Rob Rhinehart thinks he's hacked food. As the inventor of Soylent, he's managed to replace the inefficient process of chewing food. But his lifestyle is still full of luxuries like water. Now the monkish nu-food mogul is torturing his body to save some H 2 O.

"Water is the perfect product," Rhinehart opines in a blog post outlining his experiment in cutting back water consumption. "It is endlessly useful, cheap, simple, ubiquitous, and beautiful. [...] As our species continues to shape the planet I find it critically important that we take great pains to conserve the purity of this critical chemical."

For his water hacking trial, Rhinehart committed to only using 4 liters of water a day:

The rules are simple. Do not use more than 4 liters of water per day. I also decided to track 'virtual' water usage. That is, be mindful of the water used to produce a good that is used, in addition to water used directly. Given that a single toilet flush takes over 6L of water, and the cotton in a pair of jeans takes about 7000L to grow, some changes to my life were clearly in order.

The experiment is noble, especially considering California is currently suffering from a crippling drought. But in practice, it turned less pure when Rhinehart start pissing in his sink:

Relieving myself in the toilet is not an option. For a moment I consider following Clinton's advice: "if it's yellow let it mellow", but decide to go full Bukowski instead: "sometimes you just have to piss in the sink". Could we engineer more efficient kidneys?

Well, he has already disrupted dinner. Would it really be so hard optimize internal organs? Maybe A/B test humanity's way out of bodily functions?

Those aren't just the mutterings of a deranged Dr. Frankenstein. Rhinehart "massacred" his insides so he wouldn't have to evacuate his bowels:

Feces are almost entirely deceased gut bacteria and water. I massacred my gut bacteria the day before by consuming a DIY Soylent version with no fiber and taking 500mg of Rifaximin, an antibiotic with poor bioavailability, meaning it stays in your gut and kills bacteria. Soylent's microbiome consultant advised that this is a terrible idea so I do not recommend it. However, it worked. Throughout the challenge I did not defecate.

Rhinehart wasn't strictly obsessed with what comes out of his body. He dressed himself in a fireproof flight suit made from chemicals to avoid the water consumption associated with traditional clothing. He also limited how much water he drank to just half a glass:

I consumed nothing but Soylent throughout the challenge. Soylent uses no meat or dairy and only 1.6L of water. To avoid dishes and their subsequent water usage I poured my Soylent one meal at a time in to a polystyrene cup, which takes less than 1L of water to make. Soylent does not contain enough water in itself so I begrudgingly drank an additional 400ml of tap water. If there's anything as amazing as water it's petroleum.

At the end of the day, Rhinehart weaned himself down to just two liters of water. However, doctors recommend that adult men drink at least three liters per day. They also don't recommend abusing medicine so you stop shitting.

To contact the author of this post, please email kevin@valleywag.com.

Photo: Adrian Chen/Gawker