Soylent hits back at legal threat: ‘We display Prop 65 warnings' | Hacker News Reader

Soylent hits back at legal threat: ‘We display Prop 65 warnings'

blog.soylent.com

49 pointskposehn53 comments

So I was wondering how "As You Sow" makes money if this is extortion (as claimed in the article), and found this:

http://www.asyousow.org/about-us/grantmaking/guidelines/

As You Sow’s grantmaking program is funded by settlements from our enforcement of California’s Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act (Proposition 65).

Can somebody explain to me how a non-governmental non-profit can go about enforcing a state law and getting paid for it? Do they basically sue random companies and extract "donations" in exchange for going away?

Bringing the patent troll business model to the non-profit sector

Whistleblower rewards, I would expect. It's not quite deputizing As You Sow as an enforcement agent but it does take a load off the state.

> safe harbor levels enshrined in Prop 65 are unrealistically low

If I understand the regulations correctly, the Prop 65 limit for lead is about 100x more restrictive than EPA standards for drinking water.

According to http://oehha.ca.gov/prop65/pdf/safeharbor081513.pdf the Prop 65 Maximum Allowable Dose Level for lead is 0.5ug per day (assuming the lower of the two safe harbor levels applies).

According to http://water.epa.gov/drink/contaminants/index.cfm the EPA's action level for lead in drinking water is 15ug per liter (and people drink more than one liter of water per day).

15 / 0.5 = 30x higher than EPA levels 12 * 0.5 = 6x Prop 65 lower bound for Soylent

Prop 65 is per day, EPA is per liter. I calculated for drinking 3 liters per day.

Where does 12*0.5 come from?

Comment submitted unintentionally, see above

A great baseline that would make me feel better would be other foodstuffs' lead and cadmium concentration. Are these contaminants a part of most food production, at some astonishingly low concentrations already?

"Since Soylent is marketed as a meal replacement, users may be chronically exposed to lead and cadmium concentrations that exceed California's safe harbor level. We’ve worked with a few companies making protein powders and they just need to look at their ingredients and investigate."

Well, if it's extortion, they're doing a great job sounding legit. Maybe Soylent has a problem sourcing their ingredients from reputable providers? A low cost target was a big part of its appeal, so I could understand if they were aggressive in finding an affordable business partner to provide materials.

As an aside, maybe we should try to avoid linking to sites who bar copying article excerpts to the clipboard. A bit ludicrous to suggest that their article's copyright justifies this silly barely-DRM-measure.

Yes most fruits and vegetables contain trace amounts of heavy metals, arsenic, etc. depending on where they are grown the levels vary.

The safe harbor limits are very low.

From http://www.oehha.ca.gov/prop65/background/p65plain.html

> For chemicals that are listed as causing cancer, the "no significant risk level” is defined as the level of exposure that would result in not more than one excess case of cancer in 100,000 individuals exposed to the chemical over a 70-year lifetime. In other words, a person exposed to the chemical at the “no significant risk level” for 70 years would not have more than a “one in 100,000” chance of developing cancer as a result of that exposure.

> For chemicals that are listed as causing birth defects or reproductive harm, the “no observable effect level” is determined by identifying the level of exposure that has been shown to not pose any harm to humans or laboratory animals. Proposition 65 then requires this “no observable effect level” to be divided by 1,000 in order to provide an ample margin of safety. Businesses subject to Proposition 65 are required to provide a warning if they cause exposures to chemicals listed as causing birth defects or reproductive harm that exceed 1/1000th of the “no observable effect level.”

15ug / 0.5ug = 30x higher than EPA levels not 100x

25 * 0.5ug = 12ug is the upper bound for lead in Soylent reported by this article

12ug / 15ug = 1 serving of Soylent is 80% of the actionable dose for lead in a liter of drinking water

So 1.2 of Soylent servings could reach the EPA's actionable dose for lead in water. People will eat multiple servings of Soylent a day.

(15 ug/liter) / (0.5 ug/day) = 30 day/liter.

To get a ratio, we need to multiply by the number of liters of drinking water people drink per day (3 is recommended for men in temperate climates).

15 ug/liter * 3 liter/day = 45 ug/day would seem to be the EPA's idea of an acceptable daily dose from water.

3 servings of Soylent per day would come close, but not quite reach that level.

Of course, the EPA's action level might be unhealthfully high.

According to the Agricultural Research Service, the average amount of water intake a day is about 3.9 cups or under a liter.

We'd have to know if the EPA based their figures on the ideal intake or the actual consumption figures.

http://www.ars.usda.gov/SP2UserFiles/Place/12355000/pdf/DBri...

Good point, but that low "average daily intake of plain drinking water" is because most people drink other beverages, many of which are made from tap water.

I'd love to know how both limits were decided.

Of course, people drinking Soylent typically do so in addition to water. How do the numbers compare with the foods that Soylent would be replacing?

We changed the url from http://www.foodnavigator-usa.com/Manufacturers/Soylent-hits-... since this is the original source.

Thanks for changing. I don't know if you happened to notice, but among others things, the original link takes a dim view of fair use. If you try to copy any piece of text from the original article, it denies you with a message "THIS CONTENT IS COPYRIGHT PROTECTED". The incredible part was that I had been trying to copy part of a quote from a third party to find the original source.

Oh dear. That's pretty bad.

It's like those sites that append a long string of junk to whatever you copy, only worse. I usually see that on media sites that seem a bit technically naive, and always imagine the conversation with the salesperson who convinced them they needed it.

I would love to hear opinions from other HN users that would actually use this product. Clearly there are people that would love to forget about food--I don't understand the appeal myself.

I primarily use it for breakfast.

I commute on caltrain each morning, and it's a pain to prepare food that I can bring, and consume on the train without being a mess/distraction to other commuters.

Soylent works well for this purpose.

Other benefits: I have really bad TMJ, so any amount that I can reduce chewing in the day brings measurable relief.

I've not used Soylent, but I definitely would. All that's put me off in the past is the need to order large quantities of it before even knowing if I'll like it, and a big waiting list to even get it in the first place.

Seems like a lot of hassle and since the attraction of Soylent for me is precisely to avoid hassle and nothing intrinsic, I'm putting off trying it until they work this out (if that's not already happened, haven't checked recently).

Anyway, the appeal for me is summed up really well by this marketing quote, in the article:

> “During a typical week there’s several meals I eat alone in front of the TV, weekday dinners mostly. Those were usually fast food, or frozen or canned. So I thought Soylent would be faster, easier, and healthier than what I had been doing before."

That absolutely nails the appeal for me. I love food, I even enjoy cooking nice things occasionally. However, the the routine of cooking something quick and boring for only myself on just an average Tuesday evening, coupled with all the faff around planning, buying ingredients, taking things out of the freezer at the right times, cleaning up, etc, just to sustain myself in a healthy way, is something I'd love to substitute away with something like Soylent and spend that time doing things I enjoy more.

I've been doing Soylent for a month. I had the idea on a Saturday, placed my order and Tuesday morning I had 14 days worth of powder delivered, in Canada.

After 1 week of eating it, I was happy and subscribed for 28 bags a month. My wife likes it too, it's convenient when she doesn't have time to cook and wants something filling and healthy.

I'm not good at caring about food. I hate doing groceries and cooking. Yet I still care about eating well.

A while ago I had a good reliable diet when I spent a few months with a good cafeteria at hands, but I don't have the motivation to shop and cook the proper meals myself everyday. My wife sometimes does it but I can't expect her to cook for me all the time. So then I end up at restaurants eating less-than-optimal food at a more expensive price.

Also when I travel, it's hard to maintain a good diet as you often don't have a choice in what you can eat and have to pick the best approximation you can from what's on the menu where you are.

So overall, Soylent is good for me because:

- At home, it's my baseline food. I know that I'll have at least 2 meals a day with proper caloric intake. Sometimes I'll eat all my day meals with Soylent, but most days I go eat with friends for 1 meal, or my wife insists on cooking something.

- On business trips, I can carry my food in my luggage and make sure I eat properly and maintain my routine.

It's just one less concern in life. I get the stability of a good baseline diet and I still have space for tasty stuff when I decide to take 1 less Soylent portion a day and go eat out instead. So it makes food enjoyable again. The chores part of food is gone: Soylent is a 2min task in my day. The fun part of food is back: when I eat out, I can focus on just enjoying the food.

I use it for lunch most days of the week. I know exactly how many calories I'm getting (useful if dieting) and it's convenient; I get back the 30 minutes I would have spent going to a restaurant / food truck.

...its figures appeared to be based on the assumption that people eat "nothing but Soylent everyday, 365 days a year, forever"

Maybe they got that impression from the marketing image in the article with the text "What if you never had to worry about food again?"

A link directly to Soylent's Prop 65 page: https://faq.soylent.com/hc/en-us/articles/204197379

If only we had the English Rule.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_rule_%28attorney%27s_f...

Could someone shine some light on why the U.S. is not following such rule? I can't see that many downsides to it, IMHO.

OP here. This seems to have been sandboxed Off the front page for some reason. Glad some people got to read this - will post more info on the suit as I find it.

It might have been flagkilled. It was interesting information, but perhaps not the best source or most balanced coverage.

A while ago, while there was a scare about elevated lead levels in licorice, which led to a recall that worried lots of parents. The level in the candy was .18 ppm: http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2012/08/black-licorice-recalle...

At that time, I tried to understand how much of a risk this actually presented. My conclusion was no, it did not present any significant risk to anyone. In fact, this elevated level was less than half the amount that the EPA considered safe a few years earlier. And the EPA had changed it's standard from the previous presumed to be safe level of .5 ppm to .1 ppm not because of new evidence of risk, but because of a change in philosophy: http://www.fda.gov/RegulatoryInformation/Guidances/ucm077904...

  This recommended maximum level of 0.1 ppm for lead in candy 
  likely to be consumed frequently by small children is 
  consistent with the FDA's longstanding goal of reducing 
  lead levels in the food supply to reduce consumers' lead 
  exposure to the lowest level that can be practicably 
  obtained.

Previously, they had set the standard based on the level of exposure shown to cause harm, divided by a safety factor (usually some power of 10) to account for uncertainty and differences in individuals: http://www.epa.gov/iris/rfd.htm

So the furor over licorice was not because there was any new evidence that the level was unsafe, or even that there was greater uncertainty of the safety, but because similar products were tested and found to have lower levels. In one sense, this seems reasonable: lead is very bad for you, so we don't want any of it in our food. But if the lead exposure from food is much less than the environmental lead exposure from other sources, it's hard to justify going to extremes to remove the remaining tiny fraction.

With this in mind, the tested level of lead in Soylent was .01 ppm. The California "safe harbor" level for lead is .5 µg per day. Thus if you ate 50g of Soylent, you would exceed the level at which California requires a warning.

For comparison, the EPA action level for lead in drinking water is .015 ppm, and the EPA says that if the level is less than this you should not worry: http://www.cdc.gov/nceh/lead/tips/water.htm

Thus if you drank 35g of the water that the EPA considers safe (about 2.5 tablespoons) you'd also be exceeding the threshold for which the State of California requires a warning label. In fairness, the level of lead in most drinking water is significantly less than the EPA action level. The US average appears to be about .003 ppm, thus you would on average have to consume (by weight) 3 times as much water as Soylent to receive the same dose of lead: http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/dwq/chemicals/lea...

I'm guessing that 3:1 is about the ratio at why Soylent is typically made? If so, it would seem fair to say that if you are using average US tap water, you are more at risk from lead poisoning from the water with which the Soylent is made than from the Soylent itself, for which they are being sued for not making their warning sufficiently prominent.

If this wasn't enough, that last link from the World Health Organization also estimates that an adult gets about 4 µg of lead per day just from breathing. To equal this amount from Soylent, you'd have consume 400g (1 lb) of Soylent per day. Since Soylent is packaged in 459g packages designed for 3 meals, it would be false to claim that you are getting more lead from the air than you do from the Soylent. But if you only ate two meals of Soylent per day, you'd be getting more from the air than from the Soylent.

So despite being a strong believer in food safety, as a former owner of a failed California food business (whose failure was in considerable part due our inability to manage the with regulatory requirements) I applaud Soylent for fighting back here.

Yes everything which tells me to do the stuff I don't want to do is extortion.

This title is pretty poor.

I suppose Soylent has markings that confess that it "contains a chemical known to the State of California to cause cancer, birth defects, or other reproductive harm".

EDIT: From Soylent's FAQ [1] "This warning is triggered by extremely low levels of the regulated compounds, and as such, the notification is a familiar sight to anyone who has eaten at a restaurant, stayed in a hotel, attended a theme park, or parked in a parking garage in California."

[1] https://faq.soylent.com/hc/en-us/articles/204197379

I have absolutely nothing against Soylent, and I've thought about buying it, but for what it's worth, this post has +20 points in under 30 minutes with one comment, and it reads like a PR retaliation.

As a consumer of Soylent, I am looking forward to any and all information about this hitting HN.

It sounds like there aren't dangerous levels of heavy metals, and this suit is brought because it will cost Soylent less to settle than to do their own testing?

According to Soylent, they test every batch[1]. But yes, it seems like As You Sow is like a patent troll, but instead is a prop 65 troll.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/soylent/comments/3ha4et/soylent_is_...

Personally, I upvoted this because it is the first I've heard about lead and cadmium levels in Soylent.

I don't know if the complaints have any merit but I hope a full discussion will lead to a better understanding.

> Personally, I upvoted this because it is the first I've heard about lead and cadmium levels in Soylent.

I don't like Soylent, but to be fair there are heavy metals in everything you eat, even vegetables - they absorb them from the ground where they grow. What matters is how much, in the end.

Absolutely. I meant "allegedly unsafe" levels.

There are tons of folks on HN who believe in pseudo-nutrition claims (paleo diet usually gets points around here too), so I am not very surprised.

I agree, I was surprised to suddenly see this post at #1 on the front page. And now it's somehow been removed from the site, though it still shows up in /new. Strange.

Edit: why the downvote?

It was demoted for the usual reason: users flagged it.

Thanks!

The story was both upvoted and flagged heavily. The votes look authentic. I think this is just a popular and controversial topic.

> Soylent insists its products are "completely safe and nutritious"

Based on how many years of market experience? Based on how many studies ? Oh, none. Yeah, "completely safe" - except that we don't know what happens 10 years down the line - the kind of timeline that matters for cancer or other long term disease.

AFAIK there is nothing in Soylent that is not regularly consumed by lots of humans already. Instead, the primary concern is its use as a total food replacement, since it's unclear what sort of dietary deficiencies may crop up ten years down the line.

> Instead, the primary concern is its use as a total food replacement

Yes, that's why the "completely safe" is misleading, from Soylent's part. They actually have NO clue.

Where do you see Soylent marketing itself as "completely safe"? Their website is pretty nuanced.

I quoted this precise article where Soylent published their answer to the health concerns in this actual wording.

The kickstarter campaign where they described Soylent not just as perfectly safe, but perfectly safe for anyone; and where they say it puts you in perfect health; and where they claim rigorous testing.

This iterative approach to regulatory compliance - ignore everything until a regulator points out a problem - should be worrying when you're talking about food.

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