I’m sorry to say you were wrong there. You misquoted. Julian simply mentioned that "We don’t believe 100% of Huel only is the common use case of Huel, meaning - it seems that most people are not on 100% Huel only. Julian did NOT say Huel does not recommend 100% use.
Thank you for explaining, terriann. I think JamesCollier himself is about to say something on the matter.
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I’m a big fan of peanut butter nutritionally speaking. The only important thing would be to make sure you’re not having too much and exceeding your desired caloric intake, as it’s quite energy dense.
@Pitarou - I read it how @terriann reads it, too… ie. 100% Huel is not the typical useage, but there’s no reason why you can’t or shouldn’t go 100% - hence the following excerpts from “Step 2” that you referenced:
This is entirely up to you and your personal circumstances. Most people will use it for one or two meals a day, but you can use it for just an occasional snack, pre or post workout, and a tiny percentage go 100%.
We recommend that when you start Huel, you first try replacing 1 meal with Huel, and then after a while (approx. 3-5 days) you could progress to replacing 2 of your daily meals (and then 3, 4, etc. if you want to go 100% Huel). This will allow your body to slowly adjust to Huel.
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Regarding the 5-a-day issue, the advice is kind of arbitrary and nutrients vary considerably between different fruits and vegetables and also due to transportation and storage. It’s just a scheme to try to get people to eat more fruit and veg to try to make the population as a whole healthier overall, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that if you eat your 5-a-day then you’re going to be in perfect health.
A person could eat their 5-a-day and still not get their 5-a-day, if you know what I mean?
Heck, someone could eat 10-a-day, but if it’s been transported a long way and been stored for a while, who knows what nutrients are still left in that fruit and veg.
This article suggests that frozen vegetables could actually be more nutritious than “fresh” vegetables because they get frozen immediately after being picked, so retain more of their nutrients:
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Thanks for the clarification.
Let’s me clear up the confusion here. Huel has been designed so that it can comprise 100% of your diet. The statement you’ve highlighted says that we don’t actually feel most people will actually use it 100%. Of course, many do and many feel great. But the vast majority use Huel for 1, 2 or 3 meals per day or in various other regimens.
A lot of what’s in Huel, eg the 26 essential vitamins and minerals, phytonutrients, insoluble and soluble fibres, etc is also found in fruit and veg. The 5 a day message is to get people to eat more fruit and veg that they’re missing out on from eating a poor diet. The more recent 10 a day message is from looking at numerous studies and seen a correlation between mortality / morbidity and intake. However, it is merel indicative - there could be other lifestyle factors that also have a positive effect on health. My colleague, Claire, makes some really good points in her article here.
Greens and reds powders - I’m not convinced. I’ve never seen one brand who state the micronutrients in their products.
The claim that a product can be one or two of your ‘5 a day’ is a claim that needs to be validated by the appropriate departments so Huel cannot make that claim. However, Huel is based on natural ingredients and it does contain all 26 essential vits and mins, phytonutrients, soluble fibre, insoluble fibre, amino acids, essential fats and more and is certainly far, far better than the type of diets most westerners are consuming.
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Thank you so very much to you and Julian for Huel. It has totally changed my life and definitely gives me ALL the nutrients my body needs, and I’m certain of that only because I have been in peak health since I started on Huel, healthier than I’ve been for 20 years, and I have never, ever eaten junk food, take outs, foods made with flour, condiments, snacks and sweets. I’ve always eaten real foods only like fruits, veg, meat, fish, nuts, muesli and dairy products, yet god only knows why I was so unhealthy all the time. Maybe because I don’t eat enough. I was a vegetarian once for 15 years, and then I was VERY unhealthy and sickly, and my health improved a lot once I included meat and fish, but I still suffered a bit of ill health, anemia and malnutrition. Huel keeps me in peak health, and I only eat 2 bags a month. Thanks for a brilliant, amazing product.
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While it doesn’t show the exact quantities of micronutrients, this greens product does state what micronutrients are present and from which ingredients in their description section. It also states the amount of each ingredient present, so in theory it would be easy enough to find the average micronutrient content for each ingredient and multiply by the serving size to work out an approximation of the amounts.
Their fruits powder doesn’t contain such in-depth information, but does contain the exact amount of each fruit powder present, so a similar method could be used for calculating nutrient values as with the greens product.
I do agree though that a lot of the options on the market are fairly terrible.
Isn’t that also true of fresh fruits and vegetables? Say I was to buy an orange in a shop, it wouldn’t tell me how much vitamin C is in it for example. Same with a tin of baked beans, which also apparently counts as 1 of your 5-a-day, but there’s no information on the micronutrients in it. Don’t food products only list micronutrients if they’ve been added, e.g. fortified breakfast cereals?
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@IcyElemental OK, that’s a job I might do when I get time - would be interesting. There’s more info on that link than most, though. But if these brands feel they have so much to offer in the way of micronutrition, why not state the amounts?
@Marcus fruit and veg are grown and sold and the nutritional info for oranges it freely available and the results of 1000s of analyses. And well illustrated with your baked bean analogy - that’s my point above - just eat well.
Yes, if it’s fortified with a nutrient the brand would have to state amounts, but also if they make a claim for a nutrient, which is possibly why they don’t make claims.
One of two reasons I’d suspect. Either they’ve got a lot of fillers in that would make the amounts lower than people would expect, or else they don’t want to run the tests to get an accurate idea of the levels. I bought a couple of the options I found earlier today to give them a shot, though I’m not concerned with the micronutrients as I know I’m already getting them - it’s the phytonutrients which interest me.
Amounts would be interesting - phytonutrients too
Do you think this would work to ensure one get’s their 5 a day?
Complete Greens/Super Greens Powder Pure and Natural
Huel is supposed to be a complete food with no added nutritional components needed…however most people don’t use it as a sole food source.
I’ve been adding this self same product to some of my Huel meals since the beginning of April (since Joe @IcyElemental mentioned it in a thread; as well as taking a vegan vit 3 tablet, cos he seems to know more about nutrition than I ever could).
Despite being touted as unflavoured, it does have a definite taste and aroma: quite herby and probably well suited to savoury Huel, but I use it with my vanilla/unflavoured mix - sometimes with matcha tea, coffee, or raw cocoa and it actually tastes ok with all those flavours, although it is still noticeable. May not be to everyone’s liking…
Thanks. That’s good start 
Re those complete supergreens, thank for the link. Ludicrously expensive though, sadly. Unaffordable for me.
Meantime, in the absence of affordable powdered viggies, and since I am only able to consume 1200 calories a day max, and usually only consume 900 to 1000, I found this organic carbon based vitamin supplement to compensate for the other 3 Huel servings I’m not having every day :
https://www.biovea.com/uk/product_detail.aspx?PID=3717&deptid=0&cid=0&OS=204&NAME=ORGANIC-LIFE-VITAMINS-30-fl-oz-887ml
Yeah I trialled this too, extremely basil-y aroma and taste, though I haven’t found it too awful to just down 3g in water three times per day. Probably won’t bother with it again though as I have some isolated phytonutrients. I will, however, continue with their Complete Fruits which are fairly pleasant.
I haven’t tried the complete fruits…
It’s a tad bitter (as fruit powders often are) but mixed with a shake it’s quite nice. I also add in MyProtein’s Nutri Purple but that isn’t really necessary