Soylent Is Reformulating Meal Replacement Products After Making Consumers Violently Ill
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Soylent, the company famous for making liquid meal replacement drinks, will reformulate two of its products after reports of customers becoming sick, the company announced.
The two products are new formulas of the company’s standard meal replacement powder and a snack bar released a few months ago, according to a blog post on the company’s website. “For the past several weeks, we have worked aggressively to uncover why people were having these negative experiences,” Soylent wrote. “Our tests all came back negative for food pathogens, toxins or outside contamination.”
The tests apparently included product testing, an “exhaustive” industry search, and discussions with ingredient suppliers. Since its testing came back with no leads, the company added that it was now looking into individual ingredients to see if they could have affected customers with specific food intolerances.
Soylent recently halted sales of its bar, which was first released in August, after people who consumed the bar began reporting that they had fallen ill. A small number of customers have experienced similar issues after ingesting Soylent’s new 1.6 powder formula, so it’s believed that the two products might share the same problem ingredient, Fortune reported.
“This possible connection allows us to narrow the field considerably given there are only a few ingredients that are specific to only our bars and Powder 1.6,” Soylent wrote, adding that there were no similar complaints for the company’s other products.
Soylent’s lineup of meal replacement drinks, bars and powders have become popular with the tech industry and Silicon Valley in recent years. But the company has also drawn criticism because of its steadfast focus on efficiency, which some say takes the simple pleasure and joy out of eating.
As for its potential ingredient issuers, the company wrote that it’ll continue to look into the matter, and will collaborate with the Food and Drug Administration so that the government agency could perform its own evaluation.
The reformulated bar and Powder 1.6 should be available early next year, the company wrote.
