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Soylent banned in Canada

Soylent liquid meals reimagine daily nutrition 03:52

Soylent, the playfully named meal replacer that's taken off among the Silicon Valley set, has been banned in Canada because it's not real food -- at least not by Canada's standards.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency told Soylent maker Rosa Foods that its products don't meet its standards for "meal replacement," CEO Rob Rhinehart wrote in a blog post. "Although we feel strongly that these requirements do not reflect the current understanding of human nutritional needs," he added, the company would comply and stop shipping Soylent into Canada.

Last year it recalled two products after customers got sick.

Soylent, a bottle of which contains 400 calories and 20 percent of a person's daily nutrition, has a taste that's been compared to Cream of Wheat and Metamucil. But it has taken off as a meal replacement among adults too busy to eat, growing 300 percent between 2015 and 2016, according to the BBC

Its name is a reference to the 1973 dystopian film "Soylent Green," in which overpopulation has forced humans to survive on fake food -- made from people. 

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