Soylent Drink: Timmay stops eating

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This is the mostest retardest idea evah:


The Post-Food Man: Drink Soylent, and You May Never Have to Eat Again
Rob Rhinehart got  everyone's attention a couple weeks ago, when he began publishing the  results of his 30-day effort to stop eating food and instead ingest a shake  consisting of "vitamins, minerals, and macro-nutrients." Now the blogs love him,  nutritionists have weighed in, and he's on the front page of Reddit with  plans to launch a Kickstarter  project. VICE UK writer Monica Heisey spoke with Rinehart last week,  and her  interview, reprinted below, will help you get to know the man who has  inadvertently started a crusade to forever change the way humans nourish  themselves.
   You know what's an irreversible waste of time, money and effort? Eating food  you take pleasure in eating. I mean, wouldn't you rather just ingest a tasteless  form of sustenance for the rest of your life and never have to go through that  tedious rigmarole of opening and eating a pre-made sandwich or enjoying a huge  hungover fry-up ever again? Rob Rhinehart – a 24-year-old software engineer from  Atlanta and, presumably, an impossibly busy man – thinks so.

   Rob found himself resenting the inordinate amount time it takes to fry an  egg in the morning and decided something had to be done. Simplifying food as  "nutrients required by the body to function" (which sounds totally bulimic, I  know, but I promise it's not), Rob has come up with an odourless, beige cocktail  that he calls Soylent.

   I wasn't sure if he was trolling at first, because "soylent" is the name of  a wafer made out of human flesh and fed to the overpopulated masses in the  seminal 1973 sci-fi film Soylent Green, but then I read the extensive post on Rob's blog about how he came to make the  stuff and started to believe him. Soylent contains all of the nutritive  components of a balanced diet, but with just a third of the calories and none of  the toxins or cancer-causing stuff you'd usually find waiting to kill you in  your lunch. Despite the fact it looks a bit like vomit, Soylent supposedly has  the potential to change the entire world's relationship with food, so I spoke to  Rob to find out how.


VICE: Hi Rob. Why did you decide to boycott  eating?
Rob Rhinehart: It was a combination of  things. I was home for Christmas and saw an elderly family friend get admitted  to the hospital after losing an unhealthy amount of weight. He was losing  strength in one of his arms and found it very difficult to cook. I started  wondering why something as simple and important as food was still so  inefficient, given how streamlined and optimized other modern things are. I also  had an incentive to live as cheaply as possible, and I yearned for the  productivity benefit of being healthy. I'd been reading a lot of books on  biology and I started to think that it's probably all the same to our cells  whether it gets nutrients from a powder or a carrot.

What was the next step?
   Hacking the body is high risk,  high reward. I read a textbook on physiological chemistry and took to the  internet to see if I could find every known essential nutrient. My kitchen soon  looked like a chemistry lab and I had every unknown substance in a glass in  front of me. I was a little worried it was going to kill me, but decided it was  for science and quickly downed the whole thing. To my surprise, it was quite  tasty and I felt very energetic. For 30 days I avoided food entirely and I  monitored the contents of my blood and physical performance. Mental performance  is harder to quantify, but I feel much sharper.

So what's in Soylent, exactly?
   Everything the body needs  – that we know of, anyway – vitamins, minerals and macronutrients like essential  amino acids, carbohydrates and fat. For the fat, I just use olive oil and add  fish oil. The carbs are an oligosaccharide, which is like sugar, but the  molecules are longer, meaning it takes longer to metabolize and gives you a  steady flow of energy for a longer period of time, rather than a sugar rush from  something like fructose or table sugar. I also add some non-essentials like  antioxidants and probiotics and lately have been experimenting with nootropics.

And that tastes as good as a burger?
   It tastes very  good. I haven't got tired of the taste in six weeks. It's a very "complete"  sensation, more sweet than anything. Eating to me is a leisure activity, like  going to the movies, but I don't want to go to the movies three times a day.

What are some of the benefits to the food-free lifestyle? Any  drawbacks?
   Not having to worry about food is fantastic. No  groceries, dishes, deciding what to eat, no endless conversations weighing the  relative merits of gluten-free, keto, paleo or vegan. Power and water bills are  lower. I save hours a day and hundreds of dollars a month. I feel liberated from  a crushing amount of repetitive drudgery. Soylent might also be good for  people having trouble managing their weight. I find it very easy to lose and  gain precise amounts of weight by varying the proportions in my drink.
   There are drawbacks: It doesn't keep long after mixing with water, so I  still have to make it every day. If I make a mistake with the amount of an  ingredient it can make me sick, but that hasn't happened in a while. Also, some  people really enjoy food a lot more than I do, so they may not like the  idea.


How could Soylent affect the world's eating habits?
   Consumer behavior has a lot to do with cost and convenience. There are plenty  of ways to be healthy, but Americans are more likely to be overweight simply  because the food that's cheap and convenient is unhealthy. I think it's possible  to use technology to make healthy food very cheap and easy, but we'll have to  give up many traditional foodstuffs like fresh fruits and veggies, which are  incompatible with food processing and scale.

That sounds ominous.
   I don't think we need fruits and  veggies, though – we need vitamins and minerals. We need carbs, not bread. Amino  acids, not milk. It's still fine to eat these whenever you want, but not  everyone can afford them or has the desire to eat them. Food should be optimized  and personalized. If Soylent was as cheap and easy to obtain as a cup of coffee,  I think people would be much healthier and healthcare costs would be lower. And  I think this is entirely possible.

And it sounds like it could potentially help with world  hunger.
   Yeah, I'm very optimistic at the prospect of helping  developing nations. Soylent can largely be produced from the products of local  agriculture, and at scale is plenty cheap to nourish even the most impoverished  individuals. People may giggle when I say I poop a lot less, but this would be a  huge deal in the developing world, where inadequate sanitation is a prevalent  source of disease. Also, agriculture has a huge impact on the environment and  this diet vastly reduces one's use of it.

Have you recieved much criticism since posting about your experiment on  your blog?
   At this point I think skepticism is completely  reasonable. There isn't a lot of data right now, but I hope to change that.  Interestingly, a lot of academics, nutritionists, MDs and biologists have  contacted me and been very optimistic – it's the organic foodies who call me  nasty things. Good skepticism is things like, "You're not getting any Boron and  there is evidence Boron is an essential nutrient". That's helpful, and I  certainly advocate supplementing Soylent with conventional food. Bad skepticism  is stuff like, "This is stupid. You can't live on powders and chemicals, you  need healthy, fresh food!"
   Some people seem very invested in the idea of the sanctity of nature,  natural food and some idyllic view of farming, so find this idea very offensive.  I don't think that's an evidence-based viewpoint. There's no evidence organic  food is healthier than conventional food, and you just can't feed the world  without efficient farming techniques.

Do you think you'll get bored of Soylent?
   Soylent is  definitely a permanent part of my diet. Right now I only eat one or two  conventional meals a week, but if I had any money or a girlfriend I would  probably eat out more often. I'm quite happy with my bachelor chow. I don't miss  the rotary telephone and I don't miss food.

You know in the film Soylent Green, Soylent Green is made of  people, right?
   Actually, in the original book Make Room! Make  Room! Soylent is made of soya and lentil. The movie changed many aspects of  the book, though it's still one of my favourite movies. My Soylent is  human-free.

Oh good. Thanks Rob!
A full recipe for Soylent as well as a blog charting Rob's progress  towards total foodlessness can be found here.


Read more: http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/drink-soylent-and-youll-never-have-to-eat-again#ixzz2b8ZLwgio
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And Garbon makes a new thread instead of posting here.