J M Wetherington Sr

There’s a new nutrition shake on the market that, for some unknown reason, the makers decided to name “Soylent.”

If you’re of a certain age you probably walked into a movie theater in 1973 to watch the late Charlton Heston star in the film “Soylent Green” and thus you know what Soylent Green was made of. Or maybe you read the headline of this post.

Either way, you know the ingredients of Soylent Green were not, shall we say, appetizing. So why in the world would a company market a food product under the name “Soylent”, with the built-in negative association? Especially when it turns out that the creator of Soylent purposely named it after the fictional food. Wikipedia says, “Soylent was created by software engineer Rob Rhinehart; it is intended to supply all the nutrients needed by the human body without the time, money, and effort that usually goes into preparing food.[2] After researching nutritional requirement, Rhinehart developed the formula by self-experimentation based on his own research online and through textbooks, and scientific journals.[3][4] Rhinehart named it after a fictional food from the 1966 novel Make Room! Make Room!,[5] further popularized in the 1973 film Soylent Green.”

And, if you read the New York Times article linked above, you find that Soylent doesn’t even taste good.

I’ll stick with my Ensure, thank you.