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Mold whine: Soylent superfood shipments stopped by spore scare

Version 2.0 for the fun guy too busy to eat

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 on the outside by the time they reached customers.

That's a tiny proportion. However, on Friday the biz confirmed it's halting operations.

"During our record review process we did discover that the conveyor guardrail settings were not optimized, causing some bottles to move erratically on the conveyor, which resulted in small splashes on the external surface of the bottle, thereby allowing mold from the environment to grow on the bottle," it said in a statement.

"To verify that these findings were indeed isolated, we conducted physical and visual inspections, along with microbial tests, of 2,000 bottles in our distribution center and found only two bottles with the same defect. We have since optimized the line settings to minimize any recurrence of this issue."

The issue came to light after customers started posting images of the mold online. The infestation doesn't look too serious, but you certainly wouldn't want to put your mouth around one of the affected bottles.

Soylent says that the problem has now been sorted and shipments will begin on October 8. If you get hungry in the meantime, try a hamburger and do your stomach a favor. ®

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