Food Innovation: What Is Food?

Heard of Hampton Creek Foods, Sand Hill Foods, or Modern Meadows? Well, get ready as these “food” companies may be the General Mills and Nabisco’s of the future.

According to Techcrunch.com, Silicon Valley tech investors are ravenous for food start-ups, more specifically start-ups looking to make meat substitutes that can compete with the real thing.

This would include the burger made of plants that tastes and behaves like beef invented by Impossible Foods. That means that the meatless burger has the same texture as beef, bleeds like beef and costs about the same as a burger at Whole Foods. Another example would be Beyond Eggs that finally gives vegans a chance to eat yummy backed goods with its egg substitute.

However, one new product takes the clean-food movement to the next level. Soylent is a very Jetsons-esk product. It is a drink meant to replace ALL food. It claims to have all the micro and macro nutrients needed by the body and its inventor Rob Rhinehart lived off of Soylent exclusively for a month. Available in powder or liquid, Soylent is made from soy, beets and algae. At about USD 2.69 for a 400 kcal bottle, Soylent does not only “free your body” and save our planet, it is also affordable. Rhinehart believes that by only giving the body what it needs (micro and macro nutrients) and not taxing the human body with the complex processes of turning food into energy, long-term health benefits are inevitable.

Soylent changes the way we think of innovation when it comes to food.  Most food innovation of the past has focused on how we apply heat to food or how we preserve food. Soylent and other clean-food innovations make us rethink what we consider to be food.

The positives of Soylent are many. It can have a huge positive impact on malnutrition and can be a life saver in times of war or natural disasters. Some would even argue that time saved from thinking, planning, preparing and eating actual whole foods could add to human productivity which can lead to more great things.

However, I believe that this product has the potential to change some of our basic daily routines and to negatively impact how humans interact with each other and how they build relationships. In my circle of family and friends, food is what brings people together. Breaking bread with others is part of what makes us human. As Cody C. Delistraty wrote in the Atlantic, “The dinner table can act as a unifier, a place of community. Sharing a meal is an excuse to catch up and talk, one of the few times where people are happy to put aside their work and take time out of their day”. I wholeheartedly agree!