It is possible to survive a week without solid food thanks to a Silicon Valley software engineer. Rob Rhinehart grew tired of constantly having to satisfy his hunger needs and instead developed Soylent, a food alternative. Rhinehart said:

Food just seems to pop up, like this obnoxious biological need that I need to get rid of.

Soylent is a combination of a person’s recommended daily dietary intake requirements made into a drink. The food alternative is not yet available to the public but Rhinehart has raised close to a half a million dollars thanks to his crowdsourcing campaign and plans to take the mixture to manufacturers.

Rhinehart was his own guinea pig. He lived on Soylent for a month and documented the results in a blog post “How I Stopped Eating Food”. He claims while on the Soylent his skin was clearer, he had more energy, he slept better and also lost 13 pounds (5,8 kg).

Rhinehart’s Soylent drink garnered the attention of a Chigao reporter, Julie Beck. Beck says that she drank the mixture for seven days without cheating.

But Rhinehart’s Soylent diet has been critised by some. One nutritionist told the Business Insider that the Soylent mixture is “a red flag for a potential eating disorder,” while another said that Rhinehart “cannot assume what his body needs.”

The chocolate, strawberry and plain-flavored whey makes the Soylent taste like a chocolate malt, a strawberry wafer cookie and a vanilla milkshake, respectively, except not quite. It’s as though an alien race tried to recreate the taste of those things out of chemicals they had available to them and they came very, very close, but couldn’t quite make it. There’s a chemical aftertaste that lingers, rising in your throat like a vapor. After that first day, I stick to the “plug and chug” system—plug your nose and chug it.

Beck explains the effects of Soylent she experienced were nowhere near those experienced by Rhinehart. She was never hungry, nor full, was not tired, but also not energetic.

She admits there are postives with Soylent: The constant need to think about what to eat, or what to make for lunch or supper is gone. With Soylent there is only one option. Beck became accustomed to the mixture, to her it became almost habitual. She also noted that her skin had become clearer and she had lost three and half pounds (1,5 kg).

[Source: Science]