Is a Goop Called Soylent the Future of Food?

We all complain we don’t have time to cook.

But is eating itself too time-consuming? Would you be willing to give up solid food to make your life easier, and maybe even save the planet?

Silicon Valley entrepreneur Rob Rhinehart believes that in 2013, eating is an antiquated, expensive, inefficient ritual that degrades the environment and debases us. We’re smart, computer-savvy humans, he says, not animals who need to chew up leaves.

Rhinehart’s solution? A nutrient drink named after the cannibalistic food source in the 1973 science fiction film Soylent Green. 

Don’t worry – Rhinehart’s drink doesn’t contain people. It’s made of oat flour, rice protein, maltodextrin, canola oil, and basic vitamins and minerals. According to Soylent’s website, it can be customized to individual health needs.

Most of us can’t try it yet – orders should be available early next year – but Motherboard‘s Brian Merchant lived on the beta version for 30 days.

What did it taste like? Pretty bland, he says. And after a few weeks his jaw muscles started hurting, so he chewed gum to keep them in shape.

Hear more in his interview with Warren Olney on today’s To The Point.

And watch Merchant’s thirty-day Soylent diet progress in his video for Motherboard.