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SamuelTheThird

(1,118 posts)
Mon Oct 20, 2025, 06:24 PM Oct 2025

Tech Bros Have Been Accidentally Poisoning Themselves With Severe Brain Toxins for Years

Earlier this week, a bombshell analysis by Consumer Reports found that popular meal replacement drinks — a long-time favorite of tech bros — contain more lead in a single serving than a healthy adult should eat in a day.

Among the worst offenders was Huel’s Black Edition powder, the low-carbohydrate alternative to Huel’s mainstay powder, which contained a stunning 6.3 micrograms of lead per serving, as well as more than double the safe daily serving of cadmium.

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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.

https://futurism.com/future-society/tech-bros-huel-lead

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Tech Bros Have Been Accidentally Poisoning Themselves With Severe Brain Toxins for Years (Original Post) SamuelTheThird Oct 2025 OP
All made in China, I presume...nt Wounded Bear Oct 2025 #1
Lead? Wow. I thought they just microdosed LSD Keta and heroin on weekends underpants Oct 2025 #2
Cadmium is quite a carcinogen bucolic_frolic Oct 2025 #3
Well, that explains a lot... Aristus Oct 2025 #4
Stuff Has Cassava Tapioca In It ProfessorGAC Oct 2025 #5
Drink more faster please LearnedHand Oct 2025 #6
Hope it's a Musk favorite treat. nt allegorical oracle Oct 2025 #7
Hmmm. I worked in Silicon Valley engineering departments for 25 years and... hvn_nbr_2 Oct 2025 #8
Who exactly are "tech bros"? milestogo Oct 2025 #9

underpants

(196,410 posts)
2. Lead? Wow. I thought they just microdosed LSD Keta and heroin on weekends
Mon Oct 20, 2025, 06:30 PM
Oct 2025

There’s lead still in food?

bucolic_frolic

(55,063 posts)
3. Cadmium is quite a carcinogen
Mon Oct 20, 2025, 06:40 PM
Oct 2025

Not that lead is any health tonic. Dulls the mind, hinders the kidneys, causes inflammation, and cancer as well. Maybe explains their lack of clarity of thought, or poor judgment. Think logically, but not morally.

ProfessorGAC

(76,643 posts)
5. Stuff Has Cassava Tapioca In It
Mon Oct 20, 2025, 06:41 PM
Oct 2025

Cassava is a root vegetable from South America much of it from the Andes regions.
Those regions have substantial deposits of lead, and Cassava is a root vegetable. Seems like the perfect way to get lead in the food supply.

hvn_nbr_2

(6,790 posts)
8. Hmmm. I worked in Silicon Valley engineering departments for 25 years and...
Tue Oct 21, 2025, 12:29 PM
Oct 2025

I don't think I ever saw anyone drink a meal replacement drink. Maybe they did it in their cubicles where I wouldn't see them? And I never even heard of Huel.

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