[ed. From the four-part series Nothing but the Soylent.]
Soylent creator Rob Rhinehart was kind enough to sit down and talk with me for a bit on the Ars Soylent experience. He answered some of the questions that came up in the comments over the past several days.
The one I most wanted him to elaborate on was on the why of it all. The comments on the past pieces in this series have been brimming with folks who can't (or won't, perhaps) see the point of Soylent. Whether it's because they love cooking too much or they can't understand why someone would drink a nutrient slurry in place of food, some people were not at all on board.
"Soylent is supposed to be like an ultimate staple meal," began Rhinehart. "When you think about food, a lot of people immediately jump to the best aspects, which are great—eating for recreation, eating with people. This is an important part of life and food is intimately tied with culture and tradition."
But not every meal is artisanal, fresh, and healthy; Soylent aims to fill in those gaps like a utility. "People will talk about beer and wine and gourmet coffee, but most of the time they're drinking water. By focusing on Soylent as a staple, fool-proof meal, this could do a lot more for health than some new recipe based on lettuce or something."
The name
The name itself, "Soylent," has drawn fire—but that's part of the reason why Rhinehart chose the name in the first place. "For food, a lot of people tend to react quickly and not give it a lot of analysis. Piquing curiosity is very important here, and giving the product some kind of flashy marketing name would kind of—people would miss it quickly. But the name 'Soylent' is really good for encouraging further discussion and thought. Clearly, I'm wanting someone to investigate it a little deeper if I'm calling it 'Soylent.' It doesn't seem very marketable!" The name serves several purposes—it catches the interest of geeks as almost an inside joke ("IT'S MADE OF PEOPLE!"), and it's remarkably sticky.
Hasn't this been done before?
This, though, leads into another topic that readers commented repeatedly on: Soylent's originality, or its perceived lack of. Meal replacement products aren't anything terribly new, and there are products both in the consumer space and also in the medical and healthcare space that can be substituted in for solid food. Soylent is billing itself as a revolutionary product. Is it?
"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."
This, though, leads into another topic that readers commented repeatedly on: Soylent's originality, or its perceived lack of. Meal replacement products aren't anything terribly new, and there are products both in the consumer space and also in the medical and healthcare space that can be substituted in for solid food. Soylent is billing itself as a revolutionary product. Is it?
"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."
by Lee Hutchinson, ARS Technica | Read more:
Image: Lee Hutchinson
