Soylent offers food replacement drinks and bars, but you may want to stay away from the bars for now. As Ars Technica reports, people are getting violently ill after eating some of the company's snack bars, leaving Rosa Labs on the defensive. "We have retrieved remaining bars from our consumers and have personally consumed many of the remaining bars without adverse effects," says the company in a statement. "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." Graphic reports of gastrointestinal distress after eating the food bars started popping up on Soylent's website last month and Reddit about a week ago. A Gizmodo reader says he had to go to the ER after he ate a bar and became ill. One Reddit user has counted 33 reported cases so far since Sept. 7; the bars were released just two months prior to that.
Consumers report typical food poisoning symptoms including nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea, within hours of eating a bar. Since not everyone is having problems, and even the people who've gotten sick don't always get sick, some suspect there's a problem with just one or a few of the batches; some batches could have gotten spoiled, for example. A source tells Ars Technica Rosa Labs is spending tens of thousands of dollars to investigate the problem, and that the company's main theory at the moment is that some customers might have a sensitivity or intolerance to one of the ingredients in the bars. BuzzFeed notes that the facility that makes the bars hasn't had a Foodborne Biological Hazards inspection since two years prior to the bar's launch, though Soylent says it was inspected by the FDA this year. The company is refunding customers for any bars causing problems, and notes that so far, the number of complaints received per bars sold is 0.03%.
.
Consumers report typical food poisoning symptoms including nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea, within hours of eating a bar. Since not everyone is having problems, and even the people who've gotten sick don't always get sick, some suspect there's a problem with just one or a few of the batches; some batches could have gotten spoiled, for example. A source tells Ars Technica Rosa Labs is spending tens of thousands of dollars to investigate the problem, and that the company's main theory at the moment is that some customers might have a sensitivity or intolerance to one of the ingredients in the bars. BuzzFeed notes that the facility that makes the bars hasn't had a Foodborne Biological Hazards inspection since two years prior to the bar's launch, though Soylent says it was inspected by the FDA this year. The company is refunding customers for any bars causing problems, and notes that so far, the number of complaints received per bars sold is 0.03%.
.
