Soylent is a tough sell, as it's impossible to try it and not think about eating sperm. But it's a cult hit among a certain Silicon Valley subset, which swears it's actually a viable alternative to the venerable human pastime of chewing. It sounds (is?) crazy, but not too crazy to get a big new funding round.

Soylent, a slurry of vitamins, proteins, and God knows what, really, now comprises 90 percent of creator Rob Rinehart's diet (above)—and lots of his friends are giving it a whirl, too. You have much more time to code when you aren't troubling yourself with trifles like putting things in your face and chewing. Naturally, older nerds with money are fascinated by the 20-somethings and their creepy nutrient shakes: Lerer Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz, known for investing in things that aren't nutty experimental food alternatives, are taking this viscous fad seriously, TechCrunch reports:

Soylent will use the funding to help bring their manufacturing in-house and to do product development, which includes hiring a culinary director who can work on the taste and mouthfeel of Soylent.

Something you eat probably shouldn't have "mouthfeel," because it should just "feel like food," but this is still very much a culinary prototype. Once this spreads across Silicon Valley, how will San Francisco foodie-ism reconcile itself with a gallon of Soylent for dinner?