Soylent meal replacement test day four: “We” not “me”

World Today

It’s my fourth day of eating nothing but the meal replacement drink Soylent. So far I haven’t been hungry and I’ve had plenty of energy, but as I’ve mentioned it’s pretty boring. So, I was beyond excited to experiment with my morning serving of Soylent.

The owner’s manual suggests, “Other ways to enjoy Soylent”.

READ MORE ABOUT JIM SPELLMAN’S SOYLENT EXPERIMENT

I decided to add some fruit to my morning meal along with a dash of cinnamon, which a reader recommended. It really tasted much better this way, which I suppose is no surprise. If I decide to use Soylent as a regular part of my diet, I think jazzing it up from time to time would make it a lot easier.

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I didn’t bring the berry mix with me to work but I’m looking forward to adding it again to my post-work meal.

A Harvard grad student emailed me and asked me to discuss the potential environmental benefits of Soylent. There really is more to the whole idea of Soylent than just our personal diets. Think of it as more about the “we” than the “me”.

On his thought provoking blog Mostly Harmless, Soylent creator Rob Rhinehart writes about his vision for the potential environmental benefits of Soylent.

“The future of food is not the return to an agrarian society but the transcendence of it,” he writes.

“Why are we putting up with the waste and violence of agriculture? Agriculture butchers billions of animals, covers over a third of the earth’s habitable land and uses 80% of our water supply. Every year. One day the vast swaths of polluted land will be free,” Rhinehart writes.

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There are a lot of steps along the way before Rinehart’s vision becomes reality and the biggest hurdle may be Soylent itself. It meets our human needs — but maybe not our human wants.

I’m not sure if we will all drink Soylent in the future, but here is a pic of Rinehart in a jumpsuit and if there is one thing we can all agree on, it is that we should all wear jumpsuits in the future.

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Email me at Jim.Spellman@cgtnamerica.com if you have any questions or comments.