> One of Silicon Valley’s cultural exports in the past ten years has been the concept of “lifehacking”: devising tricks to streamline the obligations of daily life, thereby freeing yourself up for whatever you’d rather be doing
Well, to be frank, I'd rather be eating. What's the point of your life if you don't have time to even eat, let alone enjoy yourself.
"Good morning," said the little prince.
"Good morning," said the merchant.
This was a merchant who sold pills that had been invented to
quench thirst. You need only swallow one pill a week, and you
would feel no need of anything to drink.
"Why are you selling those?" asked the little prince.
"Because they save a tremendous amount of time," said the
merchant. "Computations have been made by experts. With these
pills, you save fifty-three minutes in every week."
"And what do I do with those fifty-three minutes?"
"Anything you like . . ."
"As for me," said the little prince to himself, "if I had
fifty-three minutes to spend as I liked, I should walk at my
leisure toward a spring of fresh water."
I love eating. But there's two problems: I love eating too much, and I don't really enjoy cooking.
I'd love to add something like Soylent to my "arsenal" to make it easier to skip cooking now and again and make calorie control easier. I manage to keep my weight by regularly counting calories, but it's incredibly tedious and easy to slip up with.
I'd rather focus my enjoyment on a smaller set of high quality meals a week.
Yes, there are lots of meal replacement shakes and bars already out there. They can certainly be found on Amazon, health food stores & in some grocery stores.
I totally agree with this sentiment (love cooking), but I still see the usefulness of Soylent. Many people just aren't very into food, and would benefit from having an (occasional) simple and healthy alternative. Of college friends I've talked to, many have said they might try this for a few meals a week when "real food" is too inconvenient.
From a nutritional perspective, $3 is pretty decent for a balanced meal. Much healthier than fast-food at that price. Obviously you can cook real food on $3 a meal, but some people can't always plan for that.
If you were never hungry, would you eat for enjoyment?
Absolutely, I would. The range of sensations available through the consumption food is second only to sex in its breadth and power and sensuality. Anyone who would forego that because it's "inconvenient" utterly baffles me.
I think a helpful parallel for this is alcohol consumption. I'm a huge cocktail nerd: I love tinkering with them and admiring them, finding complexity and nuance in slight variances in recipes and ingredients, admiring the deep levels of possibility in preparing a great drink. If anything, the drunkenness is a distraction from the mixology.
And at the same time, there are people who drink only when they want to get drunk -- or who abstain altogether, not liking the bite of alcohol or the consequence it conjures. And that's totally normal.
I think it's more likely than not that at some point in the future, eating food will be the same way -- there will be a pronounced spectrum of interest once it's decoupled from the need for subsistence.
I derive enjoyment from getting hungry and eating, I even derive enjoyment from getting tired and sleeping.
The texture of life is varying psycho-physiological states. What is fun without these? Well, other things are fun too but missing the experience of a great meal after a hard days work seems just sad.
ps: didn't mean to vote you to negative, I expected your post to have a positive score and to give an "I disagree" downvote.
>>If you were never hungry, would you eat for enjoyment?
Eating tasty, whole some food is one of the biggest joys of life.
>>Soylent's premise is that you have time to do other fun or profitable things instead of making time for a meal.
Your productivity problems will come due many other factors than breaking for a meal. If anything breaking for a meal will ensure you will come back and work with a lot more focus.
> Well, to be frank, I'd rather be eating. What's the point of your life if you don't have time to even eat, let alone enjoy yourself.
Every time Soylent comes up, I'm reminded of The Matrix, where the crew is discussing the food eaten outside of the Matrix:
> Dozer: It's a single celled protein combined with synthetic aminos, vitamins, and minerals. Everything the body needs.
> Mouse: It doesn't have everything the body needs.
I've bonded with countless friends over meals. I've bonded with co-workers over meals. The whole "eating" thing, while it is the point of a meal, requires people to (usually) stop, and take time out of their day to do not much but eat and talk. It's not "profitable" and the food prep takes work, but the time spent with other human beings is — to me — anything but pointless.
As a one-off, I suppose, though they're making it about as unappetizing as possible. There are frozen burritos, and they taste better. The biggest argument seems to be "they're unhealty": well, yes, but you're not supposed to eat them all the time. Most "comfort food" is not healthy, physically — it's for your mind. Honestly, I wonder if the lack of social interaction from fast meals wouldn't cause negative mental health effects. (And whether that would outweigh the gains in physical health.) I personally detest eating at my desk: it's lonely.
But, maybe the creator gets this. Buried in that article,
> [The fridge] contained Miller Lite, condiments, and a pitcher of Soylent. I noticed a bag of baby carrots: food! Rhinehart, who refers to food that is not Soylent as “recreational food,” […]
Of course,
> Well, to be frank, I'd rather be eating. What's the point of your life if you don't have time to even eat, let alone enjoy yourself.
Every time Soylent comes up, I'm reminded of The Matrix, where the crew is discussing the food eaten outside of the Matrix:
> Dozer: It's a single celled protein combined with synthetic aminos, vitamins, and minerals. Everything the body needs.
> Mouse: It doesn't have everything the body needs.
I've bonded with countless friends over meals. I've bonded with co-workers over meals. The whole "eating" thing, while it is the point of a meal, requires people to (usually) stop, and take time out of their day to do not much but eat and talk. It's not "profitable" and the food prep takes work, but the time spent with other human beings is — to me — anything but pointless.
As a one-off, I suppose, though they're making it about as unappetizing as possible. There are frozen burritos, and they taste better. The biggest argument seems to be "they're unhealty": well, yes, but you're not supposed to eat them all the time. Most "comfort food" is not healthy, physically — it's for your mind. Honestly, I wonder if the lack of social interaction from fast meals wouldn't cause negative mental health effects. (And whether that would outweigh the gains in physical health.) I personally detest eating at my desk: it's lonely.
But, maybe the creator gets this. Buried in that article,
> [The fridge] contained Miller Lite, condiments, and a pitcher of Soylent. I noticed a bag of baby carrots: food! Rhinehart, who refers to food that is not Soylent as “recreational food,” […]
Of course,
> Brown grabbed a taco and tore open a piece of “chicken.” [(Beyond Meat, a meat substitute for vegetarians/vegans or anyone who wants it)] The white substance was remarkably meatlike: it tasted slightly fatty, and the texture resembled muscle fibre. “See how this pulls?” Brown said. “This is really what sets us apart.”
Beyond meat does match the look of chicken quite incredibly. The taste, not so much. I've found that it tends to taste good when accompanied with other stuff (such as in a taco, which has a variety of toppings), but that the taste comes from the toppings, not the "meat", which is itself pretty bland.
> “There’s no afternoon crash, no post-burrito coma.”
That I might welcome.
> Meals provide punctuation to our lives: we’re constantly recovering from them, anticipating them, riding the emotional ups and downs of a good or a bad sandwich. With a bottle of Soylent on your desk, time stretches before you, featureless and a little sad.
This is my concern. (The author then proceeds to visit a bagel shop, and is thankful that he isn't eating the unhealthy bagel, which may distract from the "featureless" problem, but is otherwise unanswered.)
But then, I also tend to like doing dishes, I think because it's one of the few parts of my day where things slow down and I'm not longer forced to be thinking, and I can finally — ironically — think.
> Brown grabbed a taco and tore open a piece of “chicken.” [(Beyond Meat, a meat substitute for vegetarians/vegans or anyone who wants it)] The white substance was remarkably meatlike: it tasted slightly fatty, and the texture resembled muscle fibre. “See how this pulls?” Brown said. “This is really what sets us apart.”
Beyond meat does match the look of chicken quite incredibly. The taste, not so much. I've found that it tends to taste good when accompanied with other stuff (such as in a taco, which has a variety of toppings), but that the taste comes from the toppings, not the "meat", which is itself pretty bland.
> “There’s no afternoon crash, no post-burrito coma.”
That I might welcome.
> Meals provide punctuation to our lives: we’re constantly recovering from them, anticipating them, riding the emotional ups and downs of a good or a bad sandwich. With a bottle of Soylent on your desk, time stretches before you, featureless and a little sad.
This is my concern. (The author then proceeds to visit a bagel shop, and is thankful that he isn't eating the unhealthy bagel, which may distract from the "featureless" problem, but is otherwise unanswered.)
But then, I also tend to like doing dishes, I think because it's one of the few parts of my day where things slow down and I'm not longer forced to be thinking, and I can finally — ironically — think.
Well, to be frank, I'd rather be eating. What's the point of your life if you don't have time to even eat, let alone enjoy yourself.