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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
There are a few dietary supplements that voluntarily submit to FDA inspection of their facilities. Most don't. The protein powder I use is one of them:
From the QA link:
They can also be in other forms, such as a bar, but if they are, information on their label must not represent the product as a conventional food or a sole item of a meal or diet.
So, Soylent is probably considered a food since it is a sole item of a meal.
They don't need to be approved in the typical FDA sense, but the ingredients do need to be considered GRAS (Generally Recognized as Safe).[1]
GRAS just tells people what they're allowed to sell, but most food products have been around long enough they are grandfathered in. The bigger issue that the FDA still mandates, is that the products are prepared under cGMP standards. The standards are open, available, and not at all onerous if you intend to be an honest business.[2]
Essentially, you need to have trained staff, clean buildings, batch records, clean equipment, known ingredients (no allergens accidentally introduced), etc. Really basic stuff. Unfortunately, it's mostly self-policed until an 'incident' at which case the FDA can do an audit and raise hell.
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.
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.
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.
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]
> "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.
What about all of the foods in the grocery store than can kill you over years if eaten as a primary source of a diet? Are those considered "safe"?
* Not trying to advocate Soylent. Just trying to point out that there are a lot of foods in the grocery store that can kill over time (and many are marketed as full meals intended to be eaten regularly).
That seems like a pretty circular argument. Do you mean the ones that aren't supposed to be eaten as a primary source of a diet? Or do you mean the ones that are, indeed, harmful if they make up too much of your diet?
Either way, I'm not sure how that argument is supposed to build confidence in Soylent.
Eaten that way? Obviously no, they are not safe. That is why you should never suggest that they are eaten that way.... Don't eat only pears; It would be a stupid and dangerous thing to do.
You know why Soylent is receiving more criticism than pears? Because unlike pear vendors, they are suggesting that you eat their product that way.
There is an entire category of foods meant to be eaten as 'meal replacements', sold in grocery stores etc. Google it. Soylent is perhaps the best of the lot; its tailorable to your activity level etc. And yes you can eat Soylent for an extended time and feel better than if you ate McD's all the time, which millions of people do and yes, they live to tell about it.
The criticism is overheated and silly. Eat what you like, everybody else does. Lets cut out the unsolicited advice and scare tactics, it sounds silly and timid.
I'm not a real fan of chewing food, but having done a similar diet before I prefer it. Turns out that even though me and food don't always get along, after 3 weeks on a liquid diet the cravings for real food for me come back. There are plenty of weightlifters who have done similar full-liquid diets for years before soylent, this data exists but has been largely ignored since it's from a different kind of community. Anyways - 30 days isn't enough, many items take longer to produce issues. Vitamin C comes to mind, it's destroyed by sunlight, copper (copper is good for destroying a few biological agents it seems, birth-control and Vitamin C, oh it's uses - but we need it as well so it'll be there in soylent in trace amounts), and age, but so little is needed to avoid scurvy, and it takes about 3 months from your last consumption of it to produce adverse results, that it wouldn't be an issue... in the short run.
To address your comment about animals: I saw animals that are littered with disease standing above the product. Standing, breathing without masks, talking without masks(which means trace amounts of spit), in standard clothes that've probably been exposed to much. The rat was far less disturbing than seeing the people who were handling the product.
Contrary to the blood-work, there is a issue that presented itself after 30 days. Not a nutrient deficiency, but a chewing one: he mentioned he started chewing gum due to his jaw aching. As far as I know chewing is supposed to help keep the jaw healthy (an expert/dentist has been sorely lacking from these soylent discussions, I imagine they'd have much to say about chewing, jaw, and tooth issues that crop up), and as someone who hasn't done a great job of that in life... I certainly wouldn't want to mess with jaw health anymore.
Yeah, I was pretty appalled to see one of the founders/employees measuring ingredients out of a box on the floor while wearing dirty espadrilles (canvas shoes). I suspect that if you look at the skepticism/support in this thread you'd see a strong correlation between people who have worked in food service at some time in their lives and those who haven't.
As in people doing these diets years before soylent, not years on said diet. My grammar might not've been clear enough.
EDIT: Specifically I'm thinking of the hundreds (if not thousands by now) of people on T-Nation/Testosterone Nation who've done the 1-month Velocity diet, which is (or was, I haven't been there in years, but that particular diet has been around for at least 5 years+), a protein shake diet with very little solid food. There are years of people doing it for a month and relating their experiences, highlights and downfalls, and I'm sure there are several more experiences in that world that would provide better data points. However, it has the issue of being mostly anecdotal evidence.
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.
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:
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.
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?"
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-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.
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.
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.
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!)
You forget that most people use cheap submarine or even avoid submarine at all (which is even worse for them) just to save time and money.
I have bad eating habits and I know multiple people who have eating habits even worse. I don't want to change that and I don't want to change my friend either, I'm fine how I live. This however is an amazing solution which is extremely easy to apply.
Can you tell me the issue with Soylent? It doesn't contains everything I need right? There a fraction that I wouldn't get from it. Does I plan to use it for every meal? Why would I? I enjoy eating, it's a great activity, I don't plan to stop that. Personally I consider Soylent as a good lunch replacement, nothing more.
Seriously the only issue is people who will actually believe that it's good to eat only that. I believe that it's the biggest marketing mistake Soylent made but I guess they needed that to show how they are superior to solutions like Ensure.
>People are dying constantly due to the failures of the industry.
Wait, what? Not even anywhere near true[1]. The CDC says 3,000 people in the US die every year from foodborne illnesses. That's .1%, one-tenth of a percent. I'd say that's a pretty good track record.
I think he probably means things like the diabetes or obesity epidemics, which in large part are caused by the failures of the industry, and their reliance on things like HFCS.
They are not. They are caused by unhealthy lifestyles maintained by people. It is convenient blaming everything on HFCS, but the truth is, if you eat cheeseburgers with cola daily and not expel extra calories with vigorous work, that's what is producing diabetes and obesity, not HFCS. Shifting responsibility from personal to "shady corporations made me fat" is bullshit.
And, btw, the reason food industry is using HFCS is not because they are evil, but because agrisector lobbied high tariffs on sugar imports, while at the same time subsidizing corn. Which makes using HFCS produced from cheap corn practical alternative to buying sugar with its artificially inflated prices. So even if you intend to place blame of HFCS, you chose wrong industry to blame.
Have you also tried Sports Nutrition, they also have shakes and powders –some proteins, the ingredients can be similar. The whole article sounds like a fancy way to reinvent a bike. What’s new in this substitution food endeavor? One can live for 30 days on shakes and sports nutrition, or it can be used as a supplement to traditional food. One can even leave with No food at all if drinking a lot of water and juices for 30 days, some people do that. Why investing several millions in it? To create another hype?
Shush, they have plenty of testimonials from real customers saying it works.
Soylent is a true superfood unlike scams like acai berry juice.
Solves long standing dietary issues that have gone unsolved by modern medicine? Check.
Helps you lose weight? Check.
Saves time and money? Check.
Testimonials? Check.
Even people with sciency sounding backgrounds think it's good! Let me just get out my credit card and sign up for a subscription. Good bye difficult exercise and time spent preparing healthy meals, hello easy street.
OK, so I like cooking and eating food. I think soylent is a scam, or at the very least just another in a long line of unappetizing "diet replacement shakes".
But just allow me a moment to conduct a thought experiment, or at least play devil's advocate.
For years you've been walking to get where you are going and you've been plowing your fields with a couple of very high maintenance animals that are costly and risky. You've been walking out to their stalls and feeding, cleaning and otherwise dedicating lots of time and money to them. It's a lot of work. One day along comes a guy with a machine that replaces animals. Not only will it replace animals in your fields, the same machine will replace walking to get where you're going. A neighbor got it and he swears by it.
Saves time and money? Check.
Solves long standing issues that have gone unsolved by modern technology? Check.
Helps you produce more in your fields and make more money? Check.
Say goodbye to expensive and time consuming animals and sore feet, hello easy street.
Did you mean this reply for me? Because I don't recall mentioning forcing someone to do something. I'm just saying that one could apply a similar thought process to tools that have changed the world in radical ways, like the internal combustion engine, steam power, precision machining, electricity, etc.
I understand that skepticism and in this case I share it, the number of inventions that have actually made radical changes to our world is infinitesimally small compared to the number that claim to, but the same reasoning could be applied to many past developments.
Off topic but, I think that really gets to the core of our problems with food in western culture.
Sharing food is the only bodily function we share publically. We don't use the bathroom together. We generally sleep and procreate in private with select people. We don't give play by plays of our breathing or hygiene, even if they are technically public.
But food, food is such a powerful cultural symbol that we share it with our loved ones and even complete strangers. The power of food is so great that it's the centerpiece of many cultural touchstones (the harvest festival, the sacrifice, the fertility ritual). We talk about the food our grandparents made in tones so reverential it might as well be religion.
But when we get our lunch we get food in our cars and eat it alone. It was prepared by someone we didn't see and will never know. Not that long ago even convenience food was prepared by a person we knew. I realize that most of us don't do this every day or even most days, but certainly the rise of eating as an exercise of convenience and driven strictly by our taste buds has coincided with the rise of our fat society. I know that correlation does not equal causation, but in this case it seems likely to me that one has led to the other.
We've already started to disconnect from our food in dangerous ways. Why not add a new meal replacement if it's healthier? And it's not like the internal combustion engine made us a bunch healthier either.
How many meals in week do you eat alone? How many with other people? I think most people will simply use this product to replace the meals they'd eat alone, and still go out for food with friends.
As a bachelor who eats out almost every meal, including the lunches and dinners when I eat alone. This sounds perfect for saving money and thus leaving more money to spend when I go out with friends.
I eat 4 meals alone per week, mostly because I eat lunch at my desk and am not super tight with my new co-workers (mostly because except for fridays I don't eat with them, see how that works?) Breakfast is with my partner, and dinner is with my partner or friends and family.
Why are you eating alone... let alone eating alone as a bachelor?
Make food for friends, go out with friends, not eating alone will change your life for the better (IMHO).
(Another recent graduate speaking)
Not everyone is having same social skills.
You tell me that, then I shall take my ass out and make friends in a foreign country. I agree with you, as am working on it and myself, but at the moment - zero friends.
As a result I very often eat alone too. On the other hand, I still am highly against replacing my eating rituals with some shaky shakes.
Breaks down and you have no idea how to fix it and have to hand over cash to the guy you bought it from, because your generations of accumulated animal husbandry knowledge is now useless? Does not magically replace itself with newer models like your farm animals did? Introduces new and unexpected dangers like a blade that accidentally cuts off your childs hand, because while you and your children are very familiar with the dangers of farm animals, machinery is totally unfamiliar? Check, check, check...
Yes, like I said, I was playing devil's advocate. But I would be willing to bet you own a car and it's a significant part of your lifestyle. And if you don't I'd still take that bet with every adult I talk to and come out ahead. I'm also willing to bet that your car has a negative impact on your health and the environment (from the atmosphere to the planning of your city).
My point is that world changing inventions do occur (rarely) and they are met with skepticism.
Since you made the claim, what specifically is the science that supports Soylent? I assume you can provide references to peer-reviewed stuff, given the nature of your claim, and I look forward to reading it.
I yield to no HN user in the extent and intensity of my distaste for the idea of Soylent, but the Pando article was, per Pando's charter, linkjacked clickbait that referred directly to the Vice article. It was totally reasonable --- desirable, even --- for the two articles to be switched. Would that we could simply do away with Pando altogether so that this kind of controversy might never recur.
It seems like censorship or manipulation when no explanation is given. Even if it is on the up and up, it'd be nice if someone could comment as to why the changes occur.
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.
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?"
When a lawnmower breaks, you hit it really hard with a hefty wrench until it starts working again. Maybe even take it apart, clean it, and put it back together again. Worse case, you buy a new one and find yourself out a few thousand dollars.
Percussive maintenance doesn't work on humans. When humans break, they die.
You have failed to understand the analogy. Hitting things with a wrench is how I fix things. Hitting things with a wrench is not analogous to eating Soylent, hitting things with a wrench is analogous to the medical care required when you break yourself.
The fear is that Soylent, used as hyped, has the potential to break a human.
Breaking yourself, or much worse, others, is a far more serious than breaking a machine. That sort of relaxed attitude towards health is exactly why I would not trust a product like this from people like this.
Soylent really should not be banking on "it is difficult to kill a human", and neither should you.
This is exactly the relaxed attitude I am talking about. Soylent, used as hyped, should not need to be proved hazardous. Soylent, used as hyped, should be shown to be safe.
Going back to lawnmowers, it would be like not wrapping the handle with leather for comfort because we can't prove that it's safe for the lawnmower. We think it's safe, we're pretty sure from our understanding that it's safe, but we can't prove it.
I say give it a try. Let's wrap the handle, observe in operation, and then react when we have more data.
Back to your hyper-relaxed "the human body is no more complicated or serious than a machine" thing?
I can't believe I have not made myself clear on this already, but I'll give it one more go: You can fuck around with lawn mowers because breaking one typically doesn't fucking kill somebody.
If you break your fucking lawnmower, you buy a new one. You don't get to buy another human.
Such a lazy attitude towards human safety is positively chilling. Have you learned absolutely nothing from the horrors seen over past centuries of people treating human lives like any other test subject?
It's only a problem if it harms a human suddenly and irreversibly. I'm guessing that anyone who was suffering problems from a dietary change would have time to correct.
Show me some evidence or even some indication that Soylent will result in an irreversible and sudden decline in health.
I'm guessing that you won't, or can't.
Your argument is "We don't know, so let's not risk it". The risk here is minimal. If it fails to live up to the hype, it's reversible.
> Show me some evidence or even some indication that Soylent will result in an irreversible and sudden decline in health.
> If it fails to live up to the hype, it's reversible.
Once again, demanding evidence that something is unsafe instead of providing evidence that it is not, then in the same breath taking that it is not for granted.
Is that all you are wired to do? It's like what I'm saying is going in one ear and coming out the other.
That's the thing, absent any negative information a dietary change shouldn't need rigourous proof. Unless there's any indication that Soylent will do irreparable damage from day 1, I see no good reason for an individual not to try it and monitor their progress. If it doesn't work for them, then they can stop using it. How hard is that? How is that breaking anyone?
I don't treat human life lightly. You're just treating a dietary change too heavily.
> It's like what I'm saying is going in one ear and coming out the other.
I was just about to say the same of you. I'm done here.
> Unless there's any indication that Soylent will do irreparable damage from day 1, I see no good reason for an individual not to try it and monitor their progress.
You are demonstrating a very basic failure to analyze risk, understand the variety of medical risks that can be posed by experimental diets, and indeed understand the concerns that other people are raising (the concern is not that you will die after drinking it three times in a row.....).
Mono-nutrition is known to have negative health effects.
And there is clear evidence of trial-and-error that has resulted in short-term health effects due to initial versions of Soylent. Longer term effects would not have been identified and so remain a very high risk.
From wikipedia:
Modifications to the ingredient list have occurred in response to results incurred in testing, for example: the first version of the formula omitted iron, which caused Rhineheart to report his heart had begun to race.[8] In other early experiments, intentionally induced overdoses of potassium and magnesium gave Rhinehart cardiac arrhythmia and burning sensations.[8] After the early recipe had stabilized, Rhinehart found himself suffering from joint pain due to a sulfur deficiency. Methylsulfonylmethane was added to address this problem
the human body can adapt to bad nutrition for a long time. Everything will be fine until its not.
What if Soylent increases the risk of some form of cancer or some long term damage to the liver of other organs ? You wont know until its too late.
You want people to prove that Soylent is bad, but instead the Soylent team needs to proof that Soylent is good! And a couple of dozen reviews from people using it for a month does not prove anything.
To be fair, it is "startup hackathon culture" to think like this.
If you build software that doesn't work, people get pissed off and yell at you on web-forums... but in the great scheme of things that's not a big deal.
The main downside is that once you leave software, startup culture becomes incredibly dangerous. If you build an airplane that "doesn't work", people die. If you build a train that "doesn't work", the train crashes into a building and people die. If you build a bridge that doesn't work... people die.
And of course, when it comes to Soylent... if you build a food process that can be infested with diseases, or leave out important dietary nutrition in a particular diet... people can die.
We have all this discussion talking about the diet side of things, but little discussion on the practicality of storage, or whether or not it needs to be refrigerated.
Absolutely agree, it definitely is "startup hackathon culture".
Well, that combined with typical SV engineer hubris. Being bright in your field and well paid does not mean that you can be the master of any field. Some engineering disciplines require tighter tolerances. Some fields, particularly those that use human subjects, have much tighter ethical and safety requirements.
It seems as though being immersed in SV startup culture for too long can render somebody literally unable to comprehend the notion of more stringent requirements and regulations existing.
Maybe not as violent, but a bad diet can quickly lead to disease. We never see it in the affluent West but micronutrient disease was and still is a pretty big problem -- you are getting enough food energy, so while you're not starving, you're still dying from your diet.
Yeah, I agree that there's a lot that we don't know about the human body, and I disliked any claims by Soylent that overreached in this way.
But we do know about nutrients and have a good idea of the proportion of them for the avg human.
I think my main problem with the backlash is with the argument that boils down to "We don't know, so let's not risk it". I don't see why we can't try it, and then monitor and react. If I started using Soylent and then 30 days down the road I was feeling ill, I'd probably stop using it first thing while exploring other causes.
"But we do know about nutrients and have a good idea of the proportion of them for the avg human."
We really, really don't. You could be excused for thinking we've got it all figured out if you listened only to news reporting on nutrition studies, but there's so much contradictory information out there that it's difficult to know which end is up.
For example: Soylent, according to the story, is partially fish oil. Did you know that there's a study out of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center that strongly suggests that fish oil supplementation increases the incidence of aggressive, fatal prostate cancers? What was once a nutrient panacea is likely now contraindicated in men.
Does this mean that Soylent shouldn't be using fish oil? Hard to say. I doubt that even the creators have any idea.
The backlash is "We don't know, and you dumbass without a degree are trying to figure this out without any formal training".
I welcome doctors, researchers, and people who know what they are doing to experiment with the human body. But when a computer science major armed with nothing but a few textbooks in body chemistry claims that he has "figured the body out", I am going to assume otherwise.
Does he have any cooking experience? What is his medical background?
Its not so much that "we don't know", but "the creator of Soylent clearly doesn't know", and yet he wants us to believe that he does.
The human body isn't a machine. It is a more complex thing that includes many machines. There are so many features of the human body that we can not examine and that we don't even know where to look...
The real question is "Soylent is perfectly optimized... for what?" Soylent may be optimized for "meeting the models of nutrition that we have." Yet, those models may be like using an FAQ to run a nuclear reactor. I'm not trying to fear-monger. I think Soylent is a great experiment. I wish I had to guts to carry out the reporter's month-long experiment.
That sounds like a winning long term strategy if the opposition makes decisions solely to maximize short term profit. Don't overestimate the opposition. Bad money pushes out good.
A laymen thinking they have a sufficient understanding of biochemistry to "hack" the human body isn't only naive, it's unethical. There's a reason we license people to become dieticians.
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.)
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.
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.
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
It's possible they also have technical innovation over any existing meal-replacement shake, but they are being very quiet about it if so.
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.
That's it. I had to read this far before I realized that's exactly what their core is: "trying to normalize liquid diets" (as in make them normal, acceptable, approachable, I think?). There's nothing natural (as in biologically normal, desirable or standard) about a liquid diet, so that's going to be an uphill battle.
I have some kind of psychological problem where I chew 5x more than normal people. This causes me to fill up on very small quantities of food and it's very difficult to hit 2000 calories a day without eating a lot of small meals or taking liquid supplements. So, at least for me, a liquid diet would be highly desirable.
As for biologically normal, it all turns into a liquid sludge in your stomach, doesn't it? Past that point I don't see how your digestive system can tell the difference as long as the composition of the sludge is similar enough.
A lot of the issues people have with Soylent seem to revolve around making it the only thing in your diet for extended periods. You're right that this is not how they are pushing it. I would never want to replace food with this entirely. If I were planning to have Soylent for dinner but some friends called up and asked if I wanted to grab a meal with them, I wouldn't hesitate for a second.
Because of this I don't worry if it's healthy enough to be the only thing I eat for a month, or if I would miss food, or be less social. This will never, and isn't designed to, replace all food.
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.
> “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?
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.
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.
... 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.
296 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 286 ms ] threadFor 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.
Unfortunately, when dealing with matters of health and sanitation, you don't have the luxury of trial-and-error iteration.
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.
;)
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.
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?
What products specifically?
Here's Abbott Nutrition http://abbottnutrition.com/
Here's Nutricia 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.ht...
2. Listeria killed 33 people, owners of company to prison: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-24292036
- 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.1stphorm.com/products/men/level-1
I wouldn't really consider using anything that isn't, but lots of people do every day, probably mostly from ignorance.
So, Soylent is probably considered a food since it is a sole item of a meal.
GRAS just tells people what they're allowed to sell, but most food products have been around long enough they are grandfathered in. The bigger issue that the FDA still mandates, is that the products are prepared under cGMP standards. The standards are open, available, and not at all onerous if you intend to be an honest business.[2]
Essentially, you need to have trained staff, clean buildings, batch records, clean equipment, known ingredients (no allergens accidentally introduced), etc. Really basic stuff. Unfortunately, it's mostly self-policed until an 'incident' at which case the FDA can do an audit and raise hell.
[1] - http://www.fda.gov/Food/IngredientsPackagingLabeling/GRAS/
[2] - http://www.fda.gov/cosmetics/guidancecomplianceregulatoryinf...
I still expect them to come out as a huge troll. If so, 10/10, did rage, would rage again.
Figured I'd join in on the speculation while it's fresh.
Eeeeek, ook.
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
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]
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.
Per usual, there's a very informative wiki link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scurvy#Symptoms
* Not trying to advocate Soylent. Just trying to point out that there are a lot of foods in the grocery store that can kill over time (and many are marketed as full meals intended to be eaten regularly).
Either way, I'm not sure how that argument is supposed to build confidence in Soylent.
You know why Soylent is receiving more criticism than pears? Because unlike pear vendors, they are suggesting that you eat their product that way.
The criticism is overheated and silly. Eat what you like, everybody else does. Lets cut out the unsolicited advice and scare tactics, it sounds silly and timid.
This is very disengenous. The makers of Soylent have come out and said Soylent is the only thing you need to eat to have a full and balanced diet.
I can't think of a single other food at a grocery store that has made a similar promise as I dont' believe any food can do this.
To address your comment about animals: I saw animals that are littered with disease standing above the product. Standing, breathing without masks, talking without masks(which means trace amounts of spit), in standard clothes that've probably been exposed to much. The rat was far less disturbing than seeing the people who were handling the product.
Contrary to the blood-work, there is a issue that presented itself after 30 days. Not a nutrient deficiency, but a chewing one: he mentioned he started chewing gum due to his jaw aching. As far as I know chewing is supposed to help keep the jaw healthy (an expert/dentist has been sorely lacking from these soylent discussions, I imagine they'd have much to say about chewing, jaw, and tooth issues that crop up), and as someone who hasn't done a great job of that in life... I certainly wouldn't want to mess with jaw health anymore.
Name one competitive weightlifter, powerlifter or bodybuilder that lived primarily on a shake made from powder for years.
EDIT: Specifically I'm thinking of the hundreds (if not thousands by now) of people on T-Nation/Testosterone Nation who've done the 1-month Velocity diet, which is (or was, I haven't been there in years, but that particular diet has been around for at least 5 years+), a protein shake diet with very little solid food. There are years of people doing it for a month and relating their experiences, highlights and downfalls, and I'm sure there are several more experiences in that world that would provide better data points. However, it has the issue of being mostly anecdotal evidence.
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.
Salmonella outbreak sickens 12 in state, triggers closure of Clover restaurants: 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-r...
First response by the founder: 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-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.
It's Airbnb "ransackgate" all over again ...
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.
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.
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!)
I have bad eating habits and I know multiple people who have eating habits even worse. I don't want to change that and I don't want to change my friend either, I'm fine how I live. This however is an amazing solution which is extremely easy to apply.
Can you tell me the issue with Soylent? It doesn't contains everything I need right? There a fraction that I wouldn't get from it. Does I plan to use it for every meal? Why would I? I enjoy eating, it's a great activity, I don't plan to stop that. Personally I consider Soylent as a good lunch replacement, nothing more.
Seriously the only issue is people who will actually believe that it's good to eat only that. I believe that it's the biggest marketing mistake Soylent made but I guess they needed that to show how they are superior to solutions like Ensure.
Wait, what? Not even anywhere near true[1]. The CDC says 3,000 people in the US die every year from foodborne illnesses. That's .1%, one-tenth of a percent. I'd say that's a pretty good track record.
[1]http://www.cdc.gov/foodborneburden/
And, btw, the reason food industry is using HFCS is not because they are evil, but because agrisector lobbied high tariffs on sugar imports, while at the same time subsidizing corn. Which makes using HFCS produced from cheap corn practical alternative to buying sugar with its artificially inflated prices. So even if you intend to place blame of HFCS, you chose wrong industry to blame.
After all it would only be 700 per year, every year.
( Note: 2012 global airline fatalities were 475 ).
3000 people out of a population of 310 million is 0.001%.
Equivalent of 7 airline fatalities. Not so bad.
Learn history yo before making ignorant comments.
Soylent is a true superfood unlike scams like acai berry juice.
Solves long standing dietary issues that have gone unsolved by modern medicine? Check.
Helps you lose weight? Check.
Saves time and money? Check.
Testimonials? Check.
Even people with sciency sounding backgrounds think it's good! Let me just get out my credit card and sign up for a subscription. Good bye difficult exercise and time spent preparing healthy meals, hello easy street.
But just allow me a moment to conduct a thought experiment, or at least play devil's advocate.
For years you've been walking to get where you are going and you've been plowing your fields with a couple of very high maintenance animals that are costly and risky. You've been walking out to their stalls and feeding, cleaning and otherwise dedicating lots of time and money to them. It's a lot of work. One day along comes a guy with a machine that replaces animals. Not only will it replace animals in your fields, the same machine will replace walking to get where you're going. A neighbor got it and he swears by it.
Saves time and money? Check.
Solves long standing issues that have gone unsolved by modern technology? Check.
Helps you produce more in your fields and make more money? Check.
Say goodbye to expensive and time consuming animals and sore feet, hello easy street.
I understand that skepticism and in this case I share it, the number of inventions that have actually made radical changes to our world is infinitesimally small compared to the number that claim to, but the same reasoning could be applied to many past developments.
I fully appreciate that it's cheaper than food, and might be nutritionally healthy for you. Mental healthwise, it seems like a disaster.
Sharing food is the only bodily function we share publically. We don't use the bathroom together. We generally sleep and procreate in private with select people. We don't give play by plays of our breathing or hygiene, even if they are technically public.
But food, food is such a powerful cultural symbol that we share it with our loved ones and even complete strangers. The power of food is so great that it's the centerpiece of many cultural touchstones (the harvest festival, the sacrifice, the fertility ritual). We talk about the food our grandparents made in tones so reverential it might as well be religion.
But when we get our lunch we get food in our cars and eat it alone. It was prepared by someone we didn't see and will never know. Not that long ago even convenience food was prepared by a person we knew. I realize that most of us don't do this every day or even most days, but certainly the rise of eating as an exercise of convenience and driven strictly by our taste buds has coincided with the rise of our fat society. I know that correlation does not equal causation, but in this case it seems likely to me that one has led to the other.
We've already started to disconnect from our food in dangerous ways. Why not add a new meal replacement if it's healthier? And it's not like the internal combustion engine made us a bunch healthier either.
Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, etc, etc. Even the 4th of July is marked by BBQ.
As you said, last supper, last meal, sacrement. Culture is food.
As a bachelor who eats out almost every meal, including the lunches and dinners when I eat alone. This sounds perfect for saving money and thus leaving more money to spend when I go out with friends.
Why are you eating alone... let alone eating alone as a bachelor?
Make food for friends, go out with friends, not eating alone will change your life for the better (IMHO).
You tell me that, then I shall take my ass out and make friends in a foreign country. I agree with you, as am working on it and myself, but at the moment - zero friends.
As a result I very often eat alone too. On the other hand, I still am highly against replacing my eating rituals with some shaky shakes.
It's even in our languages: etymologically, a companion is literally a person with whom you share bread.
My point is that world changing inventions do occur (rarely) and they are met with skepticism.
My point, I think, was that even if an idea is good and worth introducing, transitions are hard and shouldn't be handwaved away.
The only "scammy" thing was overreaching claims about how it's "optimized perfectly" and the like. And from what I've heard, they've toned that down.
We haven't cracked the human body, but there is science that supports Soylent.
Since you made the claim, what specifically is the science that supports Soylent? I assume you can provide references to peer-reviewed stuff, given the nature of your claim, and I look forward to reading it.
I'm too lazy to find the sources, so feel free to dismiss my claim.
Is YCombinator invested in Soylent?
[1] - http://blog.soylent.me/post/64789154918/soylent-funding-anno...
YC has stake in Soylent (http://blog.soylent.me/post/64789154918/soylent-funding-anno...). I think people sometimes forget who's website this is they're commenting on.
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.
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?"
What you DON'T do, is pickup a few textbooks on body chemistry and assume you can figure it all out by yourself.
I don't like the early claims of Soylent being "perfectly optimized" and the like.
Percussive maintenance doesn't work on humans. When humans break, they die.
Humans are very adaptable wrt. food, generally speaking. Look at the different diets all around the world, or even in one person's lifetime.
The only issue I take with Soylent is their claim that it's perfect. I think we need MUCH more time to gather data.
The fear is that Soylent, used as hyped, has the potential to break a human.
Breaking yourself, or much worse, others, is a far more serious than breaking a machine. That sort of relaxed attitude towards health is exactly why I would not trust a product like this from people like this.
Soylent really should not be banking on "it is difficult to kill a human", and neither should you.
Yes, breaking humans is bad. Is there any indication that Soylent is going to break people though?
As far as I can tell, it's unknown what the long term effects will be, but we have some evidence that it should be just fine.
Do you have any evidence that points to Soylent being harmful?
I say give it a try. Let's wrap the handle, observe in operation, and then react when we have more data.
I can't believe I have not made myself clear on this already, but I'll give it one more go: You can fuck around with lawn mowers because breaking one typically doesn't fucking kill somebody.
If you break your fucking lawnmower, you buy a new one. You don't get to buy another human.
Such a lazy attitude towards human safety is positively chilling. Have you learned absolutely nothing from the horrors seen over past centuries of people treating human lives like any other test subject?
Show me some evidence or even some indication that Soylent will result in an irreversible and sudden decline in health.
I'm guessing that you won't, or can't.
Your argument is "We don't know, so let's not risk it". The risk here is minimal. If it fails to live up to the hype, it's reversible.
> If it fails to live up to the hype, it's reversible.
Once again, demanding evidence that something is unsafe instead of providing evidence that it is not, then in the same breath taking that it is not for granted.
Is that all you are wired to do? It's like what I'm saying is going in one ear and coming out the other.
I don't treat human life lightly. You're just treating a dietary change too heavily.
> It's like what I'm saying is going in one ear and coming out the other.
I was just about to say the same of you. I'm done here.
You are demonstrating a very basic failure to analyze risk, understand the variety of medical risks that can be posed by experimental diets, and indeed understand the concerns that other people are raising (the concern is not that you will die after drinking it three times in a row.....).
And there is clear evidence of trial-and-error that has resulted in short-term health effects due to initial versions of Soylent. Longer term effects would not have been identified and so remain a very high risk.
From wikipedia: Modifications to the ingredient list have occurred in response to results incurred in testing, for example: the first version of the formula omitted iron, which caused Rhineheart to report his heart had begun to race.[8] In other early experiments, intentionally induced overdoses of potassium and magnesium gave Rhinehart cardiac arrhythmia and burning sensations.[8] After the early recipe had stabilized, Rhinehart found himself suffering from joint pain due to a sulfur deficiency. Methylsulfonylmethane was added to address this problem
What if Soylent increases the risk of some form of cancer or some long term damage to the liver of other organs ? You wont know until its too late.
You want people to prove that Soylent is bad, but instead the Soylent team needs to proof that Soylent is good! And a couple of dozen reviews from people using it for a month does not prove anything.
If you build software that doesn't work, people get pissed off and yell at you on web-forums... but in the great scheme of things that's not a big deal.
The main downside is that once you leave software, startup culture becomes incredibly dangerous. If you build an airplane that "doesn't work", people die. If you build a train that "doesn't work", the train crashes into a building and people die. If you build a bridge that doesn't work... people die.
And of course, when it comes to Soylent... if you build a food process that can be infested with diseases, or leave out important dietary nutrition in a particular diet... people can die.
We have all this discussion talking about the diet side of things, but little discussion on the practicality of storage, or whether or not it needs to be refrigerated.
Well, that combined with typical SV engineer hubris. Being bright in your field and well paid does not mean that you can be the master of any field. Some engineering disciplines require tighter tolerances. Some fields, particularly those that use human subjects, have much tighter ethical and safety requirements.
It seems as though being immersed in SV startup culture for too long can render somebody literally unable to comprehend the notion of more stringent requirements and regulations existing.
How do you know that?
We've only begun to start understanding some of these diseases (like Pellagra: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pellagra#Epidemiology), and we don't really have it all nailed down yet.
But we do know about nutrients and have a good idea of the proportion of them for the avg human.
I think my main problem with the backlash is with the argument that boils down to "We don't know, so let's not risk it". I don't see why we can't try it, and then monitor and react. If I started using Soylent and then 30 days down the road I was feeling ill, I'd probably stop using it first thing while exploring other causes.
We really, really don't. You could be excused for thinking we've got it all figured out if you listened only to news reporting on nutrition studies, but there's so much contradictory information out there that it's difficult to know which end is up.
For example: Soylent, according to the story, is partially fish oil. Did you know that there's a study out of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center that strongly suggests that fish oil supplementation increases the incidence of aggressive, fatal prostate cancers? What was once a nutrient panacea is likely now contraindicated in men.
Does this mean that Soylent shouldn't be using fish oil? Hard to say. I doubt that even the creators have any idea.
I welcome doctors, researchers, and people who know what they are doing to experiment with the human body. But when a computer science major armed with nothing but a few textbooks in body chemistry claims that he has "figured the body out", I am going to assume otherwise.
Does he have any cooking experience? What is his medical background?
Its not so much that "we don't know", but "the creator of Soylent clearly doesn't know", and yet he wants us to believe that he does.
The real question is "Soylent is perfectly optimized... for what?" Soylent may be optimized for "meeting the models of nutrition that we have." Yet, those models may be like using an FAQ to run a nuclear reactor. I'm not trying to fear-monger. I think Soylent is a great experiment. I wish I had to guts to carry out the reporter's month-long experiment.
I too see Soylent as an experiment, and a possible way to push our models of nutrition forward.
That sounds like a winning long term strategy if the opposition makes decisions solely to maximize short term profit. Don't overestimate the opposition. Bad money pushes out good.
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.)
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.
- 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.
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
It's possible they also have technical innovation over any existing meal-replacement shake, but they are being very quiet about it if so.
Kudos to Soylent for trying to normalize liquid diets.
As for biologically normal, it all turns into a liquid sludge in your stomach, doesn't it? Past that point I don't see how your digestive system can tell the difference as long as the composition of the sludge is similar enough.
Because of this I don't worry if it's healthy enough to be the only thing I eat for a month, or if I would miss food, or be less social. This will never, and isn't designed to, replace all food.
Give me a break.
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.
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?
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.
But yes, you're right, I don't know if "vastly" is the word I would use.
Organic is a loaded term nowadays, so maybe it's just semantics.
>Organic is a loaded term nowadays, so maybe it's just semantics.
So loaded as to be basically meaningless.
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.