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Never Eat Food Again - Just Soylent
Rob Rhinehart thinks he may never eat again.
(ingredients for healthy, food-free living)
I was home for Christmas and saw an elderly family friend get admitted to the hospital after losing an unhealthy amount of weight. He was losing strength in one of his arms and found it very difficult to cook. I started wondering why something as simple and important as food was still so inefficient, given how streamlined and optimised other modern things are. I also had an incentive to live as cheaply as possible, and I yearned for the productivity benefit of being healthy. I'd been reading a lot of books on biology and I started to think that it's probably all the same to our cells whether it gets nutrients from a powder or a carrot.Hacking the body is high risk, high reward. I read a textbook on physiological chemistry and took to the internet to see if I could find every known essential nutrient. My kitchen soon looked like a chemistry lab and I had every unknown substance in a glass in front of me. I was a little worried it was going to kill me, but decided it was for science and quickly downed the whole thing. To my surprise, it was quite tasty and I felt very energetic. For 30 days I avoided food entirely and I monitored the contents of my blood and physical performance. Mental performance is harder to quantify, but I feel much sharper.
Take a look at the compact food pastilles from Edward Page Mitchell's 1879 classic The Senator's Daughter, which is probably the first use of the 'food pill' idea in science fiction.
Update 24-Feb-2024: An even earlier example can be found in The Fatal Curiosity, or, A Hundred Years Hence, by James Payn, published by Belgravia, A London Magazine in 1877:
Why, in those days they had not even discovered the art of preserving the surplus food in one country to supply the lack of another. Waste ruled in Australia and Want in England. The art of concentration was almost unknown...”"You are referring to that ridiculous story of the sheep's lozenge, I suppose," said Mr. Raymond, looking just a trifle sheepish himself."
(Read more about the sheep's lozenge)
End update.
Also, as I'm sure sf fans all know, the term "soylent" has been used before, in the 1973 film Soylent Green.
Via Vice.
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