The Soylent Athlete

Powdered supplements and meal replacements have existed for years, but over the recent months, they have taken merged and unified to answer the question: “Can we survive on artificial substance alone?”

Rob Rhinehart, the creator of Soylent, appeared on the Colbert Report to discuss his open source product. That’s when I first heard about it. In the course of the interview, Stephen Colbert tastes Soylent, adds chocolate sauce, and receives commendation from Rinehart:

This intrigued me. I figured Rinehart would have grimaced or demured when Colbert augmented his carefully crafted food replacement. But he didn’t. Something about this made me jump to the thought: This could work for athletes.

First in high school and then in college, I had weight problems. I was too light in high school (a 185 lbs. offensive lineman) and too heavy in college (a 210 lbs. five-seat rower). One of the greatest difficulties I faced was in the cafeteria. In high school, there was insufficient good food, so I couldn’t bulk up healthily. In college — with a Sodexho buffet — I had unlimited access to decent food and even more non-decent food. Part of the college problem was self control, but just as much of it was, let’s say, digestibility. The healthy options — the salads and vegetarian quiches — were often unpleasant or cold, but the pizza and the cheesy pastas and the cookies tasted warm and vaguely reminiscent of delicious (and more importantly, the pizza and pasta went well with the salad dressings and hot sauces that provided a much-needed variety).

In other words: Eating right was hard. Eating like an athlete — when I was burning 1000+ calories every day, and thus was 1000+ calories more hungry every day — was even harder (this, of course, is to say nothing of when your coaches actually want you to be obese).

Perhaps something like Soylent could be a solution? Not only does it meet the hard-to-hit nutritional standards, but it can provide 2000 calories and do so for around $10 a day — or $3.33 per meal.

One of the best resources I have found for learning about Soylent and Soylent-like products is the Soylent Subreddit on Reddit.com. In a recent conversation about the efficacy of the diet entirely on Soylent, user eviljolly pointed out one of the key advantages of a liquid diet — not that it trumps a standard balanced diet, but that it can bring a balanced diet to more people:

Soylent has come along and made nutrition easy for people, and people (like me) that would probably never devote themselves to eating perfectly healthy, can now do so without little to no effort involved.

The current problem for many athletes is a combination of incorrect calorie amount and poor calorie types.

“Americans are not lacking in calories,” Rob Rhinehart said to Stephen Colbert. “They’re lacking in balance.”

Athletes can be disciplined sorts. It’s not unthinkable a diet composed 2/3rds or 100% of liquified nutrition could be viable — especially if it comes cheap. I think Soylent and its sisters might be able to offer that balance.





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Richmond
9 years ago

soylent is an interesting product and basing a diet off of it does seem quite experimental. I don’t know that I’d encourage any athlete to do it, just based off research I’ve done for my own benefit and when I was coaching after we graduated. Calories from meals and the particular benefits of the fats and proteins contained in the actual foods are absorbed in different ways, often better ways. Meat protein and fat is also of great benefit and so delicious. I think for a run of the mill person, not training or doing real hard labor, a soilent diet could work. Theyd also need to sort out the increased estrogen production caused by soy in men, I already cry enough during Gilmore girls.

PS Sodexho is the worst. The school I’m at now runs their own cafeteria and uses local foods, and now I’m fat.

Matt
9 years ago

I think the flaw is this : Why not just Whey Protein and a multi vitamin? It is obviously higher in Protein/Calorie ratio. Soylent is high in carbs, making your macros off balance.