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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.
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Soylent Halts Sale of Bars; Investigation into Illnesses Continues
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Hey, wait a minute!! I want a divorce!! ... you're not Clint Eastwood!!
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 14 2016, @12:33PM
It's a lot smarter to get your nutrients from plants and animals,
What do you imagine soylent is made out of? Its all plants. Even the vitamins used to fortify it come from plant sources. Yeah, some of it is algae and similar "non-traditional" plants. But its all from living organisms. Nobody is ginding up nails for iron.
(Score: 2) by curunir_wolf on Friday October 14 2016, @01:18PM
Nobody is ginding up nails for iron.
Obviously not literally, but the concept is the same. Lots of processed foods are so heavily processed they've taken to fortifying the foods to provide some modicum of nutritional value. Not saying that Soylent specifically is sourcing these from non-plant sources, but why wouldn't they? It's a common practice. Lots of the chemicals they add back are either mined ingredients or synthesized in chemical factory (sometimes from petroleum products).
I am a crackpot
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 14 2016, @02:05PM
Synthesized is just another way to say grown in a vat, like algae.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 16 2016, @09:30PM
Not saying that Soylent specifically is sourcing these from non-plant sources, but why wouldn't they?
Because they actually want to make a product that is sufficiently nutritionally complete that you could, if you wanted, only consume it and be healthy.
If there is a significant difference in the bio-availability of ground-up iron, and iron sourced from algae, that would be a pretty good reason for them not to. If there is no difference, then maybe they would use non-plant sources, but in that case what does it matter? You were complaining about the potential health effects of a diet based largely on Soylent, and so long as the nutrients can be sufficiently well absorbed by the human digestive system, then the original source of them doesn't really matter.
I am a crackpot
Well, at least your sig is appropriate.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday October 14 2016, @03:15PM
You might be surprised to find out just what IS in your food. Flour is an interesting item. I have gone into a clay mine in Georgia, and loaded big 2000 pound plastic totes filled with clay, and delivered them to a bread flour mill in Chicago. I have loaded dried wood pulp in Arkansas, and delivered it to a cake flour mill in Missourri. There are all sorts of things that go into foods, that you wouldn't expect.
If I hear some outrageous story about the ingredients of some given product, I may not believe that story, but I'm unlikely to dismiss it without checking into it.
Now, I don't mean to imply that your bread flour has any high percentage of clay in it. I guess they only put maybe fifty pounds into a ton of flour, but it's there. This is a "fortified" flour, such as Wonder Bread was famous for.
In other cases, it's anyone's guess how much of the end product was dug from the ground, how much might be forestry products, and how much might be more natural foods.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 14 2016, @03:36PM
> I have gone into a clay mine in Georgia, and loaded big 2000 pound plastic totes filled with clay, and delivered them to a bread flour mill in Chicago.
You make it sound like they are just dumping clay straight into the mix. It doesn't work like that, but I can see how you would believe that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 14 2016, @04:24PM
The wood pulp is often used as a cellulose source for cake flour or flour mixes for baking or as "added fiber". The cellulose acts as a thickener and will inhibit gluten formation while working the dough so the end product won't be tough. Plain bread flour, on the other hand, should not have any cellulose added because it will interfere with gluten and would not hold its structure as well and any cellulose added would just be for filler.