Growing up I was exposed to diverse and numerous ethnic and regional foods. This has cultured an intense interest and appreciation of food. Not just in eating it, but understanding it. This love of color, taste, and variety led me to experiment with recipes, learning what made things taste good, and what made things taste bad. After reading Timothy Ferris’ book, The 4-hour Chef, my culinary capabilities leapt forward even more. Now, without having to invest in hundreds of dollars of cookbooks and equipment, I understood some of the key science behind cooking and food. The analytical and engineering brain of mine has always tried minimizing the time spent cooking (and eventually eating).

As previously stated, I have a lot of side projects going on. I am also usually very focused when I work. My wife will make a snack or serve me a meal at the computer (when I choose to work during meals) and sometimes up to an hour later she will have to remind me to take the first bite. Yet somehow I can remember to go through multiple cups of tea before they get lukewarm. What if there were a way to consume my food the way I consume tea? Frequently, easily (no forks!) and relatively cheaply?

Enter Soylent: The scientific and convenient replacement for food. Soylent is a formulated powdered mix of all the macro and micronutrients you need to stay alive. It’s designed for people who want to optimize and minimize their food consumption and preparation time. Robert Rhinehart, the guy who invented Soylent, is an engineer and computer scientist, just like me.

Soylent appealed to me because:
1) I am a computer scientist and I’m always trying to make everything more efficient.
2) Although I eat very healthy, I am underweight (those two are most likely strongly related).
3) I forget to eat. (Ok. Maybe that’s why I am underweight)

This apparently perfect mix of nutrition, carbs, fats, and calories has worked for several people. Other people have lived for weeks on Soylent. I figured that maybe it was worth a shot. So I bought a bag from a friend who had a Soylent subscription (since you cannot get it very quickly from Soylent’s website due to high demand).

I could not have made a more naive mistake. Soylent is not a replacement for food, even for the forgetful or busy techies in Silicon Valley. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not exactly a problem with Soylent itself. Gastrointestinal confusion aside, Soylent wasn’t bad. It takes some time for your body to stop trying to kill everyone around you with horrible gas, but in theory that should stop (I didn’t have a large enough supply to get past that unfortunate period). No, the problem with Soylent is that it is marketed as a meal replacement. What Soylent has done is broken down the concept of food into just a meal—sustenance for your body. It ruins food.

Even if you have never tried Soylent, you probably have ruined food. I am not talking about burning food or forgetting to put eggs in pudding (although that will ruin your food). I am talking about the reason for eating food. Food should have form and function. It should be colorful in every sense of the word. It should command your attention. By rushing through the day eating whatever is easiest or quickest to munch on, by working through lunch so focused on your job that you hardly taste the food you brought to your desk, by not spending time with other human beings over conversation… you are ruining food. Soylent appeals to people who live or act that way, but those people had to have survived on something else before Soylent came along. Soylent is not the problem. The mentality for using it is.

The way you avoid ruining food is by thinking about it and enjoying it. We all get busy, or go through hard times and can’t eat organic grilled asparagus. People have been busy or unable to eat fancy since time began, yet every ethnic and regional food group I have tried has had at least one simple, fantastic dish. Someone somewhere spent time to think about their food and experiment. Through many iterations they took a small number of starches, vegetables, spices and meats and perfected the combinations into a mouth-watering dish. They built relationships, life and a cultural identity off of those combinations, and you should too.

I tossed the last 15 ounces of Soylent down the drain. I was full. I was energetic. I was pretty happy on my Soylent diet, but I was missing out on food. Soylent has its place somewhere in this world. But if you choose to live in such a way that you voluntarily replace food with just the itemized ingredients that make up a nutritious meal you’re not just ruining food… you’re ruining life.