I’m trying to understand the reasoning here, but

I happened across this news tidbit:

Soylent Banned in Canada for Not Actually Being a Meal

And it gave me pause.

Had you heard about solyent? It’s this, um, food product that is supposed to relieve you of the need to actually plan, prepare, or even eat an actual meal:

If you’ve ever skipped breakfast after rolling out of bed too late…if you’ve ever missed a lunch because of a busy schedule…if you’ve ever had a guilty conscience over a midnight microwave burrito…Soylent is made for you.

Protein, carbohydrates, lipids, and micronutrients: each Soylent product contains a complete blend of everything the body needs to thrive. It turns a full meal into a one-step process. It makes things a lot less complicated. And when you’re busy, it takes eating off your plate.

This strikes me as one hundred percent strange. Who in the world would rather drink “bland goop” than eat tasty food?

But Canada’s reason for banning solyent strikes me as even stranger:

In a major blow to Canadians who love bland on-the-go meal replacement goop, The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) has blocked all shipments of Soylent into the country….According to a statement from Rob Rhinehart, the CEO of Rosa Foods and the former software engineer who created Soylent, CFIA told the company in early October that their “products do not meet a select few of the CFIA requirements for a ‘meal replacement.’”

I get that solyent is advertised as a meal replacement. I get that. But you know what else is advertised as a meal replacement that does not in any way meet the actual nutrient requirements for human beings?

Doughnuts. To take one random example.

Ever eat a doughnut for breakfast? Ever meet someone who has? Because in what possible nutritional world can that be considered an adequate substitute for a real breakfast? And yet I don’t recall any calls for banning doughnuts on the grounds that they do not constitute a complete, nutritionally balanced meal. Without looking up the nutritional profile of solyent, would anybody care to lay down money on a bet that doughnuts are better for you?

Canada is seeming a little crazy to me here. But hey, maybe to protect their citizens, the Canadian nutritional police will next ban doughnuts.

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