back to article Mold whine: Soylent superfood shipments stopped by spore scare

Soylent, which produces liquid food for techies who hate chewing, has stopped shipping its gloop after some of it was contaminated with mold. The firm started flogging version 2.0 of its formula in August, and has produced 400,000 bottles of the strange substance. It has since learned that 11 of the bottles had mold inside or …

  1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
    Headmaster

    I feel capitalizing is in order

    "bottles of the strange substance" -> "bottles of the Strange Substance"

  2. m0rt

    Whoever wrote that sub-heading...

    ...needs a raise.

    Hats off to you, Sir/Madam.

    Genius.

  3. Doctor_Wibble
    Boffin

    Nice deflective wording

    I never take these statements at face value, mainly because the more usual problem is from used condoms in the vacuum-pack machine.

    We have "... the conveyor guardrail settings were not optimized ..." which is definitely a new one on me, how is it that the process so easily thwarted by this? Do they not have a bit of plasticised foil stuck to the top before the lid goes on?

    Bottles moving erratically on the conveyor is what happens when you haven't set the thing up properly - not "optimised", just "properly". And if it's enough that the liquid actually comes out of the top then this, again, this isn't some tiny tweak to do, it's either overfilling or really rickety.

    "... we conducted physical and visual inspections ..." must be a variation on "picked some up and gave them a bit of a shake to see if anything splashed out.

    And "We have since optimized the line settings to minimize any recurrence of this issue." surely means either "we found the loose bolt and tightened it" or "we stopped trying to run it faster than the recommended rate".

    1. DanielN

      Re: Nice deflective wording

      Bah. Assembly lines have no "properly" to them. You cobble together equipment from several companies and fiddle with the adjustments until it works, more or less. It's not like there are any equations for how to do it.

      If you really hit the big time, you can buy a machine vision system to inspect each unit. But that costs the world and entails even more fiddling with adjustments.

      1. Doctor_Wibble

        Re: Nice deflective wording

        > Bah. Assembly lines have no "properly" to them.

        Perhaps in the general case, but (assumption alert) this is surely a Well Known Thing, sticking liquid in a bottle and shoving a lid on it - done by numerous places and companies so although there might not be the exact science that 'properly' may imply, there is no shortage of information and examples of how to (not) do it? In any case the problem does look a lot like nobody was paying attention as well as them not bothering with a proper seal, which I'm a bit surprised isn't mandatory for that type of drink.

        (confessional disclaimer : have worked on production lines though not food ones, surely can't be that much different, just more handwashing, right...?)

    2. Martin 47

      Re: Nice deflective wording

      What they actually mean is

      'The bloke who pours the gloop into the bottles from a bucket lost the funnel'

  4. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    "try a hamburger and do your stomach a favor"

    Everything's relative.

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Mind you

    "bottles moving erratically" brings the phrase "like a prick in a bucket" to mind - which, given the film Soylent Green (original failed promotional video perhaps?), probably wouldn't be too far from the truth....

  6. JeffyPoooh
    Pint

    Best slap some preservatives in there

    Yuck.

  7. Phil Endecott

    400 000 bottles!

    Half a million bottles! Seriously, are there really thousands of people drinking this gloop?

    1. chivo243 Silver badge
      Trollface

      Re: 400 000 bottles!

      Yes, they live in Mountain View, Redmond, Cupertino, Redwood City and possibly Austin...

      1. Chris G

        Re: 400 000 bottles!

        That just goes to prove that a lot of supposedly well educated, intelligent people,

        aren't!

        1. Robert Helpmann??
          Childcatcher

          Re: 400 000 bottles!

          That just goes to prove that a lot of supposedly well educated, intelligent people, aren't!

          Education ≠ Taste

          Alas!

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: 400 000 bottles!

        /me hangs head in shame

    2. Orv Silver badge

      Never underestimate how dysfunctional people's relationship with food can be.

      1. cray74

        "Never underestimate how dysfunctional people's relationship with food can be"

        Witness Ben Stiller's documentary on abusive fitness practices and childhood sport, "Dodgeball." It's chilling how far some people go to deal with food cravings.

  8. John H Woods Silver badge

    Not all molds are created equal...

    ... for instance, even in just Aspergillus species there's a big health & safety difference between those varieties which are aflatoxic and those which are not.

  9. John McCallum
    Flame

    Bottle Filling

    I have worked on these before Booze, Weed Killer, Pharmaceuticals, and the worst one in particular

    cough syrup but none of them sloped over the top of the bottle due to "erratic line movement or erratic movement on the line I think the mould was likely to be caused by poor or non existant cleaning of said line.

  10. Tom 7

    I'm not sure what the problem is here

    if you cant be arsed to chew your food perhaps you should just let the mould digest it for you too.

    1. noominy.noom

      Re: I'm not sure what the problem is here

      Damn you Tom 7. You owe me a keyboard.

  11. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

    try a hamburger and do your stomach a favor.

    Shirley you mean bacon...or is this story from El Regs Western Outpost in which you are partially forgiven for not knowing what the taste of proper bacon is. Please thoroughly read the Articles of Faith, in particular the comments sections. Three times.

  12. tiggity Silver badge

    mould

    As Reg is .co.uk , please can we use the UK spelling of mould.

    Mold is US English.

    1. Roger Varley

      Re: mould

      Mold is also a place in North Wales ...

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: mould

      Mold is US English

      Or write an insert "u" after "o" rule

    3. Dan Paul

      Re: mould

      Correction, the url, www.theregister.com resolves to the Register website, so BOTH spellings are acceptable!

      1. Santa from Exeter

        Re: mould @ Dan Paul

        .com ≠ .us

        1. Dan Paul

          Re: mould @ Dan Paul @Santa from Exeter

          I beg to differ, .com equals US if .co.uk = UK (no one here in the states uses .co.us unless they couldn't get a .com address) and for the record the use of a "u" in words like "mould" and "colour" serves absolutely no redeeming purpose whatsoever except to sow discontent from anglophiles and confuse immigrants trying to learn the language. If I remember, those words have a French influence when spelled that way. "Centre" is the same baloney.

      2. Old Handle

        Re: mould

        But the .com is just a redirect. If anything, that implies US spellings should be automatically translated.

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: mould

      you missed:

      "try a hamburger and do your stomach a favor"

  13. launcap Silver badge
    Meh

    They should just..

    .. rebrand it - Soylent Blue!

    If it works for cheese is should work for odd-glop-that-no-sane-person-would-use..

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