Every day of the working week, I anxiously check WhatsApp for updates on “beef strip boy”. My friend who works in tech tells us near-daily tales of a man in her office who exclusively eats beef strips for every meal – microwaving (yes, microwaving) them, heralding them, and flooding his Instagram account with pictures of them.
In my friend’s office of roughly 25 staff, she is the only person who eats anything resembling normal meals. Aside from beef strip boy, every other person in her department uses Huel – the meal replacement drink popularised by Silicon Valley’s tech bros. The enthusiasm for meal replacements is part of a growing obsession with “bio-hacking” – a tech scene staple in which people try to “hack” their bodily functions for the sake of extreme efficiency. Tech bros across California are attempting to optimise every element of their physical lives, from sleeping to drinking to eating to defecating, in order to manipulate and train their bodies into its most efficient self.
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