I’m a new user of the Huel bars but am concerned by the use of brown rice syrup and the growing body of research that suggests it introduces unhealthy levels of arsenic into the diet:
Can you comment on your consideration of this and the potential dangers of consuming this ingredient every day?
We have indeed looked in to this in detail.
Brown rice protein is NOT the same as brown rice. The rice protein in Huel is derived from brown rice When the protein content of brown rice is extracted and purified, most of the other nutrients and substances are removed. Brown rice protein is a concentrated protein powder food ingredient, thus having most of the carbs, sugar, fats and some of the minerals removed.
Arsenic is dissolvable by water. Since our rice protein extraction process is heavily water-based, the arsenic gets washed out to almost undetectable levels. Like all Huel ingredients, we can assure you that the amount of arsenic in our brown rice protein is very low and safely below the required level.
We had the arsenic measured in Huel products and the results are in the links on this page: https://uk.huel.com/pages/food-safety-and-quality-controls
Using a test result as an example: 100g Huel works out to around 0.0016mg. Made up as per directions, this would be per 500ml water. The ‘safe level’ is 0.01mg/l. Even at 500g Huel per day the amount is 0.008mg; well below safe levels.
Of course, we do use brown rice syrup as an ingredient in Huel Granola and Huel Bar, but as you can see from the result links in the above link, the levels are still way, way below ‘safe’ levels (which are already very low).
A bit off topic but James would you consider posting a high level article about the extraction process of Huel ingredients. I’m wondering if high temperature is required for any of these extractions, or to make the oat flour, etc.