In her article “The End of Food” Lizzie Widdicombe expatiates on her experience with Soylent and its creator, Robert Rhinehart. She propagates forward an abundance of ideas both good and bad about Soylent; from the time and cost saving abilities, all the way down to the eerily atrocious wind produced after drinking the stuff. After reading the article through, it is believable that Soylent has potential in becoming a meal replacement in times of desperation. However, “The End of Food” is far from becoming a truth as food’s multiculturalism, fulfillment, and emotive prowess have strong roots within our society that a single drink cannot replace and also simply because Soylent still needs quite a lot of development to be completely capable of
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Widdicombe quotes Rhinehart saying “Then we won’t need farms” when she mentions his idea of creating a Soylent-producing algae. Rhinehart also instigates that there would be less resource competition and he includes his views that “Agriculture’s one of the most dangerous and dirty jobs out there, and it’s traditionally done by the underclass. There’s so much walking and manual labor, counting and measuring. Surely it should be automated.” It does seem like much land is used for farming and it is a hard task. But the economics at play would never let the food industry die. According to the USDA’s census of agriculture, there are 3,180,074 farmers in The United States (as of 2012). Now, if food productions were cut plentifully by the production of Soylent a majority of these people would lose their jobs. Yes, such a turnover would take a long time but gaining skills to join to work force in another sector is a large task, especially when tuition costs are repeatedly rising every year. So, maybe Soylent algae can reduce the amount of farmland wars and resource competition, but it would reduce a class of workers strongly professioned in their work and most with generations of history backing them. Also, conduit with transitioning food from functional and utility to experience and socialization seems strongly to open up pathways to further discrimination …show more content…
Rhinehart even states “In theory, you could live on this entirely. In fact you’d be pretty healthy.” To get all the goods with none of the unnecessary package seems great. However, the issue lies with the fault that it is only in theory. The knowledge of what the body requires to survive is generally known but not completely or perfectly to that matter. Even Widdicombe says “Lycopene, which makes tomatoes red, has been linked to lower rates of prostate cancer; flavonoid compounds, which make blueberries blue (and can be found in chocolate), have been associated with lower rates of diabetes.” She also adds to this that the science behind how the body uses these chemicals is not really known but advises from Walter Willett that “it would be unwise to miss out on them.” Thus survival can be met but the body might not be at 100%. Essentially, the hope for a do all miracle drink is almost impossible. The knowledge currently held of the human body is great, yet there seems to always be more to learn. In fact there seems to be new knowledge to find (or create) all the time. It is probably part of the reason why there are so many Universities in the world. An argument can be made that these chemicals can be added to Soylent, but a perfect understanding of how different chemicals work with each other in food and within the human body is not known so a hope of reducing the nonessentials in
Widdicombe quotes Rhinehart saying “Then we won’t need farms” when she mentions his idea of creating a Soylent-producing algae. Rhinehart also instigates that there would be less resource competition and he includes his views that “Agriculture’s one of the most dangerous and dirty jobs out there, and it’s traditionally done by the underclass. There’s so much walking and manual labor, counting and measuring. Surely it should be automated.” It does seem like much land is used for farming and it is a hard task. But the economics at play would never let the food industry die. According to the USDA’s census of agriculture, there are 3,180,074 farmers in The United States (as of 2012). Now, if food productions were cut plentifully by the production of Soylent a majority of these people would lose their jobs. Yes, such a turnover would take a long time but gaining skills to join to work force in another sector is a large task, especially when tuition costs are repeatedly rising every year. So, maybe Soylent algae can reduce the amount of farmland wars and resource competition, but it would reduce a class of workers strongly professioned in their work and most with generations of history backing them. Also, conduit with transitioning food from functional and utility to experience and socialization seems strongly to open up pathways to further discrimination …show more content…
Rhinehart even states “In theory, you could live on this entirely. In fact you’d be pretty healthy.” To get all the goods with none of the unnecessary package seems great. However, the issue lies with the fault that it is only in theory. The knowledge of what the body requires to survive is generally known but not completely or perfectly to that matter. Even Widdicombe says “Lycopene, which makes tomatoes red, has been linked to lower rates of prostate cancer; flavonoid compounds, which make blueberries blue (and can be found in chocolate), have been associated with lower rates of diabetes.” She also adds to this that the science behind how the body uses these chemicals is not really known but advises from Walter Willett that “it would be unwise to miss out on them.” Thus survival can be met but the body might not be at 100%. Essentially, the hope for a do all miracle drink is almost impossible. The knowledge currently held of the human body is great, yet there seems to always be more to learn. In fact there seems to be new knowledge to find (or create) all the time. It is probably part of the reason why there are so many Universities in the world. An argument can be made that these chemicals can be added to Soylent, but a perfect understanding of how different chemicals work with each other in food and within the human body is not known so a hope of reducing the nonessentials in