Soy Do You Have A Favorite Meal

If the way we consume food turned into strictly  just drinking, you would lose all satisfaction in eating. Eating comes with a whole lot of opportunities, you get to sit down with your family and friends and have a meal. If that is all changed to simply just drinking your calories, you lose all that satisfaction that comes with eating a meal. The human body cannot survive without the nutrients that it gets from eating food. Simply blending up your food and turning it into a drink, does not supply the body with everything it needs. In order to get those nutrients that come from eating food, we must eat that food instead of drinking it. Nothing compares to the taste of food, drinking it ruins that. However, there are many substitutes for food. Lizzie Widdicombe introduces this idea with Rhinehart’s invention. Food may very well be the reason that you have a good day or a bad day. 

​​ Rhinehart was a college kid that thought eating food was an inefficient way of getting what he needed. He thought that food was a waste of time and money. The Rhinehart invention is an invention that turns food into a drink. It has proved to be very useful for saving time and money. “It just seemed like a system that’s too complex and too expensive and too fragile” (Widdicombe 1). This quote explains Rhinehart’s thinking and displays the reason that he started to look for substitutes for food. As a college student who needs food to feel alive, I understand what Rhienhart was trying to do, but his invention would never work for me due to the lack of eating. 

One thing I start to think about when eating comes into play is quality time with family and friends. Before I moved to college, my family and I would have “family dinner”. It was never anything special in our family, but it was something my mother always looked forward to. My mother and I have a very strong relationship, I almost lost my mother twice due to cancer, thankfully my mother is still alive and healthy. Family dinners are important to me for that reason, I have learned not to take everything for granted. If my mother wasn’t around anymore family dinner’s wouldn’t be a thing in mine and my family’s lives. 

If soylent was to take over the way we eat, instead of home cooked meals it’s taking away the opportunity to make memories with our loved ones. You usually have three meals a day, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Usually dinner time is family time. I cannot imagine what it would be like if my mother placed a bottle of soylent in front of me and told me that is what we were having for dinner, it’s unreasonable. I simply do not think a bottle of mixed up food groups is appetizing.

Having a home cooked meal for dinner was my favorite part of the day. I was always so excited to come home and have my mom cook me a delicious dinner. In my favorite food essay, I talked about how much a home cooked meal meant to me. “I believe that the meatloaf recipe in our family comes from my great grandmother, Alice. I never got to meet Alice, she died before I was born, but her recipes were passed down to all of her grandchildren (my mother) and their kids (myself).” Being in college has been difficult because all we have is dining hall food. I always took home cooked meals for granted at home. Now being almost a semester and a half through college I have learned to appreciate a good home cooked meal. If I drank a bottle of soylent four times a day I do not think I would be happy. Having a meal three times a day truly makes me so happy. It brings my energy levels up and it helps me function throughout the day. If I was just drinking a beverage with nutrients in it, I feel like I would definitely be full but there is no way I would possibly be satisfied. 

If I were to drink four to five bottles of soylent a day, I believe it would sit in my stomach. I LOVE food, I am a food lover. I am so serious about that, I always look forward to eating, it sounds funny but I do, again from my favorite meal essay, “I love meat, it’s one of those things that if I were told I had to go vegetarian I would choose death over vegetarian, I know it sounds harsh but I cannot live without meat, I just can’t. I have tried it for health reasons in the past and it didn’t work out well at all.” If meat were to disappear one day and I was handed a bottle of liquid I would be in absolute shock, I wouldn’t be able to do it. It wouldn’t fulfill my hunger, I get hangry, meaning angry when you’re so hungry that you get angry. It’s not fun to lash out on the ones you love and I truly believe that that is what would happen to me. In the “End of Food” paper Widdecomb says, “Food was such a large burden” (Widdicombe page 1) I think food is absolutely anything but a burden. I think we all need food to happily function and survive. Food is my main energy provider. I hate energy drinks, I am so against them. I get the same energy that my friends do when they drink an energy drink, as when I consume food. Reading this paper honestly didn’t change my views on homemade meals vs. soylent. I know during class discussions there were a lot of people who had mixed reviews about it and some who were completely for soylent. Not me. I don’t know what I would do without an intake of three meals a day. Even if it isn’t a real home cooked meal and just some measly food from a dining hall. 

Being away at college makes me realize how important food is in our everyday lives. We need food to survive, a lot of people don’t think about it that way but we do. We need food for energy to do our tasks. For example, going to class, doing homework, writing a paper. Without food in our bodies we don’t have enough energy to do those things. Food should be at least one of everyone’s top priorities. Whether it’s having a meal with your friends or going to the dining hall by yourself to get some fuel in your bodies. If we were to switch to soylent that wouldn’t give us the nutrients or energy we need to go on with our daily lives. Having at least three meals a day at most. 

In conclusion I do think that soylent could come in handy for some extreme circumstances. I think that it could very well help solve world hunger. I also think it would be handy to help people who don’t have direct access to a meal. I really do believe if you have direct access to food and a home cooked meal of some sort, then you should take advantage of it. I don’t think that soylent should be used for everyone at all times. I think that that would be pointless. So many jobs in the food industry would be lost and that wouldn’t help the less fortunate people feed their families. I love food and I love home cooked meals. I don’t know what I would do without them and I don’t know what I would do if soylent became popular enough to take over everyones lives. 

Works CitedWiddicombe, Lizzie. “The End of Food.” The New Yorker, 5 May 2014, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/05/12/the-end-of-food.