Let’s say you’re drowning. Maybe your Italian cruise ship has capsized and you get flung overboard and find yourself very deep underwater. And by some combination of miracle and good cardio fitness, you make it up to the surface, where you immediately and instinctively do what?

Well duh, take an enormous breath of air, filling your screaming lungs and saving your brain from hypoxia and imminent death. That’s what we air-breathing animals do, we breath air. And so far, there’s no replacement for it, even scuba tanks run out eventually.

So why do we think that food, another one of our basic human survival needs, can be replaced with something else? Something made of chemicals, synthetic vitamins, taurine, caffeine, industrially-derived proteins, oils and corn-based sweeteners? Well that’s what the Foodiness industry uses to make what they like to call “meal replacement” products.

As if a meal could be replaced with a powder, shake or bar….silly Foodiness, food is for humans! Powders and shakes are for invalids, not that they’ll get any healthier eating that junk. And only babies who can’t do the boob should be drinking powdered foodiness out of a bottle. And using meal replacement products to gain or lose weight is just another form of an eating disorder. You may wind up gaining or losing weight, but you’ll lose your connection to food along with it, and may wind up like Karen Carpenter, or even worse, Nicole Ritchie.