
More Details Emerge About the Soylent Food Bars Making People Sick - peteratt
https://gizmodo.com/more-details-emerge-about-the-soylent-food-bars-making-1787546685
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Animats
Food products suspected of food poisoning should be reported to the FDA.[1] If
it involved an emergency room visit or a serious health event, call the FDA's
emergency line: 866-300-4374 or 301-796-8240. Even if it's a false alarm, they
want to know. If they get multiple reports, it's clear there's a problem.

There's no recall for a Soylent product listed on the FDA's recall page.[2] So
this hasn't been properly recalled.

[1]
[https://www.foodsafety.gov/report/problem/index.html](https://www.foodsafety.gov/report/problem/index.html)
[2]
[http://www.fda.gov/Safety/Recalls/default.htm](http://www.fda.gov/Safety/Recalls/default.htm)

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Rhapso
This sort of thing is premature fear mongering to sell clicks.

A useful summary:

\- Some people have gotten sick. There is no indication as to why or how.
Likely possibilities include:

    
    
      - circumstantial/no causation
    
      - contamination of the batch (biological or chemical)
    
      - allergic reaction to an ingredient (happening 'now' could be a result of accumulation) 
    

\- This was all from the same batch (per current evidence)

\- This batch has been recalled and they are trying to figure out what went
wrong. (the thing we expect any food manufacturer to do when something like
this happens)

I expect Soylent is an interesting exercise in people finding out they have
allergies they did not know about, but I am going to wait and see before I
hunting for spare pitchforks.

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DanBC
> I expect Soylent is an interesting exercise in people finding out they have
> allergies they did not know about, but I am going to wait and see before I
> hunting for spare pitchforks.

Bit frustrating for those people when one of the selling points from the
kickstarter was

> > "For anyone that struggles with allergies, heartburn, acid reflux or
> digestion, has trouble controlling weight or cholesterol, or simply doesn't
> have the means to eat well, soylent is for you."

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dizzystar
Writing that is totally irresponsible and betrays how little knowledge the
creators have about general nutrition and allergen health. Nearly very single
item in their product is a well-known allergen, which includes soy, oat,
canoloa, chocolate, etc.

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Rhapso
Well, they are ALL on the label. So if you have a known allergy not on the
label I can see the viability of using soylent to have a ready food supply
known to be safe.

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TillE
Soylent seems to have disturbing contamination issues that haven't been
experienced even by companies like the lovely weirdos at Joylent - who
contracted with an actual food bar manufacturer to make their Twennybar.

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gola
I have to say that Joylent's Twennybar actually tastes great and feels
balanced. You feel great after eating the bar.

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ourmandave
They've narrowed it down to a batch of bars that are good thru 2017. They got
some sent back and tested and didn't find anything. So they're saying it's
allergic reactions.

So what does a huge food company do when it releases a new product?

Say Quaker Oats rolled out a flavorless Granola Bar, do they just expect a
certain number of ER visits?

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DanBC
In UK companies list typical allergens in bold on the packet.

They also list whether the production line is shared with other products that
might contain allergens.

This is pretty important, since food allergies can kill. (Not many, only about
150 - 200 per year die form peanut allergies in the US.)

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AznHisoka
Who's the market for Soylent bars? Is it people who don't have time to
eat/prepare complete meals and need a fast alternative? I find it hard to
believe Soylent can provide all the nutrition you need.

Is it to satisfy your hunger in the afternoon of midday as a snack? If so why
not just buy granola or protein bars that at least have some flavor?

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timjver
>I find it hard to believe Soylent can provide all the nutrition you need.

Why?

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martinko
We have no idea what all the important components of a balanced diet are on a
chemical level, it is incredibly naive to think that soylent can mix up a
cocktail that would be optimal.

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CydeWeys
Soylent bars are made out of food, specifically a variety of foods we know
that people need all mixed together. It's not like they're mining rocks from
the Earth and using complicated chemical reactions to turn raw inorganic
materials into food.

Also, what does "optimal" even mean? You're setting the bar too high; as long
as they're healthier than typical alternatives of eating lots of fast food and
processed packaged foods then their addressable market is huge.

~~~
martinko
> Soy protein, Algal oil, Isomaltulose, Vitamins & minerals

You call that food? Suddenly the 'balanced diet' everyone seems to be pushing
is not applicable? Yeah ok, I agree that if you are coming from a mcdonalds-
only diet, you might do better, but they are positioning themselves as a
healthy meal replacement.

~~~
CydeWeys
It's worth looking at the full ingredients list rather than just a select few.
See here:
[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a2/Ba...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a2/Bar_Nutrition_Facts_US_REV_NC-01.png/300px-
Bar_Nutrition_Facts_US_REV_NC-01.png)

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Jadex1
I'm disappointed with Gizmodo, and started unsubscribing to them. Has anyone
else notice a decline in their articles? No one reports up-to-date facts or
investigations any more. This article seems more of a bash-piece then a real
fact based piece. I want to see some real investigating and not references to
a subreddit. I don't care if Soylent is making people sick, tell me why and
what's being done about it.

~~~
RandomOpinion
Gizmodo is/was part of Gawker Media (yes, _that_ Gawker Media). As their whole
business model was sensationalist, click-baity articles all along, expecting
serious journalism from them is more an unrealistic expectation on your part
than anything else.

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jbmorgado
I truly appreciate the idea behind Soylent. Long before they sold the product
I was already making something similar on my own using the
nutrient/vitamin/mineral quantities that the body supposedly requires.

Problem is, many of those quantities (specially vitamins) are a wild guess to
medical science. If you go check the literature about certain
minerals/vitamins you should consume, the values vary a lot, the effects on
the organism from too much or too little aren't well understood, and worst,
you can't be sure you are actually ingesting all the necessary types of
vitamins/minerals/??? you need to have a healthy life... there are still too
many unknowns.

I did that for about 3-4 months (every other weekend I would go to my parents
home and had "real" food), and in the beginning I felt good, but after about
2.5-3 months I didn't feel so good anymore.

TL;DR: I really think that something like Soylent (this one, not the one from
the novel) will be the future for a good part of mankind, but that will happen
a long time from now when medical science and biology advance quite a bit.

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Animats
If you want food bars with a better reputation, there's Calorie Mate Balanced
Food Block, the lunch bar of Japanese salarymen. Manufactured by Otsuka
Pharmaceutical Co., Toyko. Amazon sells them. The bars taste like shortbread,
and their biggest component is wheat flour.

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talawahdotnet
> "What does this all mean? It means if you have a Food Bar with the
> expiration date July 14, 2017, it might benefit you to throw it away."

That seems a bit reactionary. A large number of the bars will have the same
expiration date even if they were produced in different batches or facilities.

This whole piece seems to be designed to stir up emotions rather than provide
real analysis. It is fine to express concern when people are getting sick, but
this seems more like a attack. The default assumption seems to be that the
Soylent team is hiding something, which does not seem consistent with Rosa
Labs' previous disclosures about production issues.

Anyway I have been eating bars from a box with the same labeling (B1-00CAR
BEST BY 1966 14JUL17 0716) for weeks with no ill effects. Rather than throwing
all their product away if someone is worried they can try consuming a small
portion of a bar first and then wait to see if there are any ill effects.

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a-b
"After these reports, we have retrieved remaining bars from our consumers and
have personally consumed many of the remaining bars without adverse effects.”

Lol, did they just admitted 135 PC - Destroying or Concealing Evidence ? ;)

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marban
Guide to eating healthy: Avoid anything with a barcode on it.

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dominotw
eat strange things, get strange diseases.

