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Comment by arzt | Hacker News Reader

I'm curious about the naming choice as the end of the movie with Heston reveals that eating "Soylent Green" is a form of cannibalism. Does the term "Soylent" signify something outside of the movie?

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In the movie "Soylent Green" (the book its based on is different, in fact I don't even think there's cannibalism in it) there are a variety of meal-replacement foodstuffs known as Soylent, including red and yellow, that are made from soy and algae. Green is the only one made from humans.

No, the name is directly referencing the movie. It's a tongue-in-cheek and self-deprecating, much in the spirit of programming culture.

It's not, it's referencing the book that the (apparently very different) movie is loosely inspired by. https://faq.soylent.com/hc/en-us/articles/201541809-Why-is-i...

Given that Soylent in the book is an apparently commercially successful product that rides the wave of a Malthusian catastrophe, it's still an odd choice (or a revealing Freudian slip) given their early hype about solving world hunger.

I wonder how many of its customers are too young to appreciate the reference or the irony. To them Soylent means one thing - this product. It'd be tricky to find out though, without spilling the beans. Kind of a quantum question in that way.

Well, a large part of what makes up Soylent is soy protein isolate. So there's that.

It's intended as a reference to the novel that the movie is "based on", Make Room! Make Room!, By Harry Harrison.

Which doesn't involve cannibalism, but is an odd choice in other ways.

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