13 ms·

How I Ate No Food for 30 Days

213 points by hoov 13y ago

LukeWalsh 13y ago
It's unfortunate for Soylent to end up in such a situation given how easily it could have been prevented. For me however it does not discount the product in the least, and I would expect a rethinking of the production process to be posted soon in response.
- jbarrow 13y ago
  While it may not take away from the product itself, I think that this definitely shows some level of inexperience from the people behind Soylent. The idea is there, but the process hasn't been perfected. Unfortunately, when dealing with matters of health and sanitation, you don't have the luxury of trial-and-error iteration.
  - seiji 13y ago
    some level They're just treating nutrition like we build databases. Ignore all relevant history, research, field knowledge and make up what you want for yourself. Iterate until downtime/heart issues stop.
- gcb0 13y ago
  they will fix that in the next agile iteration. ;)
- DanBC 13y ago
  > For me however it does not discount the product in the least You can get better products from reputable companies. Or you can buy this gloop, from a bunch of people who clearly have little clue about what they're doing.
  - LukeWalsh 13y ago
    Perhaps I should clarify, I would hate to see this hurt the entire industry. If Soylent does not do a complete rethinking after what has happened I expect someone else to take their place.
    - DanBC 13y ago
      They're using a copacker now, which means a proper, approved, factory. So things should be much better for the actual product. I dislike the way the founder keeps saying “I want to be totally transparent,” - but only after someone has seen a rat or found mold or whatever. The algae stuff sounds interesting. Is anyone already working on it?
  - dm2 13y ago
    > You can get better products from reputable companies. What products specifically?
    - DanBC 13y ago
      Ensure / fortisip / Optifast (as seen in the video in the submutted link, where the doctor tells him that liquid total food replacements have been available for decades) / etc etc etc. Here's Abbott Nutrition http://abbottnutrition.com/ http://abbottnutrition.com/ Here's Nutricia https://www.nutricia.co.uk/fortisip// https://www.nutricia.co.uk/fortisip// It's frustrating that this question is asked, and answered, every single time Soylent is mentioned, and people then dishonestly say that these products are somehow not meant to be used as a sole source of nutrition, even though that's how they're regulated and sold.
      - genwin 13y ago
        Yep. My mom got all her nutrition from Ensure for a couple months after stomach surgery. She lived.
      - dm2 13y ago
        Thanks, I'm going to try some Ensure. I've also been drinking Carnation Breakfast Essentials occasionally but I'm not sure how much different it is from drinking a glass of chocolate milk and a multivitamin.
  - genwin 13y ago
    Plus, at least one of those products is available a block away from me at the supermarket.
- justincormack 13y ago
  It is not "unfortunate" it is incompetent. They basically do not know what they are doing. Why did they start manufacture when they were not set up properly?
  - LukeWalsh 13y ago
    I think a lot of software startups do extremely similar things with customer privacy. In fact there are probably places where the security flaws are worse than anything Soylent is doing. That is not to excuse it, more to shed light on the fact that it is much more apparent when they are failing in the food industry.
    - justin66 13y ago
      > In fact there are probably places where the security flaws are worse than anything Soylent is doing. As an experiment, ask people whether they'd rather risk having their credit card number compromised or risk becoming violently ill from a foodborne illness. I bet they won't even ask the odds when they give their answer.
      - LukeWalsh 13y ago
        That's an excellent way to put it in perspective, I completely agree.
  - theklub 13y ago
    I think they've gotten very lucky that no one has gotten seriously ill from that manufacturing first set up. Hopefully that has and will continue to improve.
- joonix 13y ago
  Perhaps they should have hired someone who knew anything about food production. Instead they hired a frat buddy to be a Chief of Customer Success. Hope he has experience handling foodborne illnesses.
mikeyouse 13y ago
There are some fairly stringent regulations that ensure food products are made in a GMP environment.[1] Flaunting those rules is extremely dangerous, both from a health perspective and from a legal one. There are numerous instances where those in charge of food operations have gone to prison for failing to maintain hygienic standards.[2] Soylent better get their shit together. Food safety is nothing to play around with, literally life-and-death decisions being made. 1. http://www.fda.gov/Food/GuidanceRegulation/CGMP/ucm110877.htm http://www.fda.gov/Food/GuidanceRegulation/CGMP/ucm110877.ht... 2. Listeria killed 33 people, owners of company to prison: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-24292036 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-24292036
- seiji 13y ago
  Aren't supplements/non-medical powders/various other juju immune from FDA issues?
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - jlgreco 13y ago
    FDA regulates both finished dietary supplement products and dietary ingredients. FDA regulates dietary supplements under a different set of regulations than those covering "conventional" foods and drug products. Under the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA): - The manufacturer of a dietary supplement or dietary ingredient is responsible for ensuring that the product is safe before it is marketed. - FDA is responsible for taking action against any unsafe dietary supplement product after it reaches the market. http://www.fda.gov/food/dietarysupplements/ http://www.fda.gov/food/dietarysupplements/
    - seiji 13y ago
      Ah, got it. So it's just self policing until you kill someone, then the regulators step in.
      - 13y ago
ddoolin 13y ago
It really seems like the authors are trying to excuse the unsanitary conditions when really it's not excusable to have them at any stage. Both the journalism and the topic at hand were disappointing. They have more than enough capital to keep the place clean, and you'd think it'd be at the top of their list given the huge (vocal) concern over personal health regarding their product.
DanBC 13y ago
The preparation area shown in the video is hilariously disgusting. Fucking horrific. I still expect them to come out as a huge troll. If so, 10/10, did rage, would rage again.
tomasien 13y ago
This is a pretty sensationalist headline, given that they're in a new factory, new offices, and the general findings of the experiment are so positive that the subject is considering going back on Soylent in the future.
- Yver 13y ago
  The "mold" part of the title feels especially disingenuous.
  - mikeyouse 13y ago
    There was literally mold on a month-old product. How is it disingenuous to say there are rats and mold?
    - jlgreco 13y ago
      You forget that this is a SV product. That wasn't mold, that was "eco-synergy".
    - tzakrajs 13y ago
      Because the mold occurred when the packaging was compromised -- this is not related to the conditions of the manufacturing.
      - moocowduckquack 13y ago
        It might be related to the rat.
        ogreyonder 13y ago
        You might be a literate orangutan. Figured I'd join in on the speculation while it's fresh.
        moocowduckquack 13y ago
kmfrk 13y ago
What happens when the Move Fast and Break Things philosophy is applied outside software. :)
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
antidaily 13y ago
Disruptive!
bredren 13y ago
I would compare this to a tech startup becoming the victim of an exploit. i.e. an injurious but not life-threatening data hack. There are many examples of hacks on tech startups due to technical malfeasance that sometimes show neglect in the handling of data or poor planning in the current operation of the system.[0] I think Soylent has plenty of potential and while this will darken views toward the brand for a time, it will most likely recover. The idea is too good. [0] https://blog.twitter.com/2009/monday-morning-madness https://blog.twitter.com/2009/monday-morning-madness
sethbannon 13y ago
As someone who drinks Soylent regularly, the most pertinent part of this article was the blood tests after the author went on a 30 day Soylent-only diet. "Doctors tested Merchant’s blood at the end of it, and the only nutrient he was deficient in was Vitamin D -- i.e. sunlight", which he says made sense because having Soylent handy meant he "wouldn’t have to leave the office". That's certainly good news. If the mold was the result of shoddy shipping causing the bag to be punctured, it's hard not to take that with a grain of salt. And as for the rat (singular -- not "rats" plural as the title says), certainly that has the "eww" factor, but so long as the mix itself was not exposed to any animals, I certainly don't care. [edit: the article this post was linking to has changed, so my comment is a little dated]
- potatolicious 13y ago
  > "And as for the rat (singular -- not "rats" plural as the title says)" As someone who has (unfortunately) had to deal with rats before, there is no such thing as a singular rat. A singular rat you see represents many you do not in the vicinity. By the time you can see a single rat on a simple walk-through of the facility, you have an infestation on your hands.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- arkitaip 13y ago
  I wouldn't consider the 30 day test to be remotely significant. Maybe when we're talking about years Soylent can be considered safe...
  - herge 13y ago
    You must be the dude still holding out on cell phones because of the microwaves?
    - trentmb 13y ago
      Considering the earliest signs of scurvy start at the one month mark, I don't consider suspicion of a 30 day trial to be overly cautious.
CameronBanga 13y ago
Is there a reason that OP linked to crummy PandoDaily fluff and not to original Vice video? If anyone wants to go straight to source. http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/soylent-no-food-for-30-days http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/soylent-no-food-for-30-days
driverdan 13y ago
How about linking to the original and not this blogspam? http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/soylent-no-food-for-30-days http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/soylent-no-food-for-30-days I'm no fan of Soylent (mainly because it's all marketing hype, meal replacements have been around for decades) but this title is BS. He had a moldy shipment caused by damaged packaging and saw rats at a bar. BFD.
- anigbrowl 13y ago
  I watched the video. the rat is separated from the food preparation area by a sheet of plastic. This doesn't increase my confidence one iota.
- DanBC 13y ago
  He saw a rat in the food preparation factory. He also saw rats at a bar.
ilamont 13y ago
It's possible to recover from quality scares. Clover Food Lab, which got its start as one of the MIT food trucks, had to deal with a salmonella outbreak over the summer. These news reports and blog posts by the founder document what happened: Salmonella outbreak sickens 12 in state, triggers closure of Clover restaurants: http://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/health-wellness/2013/07/15/salmonella-outbreak-sickens-state-triggers-closure-clover-restaurants/ARtB7O4zcbFUGALVeIEKBO/story.html http://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/health-wellness/2013/07... Clover Food Lab delays reopening after Salmonella scare: http://www.metro.us/boston/news/local/2013/07/23/clover-to-reopen-wednesday-after-salmonella-scare-offer-free-french-fries/#sthash.xjdvKUJI.dpuf http://www.metro.us/boston/news/local/2013/07/23/clover-to-r... First response by the founder: http://www.cloverfoodlab.com/is-this-your-first-time/ http://www.cloverfoodlab.com/is-this-your-first-time/ Did we say Wednesday? We meant Thursday…: http://www.cloverfoodlab.com/did-we-say-wednesday-we-meant-thursday-2/ http://www.cloverfoodlab.com/did-we-say-wednesday-we-meant-t... Read the blog posts by the founder, and the comments. Transparency about what was going on was key to keeping their customers informed, as well as curious members of the public. They also worked very closely with health officials. Clover was able to survive with its reputation intact.
- kmfrk 13y ago
  Don't you think it says something about Silicon Valley that your first thought is to characterize this as a PR issue? It's Airbnb "ransackgate" all over again ...
  - mattgreenrocks 13y ago
    "If we focused too much on quality, we'd run out of VC money!"
eclipxe 13y ago
Soylent represents everything I hate about the valley.
- SandB0x 13y ago
  Eating is broken. It's time to disrupt the digestive system!
  - sillysaurus2 13y ago
    How do you have >10avg comment karma? Snarky one-liners?
- HNJohnC 13y ago
  There seem to be a lot of "bros" involved in startup culture these days with sickening attitudes.
phaed 13y ago
Meh. Sensationalist piece. I know Vice and the shenanigans they use to get headlines. I trust none of it.
- rjd 13y ago
  My initial thought was " Don't most people that go on weight loss diets shake do this anyway?" ... followed by "whats actually different about this product and existing food replacement shake diets?"
bowlofpetunias 13y ago
EDIT: Unbelievable. Both the title and the link to the article I commented on have been swapped from the PandoDaily article (http://pandodaily.com/2013/11/12/vice-investigates-soylent-finds-rats-and-mold/ http://pandodaily.com/2013/11/12/vice-investigates-soylent-f...) to the Vice article which PandoDaily referred to, but that tries to give it a positive spin. This goes well beyond whatever policy pg was trying to defend recently. This is deeply manipulative. --- It looks a scam, it sounds like a scam, it's marketed like a scam and now it apparently is being produced like any other scam. So how long until we finally draw the obvious conclusion? Just because some notable VC's gambled on it doesn't make it any more credible. In fact, there is pretty much zero evidence in the credible column.
- dragontamer 13y ago
  It certainly isn't a scam. However, I went to an engineering school, and have met Food Engineers. Food Engineering is a difficult branch of chemical engineering. You've got regulations, you've got people's lives at stake. The Soylent guys just went at it like a hacker: because thats what they are. They're taking the "startup culture" and trying to apply it to food. And that is incredibly dangerous. Anyone who has any connection at all to the food industry knows that PEOPLE DIE IF YOU MESS THIS UP. This is NOT a "hackathon", and a SINGLE mistake can accidentally kill someone.
  - nightski 13y ago
    The food industry as a whole is one big hack, even with it's fancy regulations and bureaucracy. People are dying constantly due to the failures of the industry. It is nice to see fresh ideas.
    - jlgreco 13y ago
      The maritime industry as a whole is one big hack, even with it's fancy regulations and bureaucracy. People are dying constantly due to the failures of the industry. It is nice to see fresh ideas. That's why I am pitching my new great idea: submarines made of scrap steel I found in my back yard! The best part? No more hassle with pesky waves! Glide beneath the surface with the grace of an aquatic mammal. Sure, some people have built submarines before, and they say it is really difficult to get right, but my idea is fresh by virtue of it being created by me, a SV engineer! (Ignore that puncture in the test unit, somebody mishandled the shipping!)
wil421 13y ago
People dont realize what little regulations supplements face compared to "food". Most products you buy at nutrition/health stores (like GNC/Vitamin Shoppe/etc.) are not really tested. You can pretty much be getting chalk and no one will know. Or you get an overdose of Ephedra and die.
- foobarqux 13y ago
  See superdrol (anabolic steroid with high liver toxicity) and Craze (meth analog)
  - wil421 13y ago
    This was exactly what I was talking about. Muscle building supplements and bath salts.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
ChuckMcM 13y ago
I suppose you could spin it "Look how healthy our rats are and there is nothing in this warehouse but Soylent! Testing on rats, check!" But this made me a bit sad. I think Soylent is great, it is disruptive, it is more palatable than nutraloaf it could be a great alternative for folks who just need food to live, and it could provide a fascinating 'control' group for various Microbiome projects. But clearly these folks aren't exactly "experienced" as Jimi Hendrix might say. Here is the challenge, there is a crap ton of knowledge about how to do things that isn't taught in school or on the web or in books. You learn that by 'apprenticing' at a company or organization which is already doing something like what you want to do, and getting the history of all the things they had to overcome and avoid "in the old days." It isn't nostalgia, it is education through experience. That is what experience is. And the only way to get it, is to experience it. It was sad for me when I realized this, I could be smarter than my manager at the time and yet he could be a better manager because he had experienced more issues and overcome them (or at least seen the solution to them) to have a much better sense of what would be an important problem and what would be a minor problem. I could put any situation I wanted in front of him and he had an answer to the "big problem" / "small problem" classification, but he could not express that as an algorithm I could learn from. So when people come out of college and start companies the next day I tend to cringe a bit as there is a lot of stuff they are going to learn the hard way. That is doubly true when you're doing multiple disciplines (food prep + nutrition + distribution + marketing + regulation + Etc.) and having run a business of type A won't prime you to run one of type B, other than to help you recognize where you need subject matter experts. One wonders why the first hire at Soylent wasn't someone who had 5 years or more setting up and running a food production line. I don't know but I have heard folks in similar situations say "How hard could it be?"
- dragontamer 13y ago
  What you do, is then you hire a 10-year veteran of the food preparation business. What you DON'T do, is pickup a few textbooks on body chemistry and assume you can figure it all out by yourself.
  - lowboy 13y ago
    Why not? The human body is a machine, and we can examine and alter that machine. We've been doing that throughout history. I don't like the early claims of Soylent being "perfectly optimized" and the like.
jokoon 13y ago
doesn't your digestive system have to re learn some tricks if it's not used for a long time ?
antonius 13y ago
I love how nonchalant the CEO was when he called the VICE reporter to tell him not to eat any of the spoiled batch of Soylent.
DanBC 13y ago
I'm really tempted to set up a kickstarter for a documentary of me living for 6 months on the various existing liquid feeds. It'll be tricky getting a doctor to fit a feeding tube up my nose, but I'm sure someone would do it. (Bit scary using non-medical people because of the risk of the tube going into a lung.)
throwmeaway2525 13y ago
From a different perspective, has anyone ever taken the time to read local health department restaurant inspection reports (if available)? I assume most people here eat at restaurants without too much concern, but if you ever read the reports, you'll find experienced industry professionals cited for far worse infractions than these.
- DanBC 13y ago
  I live in the UK. My local town has a 5 start system. "rats in the same building" would get a place shut down.
fredsters_s 13y ago
As a long time beta user I have a bunch of problems with this piece: - the Oakland space was a temporary location while they were iterating on the beta. Soylent is not manufactured there. - all the journalists writing about Soylent seem to attribute to Rob stuff that he doesn't actually say: namely that you should only consume Soylent all the time. The point of Soylent is that it replaces transactional eating and makes me healthier. It's not about replacing the eating I do for fun. - Soylent is a technology company. It's not just positioning. They are iterating towards finding an exponentially better way to do transactional eating using technology. That's the definition of a tech company.
- _delirium 13y ago
  Soylent is a technology company. It's not just positioning. They are iterating towards finding an exponentially better way to do transactional eating using technology. That's the definition of a tech company. Well, any product is technology in that sense. But this particular technology, meal-replacement shakes, is already reasonably well established. What seems new to me is that Soylent is pitching itself to people who either don't know about or have failed to become interested in the existing products, which seems like a marketing innovation more than a tech innovation. They don't seem to be differentiating on technical quality or iteration. If you read their campaign, for example, it is entirely positioned against regular food, as if they have just invented the full-meal-replacement shake, and does not mention anything about technical innovation over existing competitors: https://campaign.soylent.me/soylent-free-your-body https://campaign.soylent.me/soylent-free-your-body It's possible they also have technical innovation over any existing meal-replacement shake, but they are being very quiet about it if so.
  - aianus 13y ago
    The existing products have really terrible marketing. They sell them in pharmacies and generally broadcast a message of "for supplementation or diseased/senile people only". Kudos to Soylent for trying to normalize liquid diets.
    - 13y ago
mathattack 13y ago
Seems like Soylent is taking advantage if the entire industry loophole called supplements. If the loophole didn't exist, this type of entrepreneurship wouldn't. Food companies are also doing real experiments. I don't see tasteless goop shakes disrupting the market any more than sport shakes. EDIT: I stand corrected on the first paragraph. I still believe the 2nd to be true.
- caublestone 13y ago
  Soylent is a food and not a supplement. The commercial version of the product is being produced in an FDA approved and GMP certified facility - RFI.
  - mathattack 13y ago
    I stand corrected. Good for them!
Pxtl 13y ago
> “You’re not going to feed a booming population with organic farms,” Rob says. This is a popular misconception. While organic farming requires far more labour than conventional farming and the yields are lower for the same land, it's not actually that much lower. We're talking about a 5-30% drop in yield. Not great, but not "OMG mass worldwide starvation" change. And that's while being vastly more efficient with fresh water. Think about your average 3rd-world country and ask yourself what's in short supply - land, manpower, or fresh water?
- lowboy 13y ago
  Organic growing techniques use "vastly" less water? How so? I'm guessing that there's a correlation between farmers who choose to grow organic and those who try to conserve water, but I can't see how one is "vastly" different.
  - stinkytaco 13y ago
    There's pretty solid evidence that biointesive techniques use less water because they make better use of the same space. If I grow two tomato plants in the space I used to grow one, I waste less water. But yes, you're right, I don't know if "vastly" is the word I would use.
    - lowboy 13y ago
      Does biointensive === organic? Organic is a loaded term nowadays, so maybe it's just semantics.
      - stinkytaco 13y ago
        No. Really, singling out "biointensive" was unfair as any intensive agriculture would have the same benefit. >Organic is a loaded term nowadays, so maybe it's just semantics. So loaded as to be basically meaningless.
  - Pxtl 13y ago
    ... yeah, I might've overstated that, which is particularly hypocritical given the thrust of my post. Anyhow, I can't find the original article, but the idea is that organic farming techniques produce soil that's far better at retaining water and preventing wasteful evaporation. Also, there's the secondary matter of fertilizer runoff contaminating local ground-water.
yuvadam 13y ago
Soylent might, technically, work. It might be safe and healthy, it definitely looks simple and allows you to forget anything related to grocery shopping, cooking and cleaning up afterwards. But thinking about the prospect of the future makes me sick to my stomach. Soylent paints a disgustingly frightening dystopia where humans are fed 100% "correct" food to allow them to continue being cogs in the business machine, not stop for lunch during the day in the office, and be able to pull those extra longs evenings and nights to get more work done. Not to mention the vanishing social and human aspects of eating, together with friends and family. Rob Reinhardt's assertions that organic cultivation of vegetables, fruits and legumes does not scale are downright FALSE, and only serve the Soylent marketing machine. Soylent is doing nothing more than accommodating to the needs of humanoids who continue the endless pursuit of some vague promise of capitalist fulfillment (work hard, be rich, be happy), ignoring the fact that the direct opposite of such a lifestyle leads to a much more healthier, happier life which remains in touch with our basic, primal human existence.
- beambot 13y ago
  Or... it could put humanity in a position to provide a balanced nutrition as a fundamental human right, delivered right to your doorstep by USPS. If the economics worked out it could be provided everywhere worldwide, and then other food consumption could be purely for enjoyment. There are always people who scream "dystopia!" every time a new technology arrives. That seems very pessimistic.
  - fleitz 13y ago
    This is a very progressive idea, lets add housing to that, so that everyone will have a place to stay, something to eat and something to do. I can see the large halls feeding the masses, I've even heard tale of a boy named Oliver who wants even more soylent it's so delicious.
  - stinkytaco 13y ago
    >it could put humanity in a position to provide a balanced nutrition as a fundamental human right, delivered right to your doorstep by USPS. If the economics worked out it could be provided everywhere worldwide, and then other food consumption could be purely for enjoyment. So... why not just do that with the food we've got? Drop a few packages of surplus food on the doorsteps of some African countries and call it good? The thing is, there is enough food to feed the world. The Western world has way too much of it and lots of the rest of the world has too little of it. Hell, even within the western world there's too much and too little at the same time within the same square mile. The issue is not balanced nutrition, it's making the economics work out, which they do not and never have. What this may solve is a distribution problem. Some of the food problem in major US cities is lack of access to grocery stores that sell real food. Soylent could be stocked in the convenience stores those areas have access to.
Touche 13y ago
What makes Solyent special vs other meal replacements? I take a meal replacement called Raw Meal (only one meal a day) that's make mostly from sprouts. I feel great when I make myself do it every day. Is the difference that Solyent isn't made from any plant material but rather is raw chemicals?
thatthatis 13y ago
Best part of this for me was the information that the Optifast product exists. I hope soylent is successful, but I like knowing there are existing total-meal-replacement competitors I can order now on amazon (which I just did).
collyw 13y ago
IS the stuff on vice.com real? I read about a guy who claimed to only eat raw meat, and it seemed a bit far fetched. Ok, this Solyent is believable, but why??? Eating is one of life pleasures.
abuehrle 13y ago
The three NYC food critics (11:20 in the video) really bugged me. Their immediate smug dismissal of the product and idea was predetermined. Maybe I'm reading too much into what was shown, but I got the impression that there was no possible world in which they give Soylent a chance. I'm not necessarily a believer, but I'm noticing this behavior more and more often as I get older and it's increasingly bothering me.
- justin66 13y ago
  > Their immediate smug dismissal of the product and idea was predetermined. Maybe I'm reading too much into what was shown, but I got the impression that there was no possible world in which they give Soylent a chance. Why would they? The best possible case is that it tastes like a milkshake or malt or something good like that. At which point, they're still arguing against a monoculture of millions of identical milkshakes, which are still hell for anyone who actually enjoys food. I'd expect any food critic's attitude toward this stuff to make their attitude towards corporate fast food look pretty mild by comparison.
  - abuehrle 13y ago
    I believe no one associated with Soylent has ever claimed it to be a culinary delight, and no one is trying to stop people from enjoying food when they want to eat for that purpose. To have these critics evaluating Soylent by their usual metrics in a pseudo-experimental setting is disingenuous. The guy critic even used the word "stupid". It's not a stupid, it's just not good at something it never claimed to be good at.
akinity 13y ago
Gross, why are human beings packing Soylent?
sillysaurus2 13y ago
These top comments are really the worst of HN. Thoughtless, emotional vitriol. Until Soylent is proved unsafe, there is no basis for calling it unsafe.
- DanBC 13y ago
  We see unsuitably dressed workers scooping powders from uncovered boxes on a factory floor into other boxes to be mixed, with rats in the factory. They've left that factory now, but it's telling that even though Rob didn't think the factory was suitable for a number of reasons he still went ahead and prepared and shipped product to (I assume) paying beta testers. What more do you need?
  - lowboy 13y ago
    Eh. I'm not so squeamish. I know that pretty much every restaurant will have or has had rodents, it's just part of life.
- lowboy 13y ago
  Agreed. I think part of the backlash is from Soylent's hubris about how it's perfectly optimized, etc. I think we have a long way to go before drawing any conclusion, but it's a promising technology.
- derleth 13y ago
  > Until Soylent is proved unsafe, there is no basis for calling it unsafe. This is exactly backwards, and is precisely the reasoning scammers use to sell worthless treatments.
talles 13y ago
This is, IMO, the stupidest thing ever. Why just WHY give up on food? Cooking and enjoying food is one of our essential pleasures in life; I just can't see myself replacing it to some hipster matrix-like shake of nutrients. Just no thank you. Anyway the title feels a lot misleading for someone that is used to do water fast. That is truly 'eating no food', and some do it for lengths of 30 days (yes it's safe for most people). Cooking your own food, experimenting around and occasionally doing some fasting is, again IMO, the true way to eat happy and healthy. That's what I do.
- aianus 13y ago
  Some people really hate the whole process of shopping, cooking, and eating. Or, at least, they're tired of spending hours every day on it. Can you really not think of anything you'd rather do with your time?
  - talles 13y ago
    Sure, of course. Nowadays every single piece of 'time' is invaluable to be productive, to get rich, to achieve something. But we lose the pleasure in the process. Sure, I'm not able to cook a pleasant meal on midweek as I do on my weekends. But that doesn't mean that I'm going to the extreme of blending all up and feed myself with a straw. Finding a balance is the way to go.
mixmastamyk 13y ago
The angry comments in every solyent article are pretty silly imho. You are under no obligation to use it. Those that do are still permitted to dine with family. :/ Any bugs will get worked out over time. These days I usually make a smoothie for a quick breakfast... perhaps some unsweetened almond milk, protein/vitamin powder, ground flax seed, a bit of fruit/veggies, sometimes even a healthy oil. The concept is not terribly different than soylent. I do like to keep my blood sugar in a moderate range, however. I might be interested in trying soylent if they had a low-carb version, one not significantly made of oats and maltodextrin.
- DanBC 13y ago
  > Any bugs will get worked out over time. Meanwhile, they'll still market it as optimized nutrition to put you in perfect shape and fine for everyone even if they have allergies etc etc.
  - mixmastamyk 13y ago
    Maybe they've gone a bit far with that, but I've not yet encountered marketing that didn't put a positive spin on its product. As always take with a grain of salt.
jjoe 13y ago
For those who feel like they are missing out on the social aspect of eating out. Perhaps restaurants can start offering Soylent-based meals in their menu but with a twist. Instead of a plain shake in a cup, they could mold and dye the Soylent powder to look like a natural food like an apple, strawberry, or even a steak and serve it on a plate. No stigma from having to turn down a restaurant invitation or a get together with friends.
blueblank 13y ago
> Eating will become like boozing—something we do recreationally with friends, or as a hobby or, part of the grimdark future where the trend of hobby eating sends the prices of food out of reach of the lower 7/8 of society
Tarrosion 13y ago
I found this very troubling: "I wasn’t drinking enough water. At the factory, Rob told me that was a common mistake; since Soylent is a shake, people figure they don’t have to drink extra water—an easy way to get dehydrated." Failing so thoroughly to communicate how to use your product that users become dehydrated within two days is a serious mistake, though thankfully not a common one.
skizm 13y ago
I feel like you can get 90% of the way to soylent's promises with whey protein milkshakes, multi-vitamins and fish oil. Toss some fiber in that diet and you get the rest of the way. Athlete? add some creatine to your morning shake and eat something with more carbs post workout (carbohydrate supplement powder works great and is cheap). Having a minimalist diet isn't rocket science, but I guess it is reassuring to have that stamp on the bottle that says a doctor approved of the macro-nutrient ratios.
jbeja 13y ago
I Quit watching the video at the part were he says "i was eating leafs, it so strange".
gonzalocasas 13y ago
"Lacking background in chemistry or nutrition, Rhinehart developed the formula through research and self-experimentation." (from the Wikipage article) OMG, yes, that sounds like a totally reliable product to, you know, like, trust one's own existence to. Not to mention the incredibly sad, and dehumanizing experience of losing all the marvellous things of a great meal that are not related to nutrition: textures, flavor, a time to disconnect and relax, a time to chat with friends, family, etc, just to mention a few obvious ones.
digitalzombie 13y ago
I wouldn't mind eating this once and a while when I'm low on time and don't want to drive somewhere or whip something up. I wouldn't see myself eating this ONLY, cause the video did bring up a good point, eating is also a social thing. Hey babe you want to go back to my place and eat some soylent?
- quantumpotato_ 13y ago
  We can cook it, oh wait, don't have time.
ruswick 13y ago
Honestly, I just don't get Soylent. What is the purpose? As a health measure? The market for weight-loss shakes and other dietary solutions is saturated, and most of it appears to be complete shit. Dietary shakes are easy to come by, and are almost universally reviled because they don't work as advertised and taste disgusting. Is Soylent a supposed to be a remedy for malnutrition? Why is drinking a bunch of vitamins a better option than taking a dietary supplement? How does Soylent account for the fact that nutrient absorption is less efficient in artificial supplements? Why not just eat quality, healthy human food? But, far and away the worst and most appalling argument is that soylent is "convenient," and that it's beneficial to people who "don't have time to eat." I'm sorry, but if you can't find time to eat human food, the issue is your schedule, not the food. Correct me if I'm wrong, but eating is pretty fucking important. If you are in a position where feeding yourself actual sustenance is inconvenient, then there is a probably a severe deficiency with your schedule and a problem with your priorities.
- pyrocat 13y ago
  > I'm sorry, but if you can't find time to eat human food, the issue is your schedule, not the food. Correct me if I'm wrong, but eating is pretty fucking important. If you are in a position where feeding yourself actual sustenance is inconvenient, then there is a probably a severe deficiency with your schedule and a problem with your priorities. You don't sound very sorry. You sound incredibly judgmental of anyone who has different priorities than you. Personally, I love food, I just hate preparing it. Spend 30 minutes to cook a meal that I will eat in 5? No thanks. So I eat out all the time, which is really fucking expensive. You've heard of the PM triangle right? Same basic idea here. Food can be cheap, tasty, quick, and healthy, but not all at once. McDonalds is cheap, tasty, and quick but not healthy. That steak dinner you just cooked yourself is cheap, tasty, and healthy but not quick. I personally always pick the quick option, but the other items can vary. Thus I'm usually eating quick, tasty, and healthy items. I have trouble finding things that are quick, healthy, and cheap. This seems to fill that niche nicely. It doesn't mean I'm going to suddenly stop eating out, but it will mean I spend less money in the long run, without having to spend extra time. For all of the comments on Hacker News about how time=money, even when you're not on the clock, you'd think this concept would make sense more immediately.
xacaxulu 13y ago
Zuckerburg will drink Soylent only if he can kill it first.
itsameta4 13y ago
I've been following this story since the beginning, and here's the part that I'm baffled that people always forget: They're open-sourcing the recipe. That should remove all the accusations of it being a scam. If it's a scam, it will be easily proved such. If there are nutritional problems, they can be fixed, either in the official branch, or in one of the many forks which already exist.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
rdl 13y ago
I'd kill (well, pay up to $600/mo) for a low-carb version of Soylent. Even if he made it in a (clean) residential kitchen, although I'd prefer if RFI did it under contract. Even better if you could get monthly blood analysis and then have your Soylent customized for you. SoylentPro, perhaps.

213 points by hoov 13y ago

It's unfortunate for Soylent to end up in such a situation given how easily it could have been prevented. For me however it does not discount the product in the least, and I would expect a rethinking of the production process to be posted soon in response.

jbarrow 13y ago
While it may not take away from the product itself, I think that this definitely shows some level of inexperience from the people behind Soylent. The idea is there, but the process hasn't been perfected. Unfortunately, when dealing with matters of health and sanitation, you don't have the luxury of trial-and-error iteration.
- seiji 13y ago
  some level They're just treating nutrition like we build databases. Ignore all relevant history, research, field knowledge and make up what you want for yourself. Iterate until downtime/heart issues stop.
gcb0 13y ago
they will fix that in the next agile iteration. ;)
DanBC 13y ago
> For me however it does not discount the product in the least You can get better products from reputable companies. Or you can buy this gloop, from a bunch of people who clearly have little clue about what they're doing.
- LukeWalsh 13y ago
  Perhaps I should clarify, I would hate to see this hurt the entire industry. If Soylent does not do a complete rethinking after what has happened I expect someone else to take their place.
  - DanBC 13y ago
    They're using a copacker now, which means a proper, approved, factory. So things should be much better for the actual product. I dislike the way the founder keeps saying “I want to be totally transparent,” - but only after someone has seen a rat or found mold or whatever. The algae stuff sounds interesting. Is anyone already working on it?
- dm2 13y ago
  > You can get better products from reputable companies. What products specifically?
  - DanBC 13y ago
    Ensure / fortisip / Optifast (as seen in the video in the submutted link, where the doctor tells him that liquid total food replacements have been available for decades) / etc etc etc. Here's Abbott Nutrition http://abbottnutrition.com/ http://abbottnutrition.com/ Here's Nutricia https://www.nutricia.co.uk/fortisip// https://www.nutricia.co.uk/fortisip// It's frustrating that this question is asked, and answered, every single time Soylent is mentioned, and people then dishonestly say that these products are somehow not meant to be used as a sole source of nutrition, even though that's how they're regulated and sold.
    - genwin 13y ago
      Yep. My mom got all her nutrition from Ensure for a couple months after stomach surgery. She lived.
    - dm2 13y ago
      Thanks, I'm going to try some Ensure. I've also been drinking Carnation Breakfast Essentials occasionally but I'm not sure how much different it is from drinking a glass of chocolate milk and a multivitamin.
- genwin 13y ago
  Plus, at least one of those products is available a block away from me at the supermarket.
justincormack 13y ago
It is not "unfortunate" it is incompetent. They basically do not know what they are doing. Why did they start manufacture when they were not set up properly?
- LukeWalsh 13y ago
  I think a lot of software startups do extremely similar things with customer privacy. In fact there are probably places where the security flaws are worse than anything Soylent is doing. That is not to excuse it, more to shed light on the fact that it is much more apparent when they are failing in the food industry.
  - justin66 13y ago
    > In fact there are probably places where the security flaws are worse than anything Soylent is doing. As an experiment, ask people whether they'd rather risk having their credit card number compromised or risk becoming violently ill from a foodborne illness. I bet they won't even ask the odds when they give their answer.
    - LukeWalsh 13y ago
      That's an excellent way to put it in perspective, I completely agree.
- theklub 13y ago
  I think they've gotten very lucky that no one has gotten seriously ill from that manufacturing first set up. Hopefully that has and will continue to improve.
joonix 13y ago
Perhaps they should have hired someone who knew anything about food production. Instead they hired a frat buddy to be a Chief of Customer Success. Hope he has experience handling foodborne illnesses.

mikeyouse 13y ago

There are some fairly stringent regulations that ensure food products are made in a GMP environment.[1] Flaunting those rules is extremely dangerous, both from a health perspective and from a legal one. There are numerous instances where those in charge of food operations have gone to prison for failing to maintain hygienic standards.[2] Soylent better get their shit together. Food safety is nothing to play around with, literally life-and-death decisions being made. 1. http://www.fda.gov/Food/GuidanceRegulation/CGMP/ucm110877.htm http://www.fda.gov/Food/GuidanceRegulation/CGMP/ucm110877.ht... 2. Listeria killed 33 people, owners of company to prison: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-24292036 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-24292036

seiji 13y ago
Aren't supplements/non-medical powders/various other juju immune from FDA issues?
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- jlgreco 13y ago
  FDA regulates both finished dietary supplement products and dietary ingredients. FDA regulates dietary supplements under a different set of regulations than those covering "conventional" foods and drug products. Under the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA): - The manufacturer of a dietary supplement or dietary ingredient is responsible for ensuring that the product is safe before it is marketed. - FDA is responsible for taking action against any unsafe dietary supplement product after it reaches the market. http://www.fda.gov/food/dietarysupplements/ http://www.fda.gov/food/dietarysupplements/
  - seiji 13y ago
    Ah, got it. So it's just self policing until you kill someone, then the regulators step in.
    - 13y ago

ddoolin 13y ago

It really seems like the authors are trying to excuse the unsanitary conditions when really it's not excusable to have them at any stage. Both the journalism and the topic at hand were disappointing. They have more than enough capital to keep the place clean, and you'd think it'd be at the top of their list given the huge (vocal) concern over personal health regarding their product.

DanBC 13y ago

The preparation area shown in the video is hilariously disgusting. Fucking horrific. I still expect them to come out as a huge troll. If so, 10/10, did rage, would rage again.

tomasien 13y ago

This is a pretty sensationalist headline, given that they're in a new factory, new offices, and the general findings of the experiment are so positive that the subject is considering going back on Soylent in the future.

Yver 13y ago
The "mold" part of the title feels especially disingenuous.
- mikeyouse 13y ago
  There was literally mold on a month-old product. How is it disingenuous to say there are rats and mold?
  - jlgreco 13y ago
    You forget that this is a SV product. That wasn't mold, that was "eco-synergy".
  - tzakrajs 13y ago
    Because the mold occurred when the packaging was compromised -- this is not related to the conditions of the manufacturing.
    - moocowduckquack 13y ago
      It might be related to the rat.
      - ogreyonder 13y ago
        You might be a literate orangutan. Figured I'd join in on the speculation while it's fresh.
        moocowduckquack 13y ago

kmfrk 13y ago

What happens when the Move Fast and Break Things philosophy is applied outside software. :)

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

antidaily 13y ago

Disruptive!

bredren 13y ago

I would compare this to a tech startup becoming the victim of an exploit. i.e. an injurious but not life-threatening data hack. There are many examples of hacks on tech startups due to technical malfeasance that sometimes show neglect in the handling of data or poor planning in the current operation of the system.[0] I think Soylent has plenty of potential and while this will darken views toward the brand for a time, it will most likely recover. The idea is too good. [0] https://blog.twitter.com/2009/monday-morning-madness https://blog.twitter.com/2009/monday-morning-madness

sethbannon 13y ago

As someone who drinks Soylent regularly, the most pertinent part of this article was the blood tests after the author went on a 30 day Soylent-only diet. "Doctors tested Merchant’s blood at the end of it, and the only nutrient he was deficient in was Vitamin D -- i.e. sunlight", which he says made sense because having Soylent handy meant he "wouldn’t have to leave the office". That's certainly good news. If the mold was the result of shoddy shipping causing the bag to be punctured, it's hard not to take that with a grain of salt. And as for the rat (singular -- not "rats" plural as the title says), certainly that has the "eww" factor, but so long as the mix itself was not exposed to any animals, I certainly don't care. [edit: the article this post was linking to has changed, so my comment is a little dated]

potatolicious 13y ago
> "And as for the rat (singular -- not "rats" plural as the title says)" As someone who has (unfortunately) had to deal with rats before, there is no such thing as a singular rat. A singular rat you see represents many you do not in the vicinity. By the time you can see a single rat on a simple walk-through of the facility, you have an infestation on your hands.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
arkitaip 13y ago
I wouldn't consider the 30 day test to be remotely significant. Maybe when we're talking about years Soylent can be considered safe...
- herge 13y ago
  You must be the dude still holding out on cell phones because of the microwaves?
  - trentmb 13y ago
    Considering the earliest signs of scurvy start at the one month mark, I don't consider suspicion of a 30 day trial to be overly cautious.

CameronBanga 13y ago

Is there a reason that OP linked to crummy PandoDaily fluff and not to original Vice video? If anyone wants to go straight to source. http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/soylent-no-food-for-30-days http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/soylent-no-food-for-30-days

driverdan 13y ago

How about linking to the original and not this blogspam? http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/soylent-no-food-for-30-days http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/soylent-no-food-for-30-days I'm no fan of Soylent (mainly because it's all marketing hype, meal replacements have been around for decades) but this title is BS. He had a moldy shipment caused by damaged packaging and saw rats at a bar. BFD.

anigbrowl 13y ago
I watched the video. the rat is separated from the food preparation area by a sheet of plastic. This doesn't increase my confidence one iota.
DanBC 13y ago
He saw a rat in the food preparation factory. He also saw rats at a bar.

ilamont 13y ago

It's possible to recover from quality scares. Clover Food Lab, which got its start as one of the MIT food trucks, had to deal with a salmonella outbreak over the summer. These news reports and blog posts by the founder document what happened: Salmonella outbreak sickens 12 in state, triggers closure of Clover restaurants: http://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/health-wellness/2013/07/15/salmonella-outbreak-sickens-state-triggers-closure-clover-restaurants/ARtB7O4zcbFUGALVeIEKBO/story.html http://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/health-wellness/2013/07... Clover Food Lab delays reopening after Salmonella scare: http://www.metro.us/boston/news/local/2013/07/23/clover-to-reopen-wednesday-after-salmonella-scare-offer-free-french-fries/#sthash.xjdvKUJI.dpuf http://www.metro.us/boston/news/local/2013/07/23/clover-to-r... First response by the founder: http://www.cloverfoodlab.com/is-this-your-first-time/ http://www.cloverfoodlab.com/is-this-your-first-time/ Did we say Wednesday? We meant Thursday…: http://www.cloverfoodlab.com/did-we-say-wednesday-we-meant-thursday-2/ http://www.cloverfoodlab.com/did-we-say-wednesday-we-meant-t... Read the blog posts by the founder, and the comments. Transparency about what was going on was key to keeping their customers informed, as well as curious members of the public. They also worked very closely with health officials. Clover was able to survive with its reputation intact.

kmfrk 13y ago
Don't you think it says something about Silicon Valley that your first thought is to characterize this as a PR issue? It's Airbnb "ransackgate" all over again ...
- mattgreenrocks 13y ago
  "If we focused too much on quality, we'd run out of VC money!"

eclipxe 13y ago

Soylent represents everything I hate about the valley.

SandB0x 13y ago
Eating is broken. It's time to disrupt the digestive system!
- sillysaurus2 13y ago
  How do you have >10avg comment karma? Snarky one-liners?
HNJohnC 13y ago
There seem to be a lot of "bros" involved in startup culture these days with sickening attitudes.

phaed 13y ago

Meh. Sensationalist piece. I know Vice and the shenanigans they use to get headlines. I trust none of it.

rjd 13y ago
My initial thought was " Don't most people that go on weight loss diets shake do this anyway?" ... followed by "whats actually different about this product and existing food replacement shake diets?"

bowlofpetunias 13y ago

EDIT: Unbelievable. Both the title and the link to the article I commented on have been swapped from the PandoDaily article (http://pandodaily.com/2013/11/12/vice-investigates-soylent-finds-rats-and-mold/ http://pandodaily.com/2013/11/12/vice-investigates-soylent-f...) to the Vice article which PandoDaily referred to, but that tries to give it a positive spin. This goes well beyond whatever policy pg was trying to defend recently. This is deeply manipulative. --- It looks a scam, it sounds like a scam, it's marketed like a scam and now it apparently is being produced like any other scam. So how long until we finally draw the obvious conclusion? Just because some notable VC's gambled on it doesn't make it any more credible. In fact, there is pretty much zero evidence in the credible column.

dragontamer 13y ago
It certainly isn't a scam. However, I went to an engineering school, and have met Food Engineers. Food Engineering is a difficult branch of chemical engineering. You've got regulations, you've got people's lives at stake. The Soylent guys just went at it like a hacker: because thats what they are. They're taking the "startup culture" and trying to apply it to food. And that is incredibly dangerous. Anyone who has any connection at all to the food industry knows that PEOPLE DIE IF YOU MESS THIS UP. This is NOT a "hackathon", and a SINGLE mistake can accidentally kill someone.
- nightski 13y ago
  The food industry as a whole is one big hack, even with it's fancy regulations and bureaucracy. People are dying constantly due to the failures of the industry. It is nice to see fresh ideas.
  - jlgreco 13y ago
    The maritime industry as a whole is one big hack, even with it's fancy regulations and bureaucracy. People are dying constantly due to the failures of the industry. It is nice to see fresh ideas. That's why I am pitching my new great idea: submarines made of scrap steel I found in my back yard! The best part? No more hassle with pesky waves! Glide beneath the surface with the grace of an aquatic mammal. Sure, some people have built submarines before, and they say it is really difficult to get right, but my idea is fresh by virtue of it being created by me, a SV engineer! (Ignore that puncture in the test unit, somebody mishandled the shipping!)

wil421 13y ago

People dont realize what little regulations supplements face compared to "food". Most products you buy at nutrition/health stores (like GNC/Vitamin Shoppe/etc.) are not really tested. You can pretty much be getting chalk and no one will know. Or you get an overdose of Ephedra and die.

foobarqux 13y ago
See superdrol (anabolic steroid with high liver toxicity) and Craze (meth analog)
- wil421 13y ago
  This was exactly what I was talking about. Muscle building supplements and bath salts.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

ChuckMcM 13y ago

I suppose you could spin it "Look how healthy our rats are and there is nothing in this warehouse but Soylent! Testing on rats, check!" But this made me a bit sad. I think Soylent is great, it is disruptive, it is more palatable than nutraloaf it could be a great alternative for folks who just need food to live, and it could provide a fascinating 'control' group for various Microbiome projects. But clearly these folks aren't exactly "experienced" as Jimi Hendrix might say. Here is the challenge, there is a crap ton of knowledge about how to do things that isn't taught in school or on the web or in books. You learn that by 'apprenticing' at a company or organization which is already doing something like what you want to do, and getting the history of all the things they had to overcome and avoid "in the old days." It isn't nostalgia, it is education through experience. That is what experience is. And the only way to get it, is to experience it. It was sad for me when I realized this, I could be smarter than my manager at the time and yet he could be a better manager because he had experienced more issues and overcome them (or at least seen the solution to them) to have a much better sense of what would be an important problem and what would be a minor problem. I could put any situation I wanted in front of him and he had an answer to the "big problem" / "small problem" classification, but he could not express that as an algorithm I could learn from. So when people come out of college and start companies the next day I tend to cringe a bit as there is a lot of stuff they are going to learn the hard way. That is doubly true when you're doing multiple disciplines (food prep + nutrition + distribution + marketing + regulation + Etc.) and having run a business of type A won't prime you to run one of type B, other than to help you recognize where you need subject matter experts. One wonders why the first hire at Soylent wasn't someone who had 5 years or more setting up and running a food production line. I don't know but I have heard folks in similar situations say "How hard could it be?"

dragontamer 13y ago
What you do, is then you hire a 10-year veteran of the food preparation business. What you DON'T do, is pickup a few textbooks on body chemistry and assume you can figure it all out by yourself.
- lowboy 13y ago
  Why not? The human body is a machine, and we can examine and alter that machine. We've been doing that throughout history. I don't like the early claims of Soylent being "perfectly optimized" and the like.

jokoon 13y ago

doesn't your digestive system have to re learn some tricks if it's not used for a long time ?

antonius 13y ago

I love how nonchalant the CEO was when he called the VICE reporter to tell him not to eat any of the spoiled batch of Soylent.

DanBC 13y ago

I'm really tempted to set up a kickstarter for a documentary of me living for 6 months on the various existing liquid feeds. It'll be tricky getting a doctor to fit a feeding tube up my nose, but I'm sure someone would do it. (Bit scary using non-medical people because of the risk of the tube going into a lung.)

throwmeaway2525 13y ago

From a different perspective, has anyone ever taken the time to read local health department restaurant inspection reports (if available)? I assume most people here eat at restaurants without too much concern, but if you ever read the reports, you'll find experienced industry professionals cited for far worse infractions than these.

DanBC 13y ago
I live in the UK. My local town has a 5 start system. "rats in the same building" would get a place shut down.

fredsters_s 13y ago

As a long time beta user I have a bunch of problems with this piece: - the Oakland space was a temporary location while they were iterating on the beta. Soylent is not manufactured there. - all the journalists writing about Soylent seem to attribute to Rob stuff that he doesn't actually say: namely that you should only consume Soylent all the time. The point of Soylent is that it replaces transactional eating and makes me healthier. It's not about replacing the eating I do for fun. - Soylent is a technology company. It's not just positioning. They are iterating towards finding an exponentially better way to do transactional eating using technology. That's the definition of a tech company.

_delirium 13y ago
Soylent is a technology company. It's not just positioning. They are iterating towards finding an exponentially better way to do transactional eating using technology. That's the definition of a tech company. Well, any product is technology in that sense. But this particular technology, meal-replacement shakes, is already reasonably well established. What seems new to me is that Soylent is pitching itself to people who either don't know about or have failed to become interested in the existing products, which seems like a marketing innovation more than a tech innovation. They don't seem to be differentiating on technical quality or iteration. If you read their campaign, for example, it is entirely positioned against regular food, as if they have just invented the full-meal-replacement shake, and does not mention anything about technical innovation over existing competitors: https://campaign.soylent.me/soylent-free-your-body https://campaign.soylent.me/soylent-free-your-body It's possible they also have technical innovation over any existing meal-replacement shake, but they are being very quiet about it if so.
- aianus 13y ago
  The existing products have really terrible marketing. They sell them in pharmacies and generally broadcast a message of "for supplementation or diseased/senile people only". Kudos to Soylent for trying to normalize liquid diets.
  - 13y ago

mathattack 13y ago

Seems like Soylent is taking advantage if the entire industry loophole called supplements. If the loophole didn't exist, this type of entrepreneurship wouldn't. Food companies are also doing real experiments. I don't see tasteless goop shakes disrupting the market any more than sport shakes. EDIT: I stand corrected on the first paragraph. I still believe the 2nd to be true.

caublestone 13y ago
Soylent is a food and not a supplement. The commercial version of the product is being produced in an FDA approved and GMP certified facility - RFI.
- mathattack 13y ago
  I stand corrected. Good for them!

Pxtl 13y ago

> “You’re not going to feed a booming population with organic farms,” Rob says. This is a popular misconception. While organic farming requires far more labour than conventional farming and the yields are lower for the same land, it's not actually that much lower. We're talking about a 5-30% drop in yield. Not great, but not "OMG mass worldwide starvation" change. And that's while being vastly more efficient with fresh water. Think about your average 3rd-world country and ask yourself what's in short supply - land, manpower, or fresh water?

lowboy 13y ago
Organic growing techniques use "vastly" less water? How so? I'm guessing that there's a correlation between farmers who choose to grow organic and those who try to conserve water, but I can't see how one is "vastly" different.
- stinkytaco 13y ago
  There's pretty solid evidence that biointesive techniques use less water because they make better use of the same space. If I grow two tomato plants in the space I used to grow one, I waste less water. But yes, you're right, I don't know if "vastly" is the word I would use.
  - lowboy 13y ago
    Does biointensive === organic? Organic is a loaded term nowadays, so maybe it's just semantics.
    - stinkytaco 13y ago
      No. Really, singling out "biointensive" was unfair as any intensive agriculture would have the same benefit. >Organic is a loaded term nowadays, so maybe it's just semantics. So loaded as to be basically meaningless.
- Pxtl 13y ago
  ... yeah, I might've overstated that, which is particularly hypocritical given the thrust of my post. Anyhow, I can't find the original article, but the idea is that organic farming techniques produce soil that's far better at retaining water and preventing wasteful evaporation. Also, there's the secondary matter of fertilizer runoff contaminating local ground-water.

yuvadam 13y ago

Soylent might, technically, work. It might be safe and healthy, it definitely looks simple and allows you to forget anything related to grocery shopping, cooking and cleaning up afterwards. But thinking about the prospect of the future makes me sick to my stomach. Soylent paints a disgustingly frightening dystopia where humans are fed 100% "correct" food to allow them to continue being cogs in the business machine, not stop for lunch during the day in the office, and be able to pull those extra longs evenings and nights to get more work done. Not to mention the vanishing social and human aspects of eating, together with friends and family. Rob Reinhardt's assertions that organic cultivation of vegetables, fruits and legumes does not scale are downright FALSE, and only serve the Soylent marketing machine. Soylent is doing nothing more than accommodating to the needs of humanoids who continue the endless pursuit of some vague promise of capitalist fulfillment (work hard, be rich, be happy), ignoring the fact that the direct opposite of such a lifestyle leads to a much more healthier, happier life which remains in touch with our basic, primal human existence.

beambot 13y ago
Or... it could put humanity in a position to provide a balanced nutrition as a fundamental human right, delivered right to your doorstep by USPS. If the economics worked out it could be provided everywhere worldwide, and then other food consumption could be purely for enjoyment. There are always people who scream "dystopia!" every time a new technology arrives. That seems very pessimistic.
- fleitz 13y ago
  This is a very progressive idea, lets add housing to that, so that everyone will have a place to stay, something to eat and something to do. I can see the large halls feeding the masses, I've even heard tale of a boy named Oliver who wants even more soylent it's so delicious.
- stinkytaco 13y ago
  >it could put humanity in a position to provide a balanced nutrition as a fundamental human right, delivered right to your doorstep by USPS. If the economics worked out it could be provided everywhere worldwide, and then other food consumption could be purely for enjoyment. So... why not just do that with the food we've got? Drop a few packages of surplus food on the doorsteps of some African countries and call it good? The thing is, there is enough food to feed the world. The Western world has way too much of it and lots of the rest of the world has too little of it. Hell, even within the western world there's too much and too little at the same time within the same square mile. The issue is not balanced nutrition, it's making the economics work out, which they do not and never have. What this may solve is a distribution problem. Some of the food problem in major US cities is lack of access to grocery stores that sell real food. Soylent could be stocked in the convenience stores those areas have access to.

Touche 13y ago

What makes Solyent special vs other meal replacements? I take a meal replacement called Raw Meal (only one meal a day) that's make mostly from sprouts. I feel great when I make myself do it every day. Is the difference that Solyent isn't made from any plant material but rather is raw chemicals?

thatthatis 13y ago

Best part of this for me was the information that the Optifast product exists. I hope soylent is successful, but I like knowing there are existing total-meal-replacement competitors I can order now on amazon (which I just did).

collyw 13y ago

IS the stuff on vice.com real? I read about a guy who claimed to only eat raw meat, and it seemed a bit far fetched. Ok, this Solyent is believable, but why??? Eating is one of life pleasures.

abuehrle 13y ago

The three NYC food critics (11:20 in the video) really bugged me. Their immediate smug dismissal of the product and idea was predetermined. Maybe I'm reading too much into what was shown, but I got the impression that there was no possible world in which they give Soylent a chance. I'm not necessarily a believer, but I'm noticing this behavior more and more often as I get older and it's increasingly bothering me.

justin66 13y ago
> Their immediate smug dismissal of the product and idea was predetermined. Maybe I'm reading too much into what was shown, but I got the impression that there was no possible world in which they give Soylent a chance. Why would they? The best possible case is that it tastes like a milkshake or malt or something good like that. At which point, they're still arguing against a monoculture of millions of identical milkshakes, which are still hell for anyone who actually enjoys food. I'd expect any food critic's attitude toward this stuff to make their attitude towards corporate fast food look pretty mild by comparison.
- abuehrle 13y ago
  I believe no one associated with Soylent has ever claimed it to be a culinary delight, and no one is trying to stop people from enjoying food when they want to eat for that purpose. To have these critics evaluating Soylent by their usual metrics in a pseudo-experimental setting is disingenuous. The guy critic even used the word "stupid". It's not a stupid, it's just not good at something it never claimed to be good at.

akinity 13y ago

Gross, why are human beings packing Soylent?

sillysaurus2 13y ago

These top comments are really the worst of HN. Thoughtless, emotional vitriol. Until Soylent is proved unsafe, there is no basis for calling it unsafe.

DanBC 13y ago
We see unsuitably dressed workers scooping powders from uncovered boxes on a factory floor into other boxes to be mixed, with rats in the factory. They've left that factory now, but it's telling that even though Rob didn't think the factory was suitable for a number of reasons he still went ahead and prepared and shipped product to (I assume) paying beta testers. What more do you need?
- lowboy 13y ago
  Eh. I'm not so squeamish. I know that pretty much every restaurant will have or has had rodents, it's just part of life.
lowboy 13y ago
Agreed. I think part of the backlash is from Soylent's hubris about how it's perfectly optimized, etc. I think we have a long way to go before drawing any conclusion, but it's a promising technology.
derleth 13y ago
> Until Soylent is proved unsafe, there is no basis for calling it unsafe. This is exactly backwards, and is precisely the reasoning scammers use to sell worthless treatments.

talles 13y ago

This is, IMO, the stupidest thing ever. Why just WHY give up on food? Cooking and enjoying food is one of our essential pleasures in life; I just can't see myself replacing it to some hipster matrix-like shake of nutrients. Just no thank you. Anyway the title feels a lot misleading for someone that is used to do water fast. That is truly 'eating no food', and some do it for lengths of 30 days (yes it's safe for most people). Cooking your own food, experimenting around and occasionally doing some fasting is, again IMO, the true way to eat happy and healthy. That's what I do.

aianus 13y ago
Some people really hate the whole process of shopping, cooking, and eating. Or, at least, they're tired of spending hours every day on it. Can you really not think of anything you'd rather do with your time?
- talles 13y ago
  Sure, of course. Nowadays every single piece of 'time' is invaluable to be productive, to get rich, to achieve something. But we lose the pleasure in the process. Sure, I'm not able to cook a pleasant meal on midweek as I do on my weekends. But that doesn't mean that I'm going to the extreme of blending all up and feed myself with a straw. Finding a balance is the way to go.

mixmastamyk 13y ago

The angry comments in every solyent article are pretty silly imho. You are under no obligation to use it. Those that do are still permitted to dine with family. :/ Any bugs will get worked out over time. These days I usually make a smoothie for a quick breakfast... perhaps some unsweetened almond milk, protein/vitamin powder, ground flax seed, a bit of fruit/veggies, sometimes even a healthy oil. The concept is not terribly different than soylent. I do like to keep my blood sugar in a moderate range, however. I might be interested in trying soylent if they had a low-carb version, one not significantly made of oats and maltodextrin.

DanBC 13y ago
> Any bugs will get worked out over time. Meanwhile, they'll still market it as optimized nutrition to put you in perfect shape and fine for everyone even if they have allergies etc etc.
- mixmastamyk 13y ago
  Maybe they've gone a bit far with that, but I've not yet encountered marketing that didn't put a positive spin on its product. As always take with a grain of salt.

jjoe 13y ago

For those who feel like they are missing out on the social aspect of eating out. Perhaps restaurants can start offering Soylent-based meals in their menu but with a twist. Instead of a plain shake in a cup, they could mold and dye the Soylent powder to look like a natural food like an apple, strawberry, or even a steak and serve it on a plate. No stigma from having to turn down a restaurant invitation or a get together with friends.

blueblank 13y ago

> Eating will become like boozing—something we do recreationally with friends, or as a hobby or, part of the grimdark future where the trend of hobby eating sends the prices of food out of reach of the lower 7/8 of society

Tarrosion 13y ago

I found this very troubling: "I wasn’t drinking enough water. At the factory, Rob told me that was a common mistake; since Soylent is a shake, people figure they don’t have to drink extra water—an easy way to get dehydrated." Failing so thoroughly to communicate how to use your product that users become dehydrated within two days is a serious mistake, though thankfully not a common one.

skizm 13y ago

I feel like you can get 90% of the way to soylent's promises with whey protein milkshakes, multi-vitamins and fish oil. Toss some fiber in that diet and you get the rest of the way. Athlete? add some creatine to your morning shake and eat something with more carbs post workout (carbohydrate supplement powder works great and is cheap). Having a minimalist diet isn't rocket science, but I guess it is reassuring to have that stamp on the bottle that says a doctor approved of the macro-nutrient ratios.

jbeja 13y ago

I Quit watching the video at the part were he says "i was eating leafs, it so strange".

gonzalocasas 13y ago

"Lacking background in chemistry or nutrition, Rhinehart developed the formula through research and self-experimentation." (from the Wikipage article) OMG, yes, that sounds like a totally reliable product to, you know, like, trust one's own existence to. Not to mention the incredibly sad, and dehumanizing experience of losing all the marvellous things of a great meal that are not related to nutrition: textures, flavor, a time to disconnect and relax, a time to chat with friends, family, etc, just to mention a few obvious ones.

digitalzombie 13y ago

I wouldn't mind eating this once and a while when I'm low on time and don't want to drive somewhere or whip something up. I wouldn't see myself eating this ONLY, cause the video did bring up a good point, eating is also a social thing. Hey babe you want to go back to my place and eat some soylent?

quantumpotato_ 13y ago
We can cook it, oh wait, don't have time.

ruswick 13y ago

Honestly, I just don't get Soylent. What is the purpose? As a health measure? The market for weight-loss shakes and other dietary solutions is saturated, and most of it appears to be complete shit. Dietary shakes are easy to come by, and are almost universally reviled because they don't work as advertised and taste disgusting. Is Soylent a supposed to be a remedy for malnutrition? Why is drinking a bunch of vitamins a better option than taking a dietary supplement? How does Soylent account for the fact that nutrient absorption is less efficient in artificial supplements? Why not just eat quality, healthy human food? But, far and away the worst and most appalling argument is that soylent is "convenient," and that it's beneficial to people who "don't have time to eat." I'm sorry, but if you can't find time to eat human food, the issue is your schedule, not the food. Correct me if I'm wrong, but eating is pretty fucking important. If you are in a position where feeding yourself actual sustenance is inconvenient, then there is a probably a severe deficiency with your schedule and a problem with your priorities.

pyrocat 13y ago
> I'm sorry, but if you can't find time to eat human food, the issue is your schedule, not the food. Correct me if I'm wrong, but eating is pretty fucking important. If you are in a position where feeding yourself actual sustenance is inconvenient, then there is a probably a severe deficiency with your schedule and a problem with your priorities. You don't sound very sorry. You sound incredibly judgmental of anyone who has different priorities than you. Personally, I love food, I just hate preparing it. Spend 30 minutes to cook a meal that I will eat in 5? No thanks. So I eat out all the time, which is really fucking expensive. You've heard of the PM triangle right? Same basic idea here. Food can be cheap, tasty, quick, and healthy, but not all at once. McDonalds is cheap, tasty, and quick but not healthy. That steak dinner you just cooked yourself is cheap, tasty, and healthy but not quick. I personally always pick the quick option, but the other items can vary. Thus I'm usually eating quick, tasty, and healthy items. I have trouble finding things that are quick, healthy, and cheap. This seems to fill that niche nicely. It doesn't mean I'm going to suddenly stop eating out, but it will mean I spend less money in the long run, without having to spend extra time. For all of the comments on Hacker News about how time=money, even when you're not on the clock, you'd think this concept would make sense more immediately.

xacaxulu 13y ago

Zuckerburg will drink Soylent only if he can kill it first.

itsameta4 13y ago

I've been following this story since the beginning, and here's the part that I'm baffled that people always forget: They're open-sourcing the recipe. That should remove all the accusations of it being a scam. If it's a scam, it will be easily proved such. If there are nutritional problems, they can be fixed, either in the official branch, or in one of the many forks which already exist.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

rdl 13y ago

I'd kill (well, pay up to $600/mo) for a low-carb version of Soylent. Even if he made it in a (clean) residential kitchen, although I'd prefer if RFI did it under contract. Even better if you could get monthly blood analysis and then have your Soylent customized for you. SoylentPro, perhaps.