The company line is you can eat 100% Huel, and it has everything you need, but despite that, they don’t recommend it.
Why? If it’s 100% nutritionally complete, what’s the hedge?
In looking at the forum, there have been interesting exchanges/comments over the years, particularly this one with @Tim_Huel where he says nothing needs to be added to support Huel, then immediately says it’s best to add something to support Huel:
Tim: Huel is nutritionally complete at 2000kcal meaning you will be getting all the essential nutrients you need so there’s nothing that needs to be added to support it. A balanced wholefood diet is best
Donnie: but i thought huel has anything inside
so aperson who consumes 100% huel
should be as healthy as a person who dont consume huel and eat a lot fruits and vegatables and wholefood?
Tim: Huel has everything you need yes. Some Hueligans do have Huel for 100% of their diet and have no issues. Most have Huel for 1-2 meals a day when time is short or they’re on the go.
@CharlotteMW_Huel also said they don’t recommend it “because we think variety is also important to an individual’s intake”. But I just don’t get why, if Huel is what it says it is?
and @Dan_Huel in the past has said “I wouldn’t recommend 100% Huel as this isn’t sustainable for most people and some aspects of a varied diet are lost.” What aspects?
This seems like a strange contradiction to me, simultaneously insisting you can have 100% Huel but that it’s best not to, even though it’s nutritionally complete. Can someone help clarify this?
My guess would be that the hedge is there for the same reason that Domestos only kills 99% of household germs. I’d bet that there isn’t a household germ you couldn’t get rid of with Domestos, but the manufacturers give themselves that little bit of wriggle room.
People’s metabolisms differ, and they have different reactions to different foods. By advising against 100% Huel, they’ve always got the “well, we told you not to” defense. FWIW, my meals are 100% Huel, with only snacking non-Huel. Apart from the occasional instance of pebble-dashing, no problems.
As I understood it “nutritionally complete” means that you can survive by consuming Huel only, without anything really bad happening and any major health damages.
The question what “the optimal” nutrition would look like, ideally, is totally different. Nutrional value and health is just one aspect, for many people price and convenience are at least as important, if not more important.
Basically that - you can’t just flatly say it’s 100% fine for everyone because, for obvious reasons, it isn’t. Everyone has different needs and requirements - while eating it 100% of the time would technically be nutritionally complete, it would also be very harmful to people with uric acid issues, differing tolerances to FODMAPs for example.
All of that is before you get into even broader discussions on things like societal impacts of such a diet or how it would impact your metabolism if you were following that diet for a specific reason.
What group of world population would die as a result of eating 100% Huel powder for all their calories, and how much percentage of the world population are they?
If I washed up on a desert island with years to survive until rescue and sufficient quantity of only one food product to live on… I can’t think of any product which would be preferable to Huel.
There is a difference between “won’t die from it” and “having a good nutrition that improves your health above average”. There is convenient junk-nutrition, convenient-ok-nutrition and unconvenient but optimal nutrition.
If convenience is not an issue for you, or if you are willing to sacrifice convenience Huel is not the optimal solution for you.
If convenience is your main concern, it is the best option possible, the best among maybe not so optimal solutions.
Sorry for any confusion here! Yes, on paper, Huel is nutritionally complete at 2000 calories, so if you were to consume 100% of your calories from Huel, you’d be meeting or exceeding the reference daily intake for all essential macronutrients and micronutrients. You could probably survive on Huel alone if you needed to, and there are indeed some Hueligans out there that choose to take this approach.
That said, this isn’t something we’d actively recommend for most healthy individuals for several reasons which, as you point out, have been outlined in the past by previous Huel nutritionists. First, research elucidating the crucial role that the gut plays in lots of essential processes in the body continues to emerge, and one of the best things we can do to foster a healthy gut microbiome is to eat a variety of different foods. Relying on Huel alone doesn’t offer the best possible dietary variety, hence why we’d encourage you to mix it up wherever you can, even if that’s just including some non-Huel snacks (although a variety of fruits, veggies, whole grains and different protein sources would be ideal!).
Besides just physical health, we acknowledge the social aspect of food in our culture, and sticking to 100% Huel might eliminate opportunities to cook food or share a meal with others, which can have benefits for mental health.
As Tim mentioned, 1-2 Huel meals a day tends to be the most popular choice amongst Hueligans, with a third home-cooked meal to incorporate some variety.
Not with temporomandibular joint dysfunction. This can make it painful to chew anything.
A good exercise to train and mobilize your mandibular joint is “suppressed yawning”. It trains your mastication muscles without over-straining them.
And, by the way: Some people “chew” Huel. I guess it works better with the white edition powder.
