Addicts will go to great lengths to get their fix. And shipping delays for the meal replacement Soylent have created a market of famished nu food fiends. One San Francisco startup has decided to fill the void with a knockoff powder they call "Schmoylent."

Tipsters by names of Josh and Steve tell Valleywag that their Mission District co-working space has been infiltrated by a company called "axcho," which uses the shared offices to concoct copycat Soylent:

With all the powder in there, I have to wonder if they know about fine particle explosions.... My office mate and I were joking that maybe they are building some kind of gluten bomb.

The gluten bomb being mixed by food hacking terrorists is none other than Schmoylent. Axcho claims that "impatient Soylent backers" were demanding a quick-shipping version of Soylent, and they are stepping in to satisfy that demand.

As Motherboard's Adrianne Jeffries wrote last month, Soylent has an infamously long backlog of orders:

The company told me my Soylent would take 10 to 12 weeks to arrive. It took 20. If I had been dependent on Soylent as my primary food source, I would have died waiting for it.

Schmoylent, on the other hand, is advertised to ship within one and three weeks.

Axcho even reached out to Soylent inventor Rob Rhinehart during a "fireside chat" (which took place on an online bulletin board), asking if they'd be sued for their version of the fart-spawning slurry:

I thought it would be funny to sell a DIY recipe based on official Soylent, which I could call " Schmoylent". Is this cute and harmless, or should I expect to hear from your legal department if I go ahead with this?

Rhinehart gave them the go-ahead, but laid down a robotic word to the wise about going up against the real thing:

I won't stop you from selling "Schmoylent" on legal grounds, but I must caution you it is unwise to enter in to direct competition with us.

Rhinehart doesn't have much to worry about. One Schmoylent reviewer said the drinkable meal "turned into grits" when mixed.

"It's probably edible but only just."

To contact the author of this post, please email kevin@valleywag.com.

Photo: DevilGwennie