Soylent vs. Thanksgiving

A spectacular conglomeration of carbs, calories, and nutrients is still churning around in my gut, even a day later, the detritus of a particularly fine Thanksgiving dinner. Twenty four people gathered around that sprawling table, around 34 pounds of turkey, ample helpings of bacon-laced stuffing, heaps of mashed potatoes, gravy, and homemade cranberry sauce.

A couple months before, I'd eaten nothing but a food replacement cocktail for 30 days straight. So I'd been especially looking forward to this feast, since Thanksgiving is the polar opposite of Soylent, both physically and philosophically.

On Thanksgiving, the average American consumes a staggering 4,500 calories, 46 million turkeys are slaughtered, and the nation collectively slumps into a sensuous food coma. On Soylent, I consumed a fixed amount of calories, no animals were harmed, and enjoying food was out of the equation altogether.

It felt more than ever that those 30 foodless days were more of a cautionary preview of one possible future than a product trial—relying on tasteless, nutrient-packed fuel to get through the day, eschewing social activities, doubling down on work and time spent indoors, in front of computers and flickering screens. Thanksgiving, then, was a wonderful cultural overload; dozens of people, percolating conversation; sights, smells, drinking, reveling.

It felt a bit like the classic scene in Soylent Green where our protagonists finally and gleefully eat real, delicious food after countless meals of nutrient-rich wafers:

A resource-constrained future like the one depicted in that film, predicted not just by science fiction authors but by numerous scientists and economists, is clearly not out of the question. 600-800 million people go hungry every year as it is. While millions of Americans enjoyed intense culinary plenty last night, tens of millions of others eked out their meal on food stamps. The income inequality gulf is growing, worldwide, yes, and in the US, it's especially acute. Combine that with shrinking crop yields thanks to climate change, and a still-burgeoning population.

As in Soylent Green, and countless other dystopian classics, meals like the one we all enjoyed last night may eventually be the province of the wealthy. Whether or not it's Soylent—which in the real world, delivers all of your daily nutrients for about $8 a day—or fast, increasingly un-foodlike food, the future may be one in which the poor subsist on scientifically-altered food substitutes.

It certainly doesn't need to be; we've currently got the tools and scientific know-how to produce enough food for everyone; rich nations currently waste millions of tons of food a year. It's a matter of adjusting our politics, economic attitudes, and harnessing technological food innovations to benefit the global masses.

The Soylent philosophy might get that part right, actually: Thanksgiving dinner could actually be emblematic of an arcane, unsustainable food model. Much as we love it, the massive eat-a-thon is a serious environmental burden—in the distances we drive to dinner in the first place, the pounds of food that have to get shipped and processed from around the world, and the tons of food that are wasted in its wake.

But it's also clearly a fantastic social tradition. A generations-spanning group—kids, teenagers, seniors, family, friends—gathered in one spot to proverbially chew things over a bit. Conversation spanned from ancient family histories to the rise of cryptocurrencies to the troubles with college life. There were jovial moments and raised glasses alongside brief sad and awkward ones; it's an exceptionally human ritual, in other words, and it all takes place to the backdrop of chewing and swallowing.

Clearly, it'd be ideal if we could reconcile the two ideologies; less wasteful, more efficient foods and the social joy of rituals and tradition. Soylent is, in its creator's approximation, actually one means of doing so—since it's so cheap, it's a tool that will allow Thanksgiving dinners to persist in the long run. People will be able to eat Soylent during the weeks running up to it to help save up for a turkey, the thinking goes.

Hopefully, we can configure a future where even that won't be necessary. With reforms to the global food system, less energy-intense food production, fewer turkeys (and cows and pigs) in general, and more equal income distribution all around, dystopian food fixes might not need to enter the picture at all. Except when we want them to. Soylent will be there for those who want it. The company has already raked in $3 million, and consumers want the shake for more reasons than just saving money. Our food future, it seems, isn't a question of Soylent or Thanksgiving—it's how much of each.