Gadgetory

for many many years humans have eaten food it's what sustains us it comes from the earth it comes from the seas now it comes from science this is Soylent a scientific looking amalgam of protein flour vitamins and minerals that first made waves is a crowd-funded project last year a project whose goal was to straight-up replace food yes all of it technically Soylent is food just not any kind that you're used to eating on a regular basis it's supposed to give you pretty much everything you need to survive and nothing else there's no joy to Soylent only purpose it's just cheap nutritious liquid that dispenses with the entertainment and social aspect of eating and gets down to business subsisting on Soylent cost less than $10 a day here in New York ten dollars is good for a couple packs of gum so full day's worth of calories for that amount of cash is actually a really good deal and if you're in a time crunch it just takes a few gulps to put a meal down of course the first step to eating Soylent is getting it and right now that's very hard it turns out that the promise of a mega efficient no-frills diet has a lot of people buzzing and the hype has left the company with a backlog that runs several months long you can make your own Soylent or some variation of it if you're enterprising enough to dig up and deal with the mess of the ingredients they offer a whole DIY site with forums in fact but that defeats the purpose of saving time with ultra efficient nutrition in the first place anyway once you dig up some soil in the next challenge is making it the product ships to you in individual packets one per day seven per box the company also ships customer is a 2-liter pitcher and a metal measuring scoop the pitcher is key in fact you don't need the scoop at all unless you want to futz around with making individual servings but you're better off just dumping an entire packet into the pitcher and filling it up to the top with water you have to be careful here because the act of dumping the bag into the pitcher causes little plume of Soylent powder to form the company also ships matching bottles of a fish oil canola oil blend that looks a bit like those little bottles of shampoo you get in hotel rooms you're looking at a full day's worth of everything that has to go into your body to keep it running or so Soylent says 2010 calories of beige liquid once you clean up the mess you shake the picture for 30 seconds I found that shaking usually opened up some air bubbles in the powder which means you have to add a bit more water as you go when you're done you stick it in the fridge let it sit overnight so it gets smooth and you're ready to have all your biological requirements met with just a few sips you just have to get that whole pitcher down by the time you go to sleep now the moment of truth the drink since soil it first made headlines you've probably read some pretty disgusting descriptions of what this stuff tastes like don't believe them it's not bad it's certainly not delicious but it's not going to make you gag the best way I can describe it is like if you took a few spoonfuls of peanut butter in a blender with a lot of milk it has some richness and creaminess to it and just the tiniest hint of sweetness it tastes like sustenance I drink so England for a full month and let me tell you it gets boring it's doable like I said it's not gross but there's a social aspect of eating and drinking that Soylent simply isn't built to provide fortunately if the experiment was pretty painless apart from some occasional digestive discomfort I felt healthy the entire time and I never really felt hungry there's a ton of protein in Soylent so I guess that's no surprise over the course of the month I lost somewhere around 12 pounds but my usage was a little extreme the company says they don't imagine most people use it as a 100% meal replacement the way I did they see it as a convenience thing a breakfast here a lunch there and when you want to eat real food you go ahead and do it in that regard Soylent isn't all that revolutionary you can walk into your local grocery store right now and find an entire aisle of meal replacement bars and shakes but Soylent seems to be both cheaper and more nutritionally complete than most of them would I do another 30 days stint on it absolutely not but could I see myself drinking it here and there and Italy assuming I'm ever able to work my way through the waiting list