People get “violently ill” from Soylent bars

http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/10/reports-of-violent-vomiting-diarrhea-from-bars-has-soylent-on-the-defense/

by ZoeZoeBee • 10 years ago

100 48 10 years ago

More accurate title: a small number of people have self-reported a varying range of alleged symptoms commonly found in food poisoning after eating a Soylent bar, with some of them claiming it's not related to a possible soy allergy or sensitivity.

gr33nman2• 10 years ago

Making processed soy a main ingredient of your diet is probably a bad idea:

https://chriskresser.com/the-soy-ploy/

jimmydddd2• 10 years ago

I'm a fan of Kresser, but I think he and the other "paleo" or former paleo guys went a little overboard with the soy witch hunt. I looked into it after Soylent changed from rice to soy protein. Really not too much supporting evidence for all this fear of estrogen and man boobs.

Edit: I agree that processed soy shouldn't be a "main" diet ingredient. But these guys freak out over using a little soy sauce.

gr33nman2• 10 years ago

I hear you. I find Kresser is generally pretty careful and evidence-based, but there is definitely a subset of the Paleo community that is uncritical and dogmatic.

For the record, soy sauce is fermented, which makes it relatively safe to eat. As Kresser points out in the article, fermentation significantly reduces soy's antinutrients.

tropo2• 10 years ago

Well, I think I've seen it with my own eyes.

I have 3 teen boys, all breastfed as babies. For one of them, him mom went nuts with soy milk right after his birth. (a screwy doctor suggested it) She drank crazy amounts of it. Sure enough, that boy clearly has boobs, and the others (same parents) do not.

erikpukinskis• 10 years ago

Cultures that eat lots of soy don't seem to have any adverse effects. Any science I've seen is highly speculative, along the lines of "soy contains molecules which are similar to molecules which have unclear effects".

chris_7• 10 years ago

Oh nonsense, tofu and tempeh are great.

colept3• 10 years ago

I've cancelled my subscription today due to lack of appropriate action on behalf of Rosa Labs.

Food is not a game of roulette. Soylent is a new contender in the market of food replacement, and while I have enthusiastically enjoyed their product - I won't gamble on whether or not I may have a bad batch. They haven't earned my trust even if the hiccups are far and few between. Considering they market their product as "food you don't have to think about," they have done customers wrong.

Their approach needs to change if they want to win back the trust they've lost. From nutritional discrepancies in their labels, to mold inside and outside of sealed bottles, and unknown sources of violent illness - their M.O. for these problems seems to be to sweep it under the rug and only address customers that come forth.

When they have a batch that knows is tainted or has a problem, they make no effort to reach out to potentially affected customers. I've been subscribe to the bars since the beginning, and have had no problems until this one batch. While I did not experience violent illness, I had other symptoms I never would have connected had I not discovered the problem via articles such as this. When I have to inspect each bar and bottle I open, Soylent is no longer the worry-free meal replacement for me.

whamlastxmas3• 10 years ago

This is a little silly. It's been less than a week, they've been communicating to the communities that they're doing their best to look into it, they're asking for people to send them any sort of related feedback, and they're providing refunds no-questions-asked. Demanding a total recall in less than a week is asking a bit much.

their M.O. for these problems seems to be to sweep it under the rug and only address customers that come forth.

What? How could they possibly be able to consistently find these problems without customers coming forward? Do you want them to make every single customer service email publicly available or something?

colept3• 10 years ago

The first of many hiccups in their batch processing.

For two weeks they sold Coffeist without knowing the manufacturing process burned off the Vitamin A and C. They promised an update via email to customers but instead posted a blog update, while re-labeling and selling the remaining product at full cost.

The last instance of mold occurred just last month inside and out of sealed 2.0 bottles. Machinery leaked mold before the bottles were wrapped. Numerous customers and several batches were contaminated - with no contact from the company.

Other problems have included varying consistency from batch to batch and formula changes of viscosity without warning, and then the claims from users that have found roaches inside of the Soylent-branded boxes containing the bottles (not inside the shipping box).

The problem here is their approach. To discover this information you have to be connected to the community and keep yourself fully up to date or else you may find yourself unknowingly consuming a tainted batch. So far Coffeist has been the only instance in which they reached out to customers, despite there being several to many contaminated batches of their entire line - from bars, bottles, and powder.

The whole point of Soylent is that it's convenient, worry-free, and nutritionally complete. When I have to vigorously check my bars or bottles for mold, improper mixing, or to see if the expiration matches a contaminated batch - it's no longer convenient or worry-free. When they don't know for two weeks that manufacturing burns away the vitamins - and they re-label to sell it at full cost - it's no longer nutritionally complete.

"If you notice you have a bad batch, contact us," is not the approach I can trust for a new contender with no market trust. For a company that totes 100% transparency, they need to work on their customer outreach.

lawpoop• 10 years ago

What? How could they possibly be able to consistently find these problems without customers coming forward?

Quality control? Testing/inspecting their products for mold during and after production?

DanBC• 10 years ago

Excessive consumption of sucralose can cause diarrhoea, which sucks if you think this product can replace your meals.

dguido2• 10 years ago

I was one of these people! I still have all the bars from the same pack, in case anyone wants to run experiments. The bar that made me sick was part of the known bad "2:07 B.B. 14JUL17 F3 1966" batch.

I ate one of the contaminated bars about 2 weeks ago (9/28/2016) for breakfast (~9-10am?) and the only other thing I had that morning was water. By noon, I was walking out for lunch and rapidly got nauseous, then puked right on the sidewalk outside Fulton Center. Two of my coworkers witnessed it. I was unable to work, so I went home right away and tried to sleep it off, woke up later that night and felt, for the most part, better. Symptoms mostly subsided by 10pm that night.

I didn't put together that it was food poisoning until a week later when I saw these reports online (by following @Pinboard of course, for shame). I thought one of my coworkers got me sick. I tend to think most cases of food poisoning are your own fault (let something expire and eat it anyway, forget to wash something, etc). I never suspected that packaged food would cause something like this.

As many others hopefully have, I also used this incident to cancel all of my subscriptions with Soylent (2.0, Coffiest, and the bars). I started eating Soylent because of a jaw surgery I had in February. It was a convenient way to keep my weight up while I couldn't eat any solid food. Now that my jaw is healed, this is a great excuse to get back to normal food.

ps. Because Soylent is shamefully blaming this on the victims, I should state that I have seen an allergist within the last year and have no known allergies. I've consumed Soylent products, including the bars, since February 2016 without issue. I have no intolerance to any known food, as hopefully one of my twitter accounts can prove (@WhyIsntDanFat). Whatever happened, it's their fault, not some peculiarity with the way my body works, assholes.

pps. I also want to note that I consumed my contaminated bar AFTER reports about them making people sick appeared online. Soylent could have notified me to avoid them. Instead, they did nothing as the reports piled up and I ended up walking into this trap they could have reasonably alerted to. The only contact I had with them was 10/6/2016 when I emailed to notify them they were responsible for making me sick.

guyzero• 10 years ago

"Food poisoning is usually your own fault" - absolutely not.

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/03/the-most-c...

It comes from poor hygiene in the food supply chain. Salmonella and Listeria don't appear in fruits because they've been left out on the counter.

dguido2• 10 years ago

Fair. At least in my own experience, I have succeeded in making myself sick more frequently from stupid decisions in the kitchen. I think this was part of the appeal of Soylent to me :-P.

tropo2• 10 years ago

It kind of is your fault, though some products are defective by design. Food is normally produced outdoors being overflown by birds, and you know what birds do. You should simply assume that food is naturally coated in pathogens that you need to deal with.

Never bite into food that isn't clean. Never slice it unless you will be cooking it afterward.

You can clean by peeling, if this is possible without cutting. (bananas and citrus) You can clean by blanching, which is a brief exposure to boiling water. You can clean by washing with bleach, excepting the many foods (apples, cucumbers, etc.) that have been waxed to seal in the germs.

Sadly, this normally means that raw apples and raw cucumbers are hopeless. Eh, maybe you can get the wax off with warm oil followed by ethanol. Realistically, you won't get these clean before cutting into them.

jimmydddd2• 10 years ago

I was one as well. I tried a case of the drink (2.0) and enjoyed it. I then got the bars because I liked the convenience. I became very nauseous several times from the bars, and haven't had any more. I follow the soylent blog and hadn't seen any notices, so this is the first time I'm hearing of this. Surprising that they'd post about the Coffiest vitamin deficiency, but not this.

nialv7• 10 years ago

I was one as well. But my case is probably not as convincing. It was ~2 weeks ago, I ate a bar at ~11am (which tasted the same as any other bar), then I ate lunch at ~1pm. By 4pm I started feeling nauseous. But luckily I was able to get to a toilet. I puked twice, first time it was mostly my lunch, second time there was clearly Soylent bar content.

At first I blamed my lunch (I ate my lunch that day at the dining center of my University, which likely serves ~thousand people everyday). Before seeing this post I never suspected it was the bar.

qwertyuiop9243• 10 years ago

The illness is probably from eating all the dead people.

...I have nothing to apologize for. You know you were thinking it.

On an unrelated note, this line stuck out:

Reporters at BuzzFeed flagged the Food and Drug Administration’s inspection record of the manufacturing facility where the bars are produced, Betty Lou’s, Inc.

Is it just me, or is this not the sort of thing you'd expect from BuzzFeed?

taspeotis• 10 years ago

BuzzFeed does investigative journalism now.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/heidiblake/the-tennis-racket

qwertyuiop9243• 10 years ago

Well, I know that now, but it still sounds weird to my ears. I still associate Buzzfeed with annoying memes, cat pictures, and Ze Frank being less funny than he used to be.

jaredtobin• 10 years ago

Discussions on this kind of thing probably largely settle into opposing "yay Soylent!" and "boo Soylent!" sides. When I look at this as a tidbit of news, however, it doesn't seem to say very much to me.

"Small percentage of consumers report dissatisfaction with product - company investigating."

bertiewhykovich2• 10 years ago

More like "many cases of violent reaction to food product reported, no substantive action taken by company and blame deferred."

HillaryBriss• 10 years ago

it's the chipotleization of soylent. they should send everyone a coupon for a free soylent burrito.

MiddleEndian• 10 years ago

The original Soylent didn't even contain iron. Not surprised their new product makes people sick. The makers don't know what they're doing, outside of marketing their product very well online.

cs702• 10 years ago

Food is NOT like software.

If you make software, and your customers lose data, time, or money because you sold them buggy software due to lack of testing, you'll probably be OK. You can iterate quickly and break things regularly as you improve the product, and your customers will put up with it.

But if you make food, and your customers get poisoned because you sold them poison due to lack of testing, you're going to get in trouble. Federal and state government agencies will want to have a serious chat with you and possibly will shut you down. You cannot iterate quickly and break things regularly to improve a food product; you cannot experiment with the health of your customers.

If poisoning from Soylent bars was due to lack of careful testing prior to releasing the bars to market, shame on the company.

paulddraper• 10 years ago

Maybe the software you work with.

Not all software is uber-for-toothbrushes.com.

Other software could kill people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25

uabstraction• 10 years ago

As a machinist who occasionally write programs in G-Code from scratch and adjusts them almost daily I can say even if it doesn't kill anyone, it might send 25 pounds of brass spinning at 750 RPM flying across the shop. People take writing harmless software for granted, but there are many fields where a software failure can cause a serious emergency. There are embedded systems lurking in a huge variety of machines which operate with deadly forces... from aircraft to power plants to industrial processes to the car you drive to work.

TazeTSchnitzel• 10 years ago

Pick any processed food product on the supermarket shelf and you can be sure it will be safe and consistent between batches, with very infrequent exceptions, to the point that they usually make the news. Industrial mass manufacture of food has been all but perfected.

Yet I keep hearing about serious issues with Soylent products. So then, what is Soylent not doing that every other food manufacturer is? Basic quality controls?

bertiewhykovich2• 10 years ago

Brain-dead "software-style" reasoning applied to food.

mesozoic• 10 years ago

Moving fast and breaking things...

astrodust• 10 years ago

Agile food development!

hatsunearu• 10 years ago

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

LMFAO are these fuckers serious? PERSONALLY CONSUMED.

You're not gonna do microbial studies or anything like that? They literally ate their own evidence.

big_paps• 10 years ago

I dont understand why people eat such hyperprocessed stuff like that at all. Go buy an apple ...

People get “violently ill” from Soylent bars

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