Slashdot Mirror
Health Watchdog To Bring Legal Action Against Soylent Over Lead, Cadmium Levels
An anonymous reader writes: We've previously discussed Soylent, the self-proclaimed "meal replacement." The product has not been without controversy, and now it's likely to see some more: As You Sow, a non-profit foundation dedicated to corporate responsibility, plans to bring legal action against Soylent for failing to provide sufficient warning about the amount of lead and cadmium in it. They allege that a serving of Soylent contains 12 to 25 times the concentration of lead at which point consumers in the state of California must be warned. The concentration of cadmium, they say, is four times the current maximum. Soylent has acknowledged the results of heavy metal tests but says the levels present in Soylent are not toxic. As You Sow maintains that Soylent's marketing focus on replacing food suggests chronic exposure, which is more of an issue than an occasional indulgence.
I never knew people were made of lead and cadmium.
I'm sure all the informed consumers will not die of cadmium poisoning while chewing the curtains.
| "Nobody expects heavy metals in their meals," said Andrew Behar, CEO of As You Sow.
As a chemist, I can tell you that heavy metals are everywhere. If you don't expect that in your food, you are not good at chemistry. It is the concentration that matters. Even table salt at too high concentration is toxic. I don't care much about the California's safety standard. As long as the heavy metal concentrations are lower than our local standard, I am fine with it.
There was an article about the founder's cockamamie personal habits, such as ordering new clothes from China constantly (and never washing anything) as well as other eccentric behavior.
Lead poisoning might explain it.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
Soylent Green is made of heavy metals, not people. Though admittedly the latter made for a better movie.
Dislike soya at all
Schoonmaakbedrijf ECOFLEX bvba in Antwerpen
Why not eat dog kibble? I mean that is what this stuff is, "human" dog kibble.
Good luck on your bringing your date over to your flat for dinner as well. Especially when she asks you what is for dinner and you bust out your soylent. That is when your date laughs at you, goes across the road to the bar and finds a man that you know, can actually cook a meal.
There is no reason to eat this garbage, learn how to prepare a meal for yourself. I know your mother never let you near the stove until you were 25 or something, but now is the time to learn how to use a kitchen knife as well as vi and stop over processed poisons.
It seems to be a lot from the spreadsheet so I wonder how it gets in. What ingredient has all that cadmium?
but they set exposure limits for a reason.
These are based on "exposure limits" set by the state of California. California requires warnings about metal concentrations on virutally ALL FOOD, making these warnings stupid and useless. Read the related links and you will learn something.
California requires warnings about metal concentrations on virutally ALL FOOD
Good. I don't see why that makes the warning useless; the effects are cumulative and people need constant reminders that they are being exposed. It keeps manufacturers and third party groups on the ball for monitoring levels to catch cases where exposure is unreasonably high.
=Smidge=
People do not respond to constant reminders - they blank them out as irrelevant background noise. As such they are then more useless than appropriate warnings. As an example: there are no foods in the UK that are not labeled "may contain traces of nuts".
Slashdot: where don knuth is an idiot because he cant grasp the awesome power of php
California is a hypochondriac with a personality disorder.
No I am not.
They do warn people, its on their site and everything: https://faq.soylent.com/hc/en-...
No, it doesn't. There are two requirements for labeling. Individual food items that require labels have to have them, and anyone shopping can see that only a tiny fraction of the items are labeled. There's also a requirement that the entrance to the store have a label if any food item requires one. Since most food stores carry at least one item that requires a warning, almost all stores require one. That might make you think that all food requires labeling, but that impression is incorrect.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
In Canada, peanuts are labeled "may contain traces of nuts".
I know that peanuts are not technically nuts but I still find it funny.
that's in the us as well but it mention tree nuts rather than just nuts. also tree nut packages usually also have a warning about peanuts being processed in the same facility...
the thing here is that the ca weirdos set at of their levels at such microscopic amounts, but i guess that's to be expected from the overpopulated land of fruits and nuts.
why is this even a front page story on /.? slow news day?
think they are getting paid for their confinement?
So who is supposed to drink or eat this Solyent ? Why do i suspect that it will be used to punish convicts or some other wretched notion? Imagine doing a 20 year sentence and never having even a hint of real food.
what's the percentage of human-sourced protein?
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
killing off anybody who drinks that shit will be a net benefit to society!
Here in the US, foods that are labeled that they may contain trace amounts of tree nuts are treated as poison by my wife, and deservedly so because of a strong allergic reaction to tree nuts that has required hospital-level treatment. While it's not literally true that there are no foods not so labelled, it is becoming alarmingly rare to find packaged food without allergy warnings. There are a few manufacturers that do keep their equipment nut-free and market their products as such at premium prices.
I contacted one company that had a nut-free product, who switched their labels to include the warning, and they responded that certain of their products, that were marketed through Costco were still nut-free, but the Costco product includes the warning label as well. If this behavior is representative, I really think product safety legislation is going to have to fix this so that persons with allergies are still able to purchase food. Frankly, it's terrible behavior on the part of food manufacturers, and I'd much rather have legislation that requires manufacturers to properly clean their equipment instead of simply labeling their food as poison.
They do warn people, its on their site and everything: https://faq.soylent.com/hc/en-...
So why are these heavy metals in the stuff? Is it ayurvedic medicine or something??
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
The EPA recommends no more than .001 mg/kg/day of cadmium in food.
The average male adult in the US weighs 195 lb (88.5 kg). For that person the limit translates to .09 mg/day.
It is an open question whether that is really a safe long term limit, as these things do tend to accumulate in the body.
Soylent 1.5 has 21.39g (.021 mg) of cadmium per 500 calorie serving. So, as per the EPA standard, if that person ate mostly soylent, 4 servings per day (2000 calories), you would have .084 mg of cadmium, right below acceptable limit.
Note the definition of mg/kg/day is how many mg of something you can consume per kg of body mass. The soylent guy's google spreadsheet reports mg/kg of the toxic substances in the soylent itself, which is irrelevant. This suggests that he doesn't understand what he is talking about. What a surprise.
> there are no foods in the UK that are not labeled "may contain traces of nuts".
I did a quick check of food in my cupboards. The majority of items were not labelled as potentially containing nuts.
Soylent is RADIOACTIVE PEOPLE
I get it, you don't like Soylent. I could care less that you don't (it's not my business to force you to like something) but at least have some sense of realism.
I wouldn't consider Soylent to be a romantic meal to share at home. Neither would I consider a microwave TV dinner. Becoming a Soylent user doesn't imply that one must stop eating other foods forever or lose one's sense of appropriateness in choosing a meal for other people.
Soylent replaces my everyday meals. It does not replace family dinners. It does not replace a steak on the grill and potatoes in the oven for the romantic dinner.
Get a grip.
"Nobody expects heavy metals in their meals," said Andrew Behar, CEO of As You Sow.
Unless you like to eat Megadeth-O's, part of a nutritious breakfast!
Yaz
"Our Soylent is free range, wild-caught vegans! No GMOs!
Confirmed. Life imitates art. Obviously not a perfect copy, but close enough.
I have an idea. How about instead of lying about it and covering it up, they perhaps STOP PUTTING LEAD IN THEIR PRODUCT. It's not hard to remove ultra dense metals from your product before it gets packaged. What the hell are they thinking?
Hey, wasn't Soylent that shitty vegan company that Slashdot was pushing every other day a few weeks ago? Oh yeah, it was. What, did they not give you enough advertising dough, so now you've changed your mind?
Warnings belong on food labels, not websites.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
In Canada, peanuts are labeled "may contain traces of nuts".
Wrong, there is no such rule here.
However, peanuts are often processed on the same machinery as nuts, and as such should be labelled appropriately.
But you certainly can find peanuts without that label. A friend of mine has a serious nut allergy (he carries an epi-pen), but he can eat peanuts without any trouble.
I know that peanuts are not technically nuts but I still find it funny.
Only because you don't understand food processing & allergies. Food processed on machinery used for nuts needs to be labelled, even if the food contains no nuts whatsoever.
Given that public water systems are exempt from Prop 65, it is quite possible that you can get more cadmium exposure from the tap water.
While the language isn't nearly as strong, but unprocessed food, like fresh oranges or apples, aren't required to fall under Prop 65 when they "are naturally occurring in food". It's all bullshit though because there is a huge spike of lead in our environment from the fuel additives popular in the 20th century. (we still use those additives in aircraft fuels). We know that apple trees don't transmute atoms, so it pulled that lead and cadmium from some where, and it certainly doesn't need it to grow.
It's only because he has a sense of humour. It's a common mistake to get the two confused. When in doubt remember: correlation does not imply causation.
Slashdot: where don knuth is an idiot because he cant grasp the awesome power of php
Frankly, it's terrible behavior on the part of food manufacturers, and I'd much rather have legislation that requires manufacturers to properly clean their equipment instead of simply labeling their food as poison.
In the case of tree nuts, it's poison for less than 1% of the population, according to the first link I found. For everybody else, it's a harmless trace of food. It's really a question of how much expense you want to force everybody to go through to cater to a tiny percentage of the population. If food allergies can kill you, wouldn't it make more sense to only eat food catering to your specific needs?
True, we are apex predators, and thus apex toxin accumulators.
But heavy metals and other accumulative toxins are not the reason that pregnant women -- or anyone, for that matter -- should not eat people. I haven't run the numbers, but I'm pretty sure that you won't ingest that much cadmium and whatever, even if human flesh is your primary food source.
The real peril is Transmissible spongiform encephalopathy -- "Mad Human Disease" -- which begins with a single strand of broken protein.
Also, social-evolutionary pressures tend to work against cannibalism, in the long run. Maybe. I hope.
-kgj
The food label tells you everything you need to know and you don't even have to read it. Quite simply, if it has a food label, it's not food!
No. Just No. I'd equate that heartless comment to the bitching about the cost of ADA compliance. Safe food is a basic human need. We're not eating at the damned Fountainhead Cafe. You seem to think that it's just economically cheaper to kill all people with allergies, but that's just too cruel to consider.
Yes, just yes. Just how much does the rest of the world have to adapt to the needs of the tiniest few? When does it end? Is it really so much to ask that the tiny few seek out services that cater to them? It's "heartless" in the same manner you don't give all your money to charity and live on a subsistence income.
You're absolutely right, what's 15 million people compared to the convenience of the rest? I'm not a fan of Godwinning a thread, but damn, that number is over double the Jews killed in the Holocaust ... You ok with that too? It was such a 'tiniest few' ...
This is why Godwinning a thread is stupid unless it's a spot-on analogy. I'm not advocating shoving 15 million people into an oven. Rather, I'm advocating that the less than 1% "seek out services that cater to them" -- you know, take personal responsibility for their special needs instead of asking the rest of the world adapt to their needs. If anything, your 15 million number shows a business opportunity.
Then there is mine waste. For a typical lead mining operation (from the lead mines I've examined as a geologist and a caver - the ore is rarely more than a couple of percent of the material that is removed from the ground, but all of that "gangue" (non-ore material) gets hauled out to the surface, where it'll eventually become soil, and a potential source of contamination.
What is slightly more interesting to me is whether the Soylent processing of their raw foodstuffs concentrates the heavy metals, or dilutes them. But with the California "action level for lead being 15 ppb (parts per billion) and so implied levels in the Soylent being around 300ppb, that's going to be difficult to treat down. Probably their best strategy would be to tighten up on their source materials, and test every batch that comes in.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
So, not only are you suggesting that people who through no fault of their own develop an allergy should accept an economic punishment they did nothing to deserve, but then you add insult to economic injury by suggesting that businessmen should exploit those people and their handicap for personal gain, doubling the economic burden they face. This is what's wrong with the world today; instead of helping each other succeed, we seek out the weak to bleed them out - and when we run out of the weak, we actively weaken innocent bystanders to prey on them.
Don't trust any concentration of power.
So, not only are you suggesting that people who through no fault of their own develop an allergy should accept an economic punishment they did nothing to deserve
The alternative is that you force an economic punishment on the 99% that they did nothing to deserve. Life isn't fair.
but then you add insult to economic injury by suggesting that businessmen should exploit those people and their handicap for personal gain, doubling the economic burden they face
Oh no, you're "exploiting" somebody by selling something they need. Damn you free market! If only the wise government, who totally wouldn't screw up allocation of resources, decided who should be able to purchase what and for what price in a completely "fair" manner: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." Somebody should really try that system.
This is what's wrong with the world today; instead of helping each other succeed, we seek out the weak to bleed them out
What's wrong is that when it comes to somebody else's money, there's no shortage of people deciding that it should be taken for somebody else in need. Yet when it comes to their own personal finances, they don't give away the bulk of it to alleviate somebody worse off than them. Then you end up with situations like Greece.