There’s solid food now. Have you heard about this?

Soylent launched in 2013 as a meal-replacement drink theoretically offering all the nutrition you need. Unlike preexisting meal-replacement drinks, it was VC-funded, and its marketing strategy leaned more on heavy use and the idea that you could use this thing to replace all meals.

Which we did.

But then along came Huel, and it was good. Offering a slightly more food-like ingredient list and flavor, it made us proud once again to drink our daily bread. We counted our days in bottles of Berry and Banana, shakers of Strawberry Shortcake and Salted Caramel. Teeth were for horses, and we were content to let our masseters shrink from neglect.

After millennia of human cuisine, we had reached a seeming plateau. There was no reason to believe that anything would or should ever change.

That is, until today. Huel has a new* [“new” as of 2020, I just found out about it now, ignore this] line of products called Hot & Savory, and it lives up to the promise of its name. Open up a bag and you will find yourself confronted with both the familiar (a powder awaiting hydration) and the new (mixed in there, a pasta, name long forgotten but ready to be remembered, just add water, and make it hot this time).