Deconstructed ingredients by Huel

had an idea

what if Huel sold all the best ingredients as seperate powder pouches, stepping into supplementation aswell selling all the vits & mins. so the buyer can make their own nutritional profile.

a bit of a different concept, but its an idea…

i trust that huel would do it well.

pea protein powder pouch
flaxseed powder pouch
etc

with guidelines about different nutritional profiles based on your goals.

@JamesCollier
@Julian

whats your thoughts on this?

and anyone else…

Too complicated… Specially for the logistics involved and also you would have to stock at home a lot of those individual ingredients, like 5kilos per main ingredient and the blend.

And the price wouldnt be worth it for us and neither for Huel.

4 Likes

im not intending to be argumentative but if u search on amazon you can get some ingredients from there

We pay money for Huel because they buy the ingredients and make them into food for us. Why would they sell raw ingredients instead? It’d be like Budweiser selling sacks of barley.

9 Likes

the way i see it is a possible expansion of the company in the future

making supplements and ingredients as seperate too

its not too insane an idea

im interested what the guys will say

1 Like

Exactly, why sell that when they can sell bottles of piss?

7 Likes

yar

The topic is interesting for me, but I dont find it economically interesting for Huel or in the customer point of view, I think its a very niche thing.

I am doing a similar experiment to replace the Granola by making my own, with this recipe below. I already have all the ingredients and will test it in a couple of weeks when I run out of Huel.

Porridge breakfast

250ml water
50ml milk
50gr whole Oats
5 gr of sunflower seeds
5 gr of toasted sesame (Needs to be grounded before)
5 gr of pumpkin seeds
1 tea spoon non alkalinised pure cocoa
5 gr of flaxseeds (probably ground)
1 Pinch of Salt

But which would be your idea? Huel is basically 6 ingredients + the mix. Would you sell different 7 items and then the customer would have to mix it at home?

2 Likes

huel could sell more variety of ingredients and then more variety of vits and mins…

then sell tailor made nutrition profiles based on body types and goals etc

  • companies sell ingredients seperately
  • companies sell vits and mins seperately
  • nutritionists sell profiles tailored

it already is happening

my idea is that Huel, one day do all of it.

and yes mix it at home to the tailored profile

the reason it could go this way is that some ppl react differently to amounts of ingredients etc

providing a test, urine sample of whatever u can find what suits you and have a personal profile with ingredients that suit you.

for example id have a different profile every meal, less sugar, less fibre, etc mixing it up more.

at the moment its great theres huel v3 and black v1… hopefully there will be a third option and onwards… maybe an idea like mine too

Mmm that would be great, but i think is quite difficult economically but its an interesting question.

Is there any evidence of nutritional profile per type of genetic profile? @Dan_Huel

@matt009 I would pay more for a nutritional profile adapted to me, but that is not economically viable for Huel. They would need to create an small number of standard profiles

The part of this I’d love would be a separately sold micronutrient blend. Either Huel’s existing blend, or ideally a differently balanced one (remembering that their current blend doesn’t need to include anything in the other ingredients).

Why Huel and not another company? I don’t trust a lot of others. I’ve seen excessive quantities of some nutrients a lot (and have an issue with manganese added, as I eat Quorn which is excessively high in it), and struggle to believe that real care has gone into determining what people need to top up on. I’d trust Huel to create thoughtful ‘top-up blends’ to improve certain diets.

More directly, a fully balanced blend would really help Huel dieters. So often people think they can eat 100% Huel at a sizeable calorie deficit and get all their micronutrients, when they’re actually going deficient in everything.

1 Like

But Huel isn’t a supplement company, it’s a food manufacturer. They market themselves as a maker of nutritionally complete food. They aren’t marketing themselves as a maker of a bunch of add in products like energy bars or protein shakes or antioxidant powders - what they sell is food without the fuss. No need to cook, calculate macro splits, make sure you are getting your vitamins and minerals - it’s all done for you. That’s their core message.

Deconstructing food to make it more complex for the consumer where each person has to calculate their tailored requirements is the complete antithesis of what they do. Plus which product quality would be an issue. I know the tag line is nutrition first, taste second, but how do you end up with something that mixes and combines well and still tastes good if you allow each consumer to tweak the recipe. In trying to please everyone you’d end up pleasing no one.

It also makes no sense economically or environmentally. Companies generate profit either by doing something which they can streamline and do efficiently at scale which drives the cost of manufacture per unit down and profit up; or by providing a boutique custom product which people pay a premium for. In this instance once you have your profile why would you pay a premium for ingredients like pea protein or flaxseed or oats? Huel don’t ship sample packs as it isn’t economical or environmentally friendly. Imagine the packaging waste of all those individual ingredient pouches.

I can’t see this fitting with their core vision or brand profile, nor can I see it being something they’d want to invest in when they are focused on becoming profitable in their core business.

8 Likes

i know what they do now… its an idea for the future. Aswell as what they do now.

economically and environmentally - the pouches wouldnt be small. problem solved.
companies already do it so there must be profit in it.

tim explained that huel are not in profit yet, so things could change and expand…

yeah

it could work.

and regarding anyone immediately saying theres no profit in it, maybe there is. huel’s customers are clever people buy and large, so…

@matt009 that is absolutely great idea! I would buy it immediately.

I might have quite a corner case profile though :/.
I had to stop using Huel after 4-5 feeks, when I was supplementing 2-3 meals / day. The same happen with Mana, Saturo and Powder Matter, however the Huel worked for me for the longest.
The problem is definitely on my side, but I would like to track down, which ingredients does the problem. I would like to go without mineral mix for a while (while e.g. eating more vegetables instead), then on the other side replace flaxseed with e.g. some combination of buckwheat + quinoa flour, use only rice-protein for a while, etc. I know that would not be perfect meal anymore, but I could improve ingredients one at a time, once I have some non-problematic foundation. And I think I would be interested anyways in changing the mix time to time anyways. Or just change the carbs / proteins ratio sometimes.

Keep me posted, if You go on startup with that :slight_smile:

1 Like

There’s some evidence for individual nutrients, but overall not much. The DNA tests you see online often shout about these things but we’re just not at a point where whole diet recommendations can be based on a person’s genetics.

2 Likes

Hi @matt009

Interesting ideas and love the out-of-box thinking :smile:

This would be quite hard to set up and Huel is all about convenience and simplicity, so it’s not something we have in our plans. Also, we are a complete food brand, selling ingredients and supplements would mean we’re steering away from our mission.

If you have different goals, now we have Black Edition, you can flex your Huel by adding different amounts of regular and Black - this is exactly what I do :slight_smile:

1 Like

i see, then regarding ppls body types, it would be down to the customer to know what works for them.

yeah!

im waiting for the kelp to be removed from the white v3. to buy it again. it all matters imo, regarding the miniscule possible quantities of mollusc etc. sorry about that!

i was mixing berry white with vanilla black and banana white and choco black Amazing flavour and textures.

i really enjoy the consumption of healthy food .

loving black huel, trying different flavours, couldnt help but think it could be tailor made tho :slightly_smiling_face: its as good as it gets!

maybe a third option in a couple years will occcur, thatd be great to have more choice ingredients aswell as flavour.

i do consume and eat other things but im a big hueler and its huelerific yo… :cool:

just wanted to share an idea… now its out there

I agree with @Liath and I think the idea would be chaos for all involved except the tiny amount of people who would put in huge amounts of time playing around with the ingredients and spreadsheets making their own concoctions.

You would also lose control over it being nutrionally complete. Over half the vitamins and minerals in Huel Powders are naturally occurring from the food ingredients, the rest are added. If you start messing with the ratios of the food ingredients you would need detailed information on how much vitamin or mineral you have added or decreased by. If Huel released their vitamin and mineral blend it would be probably in a powder of them all mixed together so if you were well under on a certain vitamin because you’ve reduced the food elsewhere you would then have to add that separately as a supplement bought from elsewhere.

For the small amount of people who this approach would appeal to you could do this already. All of the primary ingredients can be bought online along with a huge selection of supplements.

Just to clarify the point about Huel not being in profit. Huel has made a profit but they have reinvested the profits back into the company as investment.

2 Likes