The "Meal of the Moment"
The “bowl” is the “meal of the moment,” because, as New York’s Robs surmise, “it’s healthful, filling, and infinitely customizable, a blank canvas for inventive chefs and fast-casual chains alike.” It is, in other words, the perfect meal for more perfectly optimized knowledge workers in a less-than-perfectly optimized (yet!) economy, who should be constantly striving for greater productivity, a goal that is wholly incompatible with ceasing work to sleep, eat, or poop.
That is, the bowl is the most perfect meal that so-called white collar workers will accept until, beaten down by ever-increasing productivity demands, they have fully embraced the even more optimized nourishment subroutine of Soylent for all mid-labor nutritional replenishment — which, if it makes them sufficiently efficient, will forestall their total replacement by a machine, which of course doesn’t need to eat anything at all.
Photo by El Rey