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A Soylent Knockoff Called 'Schmoylent': The Motherboard Review

At least you won’t die waiting for it.

​ If you were to order Soylent, a "powdered food" shake, and then stand by your mailbox waiting for it to come, you would die and probably decompose long before it ever comes, as we've pointed out before. The salve for the wound that is the Great Soylent Shortage of 2014 is called Schmoylent, and it is a false God.

​Schmoylent was devised by a San Francisco-based startup called Custom Body Fuel to disrupt the long wait times that Soylent has become famous for. Its motto may as well be "good enough." It does not live up to this low standard.

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"In January, I was like, ah man, I didn't get my Soylent. By March, I said I'm tired of waiting. Good things never happen to me when I'm waiting," Axcho, the guy behind Custom Body Fuel, told me. "I thought, 'I have to do something about this, then things will get better for me.'"

And so, Schmoylent was born. The current iteration is the end result of roughly 40 different attempts to replicate the original Soylent recipe. You can pay $20 for a day's worth of mixture, or $85 for a week's-worth.

Image: Author

I ordered some, and it came—quickly—in a nondescript gallon ziplock bag along with some instructions. Axcho says "business is going pretty good."

"I haven't done any marketing or anything," he said. "I don't want to get too much into specifics."

Rob Rhinehart, the inventor of proper Soylent, told Axcho that he won't be suing him,  ​but cryptically added that competing with him with the name "Schmoylent" is a bad idea.

"I won't stop you from selling 'Schmoylent' on legal grounds, but I must caution you it is unwise to enter in to direct competition with us," Rhinehart said.

Personally, I think Soylent is weird as a concept and decidedly not-for-me, but drinking it is not entirely unpleasant. I cannot say the same about Schmoylent. While Soylent goes down somewhat smoothly, Schmoylent is extremely gritty—drinking it is like drinking water with a shitload of flour mixed in.

And that's because you're doing exactly that. Soylent's latest recipe has all sorts of ingredients I've never heard of, many of which I assume are for texture-smoothing purposes.

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In theory, Schmoylent wins points for being full of ingredients that I can find in my pantry right now; In practice, well, it doesn't seem that much more complex than something I could make if I simply threw every powder I have in my house into a ziplock bag and crushed some multivitamins in it.

It smells very, very cinnamony (and kind of good), and its taste isn't completely unpleasant, but drinking it is not an enjoyable experience and  ​does not feel like The Future of Food. It's also got an overly sweet aftertaste that Soylent doesn't.

"Schmoylent is gritty, but I find if you let it sit overnight, the texture is relatively fine," Axcho said. "Right now, I'm working on recipes that use tapioca flour which is really smooth compared to rice flour."

Image: Author

The batch I whipped up didn't have any oil in it, which adds some important fats that you need, but doesn't mess with its consistency all that much. Axcho says not everyone uses oils, so the product should probably be able to stand on its own without those.

At the moment, Schmoylent is playing second fiddle to Soylent, and its one and only advantage is the fact that you can actually get it. Axcho says he knows this.

"Some people do like Schmoylent better, but most people, it's an access thing. Not everyone has access to Soylent," he said.

In any case, you've gotta admire the hustle of the guy, I suppose. He's working on more recipes as we speak, and says that the "Schmoylent" name is probably not long for this world.

"Obviously Rob's suggestion that he probably wouldn't sue anybody for using the name Schmoylent is not something I'd bet everything on necessarily," he said. "The name Schmoylent has stuck but I'm seeing what I can do to create my own brand instead of always being second place to Soylent."

The moral of the story here, if this were an Aesop fable,  ​is to not buy powdered food from a random guy on the internet.

​I Will Open Anything is a semi-regular unboxing video in which I open things that are mailed to me.