Ars does Soylent, day 1: Embrace the chalky weird sweetness

I don't do well with following directions in the morning, and this particular morning I have a bunch of extra stuff to remember. I screw up immediately when I roll out of bed, stagger into the bathroom, and swallow my usual morning multivitamin. Only as I place the bottle back in the medicine cabinet do I see the yellow sticky-note on its side: "NO," it tells me.

It takes more than a sticky note to override a multidecade morning multivitamin habit, but if a 24-year-old engineer named Rob Rhinehart has done his chemistry correctly I won't actually need the little orange pill today. A bag of powder sitting on my kitchen counter will supply my body with every scrap of nutrition it needs.

This is Soylent, day 1.