Soylent day 3

I’m sorry for the delay posting this. Some life circumstances sort of got in the way. You can now stop desperately reloading. Fear not: I have not died of non-stop bloody Soylent diarrhea and I am in good health. I just didn’t post. And now, back to our regularly scheduled programming…

Thursday night I went to sleep after eating nothing but Soylent in the last 24 hours. I had a very vivid dream of me eating a warm thick bowl of oatmeal. I remember its smell, texture… This experiment is messing with my mind.

Breakfast

I woke up on Friday and prepared my pitcher of Soylent for the day. It took 3 minutes. Since I didn’t leave the pitcher in the fridge overnight and now I know better, I added a bunch of ice to the mix.

At my desk in the office, I had my glass of Soylent. Not bad. Like revenge, Soylent is a dish better served cold. Once again I finished feeling satisfied but not full.

Lunch

A co-worker passed me with a plate from the cafeteria: their Greek Plate (chicken, tzatziki, little slices of pita)… After 13+ years, I’ve developed an indifference at best, dislike at worse for cafeteria food. I’ve had this specific dish many times and while it’s not not bad, I don’t particularly like it. But it looked especially appetizing this time.

At 1:15 I decided to “eat” “lunch” which is a lot later than my usual time. Either Soylent is very good at keeping me satiated or my body is suppressing my hunger since it knows what’s coming to it. Whatever the case, I started drinking it at 1:20.

In the afternoon I got a slight headache but I wouldn’t pin it on Soylent. People get headaches. I’ve also been terribly thirsty.

Dinner

It’s Friday night, and I mother in law cooked a big Shabbat dinner. Being the good son-in-law that I am, I decided to take a break,  enjoy food and the company of my very round pregnant wife, and spend some time meditating on the merits of giving up old fashioned food.

Flatulence

Indeed, as many people pointed out on the Internet, it mostly went away on the third day. I’m sorry I wrote about the topic so much but it turned out to be relevant to the discussion.

Comments

Let’s address some comments received:

  • Reader Esther says to watch out – Soylent has no Vitamin D. But it does, in the for of the tasty sounding ingredient ergocalciferol. 33% of the daily value per serving, to be precise.
  • Reader Carolina is worried that the first ingredient listed is sugar. But it’s not! It’s maltodextrin, which is… huh, kind of like a sugar. Shit.
  • Reader Gabriel posted a very misguided article on Soylent. Sorry dude, the article gets it wrong at the most basic level. Soylent is not for hipsters: it’s not organic, vegan, overpriced, nor sold out of food trucks. Soylent is for overworked nerds.
  • At work, several co-workers who had never heard of Soylent were incredibly puzzled. Are you on a diet? No. Is it for weight loss? No. Is it some kind of cleanse? No. Then what the hell are you doing? Science!
  • Other co-workers who had heard about Soylent were very curious. Several tried it. None were disgusted, with one exception: Frank who had done Schmoylent, the sketchy Soylent knockoff, found it disgusting. I suppose Schmoylent is better.
  • My mom vigorously opposed me doing Soylent. She watched the movie and I suppose the mental association was just too strong, in spite of my assurances that this thing is beige and most likely not made of <<SPOILER ALERT>> humans.

I did more reading about Soylent. Here’s a pretty rough thread on some of the issues with Soylent.

Closing remarks

I’m done with this stuff. All in all, this was an interesting experiment. Sure, I failed to eat nothing but Soylent for a week. Sure, I am a fraud. Sure, many readers secretly wanted me to write this from the toilet while dealing with horrible, debilitating diarrhea. None of this came to pass.

Interestingly, it seems quite viable to survive, at least for short periods of time, on nothing but Soylent. I wouldn’t go much longer than that though. The people behind it are not nutritionists nor medical doctors, and the fact that you can survive for some time does not mean you can or should go for extended periods of time on it. Let’s wait and see how some more adventurous/stupid souls do a couple of years from now.

A guy from work is buying my remaining supply. And I will close with this short video:

Thank you for joining me in my journey.

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