Tonight, I attended a meeting about the future of agriculture in Pennsylvania. While there was certainly a lot of talk about cattle and soybeans and other matters that don’t particularly interest me as a food scientist, one of the speakers did say something that perked my ear. He said that by the time we are all retiring, there will be 2 billion more people in the world than there is today. We don’t even have enough food to feed everyone on Earth as it is, so we desperately need to figure out a way to produce more food, which is a matter both agricultural students and food science students take great interest in.

Most of the proposed solutions I heard at that meeting had to do with increasing efficiency and wasting less food product, which is obviously a good idea. But I came across something on the internet that I find a bit more interesting. A product called Soylent hit the market around 2013, and could help fix our growing food shortage if it is ever widespread enough. Soylent is a nutrient-rich meal replacement shake that is nutritionally complete enough to live on. The founder, Robert Rhinehart, created the product after getting fed up with spending a ton of time thinking about and preparing nutritionally complete meals. The product is made from whey protein, olive oil, starch, carbs, proteins, vitamins, amino acids, and raw chemicals, and is classified as a food (as opposed to a supplement) by the FDA. Soylent is a healthy, reasonably affordable, convenient meal substitute that he thinks could feed the world better than sustainable agriculture.

Needless to say, this is certainly an interesting idea. Some think it sounds amazing, and are intrigued by the idea of never having to eat again – just drink the magical nutrition shake! (Personally, I could not think of a bleaker future, but hey, to each their own). Of course, you could incorporate Soylent into your diet in small amounts and still eat regular food as well, but the point is that you don’t have to. It is entirely possible to live and be healthy by only drinking Soylent, which makes it a perfectly valid option for helping feed the hungry, especially as the world’s population increases.

Of course, there are opponents. There are people who want absolutely nothing to do with Soylent, as it doesn’t seem natural to not eat regular food. However, these people are not the ones that would be consuming it anyway; they’re the ones who will have access to food, even as the world’s resources get spread thinner. While some well-off people are interested in Soylent for the fun of it, I imagine it would mostly be used in developing countries, where there are a lot of hungry people as well as a rapidly growing population. I think it could be interesting to see if the product takes off at all.

If this was intriguing to any of you, I would highly recommend checking out the video on Soylent’s website! I, at least, thought it was super interesting.

http://www.soylent.me/#/