Soylent brown

it's soylent but deadly

Hello, clowns!

It is I, Dannis Ree, the greatest food writer in all of history.

By now, many of you are probably wondering where I’ve been, because the last time I wrote was in late March, which is when I snuck hot dogs into Olive Garden to shove into a breadstick. Ugh, I know, I have some explaining to do.

I’m sorry about the radio silence, but to be honest, things haven’t been so good. Since the last edition of the newsletter, I’ve had to undergo an additional laser surgery on my eye to combat the complications of my eye condition, Coat’s disease. The procedure itself went fine—but it triggered some kind of catastrophic pain response that my doctors can’t pinpoint the source of.

Since then, I’ve pretty much been in hell (it even hurts as I’m writing this), which is why it’s taken me so long to sit back down in front of the computer. Thankfully, the doctors are taking my pain seriously, but figuring out what to do involves trial, error, medication, and a whole lot of time, and frustratingly we haven’t zeroed in on an effective treatment just yet.

So yes, I’m struggling, and I’m not too proud to admit it. Thankfully, Davida and I have each other, and I’m grateful that so many of you have continued to check in on me. Speaking of Davida—just as she was gearing up to write for the newsletter while I’ve been out of commission, she suffered a family loss.

All this being said, I can’t roll around on the floor clutching my head forever, you know? Nobody’s come to take the porcelain throne from the greatest food writer in all of history just yet, so I have taken it upon myself to rise back up, and shove not just some of the food, but all the food in the world, up my ass.

Also, I’d like to tell you about a major discovery I’ve made during my current convalescent period, because it involves how to generate extinction-level farts.

It’s been a while since Harvey’s been out and about, so he wanted to look his best today and requested the lint roller.

I’m not sure about you, but when I’m in pain, the last thing I want to do is eat.

For a while my appetite was so low I could barely stomach the idea of soup (even Taco Bell sounded terrible), which is why I decided to temporarily seek out some meal replacement shakes.

So I placed an order for a 12 pack of one called Soylent. If you’re not familiar with this shit, Soylent is a plant-based meal replacement shake that actually has some dietary heft to it. One bottle packs 400 calories and sadly (or hilariously, depending on how you look at it) has more nutrients in it than a reasonably healthy meal I could probably fix for myself.

As you know, I’m primarily a garbage-based eater and not a plant-based one, but the name alone also meant that it was the one I needed deep inside me. That’s because if you’re familiar with the famous plot twist of the 1973 movie Soylent Green, starring Moses-turned-ape-whisperer actor Charlton Heston (what a range!), you know that what the food in the movie, also called Soylent Green, is made out of.

People. It’s made out of people. And if you’re shouting at the screen right now yelling at me for spoiling the movie for you, it came out in 1973 and let’s be honest, you probably weren’t planning on watching it anyway.

I ordered the Neapolitan flavor variety box, which comes with vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry flavors, and so today I will perform a very important flavor ranking for you.

The worst of the Neapolitan-flavored bunch is easily strawberry-flavored Soylent.

This is horseshit. Calling this “strawberry” anything is a lie. It tastes like the inside of a ground-up vitamin with a slightly metallic flavor to it, and the people at Soylent didn’t even bother turning the liquid into a bright pink color. I’m all but certain that this detail would have convinced my pea brain that it tastes like strawberries. (Visually it’s cream-colored with possibly a light touch of pink to it.)

When it comes to any fake strawberry-flavored crap, gimme those chemicals that taste like a scented marker smells. Don’t hold back. I want my breath to smell like I ate a whole retail display carton of strawberry lip balm.

Fortunately, the vanilla-flavored Soylent is way, way, better, so it takes a solid second place.

Maybe I’m just a weirdo, but I actually enjoy this version of the stuff. It’s pretty basic, but it’s sweet, creamy, and doesn’t taste like lies.

It probably shouldn’t come as a surprise to all of you that chocolate is then the best flavor out of all three.

Some of you, using your keen sense of logic, may have already figured this out because I’ve already ranked the other two. I hope you get a raise at work. Chocolate-flavored Soylent thankfully tastes like full-fat chocolate milk, which means drinking it isn’t actually a chore. It’s actually pleasant, in fact.

The price is anything but, however. It’s about $4.10 per bottle. But I suppose modern nutrition that you loosely associate with a fictional human meat product should command a pretty penny. Think of all the labor those tech bros put in trying to solve the problem of “eating.” Should they not be financially compensated?!

So here’s the thing.

Before I was prescribed anything to manage the pain, I was barely eating (I’m eating better now, thankfully). So when I realized that the Soylent went down pretty easily, I would drink a few per day, supplemented with snacks or whatever other food I could manage to stomach.

That’s when I noticed Davida starting to remark frequently, looking suspiciously around the room, “It smells like farts in here.”

That’s probably because I was farting. Non-stop. It was pretty much just one straight fart for weeks. Breezy joyful gas is one thing, but these were the hot kind that made me wonder if there were new holes in the seat of my pants. And in the couch. And the bed. Perhaps, even, our lungs.

Our two dumbass cats, however, Scorpion and Sub-Zero, seemingly remained unaffected, aside from maybe a stray sniff here or there, or maybe a twitching ear when they detected a suspicious sound.

In case you think I might be using the consumption of Soylent as an excuse to talk about farts for absolutely no reason, well, guess again.

Apparently farting and Soylent go way back. It’s had a reputation for causing gas since it was first released, and though the recipe’s gone through a lot of tinkering, clearly the farts haven’t gone anywhere. In fact, they’ve all converged into our apartment, which I will now refer to permanently as “Brown Zero.”

What’s cool about this edition of the newsletter is it started all about the dysfunction of one of my brown eyes and ended up on a completely different one. Remind me why I haven’t won every James Beard Award again?

Unfortunately, I have no idea if and when I’ll get any better, so I still have a bunch of Soylent laying around for when I need it. But for those of you who are not in any pain yet would like to simulate what it’s like to be me right now, try picking up a few bottles and chugging them. Just do yourselves a favor and stay away from the strawberry kind.

And maybe give your loved ones a heads up that the air quality index in your home is about to hit a very disturbing level. It’ll be Soylent…but deadly.

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So yes, I’m still alive. Posting’s still going to continue to be a little unpredictable based off how I’m feeling in the next few weeks, but I’m determined to become human again. Don’t forget to share the newsletter by forwarding it to people you know or by posting it on social media somewhere:

And thanks to all of you for sticking around. I’m not going to ask you for anything today since I owe so many of you so much, but here’s the support button:

Time to give this poor peeper a rest, it’s screaming pretty good right now. As always, I love you all, and don’t forget to tell someone you care about them too.