Soylent is a nutritional shake that contains 20% of your daily macros, micros, and kcalories. In theory, if something contains 20% of your daily nutritional value, drinking 5 of those things should sustain you for the day. I decided to try that for an entire week.
Let me start by saying, this was a brutal 7 days.
To go an entire week without having the luxury of a chewable meal was the equivalent of being locked in a padded room.
Oddly enough, the flavor of the shakes is as vague as the names of each. None of them really have too distinct of a taste, with the exception being the chocolate one tasting quite chocolate-y. As best as I can describe them, they each have a milk-like consistency that was almost powdery. The original was closest to a vanilla taste, the coffiest had an almost chocolate-coffee taste, and the nectar was simply sweet. If I had to describe it in general, it was fower-y in flavor.
The amazing thing about my week with soylent was the amount of excess time I had. I never realized how much time we spend eating. I can understand that we don't dwell on the time we eat up during this process (pun intended) since it is a "necessary evil," but when you break it down, that's a lot of time out of our day. Preparing the meals themselves takes at least an hour, eating them adds another hour or so, and cleaning is about 30 minutes more. When I was given back this estimated 7.5 hours per day, I was an amazed at what I could get done.
The down-side was the lack of social interaction that came with missing these meals. I found myself having to turn down invitations to lunch or coffee because just sitting there watching someone else eat my favorite burger was heart breaking. This, again, opened up my schedule to do more with my week and be overall more productive (albeit a little lonely).
At the end of the week, I found myself with many positive thoughts about soylent. Surprisingly, I didn't get tired of the taste, the energy that I got from the coffiest was substantial, and the drinks themselves were satisfying. In fact, if I wasn't coming into contact with food, I didn't want it; I even found myself craving my next shake.
That being said, I was overjoyed when it ended. I may not have necessarily missed a certain food but rather the act of chewing itself and although this has been one of the most productive weeks of my entire semester, there’s nothing like the taste of my mom's lasagna or my dad's sloppy joes. This week has definitely given me a new appreciation for food, although I'll probably use soylent to supplement my nutritional needs in the future.
