Smart Phone, Smart home, Smart city. The modern era as it stands in 2018 seems to have been reduced to one long listicle in which tech bros stick ‘smart’ in front of something that already exists no matter how crap, no matter how ironic giving it that title may be. Then they inevitably attract millions in venture capital as they hype up the “innovative” or “disruptive” elements of process without any regard for the quality of the actual products.

I bring you the latest in the spectacularly un-self-aware smart products; Smart food. There are so many things wrong with this it’s hard to know where to start. But, lets just take the name, smart food. I don’t want my food to be smart, in fact that’s the opposite of what I want. Given that it’s a powder that I think they’re aiming at vegans, you’d imagine that a name which implies sentience might be a turnoff, but apparently not. Another terrible branding choice is the company name; Feed. That’s Feed (full stop). The implication being that it will just feed you, it will bring you no enjoyment, there’ll be none of that food getting people together round a table bullshit here. It will simply provide you with enough nutrients that you do not die. Well, at least they’re honest.

Feed. is one of the recent crop of startups promising to disrupt the way we eat, like Huel and Soylent, this time they’re from France though. You might think that being from a country with as proud a culinary tradition as l’Hexagone, their version of Silicone Valleyised, futurist space food might at least be something you could conceivably want to eat. I’ve tried two of their products, I can promise you that they are not. Feed. is definitely more the product of Macron’s “start-up nation” than the centuries old cuisine that brought us boeuf-bourguignonne, patisseries, raclette and ratatouille.

The first product I tried was from their ready to drink range, it was a vanilla meal in a bottle. It promised to be fully balanced, fully vegan, lactose and gluten-free. All great, but no amount of artificial vanilla flavouring made up for the fact that its aftertaste was like someone mixed Weetabix with some water than stamped it into a piece of cardboard. I had no breakfast beyond this and was late for work so grabbed the bottle and started drinking on the bus. Drinking your meals is a weird sensation. You realise that you’re not hungry, but you don’t feel like you’re full either, it leaves you with this awkward in-between that is usually only the preserve of committed marathon runners on a blended diet.

My bottle of Feed powder

The second, amazingly was far worse. This was chocolate flavoured powder in a bottle to which you have to add “room temperature” water — bonne appetite. I shook “energetically” for the requisite 45 seconds, took a sip, retched, then shook some more. No matter how much shaking I did, it did not change the fact that clumps of the powder remained in the drink, so every time I took a sip my mouth was filled with a substance with the consistency of mud and the taste of slightly chocolatey sawdust. Despite the fact that it is a water-based “meal”, the constant powder in your mouth leaves you thirstier then when you started it. The idea that it is flavoured is laughable. There are a lot of 100% boasts on the bottle; vegan, balanced etc. They should add one more to this list “tastes like 100% shit”.

I couldn’t finish my meal, I got about a third of the way through before I started to feel sick. Despite all these clear drawbacks, the company had, as of June 2018, raised €15 million in venture capital. It seems like a pump and dump scheme, just an investment vehicle for cynics to make a few quick bucks. We have a global responsibility to sort out the impending food crisis, but I’ll be damned if this is the solution. Maybe the investors haven’t actually tried the product, or perhaps they are as credulous as they seem. Either way, you can count me out of your ‘revolution’. Sustainable food should taste good, liquid sand for breakfast, is not going to displace any established food culture. Feed. if this is the best you can do, then you should give up trying.