Has Food Become Obsolete? — We try Soylent for a week

World Today

Think of all the time and money we spend buying food, cooking food, going to restaurants, and of course eating. What if that vanished from our lives and we had all that time and energy and at least some of the money back?

READ MORE ABOUT JIM SPELLMAN’S SOYLENT EXPERIMENT

That is the idea behind Soylent. It’s a whole meal replacement drink people can mix up from a powder that, according to the manufacturer, gives the user “all the essential nutrients required to fuel the human body.”

Sounds kooky, but Soylent has developed a serious following since a small group of entrepreneurs in California dreamed it up in 2013. The company has so far sold about 6.5 million servings of Soylent and attracted about $25 million in venture capital.

The demand is so high that I was on a waiting list for about year before I could buy a week’s supply of the drink. I paid $70 for seven 460 gram (16.2 ounches) pouches of Soylent. The order came with a pitcher and metal scoop for preparing the mixture.

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I have decided to drink just Soylent for the rest of the work week. As the week goes on I’ll post updates on how my little experiment is going plus more on the nutritional issues around Soylent, where the company may be heading and whether I can survive without bacon.

My one cheat will be coffee with cream, because I don’t want to go crazy.

I mixed up my first batch for lunch today. It doesn’t really taste like anything. Vaguely like flour. I’m already eyeing my co-worker’s roast beef sandwich. This could be a long week.

Send me any questions at Jim.Spellman@cgtnamerica.com and I’ll try to answer them.

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