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Related: Culture Forums, Support ForumsSoylent Green is people!! And it's here!!!
https://www.yahoo.com/food/is-food-just-fuel-soylent-sparks-debate-87212997526.htmlThe word that didnt come up during the panel: pleasure. And the New York Times tackled that very issue this week. Soylent, a phenomenon the New Yorkers Lizzie Widdicombe chronicled a few weeks ago, has been making headlines in a major way. The appeal? Visit its website, and a bespectacled, muscular man is pouring soylent into a glass, alongside the words, What if you never had to worry about food again? For $85 you can purchase seven bags (21 meals worth) of the stuff, which comes out to about $4 per meal. You mix the powder with water, and boom. No need for meals.
The Times article features a video of a gastroenterologist, a food writer, a sommelier, and a personal trainer all sampling the concoction, which some have compared to my grandpas Metamucil. All four found it lacking. It tastes like grit, said the gastroenterologist. It tastes very healthy and is like smelling cardboard, said the sommelier. Theres no way any normal person would really want to drink that.
Dining reporter Julia Moskin considered that the powder could be shipped to hurricane and other disaster zones, therefore becoming a potential boon for humanity. But Times writer Farhad Manjoo, who subsisted largely on Soylent for a week and a half, declares that everything about Soylent screams function, not fun, deeming it the most joyless new technology to hit the world since we first laid eyes on MS-DOS. Ouch.
He goes on to say that Soylents creators have forgotten a basic ingredient found in successful tech products, not to mention in most good foods. That ingredient is delight. Are tech advancements making food irrelevant? Many people seem happy to replace the variety of their daily caloric intakefrom Thai food to German food, soup to nutswith something that meets all the nutritive basics but doesnt consume energy of creative or appetite-related decision-making. The New Yorker writer visited ten students clutching water bottles filled with beige goo. One computer-science major told the reporter: It fills you up for five hours. Its good for studying.
The Times article features a video of a gastroenterologist, a food writer, a sommelier, and a personal trainer all sampling the concoction, which some have compared to my grandpas Metamucil. All four found it lacking. It tastes like grit, said the gastroenterologist. It tastes very healthy and is like smelling cardboard, said the sommelier. Theres no way any normal person would really want to drink that.
Dining reporter Julia Moskin considered that the powder could be shipped to hurricane and other disaster zones, therefore becoming a potential boon for humanity. But Times writer Farhad Manjoo, who subsisted largely on Soylent for a week and a half, declares that everything about Soylent screams function, not fun, deeming it the most joyless new technology to hit the world since we first laid eyes on MS-DOS. Ouch.
He goes on to say that Soylents creators have forgotten a basic ingredient found in successful tech products, not to mention in most good foods. That ingredient is delight. Are tech advancements making food irrelevant? Many people seem happy to replace the variety of their daily caloric intakefrom Thai food to German food, soup to nutswith something that meets all the nutritive basics but doesnt consume energy of creative or appetite-related decision-making. The New Yorker writer visited ten students clutching water bottles filled with beige goo. One computer-science major told the reporter: It fills you up for five hours. Its good for studying.
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Soylent Green is people!! And it's here!!! (Original Post)
KamaAina
May 2014
OP
phantom power
(25,966 posts)1. I'm reminded of a conversation with my department admin
Still remember it after 20 years. We were talking about tastes in food, and she said "Food doesn't interest me. If I could get all my nutrition from a pill, that would be perfect."
I love food, so I could never relate, but people are interested in different things. I can imagine there is some demographic that would be totally fine with this idea.
Also, I assume one could... (wait for it) ... flavor it.
KamaAina
(78,249 posts)2. And, of course, add green food coloring
phantom power
(25,966 posts)3. mmmmmm
Good one.
I read the article in The New Yorker on this. I agree it is not for everyone, but there are incredible number of people out there who don't want to cook. If they could be satisfied with this, they would be free from corporate America's high-fat, high-salt convenience foods.
Cher
DebJ
(7,699 posts)5. Fiber content? Vitamins in a processable form? I doubt it. n/t
KamaAina
(78,249 posts)6. Well, it has been compared to Metamucil.