Soylent Halts Sale of Bars; Investigation Into Illnesses Continues (arstechnica.com) 207
Beth Mole, reporting for ArsTechnica:Following online reports of customers becoming ill after eating Soylent's new snack bars, the company announced this afternoon that it has decided to halt all sales and shipments of the bars as a precautionary measure
. The company is urging customers to discard remaining bars and will begin e-mailing customers individually regarding refunds. In a blog announcing the decision, the company said it is still investigating the cause of bouts of illnesses of customers linked to the bars, including nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. "After hearing from our customers, we immediately began investigating the cause of the issue and whether it was linked to a problem with the Bars," the company said. "So far we have not yet identified one and this issue does not appear to affect our other drinks and powder. Though our investigation into this matter continues, we have decided to err on the side of caution and take this preventative step."
oops (Score:5, Funny)
Clever company name can only backfire in cases like this.
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Hmm...perhaps this is a case of Mad Human Disease....
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Kuru [wikipedia.org] is the term you're looking for.
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You don't have to completely avoid cannibalism, you just have to avoid eating the brain and spinal cord.
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who the F@#$ is going to eat something from a company called Soylent.
someone who didn't see the movie that was made decades before most of you were born.
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Rosa Labs is... Soylent!
"human resources" (Score:5, Funny)
"Rosa Labs -- our people are our greatest asset"
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Technically the product is soylent, and the company is rosa labs.
Technically, yes, but that's kept somewhat sub rosa.
Re:oops (Score:5, Funny)
Why not? Soylent GREEN was made out of people. The other types of soylent weren't.
So, what was soylent brown made from?
On second thought, I don't want to know.
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The Japanese are working on it.
http://www.digitaltrends.com/c... [digitaltrends.com]
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I only watched the 1973 movie. But taking place in a future 2022, I assuming it's predicting a world after Trump.
that's what you get... (Score:4, Funny)
... when you make your stuff with Zika victims...
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... when you make your stuff with Zika victims...
Look, the sick and the morbidly obese are easier to catch, OK?
If you start trying to catch healthy people the process gets WAY more expensive!
Re:oops (Score:5, Funny)
Clever company name can only backfire in cases like this.
Yes, but how does it taste?
"It varies from person to person"
Re:oops (Score:4, Funny)
Mine tastes funny.
Oh look, the box says "May contain clowns".
Interesting... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Interesting... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Do I need to put out dozens of examples proving you wrong? I'd wager most companies don't act anywhere near as responsibly as int he Tylenol case.
Maybe I'll do it with just one recent example. Chipotle. Huge chain. Nationwide. Drummed up to be the next Subway. People kept getting sick and they didn't do shit until it was an old joke.
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Although I doubt that Soylent bars need seals.
How else will they get that delicious blubbery taste?
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they're attempting damage control until they figure out what to do next.
It's not as if they can change the recipe. There's only one source of the main ingredient.
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They applied the formula? A plus B plus C equals X...
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If they are being honest in their statement, then I'm impressed to see a company in this day and age take such steps. However the cynical side of me wonders if they knew/know what's happening and they're attempting damage control until they figure out what to do next.
Your cynicism is misplaced. Having worked in the packaged food industry before, voluntary recalls happen quite a bit and never make headlines as food is tested all the way down the supply chain. The tests include both on the spot testing and a sample taken, stored, and tested later to replicate the entire life cycle of the product and see what's happening. If the follow up sample test fails, the batch is recalled even if it's taken off the shelf at the grocery store.
Food scares still happen and occasiona
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I've had almost 2 boxes of the bars (with several in back-up, unfortunately, that I should probably now dump to be safe). I've had zero issues. I really do wonder what the issue was/is.
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They're pretty good about product safety. They had a mold problem a while back.
Was the mold green?
It's made of PEOPLE! (Score:4, Informative)
That's what makes them sick!
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Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)
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Yes, when we finally eliminate all flavor from food it will be humanity's finest hour.
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If I want flavored food, i'll choose to eat something actually good - like cooked by a human who cares about the taste - rather than some prepackaged thing that is optimized for long term storage.
So you do a lot of eating at home, then?
Pretty much *every* chain loads things down with butter to make things taste good. Often masking other nonsense they try to pull. You might also be aware that there is often only a handful of food distributors in any metro area, so your choice at a restaurant is the same base products, dressed up a little differently. That chicken fried steak at Chili's is the same as Applebees, plus or minus a couple spices.
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If I want flavored food, i'll choose to eat something actually good - like cooked by a human who cares about the taste - rather than some prepackaged thing that is optimized for long term storage.
So you do a lot of eating at home, then?
Yes, yes I do.
Pretty much *every* chain loads things down with butter to make things taste good. Often masking other nonsense they try to pull.
Umm, I'm really confused by the way you went with this. The GP says he wants (1) "something actually good," (2) "cooked by a human", and (3) "who cares about the taste."
Chain restaurants almost by definition tend to use pre-packaged, pre-cooked, and pre-processed products to maintain product stability across large numbers of restaurants. I don't think this is a secret, and most people should be aware of it. Thus, there would be an automatically fail at GP's criterion (2) for choosing a ch
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Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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Sadly, the bars are 10% sugar by weight (and half carbs). Energy bards, not actual food.
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Are you not in the US? This isn't generally a problem with (mechanical) dishwashers, unless she's heroically lazy.
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Yeah, then that make sense - it takes very minimal effort to hand-clean stuff well enough for a vaguely modern dishwasher to work - but that's more than no effort.
Well, I guess Soylent's better than (Score:2)
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Soylent grey is made of apes, soylent pink is made from unicorns and soylent green, well you know.
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"Moses Bar" would have been even better!
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"Moses Bar" would have been even better!
"Let my people go! What, you turned them all into bars?"
Investigation? (Score:4, Interesting)
The company is urging customers to discard remaining bars and will begin e-mailing customers individually regarding refunds.
Why would they be asking customers to discard, instead of send them back?
I mean.... if they're really investigating, then they should take the returns, and then
do some analysis of what was winding up in customer hands, right?
Assuming they don't already have an explanation for people getting sick that they're uncomfortable sharing.......
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Soylent joins the pantheon of the greats (Score:5, Informative)
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To be honest, the WOW chips, as the only available source of Olestra, are (or should be) missed by some people - Olestra is one of the best tolerated and most efficient ways to remove dioxines from the body of people poisoned by them.
Bond to happen... (Score:3)
Because you know some people just make you sick.
Welcome to basic biology (Score:3)
Different people react differently to different inputs.
You thought your product would be a perfect fit for everyone on the planet?
You morons.
This is why you shouldn't trust anyone claiming any panacea. You fall for the marketing, you deserve that intestinal upset.
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Different people react differently to different inputs.
I don't.
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I bet I can take one strain of cannabis and simply cure it in a different manner and you'd notice a drastic difference in even the raw extracts made directly after the curing process.
If you think you can do otherwise, I know of many doctors and medical associations that would like to put you under medical study.
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You thought your product would be a perfect fit for everyone on the planet?
And why wouldn't it be? Human beings are shown to be the single most adaptable species on the planet. You can eat all sorts of meals in all corners of the earth and while it may make digestion difficult initially the body quickly adapts.
Most intolerances to generic food are medical disorders, that doesn't make it any less of a general fit for everyone on a planet.
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What do you mean by this, are you saying that people "fell for the marketing" because they didn't expect to get ill from it? How is this different from any other food poisoning outbreak?
VICE episode (Score:2, Informative)
There was an episode about Soylent on VICE a little bit back. Their facility was just an empty concrete building with plastic tubs of ingredients and the closest thing to health precautions being plastic sheeting thrown up in one area. They also saw rats in the building there, so I really wouldn't be surprised if they got contaminated.
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While the rat you can see in the video is cute, I'd rather not eat its fleas or droppings.
If I understand it correctly, for legal purposes they call the bars a nutritional supplement, not food, so they won't have to go through the costly requirements for sanitary food production.
If that's the case, I don't see how they can get away with it and still label their product as a "FOOD BAR".
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don't see how they can get away with it and still label their product as a "FOOD BAR".
Depends - did they put "FOOD BAR" in quotes like you did? If not, they should.
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https://faq.soylent.com/hc/en-... [soylent.com]
why on slashdot? (Score:2)
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Not to eat!
Soylent makes you green. (Score:2)
EOM
So, what's Soylent really about? (Score:5, Insightful)
I have some customers in San Jose, and live in Berkeley. Given the horrid traffic and the lack of good trains with little hope that BART's Silicon Valley extension will be done within a decade, I get up at 5AM when it's necessary to work at these customer sites, hit the road by 5:30, and head home around 1 PM.
Obviously, that doesn't leave time for a leisurely breakfast. So, a cold bottle of Soylent 2.0 just out of the 'fridge is about my best option while driving. Warm Soylent doesn't actually seem that much worse, and I've used that during long drives when the alternative would have been fast food.
Yes, I get paid enough to compensate for all of this.
Soylent 2.0 tastes OK, but not so good that you'd eat it just for the taste. It takes care of physical needs and doesn't do anything nasty to my gastrointestinal system. I do not attempt to use it as a total food replacement.
Consuming Soylent, though, leads one to think about how food flavors and other characteristics of food are evolved or engineered to manipulate us, and how this is a dependence or addiction and perhaps the largest cause of health issues in our lives.
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When having a meal/eating is not such a joyful part of your life that you would never want to substitute it with drinking some artificial paste, you are either suffering from a terrible disease, or you should definitely change what/when/how you eat.
Substituting real food with Soylent is like substituting sex with semen extraction under narcosis.
And "working more for more money" is certainly not a good reason to keep yourself away from the most basic pleasures in life - unless your only alternative to that p
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It's made of clowns! (Score:3)
Meal replacement (Score:2)
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Affected customers read the ingredient list.
What would they put in it that would make a significant amount of customer sick,
other than an adulterated, infected, contaminated or otherwise non-food-quality substance unfit for human consumption?
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People
Look up soylent green
Re:nausea, vomiting, etc. (Score:5, Informative)
NGREDIENTS: Soy Protein Isolate, Corn Syrup, Rolled Oat, Canola Oil, Glycerine, Whole Algal Flour, Isomaltooligosaccharide, Isomaltulose, Maltodextrin, Water, Dicalcium Phosphate Anhydrous, Soy Lecithin, Natural and Artificial Flavor, Salt, Tapioca Starch, Sunflower Oil, Dipo- tassium Phosphate, Modified Food Starch, Po- tassium Chloride, Choline Bitartrate, Mixed Tocopherol, Sucralose, Mono & Diglycerides, Magnesium Oxide, Ascorbic Acid, dl-alpha-To- copheryl Acetate, Tricalcium Phosphate Anhy- drous, Ferrous Sulfate, Vitamin A Palmitate, Nia- cinamide, Zinc Oxide, Copper Gluconate, D-Calcium Pantothenate, Manganese Sulfate, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride, Potassium Iodide, Riboflavin, Thiamine Mononitrate, Vitamin D2, Chromium Chloride, Folic Acid, Biotin, Sodium Selenite, Sodium Molybdate, Phytonadione, Vitamin B12. Contains: Soy
hmmm... exactly how much glycerin are they using?
Ingredients ...
are obtained
from genetically
engineered
sources
OH GOD NOES! RUN FOR THE HILLS! SCIENCE!
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Soy Protein Isolate, Corn Syrup, Rolled Oat, Canola Oil, Glycerine, Whole Algal Flour
hmmm... exactly how much glycerin are they using?
That's a fascinating question. Since it's between Canola Oil (of which there is potentially quite a fair bit) and algal flour (of which there cannot be very much or the mere taste would induce vomiting) it could really be any amount from a fairly wide range.
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"My guess would be... a lot." -Cameron Poe
So four of the top six ingredients by weight all will nauseate the average human in sufficiently high concentrations. I think we've found the culprit.
Hell, they might as well have named the damn things Vomit Bars...
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Sucralose can cause bloating and diarrhea. In my experience it's fine in beverage-sweetener quantities, but in foods, especially snack foods, I might consume more than I really want to contend with.
If the users are trying to replace their whole diet with these bars, they certainly could consume enough to have some sucralose-related difficulties.
http://goaskalice.columbia.edu... [columbia.edu]
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Those use malitol. A sugar alcohol that has far worse symptoms than sucralose in larger doses.
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I don't even know what half of that shit is, but I wouldn't rub it on my hair let alone eat it.
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Well, as long as it doesn't have any DNA in it. :P
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Ingredient list:
97% Formerly affected customers, 3% corn syrup.
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Ingredient list:
97% Formerly affected customers, 3% corn syrup.
That's what I think of every time I see "made from 35% post consumer content".
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In Russia, Soylent Bars are made of YOU!
No, soylent red really was made from vegetable concentrates. It was the soylent green that was made from you. Even in Soviet Russia.
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I thought his sole goal was to reduce the time he spent on making/planning meals. Kind of like having a single color and style of suit, shirt, shoes - no decisions, just efficiency.
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The powder comes to $2 for a 500 calorie meal full of vitamins and minerals. I can't imagine how you could prepare a meal with the same nutritional value for less than that.
Noodles (ramen or otherwise) with chopped mixed vegetables. Cheap, tastes good, and nutritious. All it takes is some boiling water and a minute or two of chopping. Soylent gets about half its calories from fat, which is way too much.
fresh bread is extremely easy to make and doesn't have to be labor intensive (18 hour, no-knead). Also very tasty.
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Most of today's "youth" can't cook, make or repair anything.
Most of the time is spent poking a phone and microwaving prepackaged artificial "food".
Soylent is right down their alley.
Re:Hope they fix it better than the Note 7 (Score:4, Funny)
I just had a Soylent Note 7 bar. It was delicious! ... burrrrp ~#^ [NO CARRIER]
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I think in this case, the nature of the food is part of the appeal. It's a niche product, sure, but if people are buying SOYLENT then they expect a certain unidentifiable blandness to it. That's kind of the point.
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