The title "Update on Soylent Bar" is pretty vague, so here's the gist:
> 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.
> 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. So far we have not yet identified one...
> We will be reaching out via e-mail to all Bar customers to offer a full refund.
Wow.
I have a box of Soylent Bars from a few weeks ago I've been eating on occasion. I haven't had any issues, and they seem fine to me.
Kudos to the Soylent team for covering the issue so quickly, especially after the incident last month [1] where Coffiest wasn't meeting its prescribed nutritional content. It seems like they're struggling with production quality and consistency at scale.
Maybe they are fine. I saw people online raving about Quest bars, so I bought five different flavors to try. Result: Gastrointestinal issues I haven't experienced with other protein bars. And I didn't even like the taste.
Even with that experience in mind, I'd probably try a Soylent Bar. Everybody's different.
It's probably one of the sugar alcohols, which tend to draw water into the bowels.
As for anecdotes: Quest bars usually don't upset my system, but other protein bars (MetRX protein bar, that was a memorable time…) and a lot of "diet" foods, like Weight Watchers desserts, cause, well, lower GI upset.
A lot of "diet" bars and sugar-free protein mixes are sweetened with sugar alcohols like Xylitol or Sorbitol. Your upper GI tract can't actually digest these sugars, but there's plenty of bacteria in your lower GI tract which digest them readily and produce a large quantity of gas.
Sugar free gum has the same effect for the same reason, at least if you chew enough of it.
> 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.
> 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. So far we have not yet identified one...
> We will be reaching out via e-mail to all Bar customers to offer a full refund.
Wow.
I have a box of Soylent Bars from a few weeks ago I've been eating on occasion. I haven't had any issues, and they seem fine to me.
Kudos to the Soylent team for covering the issue so quickly, especially after the incident last month [1] where Coffiest wasn't meeting its prescribed nutritional content. It seems like they're struggling with production quality and consistency at scale.
(That said, I am a happy Soylent customer.)
[1]: http://blog.soylent.com/post/149763512312/update-on-coffiest...