Soy, Is it Worth it?

In today’s world there are tons of food “alternative” supplements flooding the market every year. This is an interesting concept that many people see value in, but on the other hand there is a lot of speculation on if this is a good solution for food, or if it can even be considered a solution at all. Today if you go into any vitamin shop in the country, you will find a variety of shakes, or “weight gainers” that can serve as a meal replacement. One of the latest trailblazers in this market space in the last decade is Rob Rhinehart. Rhinehart, believe it or not, was an electrical engineering student at Georgia Tech, his product idea came to life when he was questioned what food really is. His idea in his mind was food as just a bunch of vitamins and macros and asked himself the question: “What if we went straight to the chemical components?” and he created a cost effective simple formula to get the same nutritional value but without the hassle of having to prep everything out (Widdicombe 1). There is some value to Rob Rhineart’s argument of turning to non-traditional sources for our food supply, but I feel like there is too much to lose as a society if this is something we completely burn the boats and turn to all the time. There’s a lot of value that comes from gathering supplies and cooking homemade meals. We must maintain traditional meals and all of the other values that come with them such as

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tradition, family bonding, and different textured options and use these other substitutes only when deemed necessary.

When meeting with loved ones or close friends, a lot of these occasions throughout your life will go hand and hand with some sort of food. This could be ordering pizza with your buddies, or going to your aunts and getting one of her famous meals. Or even going on a date with a significant other to get ice cream. From personal experience, I have some fond memories of food with a loved one, my mother will on occasion make my favorite meal for me, a steak sandwich. As mentioned in my favorite meal essay, “One of my first memories of this meal was when there was a snow storm one winter day a few years ago, my brother and I were tasked with shoveling our entire driveway, walkway, as well as our deck. This task took us about an hour and a half to complete. Once we completed this task, I remember coming inside to the pan on, and seeing all the ingredients out to my favorite meal. I recall the warmth and sense of security I felt when eating this meal after coming inside from what felt like the frozen tundra. It also gave me a great sense of appreciation for my mother.” In other words, this meal is significant because in my eyes this was a way for my mother to show a sense of appreciation for my brother and I’s effort. One of Rhinehart’s counter arguments to this claim, as stated in Lizzie Widdicombe’s New Yorker article “The End of Food” is that, “ [in the future] We’ll see a separation between our meals for utility and function, and our meals for experience and socialization” (3). Here Rhinehart is showing there is a time and place for Soylent, as well as regular home cooked meals. As can be seen from the two pieces of evidence, food is a great way to bond with other humans and if we move completely to these supplements, we will lose a huge piece of who we are and what we’ve done as a species since our existence.

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There is a lot to lose with how we look at food and enjoy eating it as a society if we were to be one hundred percent dependent on these meal replacements. For one, there is a lot of bonding between family and friends that takes place when eating meals together. The moments in life when you are enjoying great conversation with great food around your loved ones are some of the best moments in your life. You also lose a great sense of tradition if you get rid of food, since a lot of family gatherings are based on the idea of eating food. My family has been meeting at the same house for about seventy years on Christmas Eve enjoying fresh seafood, and great Italian cuisine, while everyone catches up with each other. I believe that this moment would lose its spark if we all came together and just shared bottled shakes together. Instead of having a big crock pot of food made by your loved ones you would have a bunch of chemicals put into bottles by strangers. In my “Favorite Meal Essay” I described the steak sandwich as “incredibly special to me because it reminds me of home.” I don’t know of anything else besides maybe weather or a certain smell that can really take you back in time and remember a certain situation like the taste of food. My dad and I used to go and get sushi from the time I was in middle school. Now everytime I taste the fresh and soft tasting fish it reminds me of going to my Dad’s house almost every Wednesday and going to a restaurant down the road called Yujo to get a bite to eat and catch up with each other.

Another argument you could create is the taste and texture of these shakes. I’m sure these shakes probably taste fine, but I could never imagine drinking fifteen to twenty shakes by choice a week. One of the more underrated aspects of the eating experience is the texture of the food you are eating. In my Favorite Meal Essay I described my favorite meal’s ingredients in many different ways, such as “applying some horseradish mayo for extra tanginess”. If you were going

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to switch to a hundred percent Soylent diet, these ingredients that help compliment others wouldn’t be possible. The combination of different food groups molding together to create one marvelous dish is something most people don’t even consider when it comes to the eating experience. Say something like a BLT sandwich for instance, the soft charred bread combined with the crunch from your lettuce and bacon, finished off with the creaminess from the aioli. Rhinehart describes the creation of Soylent in the “End of Food” as “ […] a slurry of chemicals, looked like gooey lemonade” (2). I don’t believe any normal person would want to eat a liquid described as slurry lemonade for half of their meals the remainder of their life. Imagine waking up with a weak stomach and having to down a thick high viscosity liquid before work or class? I can only imagine the stomach ache that you would endure after. With no variation in the way we eat and digest our food, a lot of the joy will go as well when it feels like you have to force these meals down.