Swapping all your meals for Soylent apparently has drawbacks besides, you know, missing out on the entire world of delicious foods that human civilization has spent millennia developing and having to explain the pitcher of beige ooze on your desk to your coworkers. It may also be making customers seriously sick. Following the recent recall of their food bars, now the brand is also halting sales on their primary product, the Soylent powder itself.
The Guardian reports that the company doesn’t seem to be quite sure—or, at least, isn’t saying yet—what specifically can be blamed for the symptoms customers are experiencing, but there have been reports of diarrhea, upset stomachs and vomiting, sometimes extending for hours at a time. Several ingredients overlap between the bars and the powder, so those will be the first to go under the microscope.
“Our tests all came back negative for food pathogens, toxins or outside contamination,” Soylent wrote in a blog post about their investigation into the concerns. They will be sharing the findings of their internal tests with the FDA once they are complete.
Still, they’re telling buyers to throw out any powder from version 1.6 of the product that they might already have, just to be safe, and no new Soylent will be hitting the streets until things are cleared up. Issues were not reported with version 1.5, so if you still have that around the kitchen, it’s probably safe to consume. Also, Soylent Coffiest has not been recalled and neither have the pre-made Soylent drinks.
In spite of the challenges, the Downtown L.A.-based start-up isn’t planning to pack it up over a few reports of stomach aches. The food-hackers are hard at work retooling the products into a new formula that should be for sale by early next year.
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