Talk about engineered food: Soylent and its many spinoffs, lab-grown meat, untraditional nutrition of all kinds!
An intelligent, common-sense essay on Soylent
Our Food Critic Subsisted Mainly on Soylent for a Month, and He'd Probably Do It Again
For a month, I mostly subsisted on it. For 30 days in September and early October, the period where we do the bulk of our Restaurant Guide magazine, I consumed Soylent for my meal unless I was reviewing a restaurant.
Martin Cizmar is the food critic for the Portland, OR paper Willamette Week. Recently he spent a month on more than 50% Soylent:
For 30 days in September and early October, the period where we do the bulk of our Restaurant Guide magazine, I consumed Soylent for my meal unless I was reviewing a restaurant. Because I do not fully trust Soylent (more on that in a second), I supplemented it with fish oil and one pint of phytochemical-rich blueberries.
In the linked essay he explains he did it because "I wanted to explore my relationship with food". He quotes with approval some of Rob Rinehart's views on food and notes,
I'm a food critic in a city that's obsessed with organic, natural farm-to-table food, but I'm also deeply sympathetic to Rhinehart's vision, especially when it comes to solving our society's chronic scarcity.
If you use, or are interested in, meal replacements, the whole essay is well worth your time to read it.




With my current job (almost said new, but I've been there since February) over the summer, I found myself not eating breakfast since getting out of the house at 530am was tough enough without the added hassle of finding something to eat. I suffered for it; lost weight, lost energy, lost sharpness.
When I first discovered Soylent, it was for a project back in college. It was a brand new company and I "Swore that I'd never touch anything called 'Soylent'. What a terrible name!" How ignorant I was. After coming to grips that I either need to get up at 430am and make breakfast or find something faster, I decided to give it a try. It has absolutly revolutionized my early mornings and let me focus more on work than on feeling deenergized all day. And, as mentioned in the article, I do really appreciate the mornings I get to make breakfast more now too. It becomes a labor of love, and not a exercise in patience. I really love that it is sustainable, embraces technological advancements, and is incredibly easy to prepare.