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ack in November I was going through a bit of a change: a new job had me driving an hour each way for training. This wasn’t the worst thing in the world – early mornings were simply made a bit earlier, and late nights a bit later. It’s worth noting this was at Wegmans, a high end grocery store with a cafe inside.

Right around this time I was first introduced to Soylent. Soylent, for the uninitiated, is the meal-in-a-bottle food of the future straight out of Silicon Valley. A single bottle provides you with 20% of your recommended daily nutrition at the cost of about $3 a bottle, bringing you to a full days worth of food for around $15.

An interesting concept, and a potential godsend for someone with long drives and not a lot of money.

I ordered my first box of Soylent and eagerly cracked it open once it arrived. Surprisingly the taste wasn’t bad! It wasn’t good, but it wasn’t bad. It was kind of like dropping a chocolate chip cookie in a glass of milk and then drinking the slightly-thicker cookie-tasting milk.

So I decided what my quest would be: no food for five days, only Soylent.

I started off slowly, just drinking Soylent for breakfast and lunch then eating a real dinner, hoping to eventually cut it all out and go food-free.

Yeah, that didn’t work.

You see, the mind is a terrible influence. Working at a grocery store and being constantly reminded of all the wonderful foods (fresh pizza right next to the break room…) makes you hungry, very hungry. While Soylent is great at providing nutrition it doesn’t exactly ‘fill you up’ mentally so to speak. While my stomach may be full, my mind is telling me that I haven’t really eaten much today. I tried mixing my drinking of Soylent with eating some fruit — mainly apples in the morning — but that didn’t help much either.

As great of an idea it was to try to be healthier, it requires a lot of self control.

I don’t have much self control… but I definitely wish I did.

Although by the end of my time with the first box of Soylent I was feeling significantly better every day. More alert, more energetic when I woke up, and overall just better. That was nice. Cutting out all the shitty-shit that comes with eating the typical college kid diet was an eye opening thing. If I had the self control, I’d still be doing Soylent.

Since my attempt at pre-bottled meals, they’ve also introduced Coffiest, a caffeinated version of Soylent for breakfast, as well as the Soylent bar, which is basically just Soylent in food form. I intend to try both of them eventually.

Is Soylent worth it? The answer to that question is the same as the answer to this one: do you have the self control to cut out your favorite foods?

It’s definitely worth a try if you want to see what the ‘food of the future’ is like, and worst case scenario you have a super-quick backup meal if you’re in a pinch and don’t have time for food.

Also: you start to poop differently once you drink a lot of Soylent. Less food in your body means less solids coming out. Keep that in mind.

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