5 a day

[KellyL]

Hi,
Can Huel be counted towards your 5 a day situation!
Cheers,
Kelly

[ChrisH0402]

This has been discussed before.
Don’t count Huel as (a part of) the ‘5 a day’.
Do you need to eat fruit when you eat Huel for all your meals ?
Not necessarily, as Huel is designed to be complete.
Does it hurt to eat fruit on a 100% Huel diet ? No, fruit/veg is always good.

I’ve looked up a post from @JamesCollier on this topic in a seperate thread, as below.

@JamesCollier

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.

And something from @Tim_Huel as well.

@Tim_Huel

The recommendation to consume 5 fruit and veg a day is to increase the vitamin and mineral intake of the population and ensure a spectrum of vitamins and minerals are consumed. The idea is that by consuming a variety of food you are less likely to miss out on certain nutrients, hence why 5 apples does not count as 5 fruit and veg.

For those that are consuming Huel 100%, they can be confident they are reaching the recommended levels for all vitamins and minerals. However as we know, the vast majority don’t consume Huel 100% and would mix this up with a fairly varied diet anyway. This way, if there is some nutrient in fruit and veg scientists haven’t accounted for, you would still be fine.

Does that make sense? In short, fruit and veg portions don’t really apply to Huel!