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Soylent Halts Sale of Bars; Investigation Into Illnesses Continues (arstechnica.com)
Beth Mole, reporting for ArsTechnica:Following online reports of customers becoming ill after eating Soylent's new snack bars, the company announced this afternoon 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. "After hearing from our customers, we immediately began investigating the cause of the issue and whether it was linked to a problem with the Bars," the company said. "So far we have not yet identified one and this issue does not appear to affect our other drinks and powder. Though our investigation into this matter continues, we have decided to err on the side of caution and take this preventative step."
Clever company name can only backfire in cases like this.
If they are being honest in their statement, then I'm impressed to see a company in this day and age take such steps. However the cynical side of me wonders if they knew/know what's happening and they're attempting damage control until they figure out what to do next.
Soylent Green is still made out of people! They didn't change the recipe like they said they were going to! It's still people!!
That's what makes them sick!
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
Rebrand the bars as laxatives!
I actually ate through a box of these bars not long ago - finished the last one about two weeks ago. I kept blaming my daughter for not washing the dishes correctly and giving me dysentery via food debris (this actually happens, at least the food debris part). But maybe it was the bars? Who knows - I never will, now.
The bars are too caramel tasting anyway. I was really hoping for a bar that tasted like Soylent - like almost nothing at all.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Simple explaination:
Affected customers read the ingredient list.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
In Russia, Soylent Bars are made of YOU!
Get-your-hands-off-me-you-damn-dirty-ape snack bar
The company is urging customers to discard remaining bars and will begin e-mailing customers individually regarding refunds.
Why would they be asking customers to discard, instead of send them back?
I mean.... if they're really investigating, then they should take the returns, and then
do some analysis of what was winding up in customer hands, right?
Assuming they don't already have an explanation for people getting sick that they're uncomfortable sharing.......
I'm shocked that a company founded by a man who intentionally tried killing off his entire gut flora and puts his clothing in the freezer instead of washing them would release a biologically questionable product.
Right up there with Lay's WOW chips and Haribo sugar free gummy bears (read the reviews, they're hilarious and disgusting)
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
... when you make your stuff with Zika victims...
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Because you know some people just make you sick.
Letter To Iran
Different people react differently to different inputs.
You thought your product would be a perfect fit for everyone on the planet?
You morons.
This is why you shouldn't trust anyone claiming any panacea. You fall for the marketing, you deserve that intestinal upset.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
There was an episode about Soylent on VICE a little bit back. Their facility was just an empty concrete building with plastic tubs of ingredients and the closest thing to health precautions being plastic sheeting thrown up in one area. They also saw rats in the building there, so I really wouldn't be surprised if they got contaminated.
Seriously, does anyone here eat these things?
love is just extroverted narcissism
Shouldn't this be: "The ingredient list read: affected customers...".
I agree that the whole enterprise is misguided. But I don't think it's proven yet that people are getting sick from these bars.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
I just had a Soylent Note 7 bar. It was delicious! ... burrrrp ~#^ [NO CARRIER]
Table-ized A.I.
EOM
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I think in this case, the nature of the food is part of the appeal. It's a niche product, sure, but if people are buying SOYLENT then they expect a certain unidentifiable blandness to it. That's kind of the point.
my, your, his/her/its, our, your, their
I'm, you're, he's/she's/it's, we're, you're, they're
I have some customers in San Jose, and live in Berkeley. Given the horrid traffic and the lack of good trains with little hope that BART's Silicon Valley extension will be done within a decade, I get up at 5AM when it's necessary to work at these customer sites, hit the road by 5:30, and head home around 1 PM.
Obviously, that doesn't leave time for a leisurely breakfast. So, a cold bottle of Soylent 2.0 just out of the 'fridge is about my best option while driving. Warm Soylent doesn't actually seem that much worse, and I've used that during long drives when the alternative would have been fast food.
Yes, I get paid enough to compensate for all of this.
Soylent 2.0 tastes OK, but not so good that you'd eat it just for the taste. It takes care of physical needs and doesn't do anything nasty to my gastrointestinal system. I do not attempt to use it as a total food replacement.
Consuming Soylent, though, leads one to think about how food flavors and other characteristics of food are evolved or engineered to manipulate us, and how this is a dependence or addiction and perhaps the largest cause of health issues in our lives.
Bruce Perens.
I thought his sole goal was to reduce the time he spent on making/planning meals. Kind of like having a single color and style of suit, shirt, shoes - no decisions, just efficiency.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
The powder comes to $2 for a 500 calorie meal full of vitamins and minerals. I can't imagine how you could prepare a meal with the same nutritional value for less than that.
Noodles (ramen or otherwise) with chopped mixed vegetables. Cheap, tastes good, and nutritious. All it takes is some boiling water and a minute or two of chopping. Soylent gets about half its calories from fat, which is way too much.
fresh bread is extremely easy to make and doesn't have to be labor intensive (18 hour, no-knead). Also very tasty.
Yup, here it is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8NCigh54jg
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DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
And I still don't exactly know what problem soylent is supposed to solve.
The inventor needed more money in his bank account.
Seriously. For emergency rations, even military MREs are more palatable than this crap. If some hipsters want to eat post-apocalyptic instant-bowl-of-snot-powder, manufactured in a rat-infested warehouse, more power to them. There's a reason this type of food is such a frequent trope of dystopian sci-fi: there are few things as morale-crushing as a bland, thoroughly joyless meal.
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DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
There are still bottles of Odwalla products spread far and wide - or are you too young to remember that disaster?
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This is why bathrooms should be designed with either a sink or a bathtub next to the toilet.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
It's made of clowns! That's why it makes you feel funny!
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
Most of today's "youth" can't cook, make or repair anything.
Most of the time is spent poking a phone and microwaving prepackaged artificial "food".
Soylent is right down their alley.
no no no No NO...
"Rosa Labs -- our people are our greatest asset"
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Why do people act like this stuff is new? I have been using Lean 1 protein shakes, which is a meal replacement, for three months. I by no means use it to lose weight, I'm actually bulking right now, but it has more than enough to replace a meal, and I have more confidence in it than the Soylent shakes. It has a longer ingredient list, but each two pound container is a shake a day for half a month, so pricing isn't too dissimilar, maybe even better.