AFAIK, dietary fibers are required to properly properly expel wastes and to maintain a healthy gut flora (which is not only used for digestion, but cooperates with immune system). And from what I've read, a normal amount is considered somewhere between 20-35g (daily).
This is the kind of idea that will probably go nowhere, but could change the world.
My first reaction, being an ardent lover of many ethnic cuisines, was "of course I'd never use something like that" but then I got to this line:
Eating to me is a leisure activity, like going to the movies, but I don't want to go to the movies three times a day.
Suddenly, I'm imagining "A DVR for eating." You have a steady intake of Soylent (the name absolutely must change), and when you have time to prepare a nice meal or go out to a restaurant, you adjust your intake ahead of time so your hunger level is appropriate. Crazy, but now I have another ingredient for my sci-fi universe.
I prefer the name Bachelor Chow myself, though I'd try Soylent as well. I wouldn't want to eat it for every meal but every once in a while I'm in such a hurry that it would be practical to do this for a period.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who instantly thought of Futurama. This does seem like a food product for people who are too lazy to make even a simple meal and clean afterwards.
It's not a matter of being lazy. Cooking and eating consumes hours in my day. At least four hours a day, and typically six hrs a day if I get fancy with cooking.
Wow, you need to optimise! I spent less than an hour today cooking and eating a healthy breakfast in the morning, and a healthy dinner (with leftovers) this evening. I bought prepared food for lunch, but it wouldn't have taken me three hours to cook and eat something else...
too lazy, or too busy? I could be doing a bunch of other non-lazy things I much prefer doing instead of cooking, such as coding, exercising, music, reading, etc.
Yeah some sci-fi books/films have incorporated that idea. For example the scene in the Matrix where they eat goop that contains "everything the body needs".
"It doesn't have everything the body needs." - Mouse
I'd be interested in the long term effects on cognition and mood. I already supplement my eating with mixes of protein powder and half n' half, this could be an interesting addition.
This stuff, which I'm going to call meal replacement powder [1], already changed the world for two groups of people I know of. First ones are famine victims, who need a special diet to recover, a diet which was time and work intensive for relief workers to prepare until meal replacement formula became widely adopted. Might sound crazy but this plus rehydration salts save lots of unlucky people every year.
Second group are bodybuilders, weightlifters and some elite athletes who want to easily ingest a specific number of calories with a carefully controlled macro-nutrient ratio several times during the day. Doing this through traditional meals is not compatible with a traditional full time job in any shape or form. With meal replacement protein powder it's pretty easy: just add water and maybe some milk to your powder which you already have in your shaker and shake.
I'm hoping for it to spread to impoverished countries or slums. If the price of production is indeed low, this could be a great chance for them.
Then let's hope it doesn't get associated too much with homeless people's food, and the rest of the world might adopt it as well. Once a large-scale production industry exists, there might not be such a high threshold for adoption. People are in a hurry to eat so often, if they could just pass by a place to grab some Soylent, they'd certainly take the opportunity.
I think this is one of those "Whatever floats your boat" kind of things. For me, as with others, eating is something I enjoy, not a chore, and I look forward to food. Also, I'm not sure how one's social interactions work in this world, especially since so much that is tied around food.
I look forward to food, but not paying $8 a day to eat lunch from one of two crappy places I can easily get to from work. Nor the weight gain that comes from them. Obviously I could pack a lunch, but I hate that shit. If this could actually sustain me I would consider it for breakfast/lunch with a real dinner. Clearly I could probably get away with an off the shelf replacement for those meals though...
I don't think it's a hoax - he's sending me a batch and I can't wait to try it. I enjoy food occasionally, but most of the time it's just a giant pain in the ass.
If I had to hazard a guess at why the gut reaction is to call it a joke, it would be that (1) meal replacement shakes have been around for at least two decades and (2) it's not a weight loss suggestion (although he mentions it may be useful for that).
Let's see how well he's doing after a year of living off the stuff. There's probably more complexity to food than breaking it up into vitamins, minerals, and calories.
A fairly stereotypical way to being an organic chemistry class is to start out with traditional vitalism and pivot into the historical first complete synthesis of urea, of all things...
I wasn't referring to vitalism so much as our ability to capture all of the components of food (given that we don't fully understand the effects of micro-levels of nutrients in our body) and determine exactly what we need (given that people vary and not everyone needs the same things in the same proportions).
So, instead of saying the complexity of food, I should have said the complexity of the entire system.
There's a certain arrogance within scientific/rational thinking that everything can be broken up in to parts and understood that way. Life is more complex than that.
I don't think that's where is "falls apart" at all!
To quote Edison, "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."
He's out there trying something, seeing what works. If it turns out that there is some essential nutrient missing? Well? We found something out. And that's pretty cool.
Personally, I think it'd be worth setting up a study around this kind of thing. If we could cheaply produce a human chow of sorts, a lot of good could come of it.
Personally, I'd be down with it. I'm a bit of a weekend warrior foodie, I love making big meals on the weekends, or every once and awhile during the week. However, for the most part, day to day eating is just kind of rote. It takes too much time to make something decent, and so I usually end up eating a sandwhich, or maybe fast food, or perhaps some microwavable thing. If I could supplement 80% of my eating with a nutrient rich drink, I'd be pretty happy to do so. Finite control over calories would be a big plus, as well.
I read a textbook on physiological chemistry and took to the internet to see if I could find every known essential nutrient.
The danger is that there are far more essential nutrients that we don't know about, than nutrients that we do. And the only way to get these nutrients is to eat a well balanced diet.
That being said, this would be amazing if it works and I applaud him for trying.
Yes, food is complex and we can't pretend to understand how it it used by our bodies. A whole food diet is still surely healther in ways we can't quantify. And if it was it would be very hard to prove affirmatively.
That said, almost no one eats a whole food diet these days. I imagine this would be a step up over 70% of the diets in modern America.
This was exactly my thought, and I don't know how you mitigate the risk effectively. The problem with missing nutrients is the effects are often subtle, may not show up for a long time, and may be catastrophic.
Of course, the rebuttal is "eat food occasionally", but that may just postpone the outcome, making it even harder to know if it is safe.
Pretty terrible experience. I had to drink close to a dozen cups of the stuff a day and it didn't go down easy. The stuff worked however and I went back into remission.
Defecating while on this became a very rare occurrence but otherwise almost normal if I recall correctly.
And another interesting twist: while I was very weak, I gained some noticeable muscle mass - I imagine because this is essentially taking protein powder consumption to an extreme.
It seems like this perhaps guy created a better version than Nestle on account of it actually tasting good and not needing a dozen cups a day - it is not a good lifestyle for healthy people but is very interesting as a supplement.
Drinking one can of something a day to insure you get all the nutrients necessary, including the rare ones, is a lot easier than adhering religiously to a very balanced diet. Sort of like a multivitamin that actually works.
>It seems like this perhaps guy created a better version than Nestle on account of it actually tasting good
I just want to point out that it doesn't actually taste good. He says it does, but try mixing whey powder, olive oil, and maltodextrin in water and drink it. It tastes fucking awful.
Thanks for this post! I too have Crohn's (and ankylosing spondylitis), but I had not heard of Modulen before. I also very much share the sentiments of the article author, so I'm a bit bummed to hear you found it to be a terrible experience.
> It seems like this perhaps guy created a better version than Nestle on account of it actually tasting good and not needing a dozen cups a day [...]
Just speculating here, but the limiting factor for Nestle might be to get the same stuff that he is using into a product that you can deliver as a ready-made "just add water" mixture. He specifically wrote that he has to make it fresh every day, so that could be the difference.
If he's a true programmer, he'd code up an iphone app that controls an arduino that mixes up the precise amounts of amino acids, boron, saccharides, glucose and polyphenols for the perfect Soylent to start his day. Maybe even post his objective C on github so I can issue a pull request with 200% more boron. You know, here in the bay area, we have plants that tweet when they run out of water. I can rig up a tweetbot so his body tweets whenever he is dehydrated, and Amazon can intercept that tweet to dropship amino acids to his kitchen where the arduino mixes up the next batch of Soylent.
If you took it to production you could just distribute a mixer that has compartments for independent ingredients, maybe even go so far as to standardize cartage sizes of them to use as a fixed insert, have them delivered regularly, and plug them in to make your nutrient sludge once a day.
Then just go a step further, have it delivered by automated transport, brew itself, and you just go grab a cup of juice to keep you alive and get on with your day.
>standardize cartage sizes...have them delivered regularly
When I first arrived in the USA in 1995 as a CS student, I was surprised to see these identical Walmarts. They were all the same - same aisles, same items in those aisles, same prices, same senior citizens manning the checkout counters..
So I asked the gent at the checkout counter - Sir, instead of me coming to your Walmart every weekend to buy groceries, why doesn't Walmart standardize on groceries & deliver them weekly to all American citizens ? Huge savings on driving costs, shopping time,...
He looked at me and said - Son, that's called communism.
Looks like Scott Adam's Dilberito returns: «With the mantra “We Make it Easy to Eat,” Scott Adams Food, Inc. condenses the gastronomy, convenience, and economy (the would-be price in 2008, adjusted to inflation, is $3.31) into one object, eliminating the need for contemplation and decision.» http://dankbuilders.blogspot.dk/2008/03/dilberito.html
Like Dilbert, the animated series (second season wasn't actually that bad), Dilberito has not caught on.
>Soylent contains all of the nutritive components of a balanced diet, but with just a third of the calories...
This worries me. It's not a misquote, either. From his blog^0 :
>...I get all the nutrition and energy I need with about 1/3 the calories the average American consumes...
The average American consumes 2,757 calories^2 . There's a term called the Basal Metabolic Rate. It is the amount of calories your body needs just to keep living, without thinking about movement^2 . A sample man's basal metabolic rate is over 1800 calories^3 . So thinking you can drop that down to 900 is suspect, especially in the long term.
Maybe the human body is not efficient when eating heavy, processed things like bread, steak, etc. etc.
Is it possible that by eating only what is essential, and in the right balances, the body is more efficient and can extract more useable energy from what goes in?
And obviously the mix is different for every person / body type / activity level etc. You can't do this kind of thing and not watch your weight, blood content, etc. carefully.
If you're eating aged beef, you're going to know about it, because it's going to be $30/pound... and this is hardly the sort of processing people should be concerned about.
I looked into this a year ago. You're right: "dry-aged beef" is the fancy expensive stuff your yuppie butcher is selling you. "Wet-aged" is everything else -- they pretty much stick it in a plastic bag in a brine that breaks down tissue. If you don't do anything what you have is a curiously tough meat product.
Wet aging is cheaper because you raise the water content (and thus the weight) a little, whereas in dry aging you lose a bunch of moisture, and because it only takes a week or so.
It's worth noting that "processed" is a very loosely-defined term when it comes to food. At it's broadest, even peeling a banana could count as processing.
Digestion involves heavy duty mechanical crushing and grinding, at least three sets of enyzymes, dissolving in acid strong enough cut metal, more mechanical squeezing action, and anything microbes can do to the remainder, over the course of several hours.
Up against that, ageing a steak is not going to make a difference. As for bread, if anything, it is easier to digest than something "natural" like raw grains since it has less fibre and anti-nutrients.
The food in question is ever more "processed", since it seems to be made mostly of the base nutritional chemicals.
I suspect this is an example of oversimplification; it doesn't make sense to say "1/3 the calories" without including the quantity. The actual meaning is probably closer to "equivalent nutrition from an average American diet would require consuming 3x more calories", which sounds reasonable.
The article mentions that he can raise or lower his weight by simply changing how much of the stuff he drinks, so consuming more calories is simply a matter of drinking an extra glass at "dinner".
Actually there is a lot of evidence to show that calorie restriction can lead to longer lifespans. I'm not a nutritionist, doctor or someone who is on a calorie restriction diet (though I'm sure I eat less than the average American).
The article doesn't support "calori restriction" -> "longer lifespan"
<quote>
No clinical trial has been performed involving humans. Two trials have been performed involving primates, but have not demonstrated increases in median lifespan. A study of rhesus monkeys begun in 1987 by the National Institute on Aging published results in August 2012 that found evidence of health benefits, but did not demonstrate increased median lifespan.[2] A study by the University of Wisconsin beginning in 1989 is still ongoing.[1][3][4] Research on maximum life span in that study is still ongoing.
</quote>
I don't think you should take that quote literally, it's just figure of speech. He probably exaggerated both the average and his reduction in calorie intake.
I'm sorry, but the dude doesn't exactly look like the portrait of health, either. I don't think the Scrawny Pale Guy Diet would sell well. Not that it would be remotely scientific to judge the diet based on a sample of 1. Which is essentially what the article is doing.
And let me also point out something: Why didn't the journalist think to ask what the diet costs him per week/day/month? I'm interested.
He's only been doing it for approximate 6 weeks, so I wouldn't expect to see a significant change in his appearance just yet.
Nor is that a stated goal here: He simply wants to eat easier, not necessarily lose weight. The ideal experiment would be to completely replace his current food intake, not also reduce it. That would introduce an additional variable for which there is no control.
Unless he has almost no physical activity those calories are lower than recommended for weight loss. Also, when on a diet with calories as low as this your body's protein requirements increase, as they also do with higher physical activity. 50g is much lower than recommended.
Given the recipe on his blog, from just carbohydrates, protein, and fat (at 4 cal/gram, 4 cal/gram, 9 cal/gram respectively), he's consuming -at least- 1585 calories a day.
(It says 200 grams of carbs, 65 grams of fat, 50 grams of protein)
It's quite possible to live on a very low calorie diet[1] of 800 calories or less. In fact I've read about successful studies using only 300 calories per day.
Not saying this guy isn't a quack, but I have seen studies (or articles about studies, at least) by reputable universities on low calorie diets that suggest they increase your lifespan.
I can't recall the details, but if you're interested, start googling - it's a legitimate field of study with some surprising outcomes (to a layman like me, at least).
My impression is that everyone is dialing back their excitement over those results. They were based on rats, they failed to hold up for primates and almost certainly will shorten lifespan for humans.
Call me superstitious, but I believe there are unknown unknowns in our understanding of nutrition. The human body evolved eating various fibrous things. I'm not going to run that kind of experiment on myself.
While I think his idea is promising, I'm inclined to agree. Simply something a subtle as pooping less for a year might wreak havoc on the bacteria in the colon. As far as I know, the precedents for powder-based nutrition are all supplements, and did not displace a regular diet entirely for a significant period of time.
I think it's something that should be tested in a scientifically rigorous way. Trying to hack your body like this is bold but if it fails it will fail in a very public way that might tarnish the idea for a long time.
> because "soylent" is the name of a wafer made out of human flesh and fed
Bit of nerd pedantry: this is incorrect. "Soylent" is the name of a type of processed food. There are different kinds made from various things. "soylent green" is a new variety introduced in this category that is supposedly made from kelp (or something like that) but is famously made from something else entirely.
It may be apt, but it's a stupid name from a marketing perspective because of the associations it brings to mind. I noticed how eager he was to correct the record about the term "soylent", demonstrating a common blind spot among technical people. He should be focused on persuasion but is wasting attentional resources on pedantry and ego stroking.
> I started wondering why something as simple and important as food was still so inefficient, given how streamlined and optimised other modern things are.
Things must be really different in Atlanta....
EDIT:
Downvotes? Really? On a site presumably full of hackers, you are gonna tell me "modern things" are really streamlined and efficient? Software for the most part isn't. Cars aren't. Houses, apartments, restaurants, workplaces, none of it is. Come on. It's a pretty absurd statement.
515 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 283 ms ] threadAFAIK, dietary fibers are required to properly properly expel wastes and to maintain a healthy gut flora (which is not only used for digestion, but cooperates with immune system). And from what I've read, a normal amount is considered somewhere between 20-35g (daily).
My first reaction, being an ardent lover of many ethnic cuisines, was "of course I'd never use something like that" but then I got to this line:
Eating to me is a leisure activity, like going to the movies, but I don't want to go to the movies three times a day.
Suddenly, I'm imagining "A DVR for eating." You have a steady intake of Soylent (the name absolutely must change), and when you have time to prepare a nice meal or go out to a restaurant, you adjust your intake ahead of time so your hunger level is appropriate. Crazy, but now I have another ingredient for my sci-fi universe.
I'd be interested in the long term effects on cognition and mood. I already supplement my eating with mixes of protein powder and half n' half, this could be an interesting addition.
Second group are bodybuilders, weightlifters and some elite athletes who want to easily ingest a specific number of calories with a carefully controlled macro-nutrient ratio several times during the day. Doing this through traditional meals is not compatible with a traditional full time job in any shape or form. With meal replacement protein powder it's pretty easy: just add water and maybe some milk to your powder which you already have in your shaker and shake.
[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=meal+replacement+protein+pow...
I'm hoping for it to spread to impoverished countries or slums. If the price of production is indeed low, this could be a great chance for them.
Then let's hope it doesn't get associated too much with homeless people's food, and the rest of the world might adopt it as well. Once a large-scale production industry exists, there might not be such a high threshold for adoption. People are in a hurry to eat so often, if they could just pass by a place to grab some Soylent, they'd certainly take the opportunity.
Generally accepted ad a hoax or ruse of some kind.
My opinion: Food is good. I don't want to replace food.
A picture perfect display of modern belief in vitalism theory.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitalism
A fairly stereotypical way to being an organic chemistry class is to start out with traditional vitalism and pivot into the historical first complete synthesis of urea, of all things...
So, instead of saying the complexity of food, I should have said the complexity of the entire system.
There's a certain arrogance within scientific/rational thinking that everything can be broken up in to parts and understood that way. Life is more complex than that.
...and that's when it falls apart.
To quote Edison, "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."
He's out there trying something, seeing what works. If it turns out that there is some essential nutrient missing? Well? We found something out. And that's pretty cool.
Personally, I think it'd be worth setting up a study around this kind of thing. If we could cheaply produce a human chow of sorts, a lot of good could come of it.
Personally, I'd be down with it. I'm a bit of a weekend warrior foodie, I love making big meals on the weekends, or every once and awhile during the week. However, for the most part, day to day eating is just kind of rote. It takes too much time to make something decent, and so I usually end up eating a sandwhich, or maybe fast food, or perhaps some microwavable thing. If I could supplement 80% of my eating with a nutrient rich drink, I'd be pretty happy to do so. Finite control over calories would be a big plus, as well.
The danger is that there are far more essential nutrients that we don't know about, than nutrients that we do. And the only way to get these nutrients is to eat a well balanced diet.
That being said, this would be amazing if it works and I applaud him for trying.
That said, almost no one eats a whole food diet these days. I imagine this would be a step up over 70% of the diets in modern America.
Of course, the rebuttal is "eat food occasionally", but that may just postpone the outcome, making it even harder to know if it is safe.
http://www.nestlehealthscience.com/products/modulen_ibd A similar, more familiar product: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ensure
Pretty terrible experience. I had to drink close to a dozen cups of the stuff a day and it didn't go down easy. The stuff worked however and I went back into remission.
Defecating while on this became a very rare occurrence but otherwise almost normal if I recall correctly. And another interesting twist: while I was very weak, I gained some noticeable muscle mass - I imagine because this is essentially taking protein powder consumption to an extreme.
It seems like this perhaps guy created a better version than Nestle on account of it actually tasting good and not needing a dozen cups a day - it is not a good lifestyle for healthy people but is very interesting as a supplement.
Drinking one can of something a day to insure you get all the nutrients necessary, including the rare ones, is a lot easier than adhering religiously to a very balanced diet. Sort of like a multivitamin that actually works.
I just want to point out that it doesn't actually taste good. He says it does, but try mixing whey powder, olive oil, and maltodextrin in water and drink it. It tastes fucking awful.
Just speculating here, but the limiting factor for Nestle might be to get the same stuff that he is using into a product that you can deliver as a ready-made "just add water" mixture. He specifically wrote that he has to make it fresh every day, so that could be the difference.
I should stop watching scifi.
Get off my damn lawn.
Then just go a step further, have it delivered by automated transport, brew itself, and you just go grab a cup of juice to keep you alive and get on with your day.
When I first arrived in the USA in 1995 as a CS student, I was surprised to see these identical Walmarts. They were all the same - same aisles, same items in those aisles, same prices, same senior citizens manning the checkout counters.. So I asked the gent at the checkout counter - Sir, instead of me coming to your Walmart every weekend to buy groceries, why doesn't Walmart standardize on groceries & deliver them weekly to all American citizens ? Huge savings on driving costs, shopping time,...
He looked at me and said - Son, that's called communism.
Like Dilbert, the animated series (second season wasn't actually that bad), Dilberito has not caught on.
This worries me. It's not a misquote, either. From his blog^0 :
>...I get all the nutrition and energy I need with about 1/3 the calories the average American consumes...
The average American consumes 2,757 calories^2 . There's a term called the Basal Metabolic Rate. It is the amount of calories your body needs just to keep living, without thinking about movement^2 . A sample man's basal metabolic rate is over 1800 calories^3 . So thinking you can drop that down to 900 is suspect, especially in the long term.
[0]http://robrhinehart.com/?p=298
[1]http://www.livestrong.com/article/347737-the-average-america...
[2]http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/metabolism/WT00006
[3]http://www.bmi-calculator.net/bmr-calculator/ for a 5'10", 175 lbs, 30 years old, inactive man
I'm 6'2 and uh... not nearly that heavy. So I think this drink might be a bit dangerous for me, as it is.
(Wow, this is starting to sound like a personal ad, heh)
Anyway, if you're not "nearly that heavy" then I imagine you are quite thin? So yeah you don't need to be dropping weight! Beef it up!
Maybe the human body is not efficient when eating heavy, processed things like bread, steak, etc. etc.
Is it possible that by eating only what is essential, and in the right balances, the body is more efficient and can extract more useable energy from what goes in?
And obviously the mix is different for every person / body type / activity level etc. You can't do this kind of thing and not watch your weight, blood content, etc. carefully.
Wet aging is cheaper because you raise the water content (and thus the weight) a little, whereas in dry aging you lose a bunch of moisture, and because it only takes a week or so.
Up against that, ageing a steak is not going to make a difference. As for bread, if anything, it is easier to digest than something "natural" like raw grains since it has less fibre and anti-nutrients.
The food in question is ever more "processed", since it seems to be made mostly of the base nutritional chemicals.
The article mentions that he can raise or lower his weight by simply changing how much of the stuff he drinks, so consuming more calories is simply a matter of drinking an extra glass at "dinner".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calorie_restriction
[1] - http://earthsky.org/human-world/oops-caloric-restriction-may...
[2] - http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v489/n7415/full/nature1...
<quote> No clinical trial has been performed involving humans. Two trials have been performed involving primates, but have not demonstrated increases in median lifespan. A study of rhesus monkeys begun in 1987 by the National Institute on Aging published results in August 2012 that found evidence of health benefits, but did not demonstrate increased median lifespan.[2] A study by the University of Wisconsin beginning in 1989 is still ongoing.[1][3][4] Research on maximum life span in that study is still ongoing. </quote>
Here's one of the posts (ignore the linkbait headline) - http://asserttrue.blogspot.com/2013/03/how-to-live-30-longer...
Also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_food_energ...
And let me also point out something: Why didn't the journalist think to ask what the diet costs him per week/day/month? I'm interested.
Nor is that a stated goal here: He simply wants to eat easier, not necessarily lose weight. The ideal experiment would be to completely replace his current food intake, not also reduce it. That would introduce an additional variable for which there is no control.
Carbohydrates (200g) 200 * 4 kcal = 800 kcal
Protein (50g) 50 * 4 kcal = 200 kcal
Fat (65g) 65 * 9 kcal = 585 kcal
That's a total of 1585 calories.
[0]: http://robrhinehart.com/?p=424
That fits with the reported claim of being 1/3 of an american diet. That also explains why he's the only person at walmart taller than he is wide.
(It says 200 grams of carbs, 65 grams of fat, 50 grams of protein)
[1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very_low_calorie_diet
I can't recall the details, but if you're interested, start googling - it's a legitimate field of study with some surprising outcomes (to a layman like me, at least).
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=calorie-res...
I don't think we're as delicate as you're worrying. Heck, for those people, this is probably an easy step up.
I think it's something that should be tested in a scientifically rigorous way. Trying to hack your body like this is bold but if it fails it will fail in a very public way that might tarnish the idea for a long time.
Bit of nerd pedantry: this is incorrect. "Soylent" is the name of a type of processed food. There are different kinds made from various things. "soylent green" is a new variety introduced in this category that is supposedly made from kelp (or something like that) but is famously made from something else entirely.
It's actually a pretty apt name.
And? Should everything we do be filtered though the lens of marketing?
http://www.angryman.ca/monkey.html
I mean, harvesting wheat isn't exactly what I would call "inefficient"
Things must be really different in Atlanta....
EDIT:
Downvotes? Really? On a site presumably full of hackers, you are gonna tell me "modern things" are really streamlined and efficient? Software for the most part isn't. Cars aren't. Houses, apartments, restaurants, workplaces, none of it is. Come on. It's a pretty absurd statement.