Ars does Soylent, day 1: Embrace the chalky weird sweetness

I don’t do well with following directions in the morning, and this particular morning I have a bunch of extra stuff to remember. I screw up immediately when I roll out of bed, stagger into the bathroom, and swallow my usual morning multivitamin. Only as I place the bottle back in the medicine cabinet do I see the yellow sticky-note on its side: “NO,” it tells me.

It takes more than a sticky note to override a multidecade morning multivitamin habit, but if a 24-year-old engineer named Rob Rhinehart has done his chemistry correctly I won’t actually need the little orange pill today. A bag of powder sitting on my kitchen counter will supply my body with every scrap of nutrition it needs.

This is Soylent, day 1.

Day 1, 08:00: Weights and measures

With one cup of coffee down and with much less stagger in my walk, I’m back in the kitchen, facing a counter full of Soylent implements.

Everything you need to get your Soylent on.

Credit: Lee Hutchinson

The first task involves math. One silver plastic pouch contains one day’s worth of Soylent, which must be mixed with two liters of water. I’ve heard tales of previous Soylent versions clumping if not mixed thoroughly, so I want to use my awesome Blendtec blender (of “Will It Blend” fame) on the stuff to ensure homogeneity. However, the blender only holds an approximate maximum of one liter of liquid. So, the math: I measure the Soylent pouch, remove half its dry weight, run that through the blender, pour the contents into the pitcher, and then blend the remaining Soylent.

The contents of today’s Soylent pouch, ready to be mixed.

Credit: Lee Hutchinson

Next to the five bags of Soylent are several small vials containing grapeseed oil and five fish oil capsules. The grapeseed oil containers get mixed into the day’s batch of Soylent pre-blender and provide fats and stuff; the fish oil capsule gets swallowed separately.

There’s probably a better way to go about this, but I’ve had a hard enough time finding a pitcher to hold the two liters of finished Soylent and I want to get on with the experiment—I’m burning with curiosity to try the stuff. I measure, scoop, blend, pour, and repeat.

Will it blend? Hell yes it will.

Credit: Lee Hutchinson

Moments later, I’ve got a pitcher of about two liters of frothy beige liquid. Yes, frothy—it’s got quite a bit of head on it. I poke at it with a whisk to see if I can maybe convince it to deflate a bit, but it’s determined to stay bubbly. Attacking the stuff with the Blendtec probably wasn’t the best plan.

Just like mom used to make, if your mom were a robot creating a life-sustaining frothy nutrient slurry for her foster human offspring to consume.

Credit: Lee Hutchinson

The documentation says to chill before serving, but I didn’t get to be the reviews editor of a major technology website by reading stupid directions. I measure out about a third of the pitcher’s contents into a large cup and eagerly bring it to my lips for an introductory sip.

It’s chalky. Even before I notice a taste, the mouthfeel blossoms and I smack my lips a few times as I swallow. It feels like a fine powder is coating the inside of my mouth—it invites a lot of lingual exploration to root out pockets of leftover sediment. The taste, when it comes, is oddly nondescript. It’s a bit sweet, and the sweetness has a bit of an artificial note to it (the sweetness comes from maltodextrin, one of Soylent’s carbohydrate sources).

The froth is definitely a factor in the mixture’s mouthfeel too, and I have to sort of slurp through it. The room temperature mix isn’t unpleasant, but it’s not great, either. I take a second sip and again my mouth is coated in chalky suspended powder. After swallowing I still feel compelled to run my tongue around in my mouth and over my teeth to get the chalkiness to go away.

Behind the vague sweetness, there’s not much of a taste—perhaps a bit yeasty or earthy. Soylent has a surprisingly long finish, too. The aftertaste hangs around for quite a bit of time, though it’s not an awful aftertaste. Just a bit like vaguely sweet flour-y dough.

Soylent is just thick enough, and the suspended particles are just big enough, to encourage chewing. I sit and slowly chomp my way through the inaugural breakfast mug of the stuff. As I near the bottom, almost with alarming suddenness, I go from feeling fine to feeling very, very full. The room temperature frothy stuff in my cup suddenly appears to be the very opposite of appealing, and I begin to think that consuming two-thirds of a liter of an untried food substitute on a morning stomach that’s more used to a small bowl of oat bran was probably not the greatest plan.

Gamely, I power on and finish my cup. There are several minutes of unease while I tell my stomach that it needs to shut up and deal, and it threatens to violently give back what I’ve sent it. Eventually, I win, but the lesson has been learned. Tomorrow, I should maybe split that morning serving up into two—or several.

A minute later, the Soylent burps start. They’re not terribly pleasant. They have an almost cloying sweetness to them. I down some water and try really hard to not notice.

Day 1, 11:30: Lunch part one

I usually escape for lunch right as the clock hits 11:00am—Deputy Editor Nate Anderson has accused me of eating lunch like a senior citizen—but I’m still feeling very full from that morning’s dose of Soylent as my normal lunchtime passes. By 11:30am, I figure I better take a stab at consuming some more. I’ve still got more than a liter of the stuff to pack away and it’s not going to drink itself.

The Soylent has separated a bit in the fridge, stratifying into a beige layer, a clear layer, and a frothy mountainscape on top. I contemplate dumping it back into the blender to destratify it with extreme prejudice, but I don’t want to aerate it further and make it foamier. Instead, I grab the whisk and beat on it for a few seconds to re-blend before gingerly pouring about half of the morning’s breakfast-sized portion.

Soylent, stratified. (Apologies for the smartphone camera picture.)

Credit: Lee Hutchinson

It’s still very chalky. Not gritty—there’s no feeling of sand or anything, just smooth powder rolling through my mouth. Fortunately, being chilled has drastically improved my perception of how it tastes. It’s a lot easier to drink down now than it was in the morning, and I zip through the serving in a couple of minutes while I write.

It’s probably too early to notice anything physical. Other than a bit of rumbling in my gut, I feel quite normal. The brief bout of nausea from breakfast is gone, and the second helping goes down nicely.

Day 1, 14:30: Second lunch

This is about the time I’d push back from the computer and go hunting around in the kitchen for something to snack on, so I grab the pitcher, whisk away the layers, and consume the other half of my lunch. It’s still all chalky earthy indistinct sweetness.

The Soylent burps from breakfast leveled themselves out after a short amount of time and weren’t repeated after my first lunch. I feel okay with leaving the safety of the house (with its close bathroom), and I run some errands. While I’m out, I look at the folks around me, all living their pedestrian food-based lives. They don’t know it, but I’ve got a little bit of the future in my tummy.