I’M often impressed with the accuracy of social media advertising, the ability of well known networks to place a product under my nose that actually really is just what I was looking for, even if I didn’t know it.

But recently I’m starting to think there must be a glitch in the algorithms, because I keep being shown adverts for Huel.

Huel, if you’re not aware of it, is “a nutritionally complete powdered food ?that contains all the proteins, carbs, and fats you need plus at least 100 per cent of the European Union’s ‘Daily Recommended Amounts’ of all 26 essential vitamins and minerals” (according to their website, anyway).

Created by a nutritionist as an alternative to our “inefficient, inhumane, and unsustainable” means of food production, it’s a food replacement system for people too busy to do the cooking required to give them an optimal diet. Made of oats and proteins, you drink rather than eat it , and like its American equivalent, Soylent, it requires little or no kitchen equipment.

The people behind Huel and Soylent call it a ‘food revolution’ - in fact the guy behind Soylent sees it as the first step toward closing down power stations and running our homes on 12v batteries. No need for kitchens, so you can close down all those factories that make ovens and fridges and toasters and saucepans and turn them into art galleries! It’s not just a food revolution, it’s a life revolution. And I hate it.

I grew up on a smallholding, in a farming county. As a student, the boys I knew spent Friday nights on a combine harvester making sure the harvest came in.

Having raised our own pigs and sheep, the eating of any part of said animal was a moment to be marked. My childhood memories are punctuated wholly by food: fresh bread and crumbly Cheshire cheese every Saturday for lunch, the crumbles made from the blackcurrants I begrudgingly picked. Damsons by the bucketload from the tree in the garden. The Christmas ham. The family birthday cake recipe, made every year, for every birthday, and always served after ham rolls and a plethora of cheap crisps.

My husband and I just can’t do a weekly shop, because what we eat is influenced by so many things - the weather, how good or bad our day has been, how tired we are, if we’ve read something during the day that triggers a longing for spices or the comfort of potatoes. The idea of coming home from a day at work and shaking some flavoured powder with water and calling it dinner horrifies me. Food isn’t just sustenance. If it is, you’re doing it wrong.

But I’m not an idiot. Our household doesn’t spend a fortune on food but far more than most of the world could afford. Our western way of eating isn’t sustainable in the long term. We throw away 30 per cent of our food in the UK yet people are getting fatter while half the world starves. Most people aren’t cooking nutritious food from scratch every night. Cows are greenhouse gas factories. Beef and dairy farming - at least the kind that gives the animals any kind of life - is too land intensive to scale to a population of billions.

So some form of restriction on the amount of meat we eat is inevitable in the long run, whether it’s price-dictated or imposed by brave governments. There’s a series of science fiction novels set in a future where the human races has expanded across the galaxy where all food is basically flavoured and textured soy protein (although real coffee and actual meat are plot drivers, because we all know that no-one really WANTS to live on tofu for the rest of their life.)

The point being that how we feed ourselves, as resources and land shrink, and countries like China adopt burgers and dairy as a staple part of their diet, is not an easy problem to solve. How do we balance the fact that the world has plenty of food yet millions don’t have enough to eat? It means GM crops, and more of us choosing to be mostly vegetarian, and it will probably include foods we’ve never even heard of yet. But what ever the future of food is, I really hope it’s not meal replacement drinks.