Soylent (meal replacement)

A Soylent package, along with the powder and resulting drink

In January 2013, software engineer Rob Rhinehart purchased 35 chemical ingredients—including potassium gluconate, calcium carbonate, monosodium phosphate, maltodextrin, olive oil—all of which he deemed to be necessary for survival, based on his readings of biochemistry textbooks and U.S. government websites.[4][5] Rhinehart used to view food as a time-consuming hassle and had resolved to treat it as an engineering problem. He blended the ingredients with water and consumed only this drink for the next thirty days. Over the course of the next two months, he adjusted the proportions of the ingredients to counter various health issues and further refined the formula.[4][6][7] Rhinehart claimed a host of health benefits from the drink and noted that it had greatly reduced his monthly food bill, which fell from about US$470 to $155, and the time spent behind the preparation and consumption of food whilst providing him greater control over his nutrition.[4]

Soylent is named after a food in Harry Harrison's 1966 science fiction novel Make Room! Make Room![8][9] In the novel, most types of soylent are made from soy and lentils. The word also evokes the 1973 film adaptation Soylent Green, in which the eponymous food is made from human remains.[5] Rhinehart also says he chose the name, with its morbid associations, to pique curiosity and deeper investigation, since the name was clearly not chosen with a traditionally "flashy" marketing scheme in mind.[10]

In 2013, a community of people interested in making their own Soylent emerged online, attracted by the ability to customize nutrition precisely to each person's unique needs.[11] Another software engineer, Nick Poulden, founded the web site diy.soylent.me (now www.completefoods.co), where users shared the results of their own tinkering with the Soylent recipe.[5][12][11] Users could enter a nutritional profile and select a recipe, and the web site would calculate exact proportions of each ingredient to yield the desired intake of each nutrient.[5] Zach Alexander, a former professional cook, made a Soylent formula mostly from ingredients available at grocery stores rather than laboratory supply houses, which he calls Hackerschool Soylent.[12]

Rhinehart's blog posts about his experiment attracted attention on Hacker News,[5][13] eventually leading to a crowdfunding campaign on Tilt that raised about $1.5 million in preorders[3][14] aimed at moving the powdered drink from concept into production. It became one of the most funded crowdfunding projects ever accomplished. After the campaign, Soylent had venture capital financing for a seed round of $1.5 million[14] to further develop proof of concept. Media reports detailed how operations began for Rosa Foods in April 2014, using a relatively small $500 system to ship the first $2.6 million worth of product.[15] In January 2015, Soylent received $20 million in Series A round funding, led by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.[16]

Prior to June 2015, Soylent was only available for purchase and shipment to people in the United States. On June 15, 2015, the shipping of Soylent to Canada was introduced[17] at the same price in U.S. dollars as for U.S. customers. Expansion to European countries is a stated future goal. In October 2017, Canada disallowed further shipments of Soylent due to a failure to meet Canadian food regulations on meal replacements.[18]

In July 2017, Soylent was sold offline for the first time at 7-Eleven stores around Los Angeles.[19] By April 2018, Soylent was sold in over 8,000 7-Elevens around the United States and is currently also sold at Walmart, Target, and Kroger.[20]

On August 13, 2015, nonprofit environmental and corporate social responsibility watchdog As You Sow filed a notice of intent to pursue a lawsuit against the makers of Soylent, claiming that Soylent did not adequately label its product given the levels of lead and cadmium present in the drink. The basis for the lawsuit lies in California's Proposition 65, a law that requires additional labeling for food products containing trace amounts of certain substances.

Although Soylent contains levels of lead and cadmium far below the national safety levels set by the FDA, it does contain 12 to 25 times the level of lead and 4 times the level of cadmium allowable in a product without additional labeling as specified by Proposition 65.[35][36] A lawyer who has worked on settlements of Proposition 65 suits described the case as "alarmist", as the levels are well below FDA limits of what is allowed in food products.[37] However, as Soylent is marketed as a complete meal replacement, many customers consume the drinks three times a day, equating to 36 to 75 times the lead and 12 times the level of cadmium without the Prop 65 label.[38] As You Sow believes these levels may be harmful.[35] Lead is a neurotoxin that accumulates in soft tissues and bones, and even at low levels is linked to nerve damage, lower IQ, and reproductive problems including decreased sperm count. Cadmium is also a toxic heavy metal and has been linked to kidney, liver, and bone damage.[38]

Soylent's website displays the Proposition 65 warning required by California.[37] Rosa Foods published the position that the levels of heavy metal content in Soylent "are in no way toxic, and Soylent remains completely safe and nutritious".[39] Rosa Foods also published an infographic and spreadsheet based on an FDA study of heavy metal content in common foods, comparing two selected example meals to servings of Soylent with a similar amount of caloric intake. Both of the company's chosen comparison meals include high levels of cadmium and arsenic, along with levels of lead similar to those of Soylent; although one of them includes tuna and the other includes salmon, providing over 97% of the arsenic in each proposed meal, with spinach providing 74% of the cadmium in the higher-cadmium meal and fruit cocktail providing 71% of the lead in the higher-lead meal.

On October 12, 2016, the company announced it would halt sales of the Soylent Bar due to reports of gastrointestinal illness, including nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea.[40] The company asked customers to discard any unconsumed bars and said it would offer full refunds.[41] On October 21, 2016, the company triggered a product recall, and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) announced it had commenced a food safety investigation.[42]

On October 27, 2016, the company also halted sales of Soylent Powder.[43] The company said tests on the bar had come back negative for contamination, but also said that some powder users had reported similar stomach-related symptoms from consuming the powder.[44][45]

The company initially suspected soy or sucralose intolerance.[46] However, on November 7, 2016, Soylent instead blamed algal flour for making people sick, and said it planned to remove algal flour from future formulations of the powders and bars,[47] which it did in the next formulation version 1.7 introduced on December 15, 2016.[48][49] The drink-based products use algal oil, not algal flour, so were deemed to be safe for users.

TerraVia, the supplier of Soylent's algal ingredients, published a fact sheet in response to media coverage for its algal flour.[50]