Ars Technica reports, following online reports of customers becoming ill after eating Soylent's new snack bars, the company announced this afternoon [October 13] that it has decided to halt all sales and shipments of the bars as a precautionary measure. The company is urging customers to discard remaining bars and will begin e-mailing customers individually regarding refunds. In a blog announcing the decision, the company said it is still investigating the cause of bouts of illnesses of customers linked to the bars, including nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 14 2016, @12:17PM
Uh, soy is real food. I eat edamame all the time. Complaining about soy in food is like complaining about corn or wheat in food.
Would you say wheat isn't real food if you had a gluten allergy?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 14 2016, @04:34PM
I think it was more a point about expecting food to only have the regular ingredients and not fillers such as soy and cellulose. Yes soy is a real food, but ice cream with 5-15% soy added to reduce costs can be legitimately called fake.
(Score: 2) by termigator on Friday October 14 2016, @07:48PM
The problem are fillers are unexpected and not directly visible by the packaging. Always check the ingredients listing to verify what you are actually buying. Of course, this assumes the manufacturing is not gaming the system and puting in ingredients not listed.
As for soy, it is a food, but it does not digest readily by many people. Fermentation helps with this. Also, soy is an estrogen-like substance, so some have to avoid it for medical and health reasons. Industry tries to push soy as a healthy food, but it is not. Main reason it is pushed so hard is the U.S. is the largest grower of soy (which I believe is subsidized) and companies need a way to dump all that soy onto consumers.
If you choose to eat soy, be careful on which soy-based food to eat and how much:
https://books.google.com/books?id=He1hPXGfZ54C&pg=PT201&lpg=PT201&dq=john+lee+natto,tofu&source=bl&ots=_7UBdU90_Z&sig=JxMzXCQnaQtvGXFdLEsD7t0NPto&hl=en&sa=X&ei=h7N7VNL1G4KZNqGbgqAF#v=onepage&q=john%20lee%20natto%2Ctofu&f=false [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 14 2016, @09:40PM
> Also, soy is an estrogen-like substance, so some have to avoid it for medical and health reasons.
Nope. That is a mercola quality myth.
Soybean isoflavone exposure does not have feminizing effects on men: a critical examination of the clinical evidence. [nih.gov]
CONCLUSION(S): The intervention data indicate that isoflavones do not exert feminizing effects on men at intake levels equal to and even considerably higher than are typical for Asian males.
Clinical studies show no effects of soy protein or isoflavones on reproductive hormones in men: results of a meta-analysis. [nih.gov]
Association between Soy Isoflavone Intake and Breast Cancer Risk for Pre- and Post-Menopausal Women: A Meta-Analysis of Epidemiological Studies [plos.org]
We found that soy isoflavone intake could lower the risk of breast cancer for both pre- and post-menopausal women in Asian countries. However, for women in Western countries, pre- or post-menopausal, there is no evidence to suggest an association between intake of soy isoflavone and breast cancer.