Soylent Versions Gray Sustenance

Shipped on June 1st, Soylent version 1.5 contains no people, in fact it’s vegan. Positive reviews commonly describe the taste as “neutral”. A recent New York Times article called it a “bland, gritty pancake batter”. It’s gray in color and non organic. Soylent’s founders don’t seem too concerned.

“What we’d really like to do is change this cultural Zeitgeist around everyone having this obsession around everything being organic and natural,” co-founder David Renteln recently told the Los Angeles Business Journal ahead of the version release. “What we’d really like to do is make nutrition as scientifically based as possible.”

Back to february 2013 Rob Rhinehart, a then 24 year old software engineer from San Francisco published a blog post titled How I Stopped Eating Food. The article got lots of attention in tech circles, describing an engineer’s approach to eating. “I researched every substance the body needs to survive, plus a few extras shown to be beneficial, and purchased all of them in nearly raw chemical form from a variety of sources.” Rhinehart wrote.

Rhinehart took the name from a 1966 sci-fi novel “Make Room! Make Room!” by Harry Harrison, where the overpopulated earth was fed by a mixture of lentils and soy. The 1973 movie Soylent Green with Charlton Heston added human remains for dramatic effect.
By the summer of 2013 Rhinehart had launched a crowd funding campaign with the tagline “Soylent: free Your Body.” Although the goal was $100,000, the campaign brought in more than $750,000. By October 2013 Soylent had closed a $1.5 million funding round from investors including Andreessen Horowitz. In April 2014 Soylent 1.0 was released, named by version like a software build. In January 2015 Andreessen Horowitz invested an additional $20 million in the startup.

Soylent version 1.5 comes complete with technical release notes written for a community of customer product testers. Long term health issues like jaw strength, and gut health are effectively being tested by customers themselves.

Using DIY Soylent, users can even re-formulate and share Soylent recipes. Customers enter their age, height, weight, and exercise levels. A nutrient template based on US RDI data is generated, serving a basis for formula experimentation. User feedback informs future releases.