How one man ate no food for 30 days

November 17, 2013 11:17 AM

"It was my second day on Soylent and my stomach felt like a coil of knotty old rope, slowly tightening. I wasn’t hungry, but something was off. I was tired, light-headed, low-energy, but my heart was racing... I had twenty-eight days left of my month-long all-Soylent diet—I was attempting to live on the full food replacement longer than anyone besides its inventor—and I felt woozy already.We were en route to Soylent HQ, where the 25-year-old Rob Rhinehart and his crew were whipping up the internet famous hacker meal—the macro-nutritious shake they think will soon replace the bulk of our meals. It’s just one of many visions currently vying for the future food crown. The world’s population is still burgeoning, after all, 600 to 800 million people are going hungry every year, and the specter of food riots is perpetually percolating—the demand for cheap, nutritious food is greater than ever."

"He also wanted his customers to be able to ‘hack’ Soylent—to add fruits, vitamins, nootropic drugs, alcohol, or whatever they wanted. Sure enough, a robust DIY community has sprung up around Soylent; they frequent the subReddit r/Soylent and the Soylent Discourse site that Rob set up, where they share pointers and recipes. Soylent is essentially a diet inspired by an open-source operating system."

posted by bookman117 (138 comments total)

“I have a very strong memory of when I was very young. I think six or something. I was eating lettuce, or kale, or something. And I remember thinking that it was very strange that I would eat leaves as a human," Rob said. "This was for animals—why would I eat this?”

I have some bad news for you, Rob.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 11:24 AM on November 17, 2013 [85 favorites]

I really hope they succeed but I don't see how they can claim to battle world hunger given how expensive the product is and the fact that it requires water.

People "hacking" Soylent is disturbing but I guess the end results cannot possibly be worse than the processed food most people eat. Right...?
posted by Foci for Analysis at 11:29 AM on November 17, 2013 [3 favorites]

Eating will become like boozing—something we do recreationally with friends, or as a hobby.

Isn't it like that already?
posted by Sys Rq at 11:29 AM on November 17, 2013 [11 favorites]

I don't know about its nutritional properties, but Soylent already ruined my blood pressure with the gratuitous open source comparison.
posted by Dr Dracator at 11:31 AM on November 17, 2013 [4 favorites]

"The world’s population is still burgeoning, after all, 600 to 800 million people are going hungry every year, and the specter of food riots is perpetually percolating—the demand for cheap, nutritious food is greater than ever."

Global hunger is not an issue of food scarcity but rather that the poor cannot access the food they need. See Susan George.
posted by docgonzo at 11:33 AM on November 17, 2013 [31 favorites]

If calling it "hacking" can get nerds to cook, then I guess I'm all for it. I could do without all the self-righteousness though.
posted by zscore at 11:36 AM on November 17, 2013 [4 favorites]

So Googlers are investing in vitro meat, biotech firms are genetically modifying crops that promise increasingly robust yields, and Silicon Valley is nurturing a bevy of future-forward alt-food companies. Then there’s Rob, who came along and claimed that nobody had to eat food ever again.

Soooo... your solution to world hunger is to apply the same kind of thinking that caused the Tech Crash of 2000 and the Mortgage Crisis of 2008? That's... surely a recipe for success.
posted by GenjiandProust at 11:37 AM on November 17, 2013 [4 favorites]

I was assembling the ingredients to do this. I learned a lot about nutrition, and one thing I learned is that it is really complex. Just read up on potassium supplementation and you will see what I mean.

I ended up doing a protein powder + maltodextrin + multivitamin for a while. Horrible.

I just used a friend's vitamix to blend together kale, spinach, carrots, cranberries, clementines, flax meal, peanuts, bananas and ginger. Now THAT is a drink I could subsist on. I feel like I could kill god.
posted by Teakettle at 11:38 AM on November 17, 2013 [65 favorites]

Kinda hope this fails simply because the company sounds like it's run by a collective of mega-douches.

Kinda doubt it's going to work as a long term food replacement either.
posted by vuron at 11:38 AM on November 17, 2013 [23 favorites]

Seriously, this came off like some sort of bro-nerd asshat who came of age beating up me and my kind and has now appropriated all the things for which they mocked us.

I don't think we need fruits and veggies, though – we need vitamins and minerals. We need carbs, not bread. Amino acids, not milk.

What he needs to do is read more. Generation after generation of people has tried to do this. There's just something about food...real plants and fruits and veg that have evolved and which we have evolved along with to eat. They've all failed. So this has a shiny tech sheen on it and it says "hackers!" somewhere on it.
posted by nevercalm at 11:46 AM on November 17, 2013 [13 favorites]

Culinary Linux?
posted by acb at 11:48 AM on November 17, 2013 [3 favorites]

Soylent Green is people!
posted by birdherder at 11:49 AM on November 17, 2013

I thought the definition of the word 'food' was broad enough to include even DIY vitamin slurry? "Not consuming food" is the act of fasting.

And surely the word 'eating' still applies to how he is consuming it? It's still called eating, Rhinehart, unless you're taking intravenous fluids or you've invented some kind of nutrition suppository.
posted by ceribus peribus at 11:50 AM on November 17, 2013 [10 favorites]

A few of the packets were infested with mold, but that didn’t bother me; I was a beta tester after all, and the packaging hadn’t been finalized yet. It’d gotten punctured en route somehow, and moisture had got in—which did highlight its vulnerability to mold, an important point given that Rob touts its non-spoiling benefits as a solution to sending nutritious food to far-flung places.

This... would not fill me with confidence. And, weirdly, after extolling this "miracle food" for a longish column, he ends with how good it was to eat actual food again. Like "good enough for the starving masses, but I like chicken" is not selling me on your product. After all, the starving masses are starving; they won't mind a little mold. Yeesh.
posted by GenjiandProust at 11:52 AM on November 17, 2013 [3 favorites]

Yeah I don't get the weird moral panic some people have about this. As the article pointed out, this is more ethical (environmentally, and in terms of our treatment of animals) than conventional meat meals. It's also much, much healthier than the ramen noodles it's designed to replace.

While it's being spun as "never eat again", I think a lot of people will simply be using this as a stopgap for when previously they would have eaten some unhealthy, unbalanced convenience food. I sort of do this already, replacing the odd meal with soy milk and a protein powder (and a multivitamin here and there). The only thing that puzzles me is why people who are really interested in replacing meals with shakes don't do this, or use one of the other balanced supplements already on the market.
posted by dontjumplarry at 11:54 AM on November 17, 2013 [4 favorites]

nevercalm: What he needs to do is read more. Generation after generation of people has tried to do this. There's just something about food...real plants and fruits and veg that have evolved and which we have evolved along with to eat. They've all failed. So this has a shiny tech sheen on it and it says "hackers!" somewhere on it.

On the other hand, there isn't anything magical about food, it's just biochemistry. In principle, it should be possible to replicate whatever the critical components are, and it would certainly be useful if we could do it (it would have serious medical applications, for instance). Although I really dislike the idea of eating that crap on a daily basis, since it would undoubtedly be boring and taste awful.
posted by Mitrovarr at 11:55 AM on November 17, 2013 [4 favorites]

Teakettle: Jevity is the product. Ensure, Boost, etc.

This is a solved problem. This enterprise is like making a startup to do Web search based on Pagerank in 2013, or making a startup to sell compilers for BASIC in 2013, or making a startup to sell 1-MHz computers for $666.66 in 2013.

Food replacement products have been on the market for 40 years. As a matter of fact, the ingredients list lists the ingredients for all food replacement products. Therefore, finding the ratios is actually merely a matter of convex optimization based upon the proportions in the literature. Requires some access to papers and some knowledge of optimization paradigms.

I would also give a lot of credence to the argument that the advancement of food technology does not advance the interests of the food consumer.

If the multinational corporations that made the food replacements felt like it, they could ship their products whereever: this is a logistics problems which is solved, and a socioeconomic problem that isn't. As a matter of fact, whenever they feel like looking better, they ship Plumpynut to places that need it, which seems to be good enough for actual acute famine situations. If it is not an acute famine situation, it should not be the case that food should be imported to a place: it should be the case that socioeconomic distribution problems should be solved. This is a solved result, due to Sen.
posted by curuinor at 11:58 AM on November 17, 2013 [39 favorites]

Eh...just because people in the past haven't been able to crack it does not mean we should stop trying. As we learn more about diets, nutrition and physiology we should try and explore ways to make foods more sustainable and accessible. There can be, of course, multiple approaches but I don't see any downside in having this as an option.
posted by asra at 12:00 PM on November 17, 2013 [4 favorites]

Asra: They did crack the problem, if the problem is posed as making a nutritional slurry that will feed you for 40 years.
posted by curuinor at 12:01 PM on November 17, 2013 [6 favorites]

In principle, it should be possible to replicate whatever the critical components are

Though perhaps not in practice. Not without substantially replicating the chemical processes that produced said components in the first place. If you're growing meat in a vat, you may not be killing "animals," but that's still one big honking organism you've got going there, using essentially the same chemical and metabolic processes that go on in real animals.

This is significant, because like all biological processes, there's a real GIGO effect. Stick craptastic ingredients in your vat and you may well be able to grow meat in there, but odds are really good it's going to taste craptastic too. Just like cows that eat absolutely unmentionable agricultural byproducts and are housed in horrible conditions don't produce beef that tastes as good as free-range, grass-fed cows.

"But it's all the same ingredients!" you say. Well. . . not really, no. There may be the same number of atoms in the appropriate ratios, but there's a chemical and biological gestalt going on here that I highly doubt we'll ever be able to replicate accurately. Even Star Trek has replicated food tasting somewhat flat and bland.
posted by valkyryn at 12:02 PM on November 17, 2013 [3 favorites]

Well, only if you assume this is the end of the research.
posted by asra at 12:03 PM on November 17, 2013

“They were known as the start-up bros,” he said admiringly. He wasn’t part of Soylent’s staff, but it was clear he wanted to be.
...
Rob insists that Soylent is environmentally friendly. There’s truth to this. Soylent is produced from vegetarian ingredients; the largest are oat flour and maltodextrin, a carbohydrate commonly derived from corn. Simply by eschewing meat, an eater is easing his environmental burden.

They're not real bros. Real bros are obligate artisanal carnivores.
posted by acb at 12:04 PM on November 17, 2013

I predict that, in the future, rich people will still eat food. But it's nice to know that they're engineering some tasteless, marginally-nutritive grit for the rest of us to subsist on, too.
posted by Sing Or Swim at 12:06 PM on November 17, 2013 [12 favorites]

Due to cancer and treatment, my father cannot currently swallow anything other than liquid. All his nutrient and caloric needs are being provided through prescription liquid nutrients delivered via feeding tube, and a couple of bottles of Ensure a day (to keep him swallowing what he can, and because apparently actually being able to take *something* by mouth aids greatly in reducing some of the depression that treatment can cause). So, like curuinor said, this seems to be a solved problem. And it wouldn't require a feeding tube for the vast majority of the population.
posted by Lulu's Pink Converse at 12:07 PM on November 17, 2013 [8 favorites]

"Culinary Linux". Man there is literally no problem that young software engineers can't solve.

BRB, hacking my soylent with some bro-juice. Mmm, tastes like creamy protein.
posted by Nelson at 12:07 PM on November 17, 2013 [4 favorites]

valkyryn: This is significant, because like all biological processes, there's a real GIGO effect.

That is... questionable. Or at least, 'garbage' means chemical substances that the system is not adapted to, not whatever humans think is 'bad' or 'icky'. Plants that grow in manure are fine, hogs that you feed with slop are just as tasty as other hogs, and so on.
posted by Mitrovarr at 12:07 PM on November 17, 2013 [6 favorites]

"Culinary Linux". Man there is literally no problem that young software engineers can't solve.

I don't want to imagine the Kernel Panic!
posted by srboisvert at 12:10 PM on November 17, 2013 [1 favorite]

srboisvert: I don't want to imagine the Kernel Panic!

It's immediately followed by a core dump.
posted by Mitrovarr at 12:12 PM on November 17, 2013 [12 favorites]

How would the experience of eating Soylent compare to correctional loaf of the sort that is fed to prisoners selected for additional punishment? Is Nutriloaf and the like specifically engineered to be an unpleasant chore to eat in a way that Soylent isn't, or would either by itself be equally joyless, all other conditions being equal?
posted by acb at 12:14 PM on November 17, 2013

I remember watching those frames with something of a dumbstruck awe—it was day three now; I was going to live for a month off this product, and the bags he’d just handed me were mixed in the same room as that rat.

The FDA allows wheat flour to contain, on average, up to 75 insect fragments and 1 rodent hair per 50g, as per their publication The Food Defect Action Levels.
posted by save alive nothing that breatheth at 12:16 PM on November 17, 2013 [1 favorite]

Soylent White is people! They didn't change the recipe like they said they were going to! /missing you, Phil Hartman
posted by Brocktoon at 12:16 PM on November 17, 2013 [3 favorites]

BRB, hacking my soylent with some bro-juice. Mmm, tastes like creamy protein.

Didja RTFA, Nelson? Tenth paragraph in indicates it already tastes like "bro-juice".
posted by Trinity-Gehenna at 12:26 PM on November 17, 2013 [1 favorite]

Somehow, I find this FPP a much more appealing approach to "food hacking."
posted by GenjiandProust at 12:27 PM on November 17, 2013 [6 favorites]

There was a great comment, I think here, about how eating this stuff would completely screw with your digestion, give you horrible bloating & diarrhea, and what's worse, kill off all the rich assortment of gut fauna that are currently trucking along in your digestive tract. Which means going back to normal food would be equally unpleasant.
posted by leotrotsky at 12:29 PM on November 17, 2013 [1 favorite]

I just want to know what sort of wine I would pair with it.
posted by sandettie light vessel automatic at 12:30 PM on November 17, 2013 [5 favorites]

Here it is!

Sigh.

First, let's talk about the the massive amount of damage this is going to do to the intestinal flora. Over a very short period of time, the enzymes that process things like lactose, fructose, and other core components of food are going to start to stop being produced, since there isn't anything for them to do. Then the by-products of those sugars being processed that feed the intestinal bacteria farm that is the human digestive system are going to start starving and dying, causing absorption issues for actual nutrients. So now you are making it harder for the intestines to actually extract nutrients from whatever you are putting into the system to begin with. With no fiber or other non-digestible roughage in the diet, the slurry of whatever this is mixed with the mucus that lines the intestines will start to thin out and expose the surface of the intestinal tract, creating pockets of inflamed intestinal tissue, leading to diverticulitis and scarring, making even less available surface area in the intestinal tract for absorption of nutrients.

So after a few months, maybe upwards of a year or so, you have rendered the intestinal tract unable to process "real food", impaired the functional ability of the gut to process nutrients, and pretty much flushed out your gut bacteria to the point where you can't eat anything without getting gas cramps and explosive diarrhea. Oh, and we haven't even covered the secondary effects of effectively lobotomizing your secondary brain. You know, where 90+% of your serotonin and dopamine are processed. So you've just given yourself practically irreversible depression and can no longer eat anything.

I hear that after about 4 weeks without food you no longer have hunger pains. That's pretty much when the entire gastrointestinal system shuts down almost completely, and stops releasing any of the hormones that trigger hunger in the brain. By that time, the only way to get nutrients into the system is through intravenous feeding, and then several weeks of slowing attempting to kick-start the intestines to start processing food again.

To address people who find the idea creepy:
It is creepy. It is something that socially damaged people do, either because they would rather spend their time doing something other than being social, since they don't know how or don't like other people enough to learn how to interact with them on a common level. Eating together forces us to recognize a base similarity with another person; the need to consume food to sustain life. This is something that the "awkward, typical nerd" would rather not have to face, that they are just like everyone else, i.e. not special. It sucks, but there it is. They want to be different, and live entirely in their heads. Most of them hate their bodies (and that's not entirely their fault; see any thread about marketing/advertising/social body consciousness/anti-obesity campaigns) and would probably pay a whole lot of money to put their brains in a robot body. Like, seriously, full on Sealab 2021, robot body.

Anyway. I do wonder if they offer more than one flavor...

posted by leotrotsky at 12:35 PM on November 17, 2013 [58 favorites]

Soylent Green is assholes!

Fixed, &c
posted by Sebmojo at 12:35 PM on November 17, 2013 [6 favorites]

Even Star Trek has replicated food tasting somewhat flat and bland.

Star Trek is fictional fyi
posted by Sebmojo at 12:44 PM on November 17, 2013 [3 favorites]

As leotrotsky linked, we spent a bunch of time arguing about this same story at the end of August. Don't see the need to do it again.
posted by Celsius1414 at 12:51 PM on November 17, 2013 [1 favorite]

I think here, about how eating this stuff would completely screw with your digestion, give you horrible bloating & diarrhea, and what's worse, kill off all the rich assortment of gut fauna that are currently trucking along in your digestive tract.

Well, yeah. There's a reason hospitals try and avoid putting patients longterm on this sort of stuff; my wife had to have this sort of feeding, pumped straight into her stomach even and the long term effects (> a couple of months) are horrendous: liver and kidney damage and such.
posted by MartinWisse at 1:01 PM on November 17, 2013

Even before clicking I had a feeling this was from Vice.
posted by stltony at 1:12 PM on November 17, 2013

Looks as good coming out as it does going in!
posted by blue_beetle at 1:13 PM on November 17, 2013 [3 favorites]

Is there a way for me to dislike the dudes involved here?
posted by localhuman at 1:15 PM on November 17, 2013

Snake oil is people!
posted by Pudhoho at 1:28 PM on November 17, 2013 [1 favorite]

The Monkey Chow Diaries

Imagine going to the grocery store only once every 6 months. Imagine paying less than a dollar per meal. Imagine never washing dishes, chopping vegetables or setting the table ever again. It sounds pretty good, doesn't it?

But can a human subsist on a constant diet of pelletized, nutritionally complete food like puppies and monkeys do? For the good of human kind, I'm about to find out. On June 3, 2006, I began my week of eating nothing but monkey chow: "a complete and balanced diet for the nutrition of primates, including the great apes."
posted by charlie don't surf at 1:29 PM on November 17, 2013 [9 favorites]

I don't know if it's any better (it seems to be), but PlumpyNut has been around for a while and has shown a lot of success. The solution is already here.
posted by zardoz at 1:35 PM on November 17, 2013 [1 favorite]

The "it tastes like semen" thing isn't exactly a selling point, but I can totally see meal replacement as a time management rather that weight management strategy taking off.
posted by NoraReed at 1:37 PM on November 17, 2013

The "it tastes like semen" thing isn't exactly a selling point

Soylent: come for the flavor.
posted by zippy at 1:41 PM on November 17, 2013 [6 favorites]

dag's comment linked by leotrotsky above says it all, I'd just like to add that overlooking the fiber calls into question the quality of research done by the Soylent team.
posted by hat_eater at 1:46 PM on November 17, 2013 [2 favorites]

Weight loss is interesting. Sounds like a case of low food reward diet.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 1:48 PM on November 17, 2013

and skipping the number of bowel movements calls into question the quality of Mr. Merchant's reporting...
posted by hat_eater at 1:49 PM on November 17, 2013 [2 favorites]

I've done several "all-in/enduro-diet" style things like this before...extended fasting, master cleanse/other cleanses, etc for several weeks at a time in almost every case. I think the longest I went was 24 days on a cleanse.

They talk about eliminating all the problems of cooking and eating and whatnot, and I get that, but what got me to cease a cleanse after 24 days wasn't that I was desperately hungry or woozy or anything else, it was that I was so, so terribly bored. And lonely. For many many people, eating is one of the few social activities we engage in every day. At the very least, you tend to go somewhere and stay there for a bit, in the process seeing people. When I was doing any of those fairly radical diet changes, I wasn't going to lunch, or a cafeteria, or sitting in a park with friends, or spending time around people who were eating.

I'm not trolling. I work 6 days a week, north of 70 hours+. I still spend some of my one day off cooking, and even when I'm eating lunch while walking around or looking at plans, I'm still trying to engage in some sort of activity that involves eating, and trying to find something other than craft service grabbitngo or shit from a deli. I wander around trying to find something good, even when my feet are killing me.

And yeah, are they really talking about all of us subsisting on some sort of glop forever? Or just once in a while? I RTFA and there's so much kickstarter futuro-sell-it-to-me speak that I never really got the gist.
posted by nevercalm at 1:51 PM on November 17, 2013 [2 favorites]

I just want to know what sort of wine I would pair with it.

Everclear would be more efficient.
posted by RobotHero at 2:09 PM on November 17, 2013 [22 favorites]

just used a friend's vitamix to blend together kale, spinach, carrots, cranberries, clementines, flax meal, peanuts, bananas and ginger. Now THAT is a drink I could subsist on.
Yeah, when I train hard I spend stupid amounts of time eating as healthy as I can. Had a mega-meal like that, all natural, fresh grown, lightly sauteed where not raw and I had the "Superman" theme playing in my head for a week.

That said - you have to spend stupid amounts of time eating healthy. As much as I like the "bachelor chow" approach to food (and I do like it, it'd be damn simple to eat like a dog or cat and have just one kind of kibble supplement) we really should change the way our food gets to us and the systems we use to deliver food.
It really is a national health priority. I've got the kids trained pretty well. We walked into a Walgreens, they said they were hungry and I let them walk around. We're at the checkout and I said "I thought you were getting something" and they said "There's no FOOD here!"
We wound up having to go to a Starbucks to pick up some $300* bananas.

The answer is more trucks less preservatives. But since that eats into profit margins *shrug*


*yeah, hyperbole, but still....
posted by Smedleyman at 2:13 PM on November 17, 2013

Seriously, this came off like some sort of bro-nerd asshat who came of age beating up me and my kind and has now appropriated all the things for which they mocked us./blockquote>

That one episode of 30 Rock where 30 Rock went back to high school because she remembered being bullied
posted by This, of course, alludes to you at 2:13 PM on November 17, 2013 [3 favorites]

This brought to mind something somewhat related, a guy who ended up fasting for a full year while under medical supervision, obtaining his year's worth of energy requirements from, apparently, 125 kilograms of fat... wonder if his intestines suffered any for the experience, as per comments above.
posted by xdvesper at 2:39 PM on November 17, 2013 [1 favorite]

The world’s population is still burgeoning, after all, 600 to 800 million people are going hungry every year, and the specter of food riots is perpetually percolating—the demand for cheap, nutritious food is greater than ever.

This stuff is to serious efforts to solve hunger problems as libertarianism is to liberalism.
posted by chortly at 2:39 PM on November 17, 2013 [2 favorites]

This strikes me as an idea that's so bad it doesn't really need to be argued against. Some geeks will use it; it's just not going to be attractive to everyone else.

What I'm skeptical about is that this has any relevance to global hunger. Really poor people don't burden the planet anywhere as much as industrialized people-- e.g., an American has the carbon footprint of 250 Ethiopians. I'd be surprised if some industrial slurry is actually cheaper and more environmentally friendly than traditional local subsistence crops.
posted by zompist at 2:48 PM on November 17, 2013 [1 favorite]

You know, I understand that this has problems, but I really WANT something like this to exist. I *hate* cooking. I hate it passionately. It may have something to do with having to spend much of my childhood on a drug with appetite suppressant side effects, so that food smells were unpleasant. I don't mind eating, though usually the food I make tastes pretty bland but I don't like cooking. I even took chef training in high school, I just don't like having to spend a significant amount of time (30+ minutes) every day preparing a meal that will last me 5-15 minutes of enjoyment, and rub home the fact I'm eating alone. Why are there not affordable, healthy, pre-made meals I can buy? I'm not a health nut, but the ones I see in stores cost a fortune and are loaded with sugar and salt to make them more tasty, and rarely have any green veggies (Not that I remember to buy those on my own).

So, I could prebuy my meals, but I'd go broke pretty quickly and I'd not be much more healthy then I am now. Why can't someone just mass produce some tins of mashed up nutriants that I can eat?

Also why is there this weird stigma against people who don't like to cook? There is a HUGE bias against people who don't like to cook, like we aren't as good as people who can go to a store, tell between a dozen types of produce and turn them into something delicious. Sure, it is a skill, but I don't think it is any more valid then my ability to take apart a computer, or fix something broken.
posted by Canageek at 2:50 PM on November 17, 2013 [3 favorites]

Here it is!

With bonus dog-whistle accusing anyone who follows this hobby of being autistic. I mean holy shit.
posted by aw_yiss at 2:53 PM on November 17, 2013 [4 favorites]

But can it compete with potatoes and milk!
posted by ProtoStar at 2:58 PM on November 17, 2013 [2 favorites]

Everyone naturally hates this for some reason.

While yall are calming down, I'll be ordering my first batch.
posted by colinshark at 2:59 PM on November 17, 2013

Like curuinor said, this is a solved problem. My Dad lived on nothing but Ensure for four months, and afterwards continued to drink a bottle a day for the rest of his life. (Strawberry was the best flavor, apparently.) There's a multitude of diet shakes and nutritional powders out there. Heck, there was even an FPP here on MetaFilter about a fifty year old guy who ate nothing but berries for ten years (calorie restriction with maximum nutrition), and he was much healthier than a "normal" man of the same age.
posted by Kevin Street at 3:00 PM on November 17, 2013

Mitrovarr: "hogs that you feed with slop are just as tasty as other hogs, and so on."

While it's certianly true that other organisms can turn unplatatable or undigestible (by humans) nutriants into delicious meat, eggs, milk, honey, alcohol and shellac what those organisms are eating has a pretty big impact on the final product. I worked at a restaurant that got bacon from pigs fed fish meal and the fishy taste of the bacon was distinct and sometimes unpleasant. Also the milk from goats that have been eating marijuana is undrinkable; or so I've, uh, heard.
posted by Mitheral at 3:15 PM on November 17, 2013 [2 favorites]

I feel like this article is only 50% complete. I mean, he writes a lot about the intake and how he's feeling, but says nothing about the output. I'm not saying I want this guy to write about his poop, but I want him to write about his poop.
posted by Think_Long at 3:17 PM on November 17, 2013 [2 favorites]

You body takes about a month to adapt to extreme changes in diet. That said, taking all your calories in a liquid form, no matter how perfect the macro- and micronutrient profile might be, is immensely bad for your digestive system. Your body will likely shed critical digestive enzymes and bacteria, which is a recipe for disaster in the long term. I think this would be good for replacing two meals a day, or perhaps even every meal from Mon-Fri (or whatever), but you should still be eating your roughage for all other meals.
posted by turbid dahlia at 3:18 PM on November 17, 2013

Or... just eat food. I DON'T GET IT.
posted by stoneandstar at 3:33 PM on November 17, 2013 [2 favorites]

this so stupid. Eat a damn sandwich already.
posted by shockingbluamp at 3:34 PM on November 17, 2013 [2 favorites]

If people wanna jump on the bandwagon and drink this stuff non-stop, then good luck to 'em. Me, I'm gonna invest in special Soylent-approved shaker bottles. I'm gonna monopolize that shit.

I'll be using an Apple business model, releasing a new version every six months. The Soylent-o-shake 3.0 (because who starts with version 1 any more?) will need to be filled from the bottom, and is made of paper. Version 3.5 will come out half a year later, and will still be made of paper but you can fill it from the top. Version 4.0 is the same but comes in a range of basic colours. 4.5 will be a shaker bottle made of plastic, and will be "revolutionary".
posted by turbid dahlia at 3:38 PM on November 17, 2013

Don't you even try to put unofficial Soylent (tm) soylent powder in my Soylent-o-shake 3.0. It seals itself up and you gotta take it into the shop. A Soyspert will troubleshoot your Soylent-o-shake 3.0. Do not attempt to remove the lid of the Soylent-o-shake 3.0 when it is in lockdown as this will void your gains. "I'm sorry sir but it appears you have tried to use a non-approved brand of soylent in your Soylent-o-shake 3.0. Your digestive system can no longer process real food. Enjoy your death."
posted by turbid dahlia at 3:42 PM on November 17, 2013

I'm sure something like this might eventually be adopted by the medical or bulimic/anorexic communities, but eating real food is one the fundamental pleasures of life, and it's not going to stop anytime soon.
posted by littlejohnnyjewel at 3:57 PM on November 17, 2013 [2 favorites]

This brought to mind something somewhat related, a guy who ended up fasting for a full year while under medical supervision, obtaining his year's worth of energy requirements from, apparently, 125 kilograms of fat... wonder if his intestines suffered any for the experience, as per comments above.

Per the article you linked, the gentleman defecated only every 40 to 50 days. That is one slow-moving gut. I wonder how refeeding went for him?
posted by gingerest at 3:59 PM on November 17, 2013

Seriously. "I like sex, but what if instead of sex with people, we had sex with sustainable frictionless glass tubes?"
posted by stoneandstar at 4:00 PM on November 17, 2013 [18 favorites]

If people who are really distressed by cooking and eating want a solution like this, I completely understand -- but lord in heaven I wouldn't trust this shit being it. Every time this dude comes across my screen, I am awestruck at apparently what bad marketing the companies who ALREADY MANUFACTURE PRODUCTS LIKE THIS must be doing. They completely failed to target the don't-like-dealing-with-food market, or the painfully-literal-engineering-hacker-bro market.

As people in this thread have already pointed out, these products exist already and some people have been living off them for years. You can go out and buy them.

Why this weird pantomime of nutrition science continues to develop while people totally ignore the actual nutrition products that are already on the market befuddles me. The only thing I can think of is marketing, in the commercial sense but also in the social marketing sense. This idea has not been marketed in an appealing way to people who have relative privilege and cultural capital over the sick and/or malnourished people who already rely on these products.
posted by Ouisch at 4:10 PM on November 17, 2013 [3 favorites]

I feel like this article is only 50% complete. I mean, he writes a lot about the intake and how he's feeling, but says nothing about the output. I'm not saying I want this guy to write about his poop, but I want him to write about his poop.

Ars Technica has the full story. While their test was only a week, it was focused on the user experience, and was more, um, detailed.
posted by charlie don't surf at 4:18 PM on November 17, 2013 [3 favorites]

Also why is there this weird stigma against people who don't like to cook? There is a HUGE bias against people who don't like to cook

Saying "I don't like to cook" isn't exactly like saying "I don't like to bathe" or "I prefer not to get out of bed", but...
posted by anazgnos at 4:24 PM on November 17, 2013 [2 favorites]

anazgnos: Saying "I don't like to cook" isn't exactly like saying "I don't like to bathe" or "I prefer not to get out of bed", but...

You use a computer, but I bet you didn't anneal your own silicon chips or smelt your own metal for it. Specialization is how civilization works.
posted by Mitrovarr at 4:31 PM on November 17, 2013 [11 favorites]

I don't think my failure to anneal is down to distaste for the task, but if annealing were seen as a fairly basic component of daily individual subsistence, then we might see a bias against those who just didn't "like" to do it.
posted by anazgnos at 4:43 PM on November 17, 2013

You use a computer, but I bet you didn't anneal your own silicon chips or smelt your own metal for it. Specialization is how civilization works.

The difference being that cooking requires significantly less specialization than that, eating is a part of basic self-care, and cooking has a variety of applications including "your significant other not being put in the position of doing all the cooking or getting pissed about the amount of money spent on restaurants/takeout/dumb slurries."
posted by stoneandstar at 5:11 PM on November 17, 2013 [2 favorites]

Why do these fellows in the video have so much vocal fry? I thought we were done with that as a culture.
posted by right_then at 5:11 PM on November 17, 2013

Soylent? Mmmmmmm ...
posted by Relay at 5:21 PM on November 17, 2013

To be 100% percent less flip than my last comment, this feels like a Bro Version of a SlimFast eating disorder.

I fully acknowledge that I'm bring my own eating disorder past into how I feel about Soylent. I found myself wondering how little of this I could drink and still be "okay" since 2400 calories would be too much for someone of my gender and age. I couldn't skip lunch and dinner around my workmates for too long without someone asking me how I was, but if I were to be eating Soylent...automatic pass? It would be weird but acceptable.

Which brings me to another point: I find it somehow hilarious that this is being invented and beta-tested by men in their 20s. Can't you feed most men in that age range anything and have their bodies adapt to it?
posted by right_then at 5:46 PM on November 17, 2013 [4 favorites]

stoneandstar: The difference being that cooking requires significantly less specialization than that, eating is a part of basic self-care, and cooking has a variety of applications including "your significant other not being put in the position of doing all the cooking or getting pissed about the amount of money spent on restaurants/takeout/dumb slurries."

As a counterpoint, cooking benefits enormously from economies of scale. Cooking one dish for 10 people takes way less time per person than having 10 people cook one dish for themselves. It would be pretty awesome if we could find a suitable substitute for cooking for yourself (that didn't cost a fortune and/or ruin your body). It would even be good for people's health, since you could free up time to exercise, which you really do have to do yourself.

Not that this looks like a great substitute. The best I'm hoping for is that they come up with something better for patients who can't eat solid foods.
posted by Mitrovarr at 5:50 PM on November 17, 2013

The "it tastes like semen" thing isn't exactly a selling point, but I can totally see meal replacement as a time management rather that weight management strategy taking off.

Have you considered trying Sabor de Soledad?
posted by A dead Quaker at 6:01 PM on November 17, 2013 [1 favorite]

Also, this is making me think of the "food" from The Matrix.
posted by A dead Quaker at 6:04 PM on November 17, 2013

Ah crap, it's linked right there in the article. Sorry.
posted by A dead Quaker at 6:08 PM on November 17, 2013

I had an idea for a short cyberpunky story while in crunch at work where programmers are a special caste kept in full body maintenance suits that electrically stimulate and stretch their limbs, and feed them a nutrient-stimulant-sleep-aid mix as needed to keep them locked into a maximally productive sleep-work cycle. I suppose it's even bleaker if that was a situation the programmers engineered themselves.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 6:10 PM on November 17, 2013 [4 favorites]

I suppose it's even bleaker if that was a situation the programmers engineered themselves.

It was the only way they could get VC in this tight market.
posted by zrail at 6:18 PM on November 17, 2013

stoneandstar: "Seriously. "I like sex, but what if instead of sex with people, we had sex with sustainable frictionless glass tubes?""

Not so much frictionless but I'm pretty sure much of the US$15 billion dollar a year sex toy market is driven by people who can be bothered or are unable to get partners.
posted by Mitheral at 6:36 PM on November 17, 2013

Imagine if the headline were "How One Woman Ate No Food for 30 Days". Different effect, isn't it?

Somehow that's not hacker chic, it's an eating disorder.
posted by 3491again at 6:42 PM on November 17, 2013 [2 favorites]

Now if you made something that looked and tasted like a bowl of cereal, you might get my interest.
posted by computech_apolloniajames at 6:46 PM on November 17, 2013

Mixed emotions on this one.

On one hand, these dudes remind of the friend who one night after a few drinks declared that the problem was that people didn't have equal access to information, and then proceeded to brainstorm a revolutionary new idea for the free dissemination and storage of all the world's information. "Like a real life version of the internet!"

We just let it go for a while because it was funny and her enthusiasm was so infectious, but eventually... yeah,It's called a library. People love re-inventing the wheel. I don't really see how this is different form protein shake + multivitamin. Maybe they're explaining it poorly?

On the other hand lplentyof people have issues with eating. Me included. If you don't have food issues It's easy to dismiss it in others. Personally I can understand that feeling of "there's tons of options, but nothing that works FOR ME".

It sounds like there's enough people out there for whom this seems like a good idea. If that thin veneer of hacker innovation is what gets them to where they need to be, then maybe this isn't such a terrible idea.
posted by billyfleetwood at 7:22 PM on November 17, 2013 [2 favorites]

Also why is there this weird stigma against people who don't like to cook? There is a HUGE bias against people who don't like to cook, like we aren't as good as people who can go to a store, tell between a dozen types of produce and turn them into something delicious. Sure, it is a skill, but I don't think it is any more valid then my ability to take apart a computer, or fix something broken.

I think this is where we've gone wrong in the way we view food.

You don't have to 'like to cook', you just need to figure out how to get good nutrition into your body by combining (preferably minimally-processed) food. For breakfast today, I diced up half a mango and threw a handful of walnuts and a handful of chia on it, plus a couple of spoonsful of Greek yoghurt. Dinner last night was seeded sourdough bread with smashed up avocado, cherry tomatoes, basil and olive oil.

Feeding yourself is nothing like taking apart a computer (or shouldn't be). I don't know when society turned eating into something so complicated.
posted by Salamander at 7:28 PM on November 17, 2013 [4 favorites]

Salamander: You don't have to 'like to cook', you just need to figure out how to get good nutrition into your body by combining (preferably minimally-processed) food. For breakfast today, I diced up half a mango and threw a handful of walnuts and a handful of chia on it, plus a couple of spoonsful of Greek yoghurt. Dinner last night was seeded sourdough bread with smashed up avocado, cherry tomatoes, basil and olive oil.

I realize this doesn't sound complicated to you, but this is pretty much exactly the same as when a tech person says "I don't know why people can't fix their own computers! You just google the error message and follow the instructions! Jeez!"
posted by Mitrovarr at 7:32 PM on November 17, 2013 [9 favorites]

How about this:

For breakfast today, I put oil in a pan and cracked an egg in it. I poured a little milk in. I scrambled it up with the spatula and then put some spinach on it. I then ate it, and was nourished.
posted by stoneandstar at 7:34 PM on November 17, 2013 [1 favorite]

I think the point that person was making though was that "cooking" and just eating nutritive foods are two different things. I actually think cooking is the easy part.
posted by stoneandstar at 7:37 PM on November 17, 2013

You don't have to 'like to cook', you just need to figure out how to get good nutrition into your body by combining (preferably minimally-processed) food. For breakfast today, I diced up half a mango and threw a handful of walnuts and a handful of chia on it, plus a couple of spoonsful of Greek yoghurt. Dinner last night was seeded sourdough bread with smashed up avocado, cherry tomatoes, basil and olive oil.

It really is just that simple.

(If you're educated and moneyed.)
posted by Sys Rq at 8:26 PM on November 17, 2013 [1 favorite]

"I always wanted you to admire my fasting, but you shouldn't admire it...I have to fast, I can't help it, because I could never find the food I liked!"
posted by anazgnos at 8:29 PM on November 17, 2013 [2 favorites]

Orthorexia.
posted by meehawl at 8:53 PM on November 17, 2013

You don't have to 'like to cook', you just need to figure out how to get good nutrition into your body by combining (preferably minimally-processed) food. For breakfast today, I diced up half a mango and threw a handful of walnuts and a handful of chia on it, plus a couple of spoonsful of Greek yoghurt. Dinner last night was seeded sourdough bread with smashed up avocado, cherry tomatoes, basil and olive oil.

To make your two suggested meals, I need to maintain a stock of fresh, expensive, easily spoilt and not-particularly-calorific fresh foods such as mangoes, basil and cherry tomatoes; I have to constantly replenish them; I have to work out what to do with the other half of the mango and the other 3/4 of the basil I didn't use, or wear the costs of the wastage (almost 70% of salad items ended up being thrown out by consumers); I have to hunt out expensive chia, artisanal sourdough and similar items and keep them replenished; and at the end of it all, I end up with a not particularly appealing slice of toast for dinner with minimal protein content. Moreover, if I want to eat anything else apart from your two suggested meals, I have to maintain a vast array of other food items in my pantry and keep them topped up, too.

Is it not understandable why some people might want to seek out a cheaper and less time consuming way to eat?
posted by dontjumplarry at 9:51 PM on November 17, 2013 [14 favorites]

does anyone know where i can score some plumpy'nut?
posted by bruceo at 10:10 PM on November 17, 2013 [1 favorite]

I love food and drink, have a complicated relationship with cooking, but I can't quite believe how aggressively judgmental people are being about the people who want to opt out of the whole business.

I think that Soylent is a solution in search of a problem, and that very few people are going to commit to eating it daily forever, but aiming a meal replacement at a target consumer group is pretty much normal operating behavior for the commercial marketplace. Ensure's market was deliberately expanded from being a tube-feeding product to a dietary supplement. Why not a geek-focused food product for people who don't want to deal with eating right now?

You don't have to be orthorexic to be indifferent to the pleasures of food, much less to anticipate being too busy to deal with eating for a day or two. I've known plenty of people who were indifferent to sleep, several who were indifferent to sex; there is variety in the degree to which people enjoy satisfying their basic biological drives.

On preview: looks to me like Plumpy'nut is only available in wholesale quantities, since its distribution is based on addressing the needs of starving children.
posted by gingerest at 10:20 PM on November 17, 2013

Don't lots of people in the world do this kind of thing with products that already exist? I ate a (prescription only) liquid diet of nutritionally complete shakes for three months (while medically monitored) along with many others as part of a weight loss program and did just fine. I did not lose the ability to digest normal food, I did not get sick, my energy and mood were fine and stable. Some people do it for much longer (months to years) and it seems to be a pretty sustainable way to live.

It was really nice to never worry about what I was going to eat. It did get boring, and I did miss social eating. If I could choose, I would probably do about half and half; shakes to replace on-the-go meals where I'm eating shitty food anyway and real food for times when it can be prepared properly.
posted by annekate at 10:32 PM on November 17, 2013

Oh, FFS. I was replying to the poster who compared feeding him/herself to building a computer. My point was that you don't need some kind of mad cooking skillz.

If you're 'educated and moneyed' enough to work as a computer technician or programmer or whatever, then you are educated and moneyed enough to put food in your body that is not fucking Soylent.

Is it not understandable why some people might want to seek out a cheaper and less time consuming way to eat?
posted by dontjumplarry at 9:51 PM on November 17 [+] [!]

Yes. It is understandable. It's also understandable that people might want to consume products that make fat pass straight through their body because it's cheaper and less time consuming than exercise. Quick-fixes of all types are 'understandable'. Doesn't mean they're a good idea.
posted by Salamander at 10:41 PM on November 17, 2013 [2 favorites]

To make your two suggested meals, I need to maintain a stock of fresh, expensive, easily spoilt and not-particularly-calorific fresh foods such as mangoes, basil and cherry tomatoes; I have to constantly replenish them; I have to work out what to do with the other half of the mango and the other 3/4 of the basil I didn't use, or wear the costs of the wastage (almost 70% of salad items ended up being thrown out by consumers); I have to hunt out expensive chia, artisanal sourdough and similar items and keep them replenished; and at the end of it all, I end up with a not particularly appealing slice of toast for dinner with minimal protein content. Moreover, if I want to eat anything else apart from your two suggested meals, I have to maintain a vast array of other food items in my pantry and keep them topped up, too.

Honestly, I read comments like this and...I just don't know what you're talking about.

I shop once a fortnight. (This week, I'm eating mangoes and avocadoes, because they spoil first. Next week, it'll probably be plums and bananas.) The basil is growing free in a pot in my courtyard; substitute whatever fresh herbs grow in your climate. The chia, I bought in bulk about 3 months ago and I keep in an airtight glass jar. The bread is not 'artisinal'; it's baked every day at the local bakery right next to the supermarket selling doughy white bread. I throw a loaf in the freezer and defrost slices as I need them.

You don't need to eat large amounts of protein at every meal. There are plenty of very easily-prepared protein-rich meals, as well; I just didn't happen eat one last night.

If you find simple food flavoured with olive oils, garlic and herbs 'not particularly appealing', it's probably because your palate is accustomed to an overload of salt, sugar, artificial flavourings, etc. That has nothing to do with how 'difficult' it is to source or prepare such food.

As for this: 'if I want to eat anything else apart from your two suggested meals, I have to maintain a vast array of other food items in my pantry and keep them topped up, too'. Just...what? You don't need a 'vast array' of anything in order to make more than two different meals for yourself.

I stand by my point, which is that there is way too much emphasis on cooking and calorie counting and protein tracking and whatever the fuck, these days. We, as a society (not having a go at individuals), have turned feeding ourselves into this complicated thing that it doesn't have to be, when it is actually a basic, but vital, life skill.
posted by Salamander at 11:03 PM on November 17, 2013 [1 favorite]

Salamander: You don't have to 'like to cook', you just need to figure out how to get good nutrition into your body by combining (preferably minimally-processed) food. For breakfast today, I diced up half a mango and threw a handful of walnuts and a handful of chia on it, plus a couple of spoonsful of Greek yoghurt. Dinner last night was seeded sourdough bread with smashed up avocado, cherry tomatoes, basil and olive oil.

I realize this doesn't sound complicated to you, but this is pretty much exactly the same as when a tech person says "I don't know why people can't fix their own computers! You just google the error message and follow the instructions! Jeez!"
posted by Mitrovarr at 7:32 PM on November 17 [1 favorite +] [!]

Well, if the computer problem is such that 'googling the error message and following the instructions' actually fixes the problem, then...I agree. I can 'fix my own computer', by that standard, and have done so. So...?
posted by Salamander at 11:08 PM on November 17, 2013 [1 favorite]

I can see where this is going: the next Republican president is going to propose and pass a law where food stamp funds can only be spent on Soylent.

This test is just a trial balloon; by 2016 Soylent will be on the lips of every Republican as they promote the idea that the poor deserve this stuff. Never mind the fact that it will be a huge expensive boondoggle that will increase malnutrition; as the unemployment rate rises to 50% over the next couple decades, the Silent company will make a huge profit.
posted by happyroach at 11:42 PM on November 17, 2013

Happyroach: This is a YC company, meaning that in all probability it's Democrat, Libertarian or bust. Probably Democrats who don't care about politics. The most Republican company in the Bay Area doing technology is Cisco, which is merely 75% Democrat. There totally exist startups of 20, 30 people who all voted for Obama, or one guy voted for Romney. The Bay Area doesn't lean right.
posted by curuinor at 12:00 AM on November 18, 2013

Omelette. Bean burrito. Pizza on a pita. Pasta. Peanut butter pork on rice w/side of veg. Chili. Soup. Lemon sauteed chicken with potato & veg. A rice noodle (udon! Yum!) dish. Stew.

Ten healthy meals. Repeat weekly. Tastes great. Quick. Cheap. Easy. No fancy ingredients.
posted by five fresh fish at 12:02 AM on November 18, 2013 [2 favorites]

You don't need a 'vast array' of anything in order to make more than two different meals for yourself.

Actually, to eat a healthy and balanced diet, you do need a reasonably wide array of fresh foods. Current best evidence suggests dudes need nine serves of vegetables and fruit per day. Different types, mostly, not just mangoes & avocadoes 2 weeks in a row or whatever. That's a not insignificant turnover of fresh food you need to constantly keep on hand. I do not know how you manage this by shopping once every 2 weeks. Stuff in my fridge gets manky after a week, and its nutritional content nosedives.

Look, my diet isn't all that far removed from yours (and I take back what I said about the sourdough + smashed avocado + basil, it sounds delicious). But in my experience it does come with a not inconsiderable dedication of time, not just for keeping fresh food constantly on hand but also the psychological headspace needed to plan it and the tremendously irksome duty of preparing it, too. I know it's normalised and everything and something that grownups are expected to do without question, but I don't know why we can't look for alternatives.

Nobody complains about roombas making vacuuming obsolete, but cooking is regarded as some sort of deeply important universal moral duty.
posted by dontjumplarry at 12:04 AM on November 18, 2013 [4 favorites]

Salamander: "The basil is growing free in a pot in my courtyard; substitute whatever fresh herbs grow in your climate."

It's -5 outside right now, that's nothing.
posted by Mitheral at 12:29 AM on November 18, 2013

Okay...use spices instead.
posted by Salamander at 1:15 AM on November 18, 2013 [1 favorite]

Nobody complains about roombas making vacuuming obsolete, but cooking is regarded as some sort of deeply important universal moral duty.

Well, I agree with you that it shouldn't be a 'moral duty', but not that it's on the same level of importance as vacuuming.

Sourcing and preparing food is vital to human health. Health is deeply integral to quality of life, in a way that clean floors are not. I think the point is that Soylent =/= food, as far as the effects on the body go. Whereas a clean floor is a clean floor, regardless of how it gets that way.
posted by Salamander at 1:20 AM on November 18, 2013 [1 favorite]

Sourcing and preparing food is vital to human health. Health is deeply integral to quality of life, in a way that clean floors are not.

This whole line of argumentation is deeply creepy. Substitute another basic human need (reproduction) and it starts looking like an argument for why homosexuality and masturbation are immoral.
posted by indubitable at 5:38 AM on November 18, 2013 [4 favorites]

Sourcing and preparing food is vital to human health. Health is deeply integral to quality of life, in a way that clean floors are not.

This whole line of argumentation is deeply creepy. Substitute another basic human need (reproduction) and it starts looking like an argument for why homosexuality and masturbation are immoral.
posted by indubitable at 5:38 AM on November 18 [+] [!]

Huh?? What are you even talking about?
posted by Salamander at 6:23 AM on November 18, 2013 [1 favorite]

I'm guessing that the demographic to whom Soylent Green is targeted can manage this type of chore okay too.

Absolutely. We could also manage to grow our own food, brew our own beer, repair our own vehicles, tile our own bathrooms even. I do all of these things, because I enjoy them. I don't sew my own clothes, because I don't enjoy sewing and I'm not particularly good at it.

A wonderful aspect of the society we live in is transformation of mandatory chores into optional hobbies. Food preparation hasn't made that transition yet, and I don't think this product is it, but one day it's going to happen. Some people will keep cooking like they always have, some will cook when they feel like it and eat soylent when they don't, some will gratefully abandon the whole food thing entirely and get back to doing whatever they love - and just like every technological advancement in history, the curmudgeons will shake their canes and grumble and make absolutely no difference to anything.
posted by Turbo-B at 6:30 AM on November 18, 2013 [1 favorite]

And don't get me wrong, I *love* food. I love cooking, I love eating, I absolutely adore finding some new and intriguing taste or texture I haven't experienced before. I will not stop cooking until FEMA rolls in, shuts down all grocery stores, and forces us to live on government soylent rations (thanks, Obama).

That said, this morning I wolfed some granola and yogurt for breakfast because I was running a little late. It was fine, but didn't give me any joy. I didn't prepare a lunch, so I'll probably wind up paying too much for something unhealthy. Tonight for dinner there's a half hour window between when I get home and my wife leaves - nowhere near enough time to prepare and eat a proper meal together. Even for me, food is sometimes a chore. If tech comes along that allows me to offload that chore, what on earth is wrong with that?
posted by Turbo-B at 6:43 AM on November 18, 2013

A baseline ability to cook - which necessarily requires tolerance for cooking as a thing that one has to do - is not in the same category as "a baseline ability to bathe oneself." But, it certainly does make life a hell of a lot easier. Cooking is obviously much more difficult when poverty wracks your life. That said, knowing how to cook will always make a tight budget easier.

It's not a personal judgment of anyone to say that being able to run your own personal kitchen will generally make life easier than being unable to do so. It's just a statement of fact. When factors beyond your control make even a baseline level of cooking impossible, then it is what it is, but it doesn't change the fact that knowing how to cook is a positive.

Cooking becomes many more times difficult when you're working (or otherwise occupied) full-time, and you're either cooking for one, or you're cooking for dependents who can't help you out. It takes time, energy, and resources to assemble and prepare ingredients for even a very easy recipe. If you don't enjoy cooking as a thing unto itself, then it's very difficult to persuade somebody who'd rather microwave a burrito or drink a taste-neutral slurry. I even like cooking, but it's depressing to prepare a salad for one. I'd just as soon eat rice and beans and call it a day.

Either way, I can see the appeal of something like Soylent, although I wouldn't be interested in it. It just seems like turning Ensure into a lifestyle, except Ensure already exists, and it shouldn't be your lifestyle. So, it's nothing, basically, except a bunch of dudes are making a big deal out of it.

...

When it comes to the idea of cooking being complicated or time-consuming, I think we're looking down the wrong end of the telescope. Food became simpler, but we became more complicated. Food acquisition, preparation, etc. has always been a gigantic part of human existence. Look at various peoples' lifestyles, rituals, traditions, etc. surrounding food and eating. The idea that food could be an annoying afterthought is a problem that only came into being when society took that activity away from the center. People developed more obligations. Other traditions supplanted traditions based around preparing and consuming food. People work all day, or they would rather perform leisure activities than spend their whole afternoon centering around food preparation and consumption, or they would rather order a pizza than spend all day making another kind of dish. It's many times easier to grab a microwave burrito than it is to make something fresh. It's human nature to oftentimes prefer the burrito.
posted by Sticherbeast at 6:58 AM on November 18, 2013 [1 favorite]

The basil is growing free in a pot in my courtyard; substitute whatever fresh herbs grow in your climate apartment
posted by Sys Rq at 7:52 AM on November 18, 2013

To someone who doesn't enjoy it, it is an enormous task. We prepare and eat 3 meals every day for our entire lives, not to mention the extra related chores - dishwashing, kitchen cleaning, grocery shopping, meal planning. We spend energy on cooking appliances, and dedicate large amounts of living space to rooms dedicated to food. This is all normal and doable, but it consumes a huge amount of time, money, and effort. We just don't notice because it's normal.

It's not unlike sleep, really. Sleep is normal, universal, necessary for health, and feels great, but if somebody comes up with a sleep replacement pill with no negative consequences, would I still sleep 8 hours every single night? Hell no.
posted by Turbo-B at 7:54 AM on November 18, 2013 [3 favorites]

Why are there not affordable, healthy, pre-made meals I can buy?

Pick any two. Or if you're not satisfied with that answer, why do you expect other people to do the work of feeding you?
posted by disconnect at 8:28 AM on November 18, 2013

I hear that after about 4 weeks without food you no longer have hunger pains. That's pretty much when the entire gastrointestinal system shuts down almost completely, and stops releasing any of the hormones that trigger hunger in the brain. By that time, the only way to get nutrients into the system is through intravenous feeding, and then several weeks of slowing attempting to kick-start the intestines to start processing food again.

I did something rather similar to "soylent" for a few months a few years ago. This did not happen. My intestines did not break or need an IV "kick-start".
posted by Tanizaki at 8:29 AM on November 18, 2013 [2 favorites]

The Oatmeal - "Why I Don't Cook At Home"
posted by Uther Bentrazor at 8:33 AM on November 18, 2013

For some people, cooking really does seem like an insurmountable task. Those people may not value the process and/or results in the same way others do, or just find all the component parts of the process either burdensome or distasteful. I can totally understand that even though I like to cook and I enjoy eating nourishing food.

Cooking and feeding yourself are skills. Some people learn them early, or adapt easily to learning them later in life, and some people don't. This doesn't make some people Wrong About Cooking and other people Right, and the questions about "Why don't you just...?" do come off with an air of moral self-righteousness, even if you don't mean that.

I work with people whom I have to often sit down with and make a basic, standing-order grocery list of 10-20 items that will provide them with 5 ridiculously easy meals so they don't starve to death. The print out the list and when they are panicking, they just go to the store and buy those things. They are so nervous and upset about doing this that it takes sitting with a person to reassure them that their food choices (their 5 easy meals) are okay, that they really can start where they are at, rather than feeling like a failure for not cooking complicated meals from only fresh farmer's market ingredients.

This tendency to let perfect stand in the way of good enough, or even of survival, is really prominent in people's thinking about food and cooking. A lot of people just say "fuck it" and get takeout every day. People are paralyzed, in a sense, by the intimidation and fear. Other people talking about cooking like it's no big thing, and you're weird and pathetic to make it sound like a big thing (it CAN be a very big thing, especially if you were never taught by your parents! Or just don't have the personality that loves food and cooking!) only makes that pressure worse, I suspect.
posted by Ouisch at 8:41 AM on November 18, 2013 [3 favorites]

This bit from the article struck me:

My first meal back was, as I’d been lusting over, some deliciously nasty fried chicken. Everyone told me not to go so heavy right off the bat—try yogurt first, they said, ease back into it—but no way. I wanted the richest, Soylent-crushingest food possible. So I bit in.

I was euphoric. I felt the endorphins rushing through my body, the gob of chicken skin wandering down my esophagus, the juices staining my chin. Rob, who'd joined us, led a conversation about food technology; the chicken was sublime. Before long, I might as well have been stoned. For a half an hour, I sat there, overwhelmed, unaware of any foodless world outside my brain.

See, I would attribute that endorphin rush to his biochemistry having been totally starved of real food before, and now that he was eating real food he finally felt GOOD again for the first time in a month.

And me, I'd figure that if the biochemical rush from eating real food again after having subsisted on a meal replacement was THAT strong, then maybe it was a sign that real food is better for me.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:33 AM on November 18, 2013 [1 favorite]

But but things that give you pleasure and remind you that you are, in fact, an animal with a body that has biological needs and desires are inherently bad and wrong!

/hamburger

{how ironic}
posted by Ouisch at 11:27 AM on November 18, 2013

And me, I'd figure that if the biochemical rush from eating real food again after having subsisted on a meal replacement was THAT strong, then maybe it was a sign that real food is better for me.

I bet that first hit of cocaine after a month of sobriety feels great too. My body tends to be very efficient at making food really pleasurable in the way he describes. It's why I've always struggled with my weight and maintaining healthy eating habits. In my lifetime, I've quit drinking/drugs/smoking, and each was massively easier than giving up bread.

I think for myself the appeal of something like this is finding some way out of the food craving and reward loop.
posted by billyfleetwood at 11:33 AM on November 18, 2013 [2 favorites]

I bet that first hit of cocaine after a month of sobriety feels great too. My body tends to be very efficient at making food really pleasurable in the way he describes. It's why I've always struggled with my weight and maintaining healthy eating habits.

...I'd wager that there's a difference between "the pleasure of a stimulant" and "the pleasure from finally having a bodily need satisfied".

If you'd rather, pretend I'm talking about something like the relief of finally getting to take a dump after you've been constipated for a few days.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:46 AM on November 18, 2013

...I'd wager that there's a difference between "the pleasure of a stimulant" and "the pleasure from finally having a bodily need satisfied".

But I guess the question is how you would know the difference in the moment. The problem is that the anecdote effectively (and efficiently) illustrates both the "he should be eating real food" argument, and in this case, because it was fried chicken, the "our bodies lie to us about what is good and therefore it's healthier/better to severely limit what we eat" argument. The latter is not exactly the argument behind Soylent, but bears some similarities with the claims of the importance of nutritional completeness. Not that anything in his experiment was scientific, but I would certainly say that his closing anecdote is not a good one from which to draw conclusions.
posted by OmieWise at 11:53 AM on November 18, 2013 [1 favorite]

The problem is that the anecdote effectively (and efficiently) illustrates both the "he should be eating real food" argument, and in this case, because it was fried chicken, the "our bodies lie to us about what is good and therefore it's healthier/better to severely limit what we eat" argument.

Okay, that's a fair point. I suppose I was more focused on the fact that he was eating food in general as opposed to the exact kind of food he was eating. I've had similar overall senses of well-being - albeit to a lesser extent - if I've been through a few weeks of half-assing meals by just having a couple pieces of bread or some cheetos for dinner or something, and then finally have the time to make myself a proper square meal. It doesn't so much matter what I eat - a huge salad, steak and some green beans, sausage and peppers, gumbo - all that matters is my body definitely gets a feeling of "oh my god yes actual food instead of a snickers bar thank you".
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:59 AM on November 18, 2013

Well, our bodies do indeed need some fats and salt. That's why they taste so bloody good to us - partly because of genetic evolutionary conditioning. But I grant you that you can also get the necessary fats and salts from something a bit healthier.

Although, that does raise the possibility that he subconsciously was choosing something that had the greatest quantity of fats and salts possible because that is how starved his system was for precisely that.

Which leads to an interesting thing I noticed - was there any kind of nutritional analysis done on him after this experiment to see whether he really was as nourished on soylent as he would have been on food? Kind of like what Morgan Spurlock did in Supersize Me?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:17 PM on November 18, 2013

We already learned how to hack food when we learned how to raise multiple generations of food animals and farm crops. Everything else is refinement in the way we leverage those hacks.
posted by davejay at 12:19 PM on November 18, 2013 [1 favorite]

Couple thoughts -- not wanting to spend much time eating/cooking is not the same as being anti-social as at least one comment was arguing. I like socializing --- I just don't want to do it while eating. I avoid eating with other people as much as possible, but I still spend a lot of time socializing. I just find it weird/strange to combine that with eating (of course, in practice I can't always avoid it, so its not like I never do).

Cooking --- meh. Not interesting. Not terribly hard, sure, at least for basic stuff, but still a waste of time and energy. Of course, I can afford delivery / takeout or premade stuff so that makes this a more reasonable option. I'd much rather pay someone else to do my cooking for me.

Soylent --- this particular incarnation doesn't sound very good. But if there was a Space Age Magic Food Pill I would take that for most of my meals. Food can be good sometimes, but often its more of a hassle / waste of time and so I'd rather reserve it for special occasions (like I do with, say, alcohol).
posted by wildcrdj at 1:29 PM on November 18, 2013 [1 favorite]

Nobody complains about roombas making vacuuming obsolete, but cooking is regarded as some sort of deeply important universal moral duty.

Because using a roomba instead of driving your own vacuum doesn't mean you're notably increasing your intake of salt & crap. It does mean you spent more, but at least you only spent more once as opposed to notably more on every single meal.

Outsourcing food isn't some moral failing, it's just that it's massively challenging to do it without eating a lot of high-calorie low-vitamin junk. "Oh it takes so much time to cook" almost certainly means drive-through or pizza or that someone is seriously deluding themselves about how long it takes to go to a restaurant, be seated, be served, and go home.

I have never known a person who told me they didn't cook who also ate remotely healthy. And hey, it's their body. They can do what they want. Nobody who likes picking his liver as much as I do should look down on other people's trade-offs. But don't tell me it's because the act of cooking is so hard or that the end result is identical. It's not and it almost never is. As expensive as keeping a kitchen stocked can be, getting equally quality ingredients out somewhere else is even more expensive.
posted by phearlez at 2:04 PM on November 18, 2013 [1 favorite]

Outsourcing food isn't some moral failing, it's just that it's massively challenging to do it without eating a lot of high-calorie low-vitamin junk.

I think that's kind of the appeal of this thing to the cooking-averse, then. Instead of something like pizza pockets and Kraft dinner that you know is designed to hit you right in the food cravings, it's a bland mush, and they say they're focusing on nutrition.


To me, the equivalent of a roomba would be more like my bread-maker. I just put ingredients in, push a button, and 3 hours later I have fresh bread. I don't think anyone's going to complain that I didn't kneed it by hand. And if I could get some sort of robot chef that could make me all sorts of meals, I would really love that.

And I have oatmeal for breakfast almost every day, for a lot of the same reasons. It's cheap, it's easy to make, and one bag lasts for weeks. But everyone has their limits, and my limit is I eat the 5 minute oatmeal. There's 1 minute oatmeal but the taste and texture is completely bland, and if you are willing to put up with that to save 4 minutes, I don't understand. I see that less like a roomba and more like those people who cover their furniture in plastic so it stays clean. Sure, you've got clean furniture that you can never touch.
posted by RobotHero at 4:12 PM on November 18, 2013

I used to be too busy to cook and bought a lot of takeout and pre-made meals. Now that I can cook I am shocked and dismayed at the amount of money I've wasted--but money is a "very" finite resource for me. So if you have the money, it's fine, but if you're struggling or wish you had a little more to throw into your retirement fund or spend on a hobby, I recommend cooking.

I make my own pickles now-- pickled jalapenos, turnips, cucumbers, whatever. It takes about 10-15 minutes and I do it once every few weeks. It costs whatever the vegetable costs (chump change) plus a couple cents on top for garlic and vinegar (or whatever else I decide to throw in). I re-use the same jars so it's no big thing. When I go to the store and see a jar of pickles that doesn't even taste as good (with a bunch of added sugar &c.) retailing for like $3, I want to cry. Sure I'll buy it if I have to, but godddd what a waste. And it's even moreso for so many other pre-made foods. And the rub is that it's SO EASY-- boil some water and salt, add vinegar and whatever (usually just garlic, maybe spices), pour over veggies in jar. Refrigerate.

I used to be very poor and worked at a variety of restaurants/coffee shops/banks whatever doing jobs where I was on my feet and often working very hard. In those days, I didn't have much money, but I didn't have the energy or time to cook a lot. I did what I could to save money. Now I work at a desk all day so I find I have ample energy and time to cook when I get home. Plus, I do enjoy it, it's very sensuous and I love food.

I think vaccuming is a bad analogy. Maybe like, someone who hates laundry so they always take it to the dry cleaners, but the dry cleaner dries it on high heat so it ends up getting kind of shrunken and a bit mangy and doesn't last as long but it's worth the money for the time-savings and laundry-aversion. Because if you don't like cooking you can pay for people to do it for you, but it definitely means a decline in quality and savings. Also a roomba is a one-time investment, whereas paying every week for food/laundry/whatever at a mark-up continues indefinitely.
posted by stoneandstar at 4:48 PM on November 18, 2013

getting equally quality ingredients out somewhere else is even more expensive.

Usually true, yeah, but if you are willing/able to spend more its totally possible to eat healthy without any cooking. Theres nothing inherently different about where the cooking happens, its just that cheap prepared food (whether prepared in a restaurant, grocery store, whatever) uses cheap ingredients. And of course you're paying for labor, so it _should_ often cost a little-to-a-lot more than doing it yourself.

But, of course, you're also not doing that labor yourself, so its a pretty straightforward swap of time for money, the calculus of which is different for each person.
posted by wildcrdj at 6:31 PM on November 18, 2013

Sorry to get back to things so late:

For breakfast today, I diced up half a mango and threw a handful of walnuts and a handful of chia on it, plus a couple of spoonsful of Greek yoghurt. Dinner last night was seeded sourdough bread with smashed up avocado, cherry tomatoes, basil and olive oil. -- Salamander

So the prep time on each of those is 15-30 minutes, which isn't bad. However most cooked recipes are over an hour long. Sure, I loved scalloped potatoes, but as I don't own a food processor, that means over an hour of chopping potatos; longer if I peel them. If I'm eating alone (As I do 5 dinners a week most of the time) then I don't want to put that effort into cooking, make twice that many dishes and then get 10 minutes of pleasure from eating.

Compare the time to my meals: Today's breakfast: Ok, bad example as I had a bit of left over homemade banada bread my friend gave me and a banana.
Lunch: PB&J sandwhich, made at my desk. White bread as the store was out of the type of whole wheat I like.
Dinner tonight is planned to be a pre-seasoned chicken breast, grilled on a cheap George Foremen grill. I'll probably have a side of raw carrots to get some veggies in me.

So the total prep time for the meals is about the same as each one of your meals, and a tenth of any actual complex food.

I spend much of my day working in a chemistry lab; the last thing I want to do when I get home is spend more time mixing and heating things.

------
Re; the thousand people talking about the 'solved' problem: Yes, there are a lot of products that make the same claims.

"From the consumer standpoint, those things aren't designed to be sustainable or really even that healthy," Rhinehart said, referring to things like Carnation Instant Breakfast and Slim Fast and other common off-the-shelf meal replacement shake-style drinks. "They're certainly not something you'd want to run your body off of—a lot of fructose, simple sugars, and by calorie it's really expensive. We've reached a point of calories-per-dollar and sustainability and nutrition where we're really trying to compete with groceries."

On the medical side, products like Jevity and Nestlé's entire line of liquid tube feeding products are in a separate league from Soylent. "We're not making any medical claims, other than it being safe for consumption," clarified Rhinehart. Additionally, from a perspective of calories per dollar, both the consumer and the medical liquid nutrition products are outside of what Rhinehart wants to target for Soylent. Rhinehart wants Soylent "to compete with rice and beans," he explained. "The routine meals that a lot of people are eating—that's what we want to compete with, especially if we can displace fast food."

That is the thing: I don't really trust most off the shelf ones, as I know they are loaded with sugar to make them taste better. I'd love it if there was a body that released studies on each one, in detail so I could find if any of them are healthy.

There isn't any judgment for people using prebuilt computers, and if you just want a cheap desktop then you can probably get a Dell for less then building it your self. Why are meals, which so long as I'm getting all my vitamins and such don't matter much on a day to day basis, matter more then the computer I use for all my work and papers?

Also: I don't see why premade meals HAVE to be so expensive and/or bad: It seems like it should be a lot cheaper to grind a whole bunch of veggies into paste, dehydrate them, and tin them near where they are grown then to ship the whole veggie.
posted by Canageek at 3:24 PM on November 20, 2013