There’s a saying that goes “Without misinformation, we’d hardly have any at all.” This holds doubly true in the field of nutrition.

It seems like every day another fortune is made based on lies, myths, and half-truths.The newest could be a failure of colossal proportions.

I’m hesitant to even discuss the company but here it is, the company goes by the name Soylent.

Marketing genius’ right? Naming a food after ground up people? Well at least it’s edgy, I’ll give them that much.

The product in question? A “complete” nutritional do-it-yourself diet replacement powder.

There’s a lot of buzz words that should be setting off alarms right about now.

No worries, I’m sure the creator has an extensive background in nutrition? Well, that again seems not to be true.  My stomach’s starting to twist.

At least I could look past some pretty gaping flaws when he was testing on himself. Then he went and started a crowdstarter to sell it nationwide.

Relax, I tell myself, I’m sure they’ve done plenty of safety studies. Then straight from the page I read “We have been testing Soylent on ourselves for several months and the data shows it to have a positive nutritional benefit.”

The alarms are roaring now.

I hate to say it but these guys have no idea how the gut changes on a prolonged liquid diet. Even if they can tolerate this DIY formula healthy and at-risk individuals might have serious issues replacing their entire diet with an untested product.

Sometimes the things that “catch on” in nutrition really truly baffle me. Complete nutritional products have been sold for decades in powder, shake, liquid, loaf, and just about any form you could imagine. Which one catches media attention? The one made at home like a DIY science experiment.

I can see the issues heading their way, the lawsuits, the federal fines, and yet I can’t look away. All it takes is one person living off this stuff and developing cancer, or becoming malnourished, or simply developing some peculiar disease. I will say I’m curious to see how this plays out.

The potential here really is massive, but it’s a tight rope to walk. If you’re reading this Soylent, I beg that you bring in some Dietitians to help the process. It just might be what you need to turn a fad into a life-saver.

My advice to the readers is to follow this company along and watch what happens when someone tries to distill nutrition into a plus and minus game. I guarantee you’ll see it more than once in your lifetime, hopefully the outcome this time is different.

Be good to each other.

-J. Iufer