October 14, 2016

Soylent Is the Future of Food, if the Future of Food Means Constant Diarrhea

Customers complained of severe stomach problems after eating the trendy meal replacement bars, so the company issued a recall.

Back to the kitchen, tech bro? <a href="http://www.istockphoto.com/photo/businessman-with-stomach-ache-gm480758066-68865867?st=_p_stomach%20ache">BrianAJackson</a>/iStock

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Of all the attempts to “disrupt” the food industry with Silicon Valley-funded projects, few are as blunt as the one presented by Soylent. Sure, Blue Apron and its peers remove the supermarket from the task of putting dinner on the table, but Soylent goes further: It takes away cooking and also the need to wield a fork or a table knife. Its meal bars and just-add-water drink mixes are meant to provide all that a body needs, with none of the drudgery or aesthetics of the table. If you stick to the drink mixes, you can even forgo chewing.

But apparently, Soylent hasn’t shaken off one major old-school food industry hazard: the risk of food poisoning. From the company’s website:

It has recently come to our attention that a small number of our customers have experienced gastrointestinal issues after consuming Soylent Bars. As a precautionary measure, we are halting all Soylent Bar purchases and shipments and are advising our customers to discard any remaining bars in their possession.

Oof. “So far we have not yet identified one and this issue does not appear to affect our other drinks and powder,” the company added.

“Gastrointestinal issues” is a rather ginger way of describing customer complaints, according to The Guardian:

One man wrote that he emailed the company, saying: “I thought I was suddenly having something like a sugar crash, but an emergency-level sugar crash like I’d never felt before.” He laid down, “but the throwing up resumed as I seemingly emptied out my entire stomach and realized that this was probably the worst I had felt in my entire life. I then also had diarrhea.” He eventually went to the hospital and recovered, he said.

…

Others described similar symptoms, which resembled food poisoning, such as “explosive diarrhea and vomiting within three hours of eating one” and “burning up and sweating profus[e]ly, and started getting very dizzy, lightheaded, and weak”.

Makes me want to get busy in the kitchen.

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This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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