"The findings are ironic, to say the least, given that Silicon Valley's worker bees have made Huel a staple of their work-life culture " a corporate ethos which sugarcoats an industry built on overwork and economic inequity.

As tech writer Joan Westenberg put it in an excellent writeup on meal replacement products, the drinks represent the "hubris and pitfalls of tech culture's impulse to reduce the irreducible."

"The same naive confidence that code can optimize every aspect of our lives ... it's an attractive illusion that technology can neatly solve the messy realities of existing in a body, of being a biological creature instead of a computer," said Westenberg."