Parker West
Professor Miller
End of food essay
After reading the essay “The End of Food,” by Lizzie Widdicombe, I was introduced to a topic that I didn’t know much about. Within the essay, Lizzie writes about her knowledge and experience meeting a man named Rob Rhinehart. Rhinehart began as a man looking to start a tech startup company, but later became the founder of a company called “Soylent.” This product was intended to become a replacement for meals, and shorten the time commitment required to sit down and have a full meal by simply filling a drink with all the essential nutritional components necessary for humans to survive. Once I had finished the essay, I knew where I stood. Although I do agree with what Rhinehart stated, that “most of people’s meals are forgotten,” I do also believe that every meal cannot simply be replaced by a drink.
At first glance, I thought that Rhinehart was simply creating a drink that would be able to replace a meal if need be. Later however, I came to realize that he was looking to eliminate meals all together, and instead offer his drink as a replacement. As I mentioned in my “favorite meal” essay, “my whole family enjoys sitting down and eating this meal together, and that alone makes it something I hold very close to my heart.” I think that when it comes to breakfast, lunch, or dinner, there is meaning beyond just filling your body with food. Meals can act as a time to gather, and a time to take your mind off of things for a little while. For me personally, I take the time while I eat to do anything besides work. Sitting down for a meal is a way for me (and people across the world) to take time out of their day and enjoy time/conversation with friends, loved ones, or even strangers. If skipped, I do believe some people would become more efficient, but many will also just build stress, as they will have no other time throughout the day to relax.
When it comes down to the science of it, Rhinehart claims that “It’s a little different than a meal replacement, it’s kind of an over-all food substitute. In theory, you could live on this entirely. In fact, you’d be pretty healthy.” This claim somewhat confused me however, because although Soylent provides many essential components of nutrition, it is the same formula every day. When eating meals, you get a different variety of proteins, vegetables, carbs, etc. on a day to day basis. This alone is a big factor, due to the fact that it is nutritionally beneficial to eat a variety of foods. When looking deeper into what exactly you may be missing in terms of nutrition, “the debate, for the most part, revolves around substances found in real food, especially phytochemicals, which come from plants. Such compounds are not known to be essential for survival, but, in epidemiological studies, they appear to provide important health benefits.” These small nutritional differences may not seem as important, but to replace every meal of the day with a drink that is not giving you all the necessary components to good health, it will add up, and doesn’t seem worth it. Also, when preparing for a meal, or even walking by a restaurant that smells good, your body undergoes a process called the cephalic phase of digestion. This process is the action of your mouth watering when you smell or are thinking about foods. The more important part though is that this process also releases stomach acid and digestion hormones, as well as enzymes in your saliva to break down food as you chew it. Without this, some of the food you eat (or drink) is not fully digested, and can pass through your system only partially digested. This reason, along with the fact that Soylent provides no variety, and that Soylent is absent of some important chemicals, show that it may not be fully suited to become the sole item in a diet.
Rhinehart does acknowledge some points that are of importance related to Soylent, and the replacement of meals with drinks. Within today’s society, a very pressing issue is climate change. Rinehart targets this directly in saying that “livestock cause almost fifteen percent of all greenhouse- gas emissions. In California, which is suffering from its worst drought in a generation, about eighty percent of all water goes toward agriculture.” This fact is part of the reason why I do believe Rhinehart has a product that could help cover an occasional meal if need be. With the use of only chemically engineered powders, Rhinehart does avoid using livestock, and the water consumption associated with it. However, in doing this, Rhinehart is missing a large demographic for those who still believe farm to table is the ideal way of life.
