CFIA halts imports of Soylent

Soylent, the meal replacement drink that’s been called both “the future of food” in breathless headlines and “the end of food” by the New Yorker, can no longer be sold in Canada due to a failure to meet federal food regulations.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency says it advised Soylent earlier this month that the company’s drinks do not meet the compositional requirements for meal replacement products, and that imports would have to be halted unless regulations were met.

But the agency is not recalling Soylent products as there’s no health risk.

In a statement posted on Soylent’s website, CEO Rob Rhinehart says the company intends to comply with CFIA regulations, even though the company feels “strongly that these requirements do not reflect the current understanding of human nutritional needs.”

He goes on to say that he doesn’t know how long it will take for Soylent to adapt to CFIA’s requirements, and that the company can’t yet estimate when their products will be available to Canadians. The company did not provide a spokesperson to comment, but said in a statement that they are “working hard to resolve the categorization issue.”

Soylent, which offers meal replacement drinks both in bottles and in powder form, started when Rhinehart was working in Silicon Valley in 2013.

The product is built around the idea that home cooking is unnecessarily time-consuming for busy people in a workobsessed culture, and is often more expensive and less healthy than it could be.