youtu.be/t8NCigh54jg?t=5m50s
- aianus 10y agoNone of the bags made in that facility were sold to the public. I remember because I was an original crowdfunder eager to receive my first shipment. They did not ship until they were producing it at the regulated co-packing facility.
- wodenokoto 10y agoJust out of curiosity, what did they do with the mix from that warehouse?
- aianus 10y agoAs far as I know, they tested it on themselves and gave it to friends and reporters to hype it up.
- emodendroket 10y ago> Soylent is trying to do something more ambitious than other packaged food manufacturers. It's not unreasonable to expect there to be some small hiccups. If you can't tolerate that, then don't buy it. Really? It seems to me like it's Ensure for computer programmers.
- emmab 10y agoHave you tried ensure? It's intolerably sweet (comes in chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, and butter pecan). There's no option for people who want a meal replacement, not dessert. It gives me indigestion every time I drink it. I switched to Soylent because it's a better product than Ensure.
- emodendroket 10y agoBut that's not a revolutionary difference in kind.