Company Launches Ready-To-Drink 'Complete Meal' In A Bottle
SACRAMENTO (CBS Sacramento)-- A company is launching a ready-to-drink liquid that offers the nutrition of a "complete meal."
Soylent CEO Rob Rhinehart says the new product may be an interesting concept to many, but he has nothing against food.
"Quite the opposite; I love food," Rhinehart told CBS News. "I love pizza, I love burritos, barbecue."
Rhinehart says the idea first occured to him while he was working long hours and realized he had a tendency to eat a lot of bad food and waste a lot of money. He says he now drinks 80 percent of his daily calories instead.
"This is not something that's designed as a supplement to fill in the gaps of your diet, this is a full meal, it's going to give you everything your body needs," Rhinehart said.
The ready-to-go meal is said to provide the same essential vitamins, minerals, and fats that you would get from a complete meal. Each serving of Soylent packs 400 calories and 20 grams of protein. Rhinehart says he designed the product bland taste so people can flavor it to their liking.
Critics of the product have raised concerns saying the body doesn't metabolize synthetic nutrients in the same way we process food.
"This does not substitute for regular food; it certainly could be used together with food, but in no way does it provide all of the things that you get from eating a diet of colorful fruits and vegetables and adequate protein," UCLA Division of Clinical Nutrition Chief David Heber told CBS News.
In addition to a quick and efficient on-the-go meal for busy every-day people, Rhinehart also hopes the product might be a solution to feed the world's poor in overpopulated countries. The meals currently ring in at $9 per day, but with new investors the price could come down.
"All we have to do is produce food more efficiently and distribute it wider and we do that through technology and that's what we're working on," he said.
Soylent has reportedly sold over 6 million meals to its 50,000 customers so far.
