Soylent Confessions

If you’ve been on the Internet in the last fifteen years and change, you’ve probably heard of Soylent, whether you wanted to or not.

Nutrition drinks as a category have been around forever, pitched in various forms to dieters or weightlifters or people who just frequently find themselves rushing in the morning. Nobody gives their coworkers shit for grabbing a prepackaged smoothie for breakfast.

Soylent, though, has a distinctly bad reputation. Partly, that comes from the fact that the original version—the one most people know about—looks and tastes like watery cake batter (to pick one of the kinder descriptions). But a lot of it comes from Soylent’s associations. Its “food for people who hate food” gestalt. Its vibe. As a December 2025 SFGate article put it,

When this liquid meal replacement was first introduced more than a decade ago, it became symbolic of the Bay Area’s rising tech scene and the brutal gentrification that followed. […] At its core, Soylent feels like an extension of capitalism and a byproduct of one of Silicon Valley’s most harmful ideologies: that we ought to forgo the human experience in favor of productivity.

But over the years, Soylent quietly came out with ready-to-drink shakes instead of weird powders, shakes with normal flavors like chocolate, strawberry, and vanilla, and those shakes were

(looks around from side to side furtively)

(lowers voice to a strained whisper)

(ahem) good.

I’m sorry. Truly. I know I’m supposed to nod in dutiful agreement with SFGate’s Ariana Bindman when she describes it as “medical-grade slop.” But they tasted good. Not good for something stupidly named after a horror in a dystopian sci-fi movie, not good for something created by the kind of dingus who thinks stupidly naming the product after a horror in a dystopian sci-fi movie is clever. Just good, full stop.

And no, I’m not someone who hates food. I love finding new restaurants, from neighborhood dives to aspiring Michelin Star contenders. Thai? Hawaiian fusion? Burger joint? Vegan Tex-Mex? Proper Tampa-style Cuban sandwiches on La Segunda bread? (La Segunda is to Cuban sandwiches what Amoroso is to Philly cheese­steaks.) Bring it all on. I’ve never been an “eat at my desk” kind of worker; my favorite office jobs were in downtown San Francisco and San Jose, because I could walk to so many places for lunch. And while I’m not a great cook, I’m not bad in the kitchen. (I’m getting better in late middle age, now that I have to; when I lived in California, it was way too easy to eat out for most meals, and I did.)

But I was never much of a breakfast person. I made myself a cup of coffee, worked on my own stuff for an hour after waking up, and maybe got a bagel or a donut or whatever on the way to the office. Or not.

A coworker in 2015 brought in some Soylent. I wasn’t impressed, although they had a short-lived snack bar that wasn’t bad. (As with many of their early experiments, it ended in disaster.) On a whim, I checked them out again in 2018; by that point, their founder had left the company and ascended to conspiracy-pilled Kanye-voting nutbag, but his former company had discovered the revolutionary concept of “flavor.” So I took a chance on a variety pack. And damn. The chocolate tasted like a good chocolate milk. The vanilla was genuinely great. The strawberry tasted like the way a child of the eighties remembers Strawberry Quik tasting, as opposed to the way Strawberry Quik actually tastes, which is terrible.

So, yes: I’ll admit it. I got regular mail order shipments of Soylent for a few years. They didn’t make me hate food, or make me a better programmer, or get me two million in early-round VC funding. They were just a convenient and good-tasting way for a breakfast-hater to have breakfast.

Was I bothered by the associations with the most mockable aspects of Silicon Valley’s ethos? A little, but the truth is, I started cutting back on Soylent for prosaic reasons, not symbolic ones. After moving back to Florida in 2022 to help out my mom, I rediscovered that she’s a dedicated breakfast person. We always have cereal on hand now, and a bowl of organic cereal with a generous topping of berries and soy milk is just as nutritious and lower calorie than Soylent, at about two-thirds the price per serving.

Then in 2023, Soylent was bought by “Starco Brands,” home of spray-on popcorn flavors, alcoholic whipped cream, and skin care products for athletes. (Really.) They proceeded to immediately raise the price and screw up both their subscription shipping system and their retail supply chain. After three out of four consecutive orders had problems, I gave up. That’s right: a company reviled as a symbol of techbro capitalism is being undone by—surprise!—capitalism.

Do I miss it? A little. But it’s unlikely I’ll ever again have an office job I’m rushing to on weekday mornings, and the associations are more wearing in 2026 than they were a mere eight years ago. Also, I’m not sure how long the company is for this world, given their business troubles. (As of this writing, their shopping page is completely broken, which is not promising.)

But who knows. Maybe someone sensible will buy the company, change the vibe, rehabilitate the brand. Personally, though? I’d lose the name. It’s not nearly as clever as they think it is.