A Few More Thoughts on Soylent
After publishing my last article, Soylent, and as I made a late-night snack of a pear, I couldn’t help but continue thinking about Soylent. Rather than tacking these additional thoughts on to the bottom of the previous post with the sad excuse for poor journalistic planning that is the “UPDATE:” header though, I decided to shape them into an entirely separate post, a new post with a few more of my thoughts on Soylent.
From the short amount of time I spent perusing the Hacker News comment thread for this story, I encountered a great deal of skepticism and an inordinate amount of hostility directed towards Rob, his fascinating findings, and his impressive creation interestingly named Soylent. As all the armchair nutritionists, biologists, and general know-it-alls prepared their strongly-worded monologues though, I wonder how many took a step back and examined the success Rob has experienced: not only has his physical health improved over the past thirty days or thereabouts, but his mental health has greatly improved as well: he went from running less than a mile to seven in just four weeks, a very difficult transition that must be attributed to something, and Soylent is simultaneously the most likely and only culprit; psychologically, Rob’s capacity to focus, absorb, and retain information has also increased, a transformation that, again, must be attributed to Soylent.
And it all makes sense. We go through our lives adhering to one diet or another, carefully monitoring and proportioning our foods in a vain attempt at becoming healthier human beings. When in truth we should look to a diet that tells us to eat everything not for the sake of doing so but because our bodies’ needs often exceed the restrictions placed upon us by the latest fad in dieting, we instead relegate ourselves to eating only certain foods in carefully controlled quantities and only at certain times. It’s asinine and nonsensical, but it is the only way that we have been able to provide ourselves with the semblance of a complete diet. Until now, that is: Soylent provides every chemical necessitated by the body, and has the potential to provide even more in the form of nootropics. It would not be an extreme stretch to characterize this creation as the perfect diet, as I am sure some already have. Unlike conventional diets though, Soylent appears worthy of such a title.
Providing our bodies with every chemical it could possibly need at each and every meal is not the only benefit to Soylent though, nor is it even the most compelling reason to adopt the diet: the real power behind Soylent is the exacting control it would enable us to possess over our diets. A deficiency of iron, for example, would be easily combated by increasing the amount of iron in your Soylent mixture. Thinking of hitting the gym more often? You will want to add more carbohydrates and protein to your Soylent mixture, plus a few more ingredients I haven’t thought of off the top of my head. No more power shakes, protein supplements, or ridiculous cravings, Soylent solves all these problems. The benefits of a carefully controlled diet, one in which any sort of deficiency can easily be remedied with the addition or removal of a given ingredient, are enormous; overstating them would be impossible both for healthy and sick individuals alike, as well as those requiring special diets.
As a last-ditch, final effort to convince the skeptics who have managed to make it this far in to this article, consider Soylent in this light: protein shakes are often used by those who frequent the gym as a way to combat a deficiency of protein, among other things, in their bodies as a result of working out. Protein shakes allow their bodies to operate with the appropriate amount of protein, and as a result of which they see accordingly excellent results. Soylent is to the entire body what protein shakes are to those deficient in protein: the solution to the body’s craving for each and every vitamin, mineral, and substance it is deficient in, allowing it to preform to its greatest potential.
Finally, the convenience of this approach, like the enormous advantages of a finely-tuned diet, cannot be overstated. Imagine a scenario in which your food bill was cut nearly in half along with your utility bill, and you suddenly had a significant amount of previously occupied time to do whatever you wished with. That is the scenario Soylent offers, one in which rather than requiring a significant amount of time, energy, and money as most conventional diets do in order to become a healthier human being, Soylent will not only give you all that back without any of the usual downsides to fast food, but also do so much more efficiently and to much greater results. Once proven, or even before then if you opt-in to experiment with the mixture during the testing phase, I can see no reason not to embrace Soylent.