Soylent's Food Bars Causing Food Poisoning?

Consumers report food poisoning; Soylent claims it’s “food intolerance”

For Soylent, the makers of the liquid meal replacement drinks and nutrient-infused oils, the hits keep coming. Their newest product is under scrutiny from consumers and the FDA after people start reporting food poisoning symptoms after ingesting the new product, Soylent Food Bars. 

Consumers Report Problems

On discussions on Soylent’s website as well as a couple Reddit threads, consumers have been speculating what may be causing the digestive issues, including nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. The problems have been reported by a number of users for some time and the fact that Soylent refuses to make a recall of the bars and instead will offer to refund money to those affected, has many consumers concerned over the company’s tepid response to the problem. Many of the bars that seem to be causing the issues came from one particular batch, 1966 14 JULY 2017, but while most seem to have come from this batch, there are other reports that these issues are still occurring with other batches. 

Solyent’s Response

“After these reports, we have retrieved remaining bars from our consumers and have personally consumed many of the remaining bars without adverse effects. We have also sent them for further microbiological testing and all tests have come back negative. Based on this we remain very confident in the safety of the bars.”

Upon Further Inspection

• algal flour (flour produced from algae)
• a sugar from beets called Isomaltooligosaccharide
• soy derived from 3 separate sources
• the artificial sweetener, sucralose. 

“Our algal flour has been used in more than 20 million servings of products, and we are aware of very few adverse reactions. In no cases was algal flour identified as the cause.”

A Sticky Situation

Due to these quality control measures, Soylent feels confident that the problem wasn’t caused by their processes, but the result of the inclusion of algal flour in two of their products and some people’s difficulty digesting it. The question now is will consumers be willing to swallow this or has the ordeal left a permanent bad taste in their mouths? Only time will tell if this is an isolated incident due a select few individual’s sensitivity to one specific ingredient or if this is the tip of the iceberg that sinks the SS Soylent.

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