Journal #4
Initially, reading the title “The End of Food” maybe me assume we were about to read on some a radical idea that a random person came up with that failed massively. However, only a few paragraphs in and I fully understood the concept and the genius behind the idea. One of the biggest concepts that stuck out to me in the article was the intent behind Soylent. Rob Rhinehart had no intention of entirely replacing all food products, saying it is not a “recreational food” (Widdicombe 6). He instead advertised it as an efficient meal as an alternative to his previous cheesy quesadillas. On of the main reasons this jumped out at me was the line, “The college student fridge of the future,” describing a fridge containing nothing but Soylent and a bag of baby carrots as a fun snack along with the section discussing Caltech students who were described as not having time for anything, let alone sitting down for three full meals a day to nourish themselves (Widdicombe 6). Often I have difficulty either finding time to sit down and eat a full meal with the amount of work I have or, in other cases, I simply cannot find anything that interests me enough to be worth eating. Because of this, the concept and intent behind Soylent really interested me. It clearly is not just for adults in a 9-5 job, rushing around trying to save money on their meals and time during their day. It can me extremely helpful for the cheap college kids who do not have enough time for a sit down meal or even just simply too lazy to walk to the dining hall. Even more, the immensely creative ideas produced by the DIYers allow everyone to have more than just the pale initial recipe. Though Rhinehart seems to enjoy this yeasty blandness, he his hope had been achieved as his posting the recipe online had allowed it to expand, be altered, improved upon and enjoyed by so many. Though it is hard to even begin to imagine replacing even just a few of your meals in a day way a sort of smoothie that will likely be better for you than any alternative you could come up with, the concept behind it is ingenious and I would be very open and even excited to try it out sometime.
