Soylent: Cooking Like A Sci-Fi Guy February 25, 2015February 24, 2015 Young Rob Rhinehart, 26, can fuel your body with ideal nutrition — called Soylent — for $9 a day, as he explained to Stephen Colbert here. “It’s the ultimate ‘Cooking Like a Guy™,'” my pal Dan gushed when he sent that link. “But . . . but . . . ” I sputtered . . . “don’t you miss tastes and smells and three-course meals and brunch? Ripe peaches and juicy tomatoes? Why do you do this? For health? money? time? weight loss?” “I do get all those tastes and smells,” Dan wrote back, “not to mention the fun of eating socially, since Soylent isn’t all I eat. It’s just mainly what I eat. Two meals a day and snacks usually. Which saves me from shopping. And figuring out what to eat with what. And preparing. And cooking. And sitting down and eating. And cleaning up and throwing away. These things take, what, an hour a day? Do you have any idea how much time an hour a day is? Well I’ll tell you. If you’ve got only 20 more years to live it’s 1.25 years assuming you sleep 8 hours a day. Which for me is 6% of the rest of my life. Which I’d rather spend doing something besides eating. Simple as that.” Hello? I love eating! But I didn’t want to interrupt, so I let Dan conitinue: “So I get 15-20 bags of Soylent a month on subscription, enough for 2/3 of a month’s meals and snacks. A bag, three meals worth, takes 2 minutes to prepare by shaking it with water and a little bottle of fish oil they give you (we gotta have some fat to be healthy) in the BPA-free plastic tea pitcher that comes free with your first order. No blender! Then it takes 15 seconds to shake and pour the next time you want some, 15 seconds to stir in a splash of Gatorade powder, orange juice, chocolate milk, or even peanut butter (OK, blender needed for that one) and 60 seconds–or as long as you like–like to drink it. While you read, think, talk on the phone, whatever. “I spend less than $180 a month eating this much Soylent. And even taking into account the ‘regular’ food I buy for occasional old-fashioned meals I can’t live without — pot roast comes to mind — I have more money and time for eating out. They even know me now at Gramercy Tavern. That could never have happened without the money I save eating Soylent primarily. “And health? I’ve lost 15 pounds, have no problem keeping it off, and have more energy. Way more. It doesn’t take as long to digest Soylent as it does other food. And because it has the right amount of natural fiber, not to mention the right amount of everything else, my entire system operates, shall we say, right on time. “I don’t need to get into Soylent’s bigger picture. The carbon footprint, for example — although you can imagine how much lower Soylent’s is than, say, the meat industry’s, where food has to be raised, slaughtered, processed, shipped, refrigerated, prepared, eaten with the right other food and so on. Or how Soylent isn’t anything really new. Baby formula is complete food, for example. The web is full of articles. All I can say is what it does for me — which is free up my life. A LOT.” ☞ Hmmm.