Advice on improving taste / adding sugar (I'm really picky)

Nutrition
1

Huel is basically what I’ve been looking for all my life. I’m another one in the ‘if it takes longer than a minute to prepare the food, I’d rather not eat it because it’s a waste of time’ club and I started with Huel this week. I think Huel is amazing in this regard, if I could just eat “complete” food that I liked the taste of, I would eat that and nothing else forever. So I really do want to try and make Huel work for me.

Not going to lie though, I’m really struggling with the taste of Huel. I chuck it in my Blend Active and the consistency of the shake is great, it’s just the seedy taste that’s the issue. (My throat also tightens a bit when I drink it, but there’s another thread on that and I can kind of overlook this since the feeling goes away as soon as I’ve swallowed it all).

I hate the taste of fruit, nuts, seeds, vegetables and can’t do spicy foods. My taste buds hate me.

I ordered chocolate flavour, thinking that would be a safe bet but I don’t think I could describe it as chocolaty at all. All I can taste is seedy (which I hate), so I’m only managing to get less than a scoop into me a day at the moment until I figure out how to make it taste better.
At my current rate of consumption (about 30g a day) it’s going to take me forever to get through the bags I’ve got and I suppose while technically it’s 30g more of goodness than I was getting before I’d like to find a way to up my intake without counteracting too many of the benefits.

A lot of the suggestions I have seen for improving taste are to add things to it that I don’t like the taste of. I’m already mixing it 50/50 with chocolate milkshake (Slimfast, not because I’m trying hard to lose weight, but because it’s a meal drink I actually REALLY like the taste of. I used Complan before and decided that the 15 or so more calories per drink that has wasn’t worth the fact it tastes 10x worse to me than Slimfast does) and it’s still overwhelmingly seedy tasting to the point I can only just about manage to drink it.|
Basically at the moment my breakfast is Chocolate Slimfast with 30g of Huel added to it.

I wanted to get more goodness into me, since I don’t eat any real fruit or vegetables and exist mostly on meats, pasta, milk and junk food if I wasn’t having meal replacement drinks. I make sure I still have one proper meal a day, but it’s always meat with potatoes or pasta based.

Do the Bannana / Plain flavoured versions taste any less seedy than the chocolate does?
From reading a lot of the threads it sounds like I would have liked the old versions better before more seed was added.

How much sugar (maybe not straight up sugar, but sugar based content such as milkshake powder / sweetened cocoa powder) could I add to a scoop of Huel without going past the point of defeating the purpose and making it less healthy for me than just drinking something I like the taste of?

I did try to search the forum before posting for information on adding sugars to Huel, but didn’t find any really useful answers.

2

I’m really not sure what the “seedy” taste your describing is but for whatever it’s worth, the banana flavour tastes exactly like a just ripened banana to me.

With regard to how much of a particular add in you can do, that’s definitely more up to your limits and preferences. Maybe consider what your alternative meal would’ve been without the add ins and see how those macros compare?

If your Huel is still ultimately a more rounded meal (e.g. less sugars, better vitamin and minerals, better macros, etc) then I’d still consider it a better option.

I’m sure you’ve read a lot of the common flavouring suggestions that are made on here but some of the easiest options are these:

  • changing your liquid base - eg dairy/plant milks, vanilla/chocolate milks, coffee, tea, etc.

  • blending in fruit - e.g. banana or berries

  • adding barista style syrups - e.g vanilla, caramel, mocha, etc.

  • adding in other flavourings - e.g. cocoa/cacao powder, cinnamon, peanut butter, etc.

I hope that helps a bit and good luck!

3

You might want to try Flavour Drops to change the taste. They do flavours like white chocolate or toffee which are fairly strong tasting without adding a ton of sugar.

Otherwise I’d suggest experimenting with unhealthy options at low quantities until you find the minimum level of additions to change the taste. I’m thinking of things like milk or plant milks, but also things like a tablespoon of peanut butter or chocolate spread. Not a massive amount of extra calories but might be enough to change the texture and taste.

4

I’m already using semi skimmed milk, couldn’t get more than 3 sips down me without wanting to vomit when I mixed the recommended Huel + water mix. Because of the seedy taste, not the texture.

I’ll experiment with adding more chocolate flavour things and see if anything works.

I would love to try banana, vanilla (I don’t usually like vanilla but I’m seeing a lot of coments that it tastes sweet) and plain in normal and black to see if any of those work better for my taste buds but that’s another £100 plus of Huel I’d have to order and probably waste just to pick the best flavour for me.

@Tim_Huel
This is why you really should have taster packs. I’d be happy to spend money (I’d probably happily have spent £20 to try a small amount (not even a scoop would do) of each flavour to get the best tasting one to me and more likely to stay a customer) . I honestly can’t see me buying more after what I have now is done because I don’t want more of something I hate the taste of and it costs too much to order more full bags that may end up completely wasted.

5

Hey @Quoth, thanks for persevering. Tough one if you have tried/know you don’t like the flavours of a lot of the suggestions you’ve found. A couple of suggestions from me:

  • You mention the ‘seedy taste’. I think this is the powdery, earthy taste of the plant-proteins we use. Have you tried refrigeration? Chilling Huel I find mellows out some of that earthy-ness
  • A really simple way to change the flavour would be to use our Flavour Boosts. You can get sample packs, or buy larger packs for a fiver. You could experiment with these, adding different amounts until you mask the flavour in Huel you don’t like. The benefit would be that you aren’t adding any extra unhealthy stuff.

Also,

By adding additional stuff to Huel you aren’t going to remove any of the nutrition. I kind of see what you mean, but it doesn’t really work like that. You can add as much sugar as you want but you’re still going to get the same amount of vitamins and minerals from the 30g of Huel.

However trying to stick to more nutrient-dense additions would be best, or ones without any nutrients/calories in e.g. flavourings.

6

@Tim_Huel So do you think trying the black would be a worse option and I’d be better off trying the vanilla / banana of the regular if I do decide to give other flavours a try?

I have tried refrigerated and it still tastes exactly the same to me.

7

I don’t think there will be much difference for you between Chocolate v3.0 and Chocolate BE. I think your first port of call should be the taster pack of Flavour Boosts with some Vanilla Huel v3.0. I bloody love the Banana v3.0, but I don’t think it will have significantly less ‘seedy’ taste.

8

Thanks for the recommendations Tim. I’ve ordered some Vanilla 3.0 and Flavour Boost samples and am crossing my fingers that tastes better or I’m going to be eating 30g of Huel a day for the rest of the year so it doesn’t all go to waste Hahaha.

1 Like
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@Tim_Huel
Got my Vanilla this morning. Made up pure Huel + Milk, tastes SO much better than the chocolate version, I can’t taste whatever it is that I can’t stand in the chocolate version at all. I’m going to try all the flavour samples slowly (because I have them now so why not) but I don’t actually think I’m going to need them.

My mum then tried my chocolate stuff (to see what I was complaining about), and she liked it, so she’s having my chocolate and you’ll probably have a new customer when it runs out. Win win.

Thanks so much for replying and all the advice!

1 Like
10

I’m really pleased to hear that @Quoth! It’s no problem at all and great to have you and your mum on board too. :raised_hands: