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.
Image: Getty
Soylent first began shipping to Canada in July 2015, announcing the move with a video of people reading fanatical complaints from Canucks requesting Soylent, with “O Canada” playing in the background. It seems Canada’s food regulatory agency is not as enthusiastic about having the quasi-nutritious substance shipped into the Great White North.
According to a statement from Rob Rhinehart, the CEO of Rosa Foods and the former software engineer who created Soylent, CIFA told the company in early October that their “products do not meet a select few of the CFIA requirements for a ‘meal replacement’”.
Since Rhinehart introduced Soylent in 2013 he has marketed it as a food replacement drink. The product appealed to programmers and others who couldn’t be bothered to peel their fingers away from a keyboard long enough to consume real food. The company originally claimed that Soylent provided all nutritional requirements for a human. But several scientists and journalists challenged that claim and the site now states the 400-calorie (1674kj) drink provides 20 per cent of daily nutritional requirements.
Rosa Foods is complying with the CIFA regulations even though Rhinehart and his team “feel strongly that these requirements do not reflect the current understanding of human nutritional needs”.
CIFA said they could not provide a statement to Gizmodo by press time.
In a FAQ about the issue, the company assured potentially concerned Canadian Soylent drinkers, “There is nothing wrong with the Soylent product you are consuming, this issue emerged from regulatory compliance, not product quality.”
So don’t worry, the gunk you consume because you don’t want to actually eat is totally fine.
[Soylent via Ars Technica]