Some time in late November I decided to order a tub of Soylent, the foodlike meal-replacement powder. My reason, aside from curiosity, is that lunch is always a pain to procure. I work from home and can’t just carelessly walk to some overpriced midtown salad joint that caters to office workers. And I don’t particularly want to spend too much time making anything; the emotional labor of designing a sandwich is too much to bear!! So I thought of trying Soylent.
No, of course I had no intention of eating Soylent exclusively. I just wanted a stupid thoughtless meal in the middle of the day! Soylent is a stupid thoughtless meal in the middle of the day.
It’s fine. It’s fine! It tastes sort of like raw cake batter. Like when you lick the mixing blade when mom is making a cake. It didn’t even make me do weird poop.
The stupidest part of the endeavor was that also I bought a ‘Blender Bottle’ at Target to prepare for my Liquid Journey, but the only one in stock was made of some carbon fiber metal alloy fancy crap that cost like $25 bucks. It’s just a water bottle but it has a cheap metal sphere thingy to do the blending when you do the shaking; honestly some ice cubes can do the same thing in any bottle. I hate spending money but I needed to commit! Commit to being a Shake Guy! Harnessing the power of the sphere! Call me William Shake Sphere!
The Soylent itself is $34 for 12 meals (if you consume 400 calories, the recommended meal size). Which means it’s cheap, but not necessarily cheaper than a bowl of cereal or whatever. I got the cacao flavor. Tastes like cold watery chocolate cake batter. Fine! Lunch sorted for a few weeks. I tried adding a little chocolate syrup but it didn’t really blend in the right way? Because you add water to the Soylent powder, and syrup needs milk, not bland-ass water! Chocolate syrup cannot collab with water. One time I poured coffee into the mix and it was abhorrent! I shouted CACAO!! into the wind. But plain cacao Soylent with water and ice was fine.
I didn’t quite finish it; you’re supposed to consume the Big Jug within 30 days of opening and when I got back after the holidays it the remaining Dust Food smelled a little off (as I bought it over a month ago). I think it was still fine but I was worried about invisible mold or, whatever. I’m not food scientist. Not even a food grad student.
I have not ordered more. But I might! Perhaps! It is more convenient that my current lunch habit of hoping, absolutely praying, that I have some leftovers that I don’t remember and then eating crumbly granola bars while gazing out the window like a sorrowful granola ghost in a William Shakesphere play.
cocopunk 