# Soylent Soylent is a meal replacement drink that software engineer Rob Rhinehart created in 2013 and named after the dystopian 1973 film Soylent Green. His blog post about living a month on the homemade shake went viral on Reddit, drew Vice features and generated over $3 million in a Crowdtilt campaign that May. By May 2014, the first 30,000 retail units shipped to customers in the United States. ## Origin Rhinehart was working as a software engineer in late 2012 when he watched an elderly, injured friend struggle to feed himself, which prompted him to leave his job and begin tinkering with a liquid food substitute[4]. He taught himself nutrition from online courses and books, then published "How I Stopped Eating Food" on his personal blog on February 13, 2013[1]. The post described a month of eating nothing but his homemade shake and tracked each ingredient change he made along the way. He borrowed the product name from Richard Fleischer's 1973 film Soylent Green, in which processed food rations turn out to be made from human corpses[8]. - **Platform:** Personal blog (origin) / Reddit (viral spread) - **Creator:** Rob Rhinehart - **Date:** 2013 ## Overview Soylent sits at an odd intersection of Silicon Valley food hacking and science-fiction irony. Rhinehart assembled the drink from maltodextrin, rice protein, oat flour, canola oil, fish oil and raw chemical powders meant to cover every known human nutritional need[8]. Supporters called it a cheap, time-saving replacement for cooking, while critics mocked the premise and questioned the science behind a drink formulated by someone with no formal nutrition training[4]. Discussion online centered on whether a person could actually live on the mix, with Rhinehart openly inviting experimenters through an open-source approach to his recipe[1]. Vice staff writer Brian Merchant ran a 30-day Soylent-only diet on camera, and the resulting Motherboard video drew more than 895,000 views and 5,000 comments within six months[3]. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What is Soylent? Soylent is a meal replacement drink that software engineer Rob Rhinehart created in 2013 to cover all known human nutritional needs using ingredients such as maltodextrin, rice protein and oat flour[8]. ### Where did Soylent come from? Rhinehart published a blog post titled "How I Stopped Eating Food" on February 13, 2013, describing a month of drinking only his homemade shake[1], then raised over $3 million on Crowdtilt that May[10]. ### What does Soylent mean? Rhinehart borrowed the name from the 1973 film Soylent Green, which depicts a future where processed food rations are revealed to be made from human corpses[8]. ### How do you use Soylent? Soylent is drunk as a liquid meal replacement, and Rhinehart openly shared his recipe so others could mix their own versions and experiment with ingredient changes[1]. ### Is Soylent still popular? Online debate peaked in 2013 and 2014 around Rhinehart's $3 million Crowdtilt campaign[10] and Vice Motherboard's 30-day diet video[3], with the first 30,000 retail units shipping in May 2014[11]. ## References 1. [http://robrhinehart.com/?p=298]() 2. [http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/21/soylent/]() 3. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8WpksPED_Q]() 4. [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/active/10032594/The-man-who-lives-without-food.html]() 5. [http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/rob-rhinehart-no-longer-requires-food]() 6. [https://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/18ydir/how_i_stopped_eating_food/]() 7. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVpN312hYgU]() 8. [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/soylent]() 9. [https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1qpjh4/im_rob_rhinehart_the_ceo_and_founder_of_soylent/]() 10. [https://crowdtilt.soylent.me/soylent-free-your-body]() 11. [http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2014/05/12/140512fa_fact_widdicombe?currentPage=all]() --- Source: https://meme.com/memes/soylent Published by meme.com — The Internet Meme Library