The meal replacement idea is not entirely new, though, they've always been more in the area of supplement, rather than outright replacement. Things like ensure, slim fast, and a host of other meal in a can things exist. A quick googling led to this study: http://www.nutritionj.com/content/9/1/11 which indeed did follow the shake vs traditional food format.
If nothing else, it could be benchmarked against existing meal replacements.
I'm now actually curious how these things do get tested, and over what period of time. I'll have to hit my school's database tomorrow and see how trials have been run in the past
