《经济学人》双语阅读 | 液体午餐 Liquid Lunch

小白老师说：经济学人是给全球精英人士看的意见性刊物。它能先核实与考证的事实，分析归纳各方意见，最后给读者一种“定见”式的结论，是一种典型的知识精英的编辑思路，信息全面，逻辑清晰，判断独到。在互联网时代，我们不缺大量的信息，而缺少这种几十个知识精英聚集成的编辑部给你带来的判断、意见和指引。所以每遇金融危机，经济学人的销量都大幅增长。**

另外，《经济学人》也是国内主流的高端英语考试阅读理解的重要题源。

Food technology 食品科技

Liquid lunch 液体午餐

A startup called Soylent wants to change the way people consume calories

一项被称之为Soylent的启动项目希望改变人们消耗卡路里的方式

Dinner is served 食物提供

“ONE should eat to live, not live to eat,” wrote Molière, the French comedic playwright. Some workaholic（工作狂） entrepreneurs（企业家） have taken him at his word. Soylent, a two-year-old startup, is trying to save consumers time and money by selling them a healthy, cheap “meal” that they can drink. Each vegetarian（素食的） portion has only around 400 calories, costs around $3 and boasts of being as nutritious as, and more environmentally-friendly than, processed food and meat.

Molière，法国喜剧剧作家说过:”一个人应该为了活着而吃，而不是为了吃而活着” 一些终日忙于工作的企业家对他的话深信不疑。Soylent，这个建立两年的新兴公司，正在努力地通过售卖健康、廉价并且可以喝的“一餐”来达到节约消费者时间和金钱的目的。每一种素食主义食物都只含有大约400卡路里的热量，这只需花费3美元，并且，值得夸耀的是，这些食物不仅与那些加工素食或荤食的营养价值相当，相比之下还更加环保。

Soylent has found a place among American workaholics who resent（怨恨） the cost and hassle（麻烦） of preparing regular meals. This is especially true in Silicon Valley, home of many “early-adopter” engineers too consumed with coding the future to break from work. Their bad diets can damage their health. Several years ago Sam Altman, an entrepreneur who is now president of Y Combinator, a startup boot camp, was so cost-conscious and focused on building his first company, Loopt, that for weeks he ate only ramen noodles and coffee ice cream, until he developed scurvy（坏血病）. He later became an investor in Soylent. At first the product was sold as a powder, but even that was a hassle for some consumers, so on September 9th it started shipping version 2.0, which comes already mixed and bottled.

Soylent已在美国那些厌倦了准备正餐所带来的花费和纠结的工作狂们的心中占有了一席之地，这种现象在硅谷尤其普遍。硅谷是许多早期采用者的家园，他们醉心于撰写未来来打破常规。可他们糟糕的饮食会破坏他们的健康。许多年前，Sam Altman,现在已经是Y Combinator主席的一位企业家。从前他特别注意节约成本，专注于创立他第一家公司Loopt, 以致于连续几周内，他只吃拉面跟冰淇淋咖啡，直到他逐渐发展成了坏血病。后来他成为一名Soylent的投资者。一开始这种产品是以粉末的形式被出售，但是对一些消费者来说仍困难，所以到了9月9号它开始升级到2.0版本，产品已经是被混合起来，且以瓶装饮料的形式出售。

The name Soylent is a tribute to a 1966 science-fiction novel, “Make Room! Make Room!”, set in an overpopulated world where everyone eats a mixture of lentils（扁豆） and soy (and, in the film version, human flesh). Rob Rhinehart, the drink’s 27-year-old creator (pictured), came up with the idea when he was working on a different startup, focused on wireless internet. He was so poor that he started mixing his own food, and later dropped the other project to focus on food technology. He is, by any measure, extreme. He considers shopping at grocery stores, in the presence of “rotting”（腐坏）） produce, a “multisensory（多感官的） living nightmare”, and no longer owns a fridge.

Soylent这个名字是向1966年的一部科幻小说致敬，“腾出空间！腾出空间！”，背景是在一个人口过剩的世界，然而每个人只吃一种小扁豆和大豆混合起来的食物(在电影版本里是人肉）。27岁的Rob Rhinehart–这款饮料的发明者（如图），当他在一个新兴网络公司（研究无线网络）工作时，他有了这个想法。他当时非常穷，以至于他开始混合自己的食物。后来，他将精力投入到了食品科技。他通过任何的措施，甚至是极端的。他考虑去杂货店买东西。没有冰箱，就会存在腐烂这一过程，这将是一场多感官的恶梦。

Soylent has proved that it can appeal to an iche, as well as to a handful of financiers: in January the firm raised $20mfrom investors, including Andreessen Horowitz, a well-regarded venture-capital firm. But it has plenty of obstacles to overcome. Yucky-sounding ingredients like algal oil（海藻油） (yes, derived from algae) will put many off, as well as reviews from early users that Soylent makes them gassy. “I prefer my food with both flavour and texture（质地）,” says one young, vegetarian entrepreneur who has tried it. Mr. Rhinehart insists that Soylent’s “neutral” taste is the best way to appeal to the broadest group of people. Just how big that group really is, however, remains to be seen.

Soylent证明它可以吸引一个利基，以及少数的金融家：该公司在一月从投资者那里筹集了2000万美元，包括安德森霍洛维茨，一个著名的风险投资公司。但它还有很多障碍要克服。

听上去恶心的成分如海藻油（是的，来自藻类）将很多了，以及从早期的用户评论，soylent使人们处于瓦斯环境中。一个年轻人说：“我更喜欢有味道和质地的食物，”，素食主义者正尝试如此。Rhinehart 先生坚持任认为Soylent 的平淡口味是吸引广大人群的最好的方法。想想这个小组将会有多大，然而这个结果有待被证明。

本文选自《经济学人》2015年9月19日刊