In case you missed that one, Charlton Heston plays a cop in world in which over population has lead to a break down in society, mass poverty and a dire lack of food. During an investigation he discovers that the Soylent Corporation has been doing the unthinkable to produce their popular food alternative Soylent Green. They have been harvesting human beings!
It sounds like the bleak futuristic type of horror movie that became popular in the late sixties and early seventies when films like Planet of the Apes, Logan's Run and The Late, Great Planet Earth did well at the box office.
We were either destined to be ruled by apes or eat ourselves, that was the future of mankind.
It's easy to look back at movies like that and laugh at the notion of simian dominance and alternative food products made from humans as paranoia spawned the civil unrest of the day combined with political uncertainty and nightly visions of the Vietnam War via network news.
Interestingly enough it is now the year 2022 and things have gotten rather bleak over the past couple years and there is presently a shortage of food on store shelves ... oh and you can by an alternative food product called Soylent at your local Walmart, Target and Walgreens.
"Who are meal replacements like Soylent for? Me, for one." - Vox
"I've Eaten Soylent for 3 years. Here's how it changed me." - SFGate
Now, I'm not insinuating for one second that the Soylent on the shelf at Walmart is made from ground up humanoids. That really is the stuff of science fiction and horror. I am however curious about why this company chose the this particular name for their product? You would have to believe that they were aware of the film when they came up with the name right? They had to know when some chowderhead like me would stop dead in their tracks when the passed by a green bottle of Soylent on the shelf and ponder "what the heck?"
From the Soylent Website:
Soylent started with the basic idea that complete nutrition shouldn’t be difficult or expensive. Our co-founders met in 2013 in Silicon Valley, working under the same roof and eating the same diet of frozen meals and ramen noodles. After a lot of frustrating meals, founder Rob Rhinehart, alongside co-founders Matt Cauble, John Coogan, and David Renteln, developed Soylent as an experiment. Their hypothesis: Food can be simplified for the better. They were software engineers after all so they wanted to engineer better food for themselves.Our founders named the product Soylent, in homage to the novel Make Room! Make Room! by Harry Harrison. It’s a dystopian sci-fi novel that explores population growth and world resources. (Yes, we know that there is a Hollywood movie that is an adaptation of the book that involves people. See below.)
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