Last week, New England faced Winter Storm Juno, which dumped enough snow on Brown’s campus to cancel classes and close all nonessential University buildings. Much to the dismay of Pembroke students, dining operations were centralized to the Sharpe Refectory.
Anyone who went to the Thayer Street CVS to stock up on supplies will remember empty shelves and a line snaking around the entire store. With warnings of potential power outages, many including me were purchasing candles and flashlights.
One thing I wasn’t concerned about was food, of which I had plenty left in my closet — enough to last for 8 weeks and two days, to be exact. Just a week prior, one month’s shipment of Soylent version 1.3 had arrived on my porch in a single large box. The box held four smaller boxes, each containing seven vacuum-sealed bags filled with one day’s worth of nutrient-rich goodness.
The name Soylent might remind some older readers of “Soylent Green,” the 1973 Charlton Heston film set in a dystopian future that would rival an environmentalist’s worst nightmare. In the film, humanity subsists largely upon soylent green, a processed nutritional wafer that turns out to be made from human corpses.
The Soylent to which I’m referring is not a wafer but a powder. It’s also — probably — not made from people. In early 2013, Georgia Institute of Technology graduate Robert Rhinehart — then a software engineer who was just a few years older than I am — began to tackle a problem with which any micro-optimizing, life hacking aficionado will be familiar.
The problem is food — it’s expensive, time-consuming and often extremely labor-intensive. Rhinehart planned to solve all of these issues with this product — a bag of blended nutritionally complete vitamins, minerals and macromolecules that the user need only add water to and consume.
In August 2013, I caught wind of Rhinehart’s crowdfunding project and shortly thereafter became an initial backer. Unfortunately, due to the numerous legal and logistical hurdles, I received my first shipment of Soylent 1.0 nearly a year later in September 2014.
It’s hard to describe the taste of Soylent beyond commenting on the slight hint of creamy vanilla. In his appearance on the Colbert Report last summer, Rhinehart said the taste was designed to be “minimal” and “nonspecific” so as not to tire the user with extended use. Despite initially expressing skepticism, Colbert found it “delicious.”
While its official beta test phase is complete, Soylent will be a work in progress for the foreseeable future. With each update, the packaging becomes slicker and the formula more refined. We’re nowhere near an exhaustive understanding of human nutrition, and I personally wouldn’t rely on Soylent exclusively for extended periods of time — despite the anecdotal success of many bloggers.
With provision for your entire daily recommended value of every nutrient, it’s certainly superior to the diet of most Brown students. And at only $3 for each surprisingly satisfying vegan-friendly meal, Soylent is easy on the wallet as well as the environment. Perhaps most importantly, the high fiber content ensures your stools remain solid.
But since its inception, significant controversy has surrounded Soylent. Stella Metsovas, a popular nutritionist and advocate of her own paleo-mediterranean diet, told Business Insider in March 2013 that “our culture has become so fixated on all things food; it’s no surprise (Rhinehart) is generating so much response. … I probably wouldn’t respond to any of this rubbish. However, I see a red flag for a potential eating disorder.”
A similarly contemptuous pediatrician opined in the Daily Beast last May, “For all you people who have something better to do than eating, you probably won’t kill yourself living off of Soylent. … But it’s no more the end of food than Nutren was. … Which is good, because food is delicious.”
I find it telling how openly judgmental of Soylent users these writers and many other reviewers are. The criticisms of Soylent that I’ve read frequently resort to vitriolic ad hominem attacks and rarely cite any specific nutritional concerns beyond those solved in early beta testing. In many cases, even anti-vaxxers — whose health claims have been conclusively falsified — garner more respect.
Society has more patience for the clueless parent of an endangered child than for individuals who take such an unconventionally aggressive stance on self-improvement. We prefer superstition to ambition — ignorance of empirical science to arrogance of flaunting cultural norms. It’s uncool to say one’s too good for something as ubiquitously loved as food.
But such defensive hostility is misinformed. Soylent does not preclude one from eating normal food — I did in fact venture to the Ratty in search of free food despite Juno’s wrath. Rather, it provides the option of saving both time and money when — and only when — one wishes to.
The fact that many enjoy eating, socializing while eating and even preparing and cooking to eat is not an argument against the utility of Soylent. The product is not designed to supplant any of your favorite foods, friends or activities. It is designed to improve your day-to-day existence. As Rhinehart explained to Colbert, “people can fit it in their lifestyle however they see fit.” And so you should. Unless you’re a wealthy food snob who’s never busy, Soylent can probably benefit you in some way.
Yet ironically, it seems to me that many — including most Brown students to whom I’ve spoken — feel too good for Soylent. They enjoy complaining about unhealthful diets and not having enough money and leisure time, yet they offhandedly dismiss a simple solution to all of these problems. It’s too easy to default into habit. If your palate is truly so refined that these problems are not worth solving, then rejection of Soylent will be a matter of intellectual reflection, not visceral distaste. You can never be too proactive in improving the quality of your life.
Andrew Powers ’15 can be reached at andrew_powers@brown.edu.
