If a meal replacement powder like Soylent makes you sick to your stomach, algae flour might be the culprit.
After some Soylent customers complained of tummy trouble in a nutritional powder and bar, the company pulled both and vowed to figure out what went wrong. The issue may come down to a certain kind of ground-up algae that found its way into both products, Bloomberg reported.
Soylent did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Earlier formulas that didn't include the algae ingredient didn't seem to make people sick -- only one version called Powder 1.6, which tested negative for toxins, food pathogens and "outside contamination". Soylent said it would release new formulas of both its powder and meal-replacement bar in early 2017, according to Bloomberg.
The incident is a huge blow for the food-meets-tech startup, which collected $20 million in Silicon Valley funding in 2015.