Are the calories specified on huel packets estimated

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I was just wondering which method is used to calculate the number of calories in huel. For instance the Wilbur Atwater method has long been seen as inaccurate and the bomb calorimeter method does not take in to account indigestible foods such a fiber.

Can anyone answer this?

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@JamesCollier

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This would be good to know. Iā€™d hate to find out Iā€™m eating fewer calories than I thought.

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Hi guys

Weā€™ve actually covered How to Calculate the Energy Value of Food

In the early days, we used a combination of ingredient supplier specs and verified nutritional databases to work out calories. From a legal perspective, these are based on Atwater, but Atwater does take in to account fibre. I still do it this way, however, as weā€™re grown we send product off for regular testing, including new products, and I verify the figures Iā€™ve used on the pack through testing.

For fibre, we use two (of the four available) different methods of analysis depending on the product (due to the different fibre sources). From this (and available carbs, protein and fat) our lab uses an appropriate energy calculation. I check this with my calculation.

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Thanks for the insight. I do hope youā€™re as accurate as you say with the differences being ā€œso small that the values become negligibleā€.

That being said research regularly finds out that calorie calculations are often inaccurate for instance a 2012 study by the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that almonds have 20% fewer calories than Atwater would have calculated.

Do you also find that your calculations are often so far off when you send Huel off for testing? or are they normally spot on?

Thanks again for replying about this i didnt realise you had talked about this before.

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Calories are never spot on - they are merely estimates. itā€™s the same for any food. Youā€™ve highlighted one point yourself. In my professional career, Iā€™ve always argued against calorie-counting and I never did it with my clients (one of my sayings was ā€˜eat food, not figuresā€™). But people like to count calories.

However, Huel calorie calculations are indeed not far off and vary by only a few calories on our tests.

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Awesome Thanks :slight_smile:

Im glad to know its not far off.