[oneJob]

Unfortunately Soylent does not market it as such. If they did, I'd be inclined to agree with you. However, on Soylent's website you can find the following:

"Soylent is a food product (classified as a food, not a supplement, by the FDA) designed for use as a staple meal by all adults." -https://www.soylent.com/about/

"Soylent is designed as a simple staple food, and people incorporate it into their lives to varying degrees. Some people use it almost exclusively, while others use it 2-3 times per week. There is no right or wrong amount of Soylent to eat - the whole idea is to find a balance that works for you." -https://faq.soylent.com/hc/en-us/articles/201273045-How-do-I...

"Our goal at Soylent is to engineer nutritionally-complete food products that are optimized for modern consumers' lifestyles and budgets. Above all, we want to make healthy nutrition easily attainable." -https://faq.soylent.com/hc/en-us/articles/203709619-Soylent-...

So by using terms or phrases such as 'complete', 'almost exclusively', and 'staple', and going so far as to remark that it is classified by the FDA as a 'food' and not a 'supplement', Soylent is explicitly marketing their product as a primary or complete food and nutrition source.

Their words. Not mine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staple_food

[Karunamon]

It sounds like the FDA classified it for them.

Given:

- The FDA considers it a food

- Soylent considers it a food

- Soylent users are on record as consuming mostly or all the product for their primary complete food source..

- ..over long periods of time, including the founder, who supposedly lives on the stuff.

- Of those users, most are reporting positive results...

- ..and the negative results are generally of the classes "don't like the taste" / "gave me bad gas"

..then I'm left to conclude that it is a food, and a pretty good one at that.