Soylent is Feeding Innovation

There are few things humans cherish as much as food, but the effort needed to acquire our meals has never been constant.

Long gone are the days where spear-in-fist and loincloth-on-waist we'd hunt down wooly mammoths after tracking them for miles. Though we may have been rather proficient at our hunting duties - humans are the most impressive endurance animals on Earth - sometime between the discovery of agriculture and the invention of the Foreman Grill our predatory instinct to stalk was replaced with the urge to stuff our faces as-quickly-as-freaking possible. The effort of catching your dinner, bringing it back home and preparing it has been replaced with a shopping trip to the grocery or, even worse, a short wait at the drive thru. It's even somewhat depressing to think about all the people who haven't earned -- either by work or calorie expenditure -- their food, yet hundreds of thousands go starving each month.

But there is at least one constant in regards to our cultural attitudes with food: ritual and celebration. We love to share our food with friends and family. "A way to a man's heart is through his stomach." We pay a person to go out to eat and tell you everything that's wrong with their meal. Students spend years at culinary institutes learning how to make exquisite cuisine. We have channels and magazines dedicated to food, and shows entirely about reprimanding people who cook "f***ing rubbish!" (language warning: Gordon Ramsay).

So what happens in a world where there is no food? Nourishment, sure; but no food. If a software engineer from California has his way, we'll be drinking the same exact thing for each meal, every day.

It's not that crazy of a concept, after all. Our canine and feline friends often make-do with the same food non-stop. Heck, Canidae dog food is my dog's favorite thing in the world. Even though there hasn't been a scientific conclusion about the value of feeding our pets rotating diets, many dog owners are proponents. And we already have meal replacement drinks, they're just not food replacement drinks. It's easy to picture a day where the entire human population consumes the same nutrients. Not only would it peak our measures of sustainability, but it'd be easy to distribute to impoverished areas of the globe. This could be one of the key steps towards achieving a human dystopia, if you're into that kind of thing.

Rob Rhinehart didn't invent Soylent with an altruistic vision in mind. Rather, he was a poor, unemployed software engineer in San Francisco struggling to get by. Before Soylent, his diet was heavily-based on Ramen Noodles and corndogs. Rhinehart recalls, "I was unhealthy, hated cooking, shopping, and cleaning, and my only major expenditure was food." After considerable research, he ordered a selection of powders and nutritional supplements from laboratory supply stores. The result was a gross, milky concoction (pictured right) that left Rhinehart with a cardiac arrhythmia and flushing, but after some revisions Rhinehart has noticed an increase in energy and healthier skin. Somewhere there's a trade-off.

While this drink hardly sounds or looks appetizing, Rhinehart has raised $800,000 to further research Soylent. He plans to formulate several versions to cater to individual nutritional needs. An athlete would need more protein; an aging female may need more calcium; an overweight person could use less calories. Rhinehart relies on Soylent for 92% of his calorie intake, but like everyone else ever he has a weakness for bacon and it also provides him with some additional fat. This fall, Rhinehart expects to be shipping Soylent to customers worldwide.

There is one major oversight of Soylent however, and that is the taste. It seems as if Rhinehart wanted the drink to taste gross. He claims, "I'm not trying to make something delicious. There are already a lot of delicious things." A few individuals at Gawker tried Soylent, and reviews included such phrases as "My mouth is hot and tastes like old cheese," and "Tastes like homemade non-toxic Play Doh." There were also some not-safe-for-work comparisons. For Soylent to ever achieve real success, it is my opinion that Soylent's taste needs to be improved. Though this radical meal replacement was borne from high-tech 'biohacking', refusing to address this critical aspect of the human-food relationship is absurd.

Next time you're visiting the local market, I advise you to consider the future of your food. While I feel like this next-era innovation is incredible, and can possibly become a part of the solution to global hunger, I know that it's never going to replace the satisfaction of enjoying a delicious meal with loved ones.

Resources

Wikipedia - Soylent

Tech Crunch - Silocon Valley and the Reinvention of Food

Popular Science, Aug 2013 (print) - How To Live Without Food