Tech liberation, or new-age eating disorder in disguise?
Leave it to Generation-Y and our tech-savvy minds to conceive a way to bring to life the cartoon Jetsons. Rob Rheinhart, a young Californian entrepreneur and tech-developer, seems to have struck powdery, sawdust-like gold with his Soylent nutrition powder.
The powder is being marketed as a total food replacement, and ingredients (which Reinhart has made public) consist of a long list of head scratchers that will surely have Poindexters worldwide salivating at the opportunity to consume this paste without ever having to leave their swivel chairs, except to expel the digested supplement at a later time.
But what’s all the worry about? It is, after all, vegan!
The sleek silver bag that carries the powder dons an “S” that is not dissimilar to the iconic Superman logo. However, Soylent, according to Berna Magnuson, associate Professor of Nutritional Science at the University of Toronto, describes the concoction as “hilarious” and that the way in which it is mixed is, “exactly how we make animal feed.”
Rheinhart, who admits to not being a very good cook, commented on his entrepreneurial venture that has already amassed $2 million in pre-orders, saying, “I just thought, ‘What if you could get the same effect [as food] with something that is very simple and very easy?’”
The idea appears revolutionary in theory, but in practice, treating food as a sum of its chemical parts, poses potential danger and controversy. Magnuson called this the quest for finding a golden formula for nutrition vain given what we know about nutrition. She equates this quest to human consciousness, which does not have a crackable code, and says that there is no magic formula.
In other words, a banana is healthy for you because of its nutrients, but those nutrients, when manmade or broken down into other unnatural forms, don’t necessarily possess the same benefits.
Adding to Magnuson’s worries is the fact that the Rheinhart’s team has no nutritional education, and that creating a stir-fry of ingredients to meet minimum guidelines for nutrition (by an entrepreneur that admits to having lived off ramen noodles and fast food) is dangerous.
And let’s not forget the price tag, which, according to early speculations, will sell 2,200 calories for under $10 a day – and with a market that appears to be in high demand for Soylent, that estimated price is expected to fall.
Rheinhart has effectively created an eating disorder for the sedentary. No time or effort is needed to consume this product, outside combining it with water and stirring, and because it is marketed as a food replacement, the public stands to be duped by the creativity of marketing whizzes with an appetite for raising the bottom-line of profit over raising the bottom-line of North America’s ever-increasing health problems.
I suppose this is all a part of the double-edged love affair we have with the accumulation capital that makes the world economy turn. The due diligence to be healthy rests of the shoulders of the consumer. Those that wish to put health second to a price tag will continue to do so whether or not Soylent is on the market. The choice is ultimately yours – Soylent is certainly a bargain in terms of price, but undoubtedly a cost on your health.