Amid illnesses, Soylent halts powder sales and zeroes in on bad ingredients

Enlarge (credit: Soylent)

Soylent is pulling its meal-replacement powder from the market in light of trickling reports of customer illnesses. As Ars previously noted, the company already pulled its snack bars earlier this month after customers online said they suffered gastrointestinal distress, some "violent." However, in an update late Thursday, the company acknowledged that it had received a small number of similar complaints from customers who consumed the latest powder line, Soylent 1.6. The company now thinks they’re connected and that the link could finally help them identify the source of the problem.

In an online blog post Soylent said:

For the past several weeks, we have worked aggressively to uncover why people were having these negative experiences. This has included product testing, an exhaustive industry search, and discussions with many of our suppliers. Our tests all came back negative for food pathogens, toxins or outside contamination… Interestingly, we didn’t see similar complaints during the 1.5 formulation. 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.

Ars reached out to Soylent to ask what those ingredients are, but we haven’t received a response yet. We’ll update when we do. However, based on online ingredient listings for the three products, the likely top suspects include Whole Algal Flour, Isomaltooligosaccharide (a non-digestible, low-calorie sweetener made of short-chain carbohydrates), and a Soy Protein Isolate.