Read An Interview With The Man Who Wants To Make Eating Obsolete
It's something so intertwined in our everyday lives; a necessity that society dictates we all must do multiple times each day. It is integral to absolutely everyone, regardless of socio-economic factors. Many of our social rituals revolve around it, and it remains a lowest common denominator across countries and cultures. It's the practice of eating, and one man wants to render it obsolete.
Twenty-five-year-old Rob Rhinehart is the mind behind Soylent, a beige-colored beverage that supposedly contains every nutrient the body needs. The former software engineer created and re-worked its formula solely through research and self-experimentation, securing investments via crowdfunding and venture capitalists. He put himself through a month of the liquid diet and reported drastic improvements in several aspects of his health. With the first batch of Soylent set to ship this month, The Atlantic sat down with Rhinehart to discuss the possibility of a single beverage replacing the need to ever eat.
Rhinehart certainly markets his product well, claiming, "When I first switched over [to living on Soylent], I felt amazing. I mean, I never felt that good...I felt like I had been hungover, for years, and all of a sudden I was out of it." The inventor also points to the low cost of Soylent, stating his desire to soon decrease it to a total of $5 per day and his hope that it "be produced almost ephemerally." In essence, he envisions a society in which a negligible amount of time is spent not only on eating itself, but also on any task related to it (think: cooking, grocery shopping, dishwashing). Good luck, kid. We're going to go think about all this over lunch.
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