Hi,
I received my bag of Huel a couple of days ago, i thought it would be ok to share my thought in this forum.
I’m a regular user of powder based food (joylent, veetal, jake etc…).
First of all thx for the goodies (shaker , shirt, flask)
After 3 days, i have to say Huel is feeling my nutrition needs, i do a 600cal shaker in the morning and it is ok for me.
I have two problems though : First of all , this is the first time i use a powder that produces so much lumps. I used the provided shaker, a shaker with a metal sphere, a promagixx and it won’t change anything. I have to use a blender and add water then powder, water again and the rest of the powder in that order to avoid lumps.
Secondly, i find it too sweet, i’m not a big fan of sweet drinks and it appears that Huel is too sweet for my taste.
It would be good to propose different levels of “sweetness” if that’s possible.
Firstly, in terms of sweetness, this a tricky because we all have slightly different opinions on the same flavour. Other customers have said it too sweet too, while others have said it’s just right, and some not sweet enough.
We do have a plan to solve this problem, watch this space! A solution should be available within a month.
In terms of lumps, you are not the first customer who have switched from Joylent to raised this. The big different is that they used Maltodextrin which mixes better than oats but does have downsides in terms of nutrition. Have a read of this thread: Why I have a LOT of lumps?
I personally don’t get lumps, well maybe a few occasional, but having something to bite into now and then is quite nice.
The choice comes down to:
Do you want to consume large quantities of Maltodextrin all day,
but have a easy to mix drink?
Consume natural oats which includes lots of naturally occurring
fibre, lower gi carbs, protein, vitamins and minerals, but
occasionally get some lumps.
There a third option, buy a blender and use Huel, this way you get the best of both world a totally smooth drink without any Maltodextrin.
My blender is Breville, I had it about 10 year and cost about £30, so a cost per year of £3 and cost per use of about 1p-2p. This is the closest I could fine:
I agree with Christophe that Huel is way to sweet. I get sick of the sweetness. My opinion is, that the taste should be as bland and unremarkable as possible.
I’m an ex-Joylent user myself and I’ve also got ambiguous first impressions Huel: on one hand it’s got definitely better GI (than Joylent) and no maltodextrin and (hurray!) an unflavoured version; on the other hand it has unavoidable lumps when mixing without a blender, meaning decreased on-the-go usefulness.
@Ric I’ve performed some tests myself. Lots of finger pricking. Sadly, I’m not pleased with the accuracy of my, ironically named, Accu-Check blood glucose system. I’ve seen variation of 0.3 mmol/L between measurings less than 30 seconds apart and there seems to be a LOT of importance on the fasting blood sugar value in order to get a correct enough GI value, but a pattern can be seen with Huel generating a lower curve than Joylent or sugar.
So yes, you are right, technically I don’t know the GI of Huel but I have reasons to believe it is lower than Joylent.
“All glycemic index and glycemic load data was generated through a third-party clinical trial conducted by Glycemic Index Laboratories in Toronto, Ontario.”
[PS - A lot of time when I post, I refer to “soylent”, the accepted industry notation for all powdered food products. Only if I use the capitalized “Soylent” am I referring to the Rosa Labs original product. So when you see me say “soylent,” I’m not advertising for Rosa Labs.]
