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Would you give up char kway teow for this?

SINGAPORE — There is a local businessman who is about to do something bold and perhaps foolhardy — he wants to come between Singaporeans and their food.

Could Zoylent be Singapore's answer to Soylent? Photo: Zoylent

Could Zoylent be Singapore's answer to Soylent? Photo: Zoylent

SINGAPORE — There is a local businessman who is about to do something bold and perhaps foolhardy — he wants to come between Singaporeans and their food.

Entrepreneur Alvin Chong will soon launch his own version of Soylent, the popular meal replacement drink originally invented by programmer Rob Rhinehart for those who prefer not to waste time eating. And Soylent has become the meal of choice in Silicon Valley, where it is drunk frequently by technologists.

Chong’s vanilla-flavoured concoction, called zoylent, contains coconut flour, oat flour and soy flour. It smells like Chinese New Year cookies and tastes vaguely like very diluted soya milk.

The 27-year-old began working on his zoylent recipe about one and a half years ago, with the help of a nutritionist, a food technologist, and eventually a research and development team at a factory (in Malaysia) that now helps to produce zoylent.

It is certainly no char kway teow, but Chong, who studied sports and wellness at Nanyang Polytechnic and has a business degree from a private school here, is confident it will appeal to Singaporeans who are so busy, they either do not have the time or the desire to eat. Say what?

“If you’re working in an office, you’d know the ins and outs of your neighbourhood. You are going to take the elevator down, join the lunch-hour queue, hold a tray and look for a table. You’d know how each dish of every stall tastes. You not sian meh? (Singlish for ‘Aren’t you tired?’)” said Chong, adding that each serving of zoylent contains 500 calories. “You are doing the same thing over and over again, like a hamster in a wheel.”

Persuading Singaporeans to give up on their favourite lunchtime indulgences may prove challenging, but Chong believes he can convince them that they are better off spending their precious lunch hours doing something more worthwhile — such as taking walks, having naps, or heading to the gym. For those too busy to eat, zoylent could even prove to be a lifesaver.

“I want meal-replacement drinks because, while I enjoy eating, I am usually too stressed and busy to have meals,” said Ivan Tan, who teaches programming. “I skip most of my meals unless people buy them for me. I was most interested in Soylent because it looked flavour-less and completely functional.”

Technical sales engineer Chua Zhen Guang, who works at least 12 hours a day, also said he would try consuming meal-replacement drinks when he does not have time to eat.

“If it doesn’t taste bad and is healthy, I wouldn’t mind it as a day starter or at night for supper,” he said. “You know, when you are busy and your stomach isn’t ready for a heavy meal.”

To date, Chong has spent S$15,000 on creating and perfecting zoylent, which he says does not infringe on any of Soylent’s trademarks or patents, and that other offshoots of Soylent exist in different parts of the world, including Joylent in Amsterdam, Aussielent in Australia, and many others. While he is not ready to announce pricing tiers for zoylent, he hopes to launch a crowdfunding campaign soon to raise more funds for his project.

“I want to see how the general population takes to this kind of thing, whether it excites them and makes them curious, and whether they would actually adopt it,” he said. “I want to show them that zoylent can bring them benefits without their having to sacrifice anything.”

“(Those who try zoylent) will find a lot more use for their time than to spend an entire hour in pursuit of that one meal that they don’t necessarily enjoy,” Chong argued.

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