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.
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.
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.
Soylent might, technically, work. It might be safe and healthy, it definitely looks simple and allows you to forget anything related to grocery shopping, cooking and cleaning up afterwards.
But thinking about the prospect of the future makes me sick to my stomach. Soylent paints a disgustingly frightening dystopia where humans are fed 100% "correct" food to allow them to continue being cogs in the business machine, not stop for lunch during the day in the office, and be able to pull those extra longs evenings and nights to get more work done. Not to mention the vanishing social and human aspects of eating, together with friends and family.
Rob Reinhardt's assertions that organic cultivation of vegetables, fruits and legumes does not scale are downright FALSE, and only serve the Soylent marketing machine.
Soylent is doing nothing more than accommodating to the needs of humanoids who continue the endless pursuit of some vague promise of capitalist fulfillment (work hard, be rich, be happy), ignoring the fact that the direct opposite of such a lifestyle leads to a much more healthier, happier life which remains in touch with our basic, primal human existence.
Its funny because we already live in this dystopia and you simply don't notice it because the plastic food we eat "looks real" and "tastes good". What is the difference between the completely artificial hamburger people get at McDonalds and Soylent? The fact that its basically "molded" to look like the real food we used to eat?
The reality is that we long ago crossed the line into having a society that mostly eats absolutely garbage and artificial food. This is not some future prospect, it is today, and we regularly see (and ignore) the disastrous medical results. This is of course perpetuated by a government that pushes a purely political nutritional agenda (let's tell everyone carbohydrates are the most important staple to eat and let's put corn and sugar in everything for economic reasons and let's also hope no one notices that fiber has mysteriously disappeared from our diets).
At least Soylent is trying to harness this machine for good. A world where "the cogs" at least receive proper nutrition would be a step up from today's illusion of choice.
There are also those of us that derive no joy from eating. Eating is an inconvenience to me. I have zero sweet tooth, and I don't have many cravings for specific foods. I'd rather be doing any number of other things, like reading, working out, yard/car work, calling up family, etc. I work for myself (and work reasonable hours). Of course, all of this anecdotal, but the point is that this isn't a dystopia scenario for all of us.
Having an incredibly convenient/healthy option would be outstanding for me personally. I suspect that people like me may represent a much smaller percentage of the population. I want to be healthy, but I hate shopping for and preparing food to the point where I sometimes don't eat as well as I should.
With that said, I wouldn't wish my food indifference on other people. I could see how it'd be spooky to see this kind of living being forced on people. It's probably a bit premature to worry about this just yet, though. Soylent and other similar products are still so polarizing that it's hard to imagine them taking over in the near future.
Or... it could put humanity in a position to provide a balanced nutrition as a fundamental human right, delivered right to your doorstep by USPS. If the economics worked out it could be provided everywhere worldwide, and then other food consumption could be purely for enjoyment.
There are always people who scream "dystopia!" every time a new technology arrives. That seems very pessimistic.
All I can think of when I see it is "Man, I thought the future was supposed to be awesome. Where is my engineered to be delicious lab grown steak? I get Soylent? This is not awesome."
Given, as long as I'm not being force fed the stuff as a government ration, I don't really see it as a problem, I just get sad when I see it marketed as 'future food'.
Yes, the whole problem with the marketing hype is thinking about this product in terms of this all or nothing "disrupt the food industry" mentality. It might turn out to be a company producing a slightly more economical meal replacement shake that you can down a couple days in place of breakfast, but at the end of the day thats really all. There's nothing new to see here.
Not to worry, the last two paragraphs explain why it won't take over the world:
"I was euphoric. I felt the endorphins rushing through my body, the gob of chicken skin wandering down my esophagus, the juices staining my chin. Rob, who'd joined us, led a conversation about the food technology; the chicken was sublime. Before long, I might as well have been stoned. For a half an hour, I sat there, overwhelmed, unaware of any foodless world outside my brain."
"For a few minutes, the future didn’t matter; the taste, the the swirling talk took over. The food anchored me to the glorious present, and eating was all."
The Soylent guy keep mentioning that current food system will not scale, but gives no evidence that his system will. It appears to be very wasteful to grow or synthesize each components in their original form, separate them and then finally mix them, compared to naturally occurring food.
humanoids who continue the endless pursuit of some vague promise of capitalist fulfillment (work hard, be rich, be happy), ignoring the fact that the direct opposite of such a lifestyle leads to a much more healthier, happier life which remains in touch with our basic, primal human existence.
Basic, primal existence means no dental care and death of the first sufficiently strong infection. As somebody who would be dead at least 4 times already without modern medicine (nothing special, a bunch of inflammatory diseases, appendectomy, etc.), I'm not buying the joys of primal existence. That doesn't mean I'm ready to give up my juicy steak for a glass of beige sludge, but I still love my civilization.
And yes, "organic" as currently practiced is definitely not scalable, as it is mainly consists of removing scaling improvements, like using chemicals to defeat pests. You can allow pests to eat 30% of your crop if you sell it at 50% higher price point. But if you need to produce more and cheaper, it no longer works. As niche market, it is fine, as main food producer - I believe it when I see it.
>Soylent is doing nothing more than accommodating to the needs of humanoids who continue the endless pursuit of some vague promise of capitalist fulfillment
Or, I'm just really lazy and would prefer something remotely healthy and cheap compared to, say, ordering a pizza.
It isn't meant to replace all your food intake, but, it seems like a good thing for when-you-just-don't-feel-like-cooking or don't have time because you have other things you'd rather do, then spend time cooking and eating (don't get me wrong though, I very much enjoy eating)..
As a student, this seems like a super product for someone like me...
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?"
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> “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?
Honestly, I just don't get Soylent. What is the purpose?
As a health measure? The market for weight-loss shakes and other dietary solutions is saturated, and most of it appears to be complete shit. Dietary shakes are easy to come by, and are almost universally reviled because they don't work as advertised and taste disgusting.
Is Soylent a supposed to be a remedy for malnutrition? Why is drinking a bunch of vitamins a better option than taking a dietary supplement? How does Soylent account for the fact that nutrient absorption is less efficient in artificial supplements? Why not just eat quality, healthy human food?
But, far and away the worst and most appalling argument is that soylent is "convenient," and that it's beneficial to people who "don't have time to eat." I'm sorry, but if you can't find time to eat human food, the issue is your schedule, not the food. Correct me if I'm wrong, but eating is pretty fucking important. If you are in a position where feeding yourself actual sustenance is inconvenient, then there is a probably a severe deficiency with your schedule and a problem with your priorities.
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.
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.
The angry comments in every solyent article are pretty silly imho. You are under no obligation to use it. Those that do are still permitted to dine with family. :/ Any bugs will get worked out over time.
These days I usually make a smoothie for a quick breakfast... perhaps some unsweetened almond milk, protein/vitamin powder, ground flax seed, a bit of fruit/veggies, sometimes even a healthy oil. The concept is not terribly different than soylent.
I do like to keep my blood sugar in a moderate range, however. I might be interested in trying soylent if they had a low-carb version, one not significantly made of oats and maltodextrin.
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.
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.
[+] [-] bowlofpetunias|12 years ago|reply
This goes well beyond whatever policy pg was trying to defend recently. This is deeply manipulative.
---
It looks a scam, it sounds like a scam, it's marketed like a scam and now it apparently is being produced like any other scam.
So how long until we finally draw the obvious conclusion?
Just because some notable VC's gambled on it doesn't make it any more credible. In fact, there is pretty much zero evidence in the credible column.
[+] [-] dragontamer|12 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] brymaster|12 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] fleitz|12 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] tptacek|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] obstacle1|12 years ago|reply
Is YCombinator invested in Soylent?
[+] [-] fredsters_s|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lowboy|12 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] yuvadam|12 years ago|reply
But thinking about the prospect of the future makes me sick to my stomach. Soylent paints a disgustingly frightening dystopia where humans are fed 100% "correct" food to allow them to continue being cogs in the business machine, not stop for lunch during the day in the office, and be able to pull those extra longs evenings and nights to get more work done. Not to mention the vanishing social and human aspects of eating, together with friends and family.
Rob Reinhardt's assertions that organic cultivation of vegetables, fruits and legumes does not scale are downright FALSE, and only serve the Soylent marketing machine.
Soylent is doing nothing more than accommodating to the needs of humanoids who continue the endless pursuit of some vague promise of capitalist fulfillment (work hard, be rich, be happy), ignoring the fact that the direct opposite of such a lifestyle leads to a much more healthier, happier life which remains in touch with our basic, primal human existence.
[+] [-] tolmasky|12 years ago|reply
The reality is that we long ago crossed the line into having a society that mostly eats absolutely garbage and artificial food. This is not some future prospect, it is today, and we regularly see (and ignore) the disastrous medical results. This is of course perpetuated by a government that pushes a purely political nutritional agenda (let's tell everyone carbohydrates are the most important staple to eat and let's put corn and sugar in everything for economic reasons and let's also hope no one notices that fiber has mysteriously disappeared from our diets).
At least Soylent is trying to harness this machine for good. A world where "the cogs" at least receive proper nutrition would be a step up from today's illusion of choice.
[+] [-] gtaylor|12 years ago|reply
Having an incredibly convenient/healthy option would be outstanding for me personally. I suspect that people like me may represent a much smaller percentage of the population. I want to be healthy, but I hate shopping for and preparing food to the point where I sometimes don't eat as well as I should.
With that said, I wouldn't wish my food indifference on other people. I could see how it'd be spooky to see this kind of living being forced on people. It's probably a bit premature to worry about this just yet, though. Soylent and other similar products are still so polarizing that it's hard to imagine them taking over in the near future.
[+] [-] beambot|12 years ago|reply
There are always people who scream "dystopia!" every time a new technology arrives. That seems very pessimistic.
[+] [-] cobrausn|12 years ago|reply
Given, as long as I'm not being force fed the stuff as a government ration, I don't really see it as a problem, I just get sad when I see it marketed as 'future food'.
[+] [-] freyrs3|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dpapathanasiou|12 years ago|reply
"I was euphoric. I felt the endorphins rushing through my body, the gob of chicken skin wandering down my esophagus, the juices staining my chin. Rob, who'd joined us, led a conversation about the food technology; the chicken was sublime. Before long, I might as well have been stoned. For a half an hour, I sat there, overwhelmed, unaware of any foodless world outside my brain."
"For a few minutes, the future didn’t matter; the taste, the the swirling talk took over. The food anchored me to the glorious present, and eating was all."
[+] [-] hokkos|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sillysaurus2|12 years ago|reply
You'd enjoy the book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. http://www.arvindguptatoys.com/arvindgupta/zen-motorcycle.pd...
[+] [-] fleitz|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smsm42|12 years ago|reply
And yes, "organic" as currently practiced is definitely not scalable, as it is mainly consists of removing scaling improvements, like using chemicals to defeat pests. You can allow pests to eat 30% of your crop if you sell it at 50% higher price point. But if you need to produce more and cheaper, it no longer works. As niche market, it is fine, as main food producer - I believe it when I see it.
[+] [-] fredsters_s|12 years ago|reply
Fairly simple you'd think, yet this is the main point that all the detractors seem to have... and it's not something that Soylent is pushing at all.
[+] [-] lowboy|12 years ago|reply
Granted, I too am terrified of that future coming to pass, but it doesn't follow from increased Soylent consumpion.
[+] [-] Tehnix|12 years ago|reply
Or, I'm just really lazy and would prefer something remotely healthy and cheap compared to, say, ordering a pizza.
It isn't meant to replace all your food intake, but, it seems like a good thing for when-you-just-don't-feel-like-cooking or don't have time because you have other things you'd rather do, then spend time cooking and eating (don't get me wrong though, I very much enjoy eating)..
As a student, this seems like a super product for someone like me...
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|12 years ago|reply
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?"
[+] [-] mikeyouse|12 years ago|reply
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
[+] [-] ddoolin|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sethbannon|12 years ago|reply
If the mold was the result of shoddy shipping causing the bag to be punctured, it's hard not to take that with a grain of salt.
And as for the rat (singular -- not "rats" plural as the title says), certainly that has the "eww" factor, but so long as the mix itself was not exposed to any animals, I certainly don't care.
[edit: the article this post was linking to has changed, so my comment is a little dated]
[+] [-] potatolicious|12 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] KeliNorth|12 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] arkitaip|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sanskritabelt|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fredsters_s|12 years ago|reply
- the Oakland space was a temporary location while they were iterating on the beta. Soylent is not manufactured there.
- all the journalists writing about Soylent seem to attribute to Rob stuff that he doesn't actually say: namely that you should only consume Soylent all the time. The point of Soylent is that it replaces transactional eating and makes me healthier. It's not about replacing the eating I do for fun.
- Soylent is a technology company. It's not just positioning. They are iterating towards finding an exponentially better way to do transactional eating using technology. That's the definition of a tech company.
[+] [-] _delirium|12 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] JaggedJax|12 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] eclipxe|12 years ago|reply
Give me a break.
[+] [-] driverdan|12 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] DanBC|12 years ago|reply
I still expect them to come out as a huge troll. If so, 10/10, did rage, would rage again.
[+] [-] Pxtl|12 years ago|reply
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?
[+] [-] ruswick|12 years ago|reply
As a health measure? The market for weight-loss shakes and other dietary solutions is saturated, and most of it appears to be complete shit. Dietary shakes are easy to come by, and are almost universally reviled because they don't work as advertised and taste disgusting.
Is Soylent a supposed to be a remedy for malnutrition? Why is drinking a bunch of vitamins a better option than taking a dietary supplement? How does Soylent account for the fact that nutrient absorption is less efficient in artificial supplements? Why not just eat quality, healthy human food?
But, far and away the worst and most appalling argument is that soylent is "convenient," and that it's beneficial to people who "don't have time to eat." I'm sorry, but if you can't find time to eat human food, the issue is your schedule, not the food. Correct me if I'm wrong, but eating is pretty fucking important. If you are in a position where feeding yourself actual sustenance is inconvenient, then there is a probably a severe deficiency with your schedule and a problem with your priorities.
[+] [-] CameronBanga|12 years ago|reply
http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/soylent-no-food-for-30-days
[+] [-] tomasien|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eclipxe|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ilamont|12 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] mixmastamyk|12 years ago|reply
These days I usually make a smoothie for a quick breakfast... perhaps some unsweetened almond milk, protein/vitamin powder, ground flax seed, a bit of fruit/veggies, sometimes even a healthy oil. The concept is not terribly different than soylent.
I do like to keep my blood sugar in a moderate range, however. I might be interested in trying soylent if they had a low-carb version, one not significantly made of oats and maltodextrin.
[+] [-] kmfrk|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wil421|12 years ago|reply
Most products you buy at nutrition/health stores (like GNC/Vitamin Shoppe/etc.) are not really tested. You can pretty much be getting chalk and no one will know. Or you get an overdose of Ephedra and die.
[+] [-] foobarqux|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mathattack|12 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] antonius|12 years ago|reply