Reports of “violent” vomiting, diarrhea from bars has Soylent on the defense

Online forums link bars to food poisoning, but maker suggests soy intolerance.

Read the whole story

 

[Olwenntaron]

In an official statement, the company said: “After these reports, we have retrieved remaining bars from our consumers and have personally consumed many of the remaining bars without adverse effects."

Well, I guess that qualifies as "putting your money where your mouth is".

 

[Facekhan]

The fake sugar alcohols (aka artificial sweeteners) tend to make me feel a bit gross too. That's why I don't drink diet/zero sodas.

 

[Ecmaster76]

As someone with an intolerance of both soy and artificial sweeteners I find Soylent's explanation to be completely plausible.

Also my condolences to the people learning the hard way how awful concentrated soy protein can be (and to anyone down wind)

 

[oly884]

Ecmaster76[/url]":11bbpyle]... (and to anyone down wind)

Or horses, for that matter.

 

[samred]

We at Ars are all lobbying for Lee Hutchinson to help us really nail down what's going on here by way of an intensive, gastrointestinal test. To aid us in these efforts, please send any spare, unopened bars to Lee Hutchinson c/o Conde Nast, 1 WTC, NY, NY. We'll make sure he gets them.

 

[Boozy]

I suspect gut bacteria are involved (as usual).
Personal anecdote: I lost the means to process cooked vegetables after leaving my parents'.
Bad eating habits that had taken over made various cooked vegetables a gaseous affair.
After correcting my diet I got better.

It's not all that far fetched to think that people who go on a sudden health kick aren't able to tolerate things they've either never, or not for a long time, eaten.

 

[ten91]

It seems the effect caused by soylent bars varies person to person.

 

[pokrface]

samred[/url]":3p12k6vs]We at Ars are all lobbying for Lee Hutchinson to help us really nail down what's going on here by way of an intensive, gastrointestinal test. To aid us in these efforts, please send any spare, unopened bars to Lee Hutchinson c/o Conde Nast, 1 WTC, NY, NY. We'll make sure he gets them.

oh my god sam we need to have a talk now

 

[carcharoth]

depending on your genetic history, you shouldnt really be eating an excessive amount of soy, not just because of the estrogenic properties

 

[iceph03nix]

Part of me wants to blame this on a bunch of people who eat crap suddenly getting a load of fiber in their diets and having it flush their system.

Beyond that, I can believe that if you're selling something like this to millions, you're gonna end up with a decent number of people reacting to something in it.

 

[simonbp]

samred[/url]":1vw2vboa]We at Ars are all lobbying for Lee Hutchinson to help us really nail down what's going on here by way of an intensive, gastrointestinal test. To aid us in these efforts, please send any spare, unopened bars to Lee Hutchinson c/o Conde Nast, 1 WTC, NY, NY. We'll make sure he gets them.

The City of Houston will not survive.

 

[Unzip_for_Harambe]

Facekhan[/url]":336mcria]The fake sugar alcohols (aka artificial sweeteners) tend to make me feel a bit gross too. That's why I don't drink diet/zero sodas.

Why is this comment getting downvoted?

I know for myself, Splenda gives me the shakes and I have to avoid it.

 

[xevilrobotx]

My wife and I have been trying Soylent 2.0 liquid for a couple of months, we finally had to give up because we are both constantly getting diarrhea. I really like the idea of this stuff but we both just can't handle the current formula.

 

[Vapur9]

Boozy[/url]":11s5uxxu]I suspect gut bacteria are involved (as usual).
Personal anecdote: I lost the means to process cooked vegetables after leaving my parents'.
Bad eating habits that had taken over made various cooked vegetables a gaseous affair.
After correcting my diet I got better.

It's not all that far fetched to think that people who go on a sudden health kick aren't able to tolerate things they've either never, or not for a long time, eaten.

That's what I was thinking. Are Soylent products changing gut flora to be less resilient to the product over time?

 

[S2pidiT]

Rosa Labs aggressively defended its quality control after extensive internal testing.

They're referring to testing Lee's internals, right?

 

[GreenMeters]

Pokrface[/url]":14i8v74c]

samred[/url]":14i8v74c]We at Ars are all lobbying for Lee Hutchinson to help us really nail down what's going on here by way of an intensive, gastrointestinal test. To aid us in these efforts, please send any spare, unopened bars to Lee Hutchinson c/o Conde Nast, 1 WTC, NY, NY. We'll make sure he gets them.

oh my god sam we need to have a talk now

Hopefully a face-to-face talk, in a small, enclosed, unventilated room.

 

[Fatesrider]

Olwenntaron[/url]":k5oev7y0]

In an official statement, the company said: “After these reports, we have retrieved remaining bars from our consumers and have personally consumed many of the remaining bars without adverse effects."

Well, I guess that qualifies as "putting your money where your mouth is".

:/

True.

But when it comes to finding the potential source of an illness, I always thought they checked the production equipment first.

OTOH, if one considers that production starts with management, this could be a novel way of doing that, but still... They'd have to test all of the returned bars (which is labor intensive) to see if any were contaminated, but only the few production lines (much less labor intensive) to find the actual source of potential contamination.

It may also be an uneven mixture issue in that some individual bars got more of ingredient X (perhaps the soy?) than others, which might trigger gastrointestinal issues but not show any "contamination".

I'd look at their production lines before I started testing the bars. It seems to me the bars aren't the source of the problem.

 

[Nacko]

Unzip_for_Harambe[/url]":3p1h9irg]

Facekhan[/url]":3p1h9irg]The fake sugar alcohols (aka artificial sweeteners) tend to make me feel a bit gross too. That's why I don't drink diet/zero sodas.

Why is this comment getting downvoted?

I know for myself, Splenda gives me the shakes and I have to avoid it.

Because it's wrong. Sugar alcohols are not the same as artificial sweeteners and neither are they "fake," despite their sometimes unpleasant side effects. Splenda isn't a sugar alcohol at all (it's an artificial sweetener) and doesn't cause gastrointestinal distress the way some sugar alcohols can. It's also not true that all sugar alcohols have the same side effects, and neither are all artificial sweeteners the same. Erythritol doesn't cause laxation, for example, and what's true of Splenda isn't necessarily also true of aspartame. To the best of my knowledge, none of these cause vomiting in reasonable quantities.

 

[bittermann]

Well it is an energy bar so to speak, right? They just didn't tell you all the energy was limited internally to the bowels.

 

[jbart]

So far, the company says that the number of complaints per bars sold is only 0.03 percent.

Isn't it a bit high, considering this is # of complaints / # bar ? Assuming an average customer may have bought 10 bars or more, that would make quite a few customers impacted. Not sure how that would compare to other similar products though ...

 

[Sulik2]

I'm literally eating a bar as I type this. I love these bars, best tasting food bar ever made. I just got my second box. Maybe I will wait to eat the second one to see if there is a contamination issue.

 

[vf-xx]

samred[/url]":2clkpkwx]We at Ars are all lobbying for Lee Hutchinson to help us really nail down what's going on here by way of an intensive, gastrointestinal test. To aid us in these efforts, please send any spare, unopened bars to Lee Hutchinson c/o Conde Nast, 1 WTC, NY, NY. We'll make sure he gets them.

If you like, I work nearby and deliver them for you and cameraphone the results.

 

[likewhat]

Isomaltooligosaccharide definitely causes gastrointestinal distress in too great of quantities. Quest bars are the first big product using isomaltooligosaccharides (that I know of) and it seemed well accepted that you don't want to eat more than one at once, at least at first.

 

[awelux]

"A source with knowledge of Soylent’s production said that the company is spending tens of thousands of dollars on testing"
That sounds like an awful small amount for a food product these days. You might check your sources.

And 0.03% complains is about 1 in 3000 bars. That sounds high. Given the amount of candy bars I'm eating I should have had a few complains in the last 10 years at that rate.
Though the soylent bar's might have a more engaged customer base than average.

 

[pho3nixf1re]

I was shocked to see this in my feeds. I bought a box of bars and ate them about once a day for an afternoon snack. One Friday afternoon about 2.5 hours after eating it I was violently throwing up and couldn't hold food down. I was fine by the next morning. No fever or other signs of illness. It was so weird and I wrote it off as possibly something else.

 

[KGFish]

My completely uneducated, wild-ass guess: people are suddenly ingesting a whole bunch of stuff they've never been exposed to: various soy proteins, unfamiliar sugars, etc. They're also doing it in significant quantities, because "it's good stuff". End result: a bacterial fauna in the gut that is going apeshit trying to deal with the new stuff.

Most endurance racers have an iron rule: never try new foods during a race. And that's even with stuff that differs only marginally, like the exact ratio of different sugars and proteins in it. Because with a stressed GI system, even small changes will mean a lot of time spent in a bathroom or behind a tree. I can't imagine what something like a soylent bar would do to someone who's never really eaten soy, beets, or any of the other ingredients in it.

 

[Boskone]

xevilrobotx[/url]":10q5yrq2]My wife and I have been trying Soylent 2.0 liquid for a couple of months, we finally had to give up because we are both constantly getting diarrhea. I really like the idea of this stuff but we both just can't handle the current formula.

You might try the powder, 1.4. 2.0 kinda bothered me (and I found the flavor vile), 1.4 was no problem.

I premeasure 250g into water bottles a few days ahead of time, and mix the morning of. All in all, it's not much more trouble.

 

[zeotherm]

Pokrface[/url]":wmwwrpwe]

samred[/url]":wmwwrpwe]We at Ars are all lobbying for Lee Hutchinson to help us really nail down what's going on here by way of an intensive, gastrointestinal test. To aid us in these efforts, please send any spare, unopened bars to Lee Hutchinson c/o Conde Nast, 1 WTC, NY, NY. We'll make sure he gets them.

oh my god sam we need to have a talk now

Let me know when you do this, I don't want to have any trips to customers in Houston scheduled then.

 

[aaronb1138]

bittermann[/url]":3jvqnlkg]Well it is an energy bar so to speak, right? They just didn't tell you all the energy was limited internally to the bowels.

Isn't Germany banning this mode of locomotion by 2030?

 

[keltor]

It's the isos, other products using them that have smaller batches have had issue where if there is too much of them (due to manufacturing techniques) it will cause very quick vomiting. The soy intolerance thing is clearly a load of crap - people in the very thread mentioned already called that out. Those people who vomited ... some of them easily has no problem consuming the rest of the box. A single box will virtually 100% of the time be from the same batch, but if you mixing technique is bad, you can end up with uneven amounts. Isos in BARELY above normal amounts (like 3x) will induce vomiting.

 

[keltor]

KGFish[/url]":2xcquinv]My completely uneducated, wild-ass guess: people are suddenly ingesting a whole bunch of stuff they've never been exposed to: various soy proteins, unfamiliar sugars, etc. They're also doing it in significant quantities, because "it's good stuff". End result: a bacterial fauna in the gut that is going apeshit trying to deal with the new stuff.

Most endurance racers have an iron rule: never try new foods during a race. And that's even with stuff that differs only marginally, like the exact ratio of different sugars and proteins in it. Because with a stressed GI system, even small changes will mean a lot of time spent in a bathroom or behind a tree. I can't imagine what something like a soylent bar would do to someone who's never really eaten soy, beets, or any of the other ingredients in it.

A number of the reddit reporters are long time buys of Soylent products, many of them had already eating more bars than is reasonable honestly. It's very likely a batch or manufacturing technique issue.

 

[Frosty Grin]

samred[/url]":3cvads63]We at Ars are all lobbying for Lee Hutchinson to help us really nail down what's going on here by way of an intensive, gastrointestinal test. To aid us in these efforts, please send any spare, unopened bars to Lee Hutchinson c/o Conde Nast, 1 WTC, NY, NY. We'll make sure he gets them.

I hope the bars are going to make him violently happy.

 

[Marlor_AU]

Recent research is showing the gut microbiome to be both more complex and more delicate than anyone could have foreseen. Replacing a large chunk of your daily nutritional intake with a food replacement could have all sorts of unpredictable effects over time, which would vary from person to person. I wouldn't be surprised if these changes are causing violent reactions in certain individuals.

Given that recent research findings have found strong links between gut microbiome balance and mental health, I'd be pretty wary of doing anything that is likely to screw with it. For example, we're only just now discovering that foods high in sugars, fats and simple carbohydrates appear to have negative effects, and leafy greens have been shown to have a positive effect in promoting "good" bacteria. Generally, research is suggesting that a varied diet, rich in vegetables, is good for promoting microbiome diversity.

Replacing a significant chunk of your diet with a static, unchanging food source is likely to, at the very least, change the balance of the gut microbiome, favoring certain bacteria over others. It's no surprise if that leads to digestive trouble. However, recent research suggests it may also have unforeseen effects on cognitive abilities and mood as well.