We’re always trying to make your experience of Huel better! What do you think of the flavour boosts purely from a sweetness/flavour standpoint?
Do you ever think they are too sweet?
Do you ever wish they didn’t have any sweetener in
– bearing in mind that sweetener/sugar acts a bit like salt in your dinner - it enhances the flavour
What about the experience of adding our flavour boosts to either Vanilla or Unflavoured?
– does it make it a bit sweet in Vanilla or isn’t strong enough in Unsweetened?
– does simply adding a bit more to Unflavoured help with this?
We would love to hear your opinion on any of the above!
Blimey I think you could be opening a can of worms here.
I’d be interested trying them with no sweetener, but I think it won’t make them as good - would like to be wrong though. I’ve only so far actually used one of your flavour boosts - coconut and vanilla; half a teaspoon in 50/50 vanilla/unflavoured and 50/50 oat or almond milk/water is fine, although it also works as well in unflavoured, it’s just I’m in the habit of making a whole load of Huel portions once a week and adding flavouring as I feel like it…coffee with no additional sweetener works well, as does matcha tea.
I’m new here and literally only been using Huel for a couple days but so far I’ve tried banana and strawberry, with the vanilla base. I think the Banana was great and cut down the “Huel” aftertaste that I’m not totally keen on, however I just tried Strawberry and while it smelled great in the pack, I found I had I to add nearly all the sample sachet to a 1.5 mix of Huel and even then the strawberry wasn’t as strong as banana but the sweetness was WAY too much, and it didn’t reduce the Huel taste itself.
I haven’t tried the others yet so can’t give an informed view but id say it definitely doesn’t need to be sweeter, less sweet if anything so you can add more flavour without it being overly sweet and sickly.
For me, the balance is about right when using vanilla Huel. I had one bag of U/U (I’d been thinking of savoury Huel) and I was so relieved to finish it! Maybe it was using vanilla for so long (I’ve been on about 99% Huel since November last year) but I’ve come to associate Huel with sweetness - when not using a flavour I use either fruit or fruit juice to add flavour.
Today I’ve had Vanilla with toffee/banana flavour pack and chocolate for lunch. I have to say, I made the banana/toffee in advance overnight, and made the lunch one this morning, and leaving them in the fridge definitely improves the taste a lot. The toffee and banana combo is great and not too sweet and the chocolate one is good too, I added more than recommended but doesn’t feel over sweet and I could be drinking a normal chocolate milkshake right now, it takes very enjoyable
Too sweet in vanilla imo, a bit sickly unless you dilute it more. Using half a sachet not very practical. Don’t mind the Huel taste at all, might just stick with vanilla or try adding lemon juice
Chocolate
Strawberry
Toffee
Pineapple and Coconut
Banana
Cacao
In terms of sweetness I think they’re spot on but I only use a small amount, 1/3rd of a teaspoon per 90g/450ml of Vanilla. I do find that that P&C has a bit of a bitter aftertaste to it though.
I would be interested in trying it without a sweetener as I only use Vanilla Huel.
From my experience thus far (a few huel meals a day for almost a month),
Unsweetened + Boost = Sometimes not sweet enough
Vanilla + Boost = Sometimes too sweet
Having the sweetness there definitely improves the overall experience. For example, when I mix my chocolate protein supplement with huel, I don’t add any more sweetener or boost and it is consistently not sweet enough. This is mainly the fault of the whey protein flavor, however.
Obviously, my experiences vary between days and the flavor of the huel+boost. Is the sweetener the same for every boost? If so, we could get unsweetened boosts and a pack of sweetener?
Personally I prefer the flavour boosts with vanilla Huel. With unflavoured, they just aren’t sweet enough and don’t effectively mask the other flavours enough to be palletable for me. I do have a real sweet tooth though.
Rhubarb crumble is amazing and my all time favourite! The perfect level of sweetness. For me, the best taste is with vanilla. I find it unpleasant with unflavoured.
I have a bag of unflavoured that I’m only getting through by adding double the recommended boost serving, and topping up with other sweeteners. I’ll be sticking to vanilla only when that’s gone.
Before I discovered I had a milk intolerance, I used to buy a strawberry & banana breakfast smoothie from bulk powders. It’s very popular and the flavour was amazing. I really miss it, but it’s made with milk so a big no no for me. If you could replicate this in a flavour boost, I’d be first in the queue to buy!
Before I answer, I consume Huel to benefit from its nutritional content. If it is truly comprehensive, then the flavour is relatively unimportant. So to make Huel better, I would like to be more informed about its nutrition. Clearly, the main requirements (vitamins minerals oils protein fibre) are there but nutrition research is finding new beneficial phytonutrients all the time; what about these? For that matter, where’s the proof of nutritional improvement amongst users; there’s a couple of use cases on the website which are frankly unconvincing and I think this is a problem: if we don’t know Huel is effective nutrition, it doesn’t really matter what it tastes like.
Secondly, taste buds are amongst the fastest growing of human cells ad quickly adapt or “get used to” new flavours. Any given opinion about taste will be transitory.
Coca cola has covered all the territory in respect of what makes a great-tasting drink, probably to the detriment of mankind. Hopefully, Huel’s destiny lies elsewhere.
Received a bad of FlavDrops from my protein. They do a god job of flavouring the mix itself but I’m yet to actually review the flavours themselves properly, looking forward to Maple in the morning.
What I would really like (I know this isn’t a request thread) would be something like Cinnamon Danish flavour Whey that my protein do. I don’t know how but that tastes exactly like fresh bakery cinnamon danishes. If you could supply that in a flavour pack, I would be set for life!
For me personally they are too sweet. I mostly use vanilla Huel with coffee and the only two flavours I like are Mocha and R&C. Even those I use at a reduced dilution.
I have a savoury tooth and yet haven’t tried a savoury Huel idea yet. A fried said just dropping a beef stock cube in was ok but I don’t fancy drinking a pint of gravy. It’s a tough one.
I have tried competitors versions and although they didn’t work for me as well as Huel does the flavours were often better and more natural tasting.
I agree that using half a sachet isn’t practical, it’s worth noting that the Boost Sample pouch is just that - a sample. It’s so that you can try all of them and then know which flavour you want to buy 150g of. When you have the full bag you can easily add 1g, 2g etc.
I’m a big fan of Rhubarb Crumble too! But we don’t do a Rhubarb Crumble flavour (makes mental note!), who’s is this?
Hey Andrew, a few side topics here but:
Huel contains many phytonutrients. Oats and flaxseed are rich in phytonutrients and we also add lycopene and lutein/zeanthanin too. you can read more about the phytonutrients in Huel here.
I’m interested in your perspective on this. Huel is just food in powdered form, your fruit and veg doesn’t come supplied with research supporting nutritional improvement. If your diet was poor then eating Huel will improve your diet because it supplies a good balance of nutrients.
I assure you our destiny lies elsewhere. But if we can make a highly nutritious food source that also tastes even better, then we would like to!
At the moment it’s seeming like the flavours aren’t strong enough with Unflavoured but for some a bit too sweet on top of Vanilla.
Only been drinking Huel for two weeks for breakfast. So far, I’m on a very diluted vanilla mix (300ml cold water, 200ml hot water, 1 level Huel scoop) and that tastes like sweet, warm porridge to me with the consistency of watered oatmeal. I did start on three scoops but it was way too thick and sweet when made warm, and made me feel like I was eating three bowls of sugar glue in one sitting (literally had to eat with a spoon).
The vanilla mix is sweet enough on its own (in my diluted mix) but when I added one of the flavour sachets to attempt a lunch Huel drink (toffee) I couldnt finish it. Tried adding more water, still too sweet. I chucked it and tried another (Strawberry) and tossed that too. Did try mocha the next day, and while the flavour was great (less artificial than the previous two) the saccharine blanket on my tongue was not nice. They were way, way too sweet. That being said, I very rarely consume anything but raw cane sugar, honey or maple syrup to sweeten food (West Indies heritage. Processed sugar/sweetners have never been a staple of my diet at home even while living/being born here in UK). So sweeteners/processed sugar have always tasted super sweet and artificial to me anyway. I’d actually prefer the vanilla without any sweetener at all (artificial sweeteners have a funny aftertaste) but perhaps when I open the unflavoured Huel, I’ll revise my stance on that because then I can mix them together. The vanilla is super easy, no fussing, and the sweetness/flavour is okay for how diluted I currently drink it, but I see it becoming a problem again when I start adding more scoops…and that’s before the boosts!
I got two of the flavour sachet trial packs and don’t really see myself liking any of them. I’ll try the same flavours again when I open the unflavoured Huel as a comparison. I think when I’m ready to fully extend to lunchtime Huel I’ll be a bit stuck for palatable options…maybe a Plain/Greek yogurt and whole fruit blend in the nutribullet might do it. Savoury Huel…meat stock/broth? That way it could be warm and taste less “fake” and unnaturally sweet. At present, I do not like Huel cold…probably because it reminds me so much of porridge how I make it.
So my overall verdict is yes, the sachets are far too sweet and artificial tasting, but I’m not used to sweeteners in any case.
Oops, I meant rhubarb & custard! Sorry to confuse. I’m a big fan of rhubarb crumble too, but your rhubarb & custard is the one I meant. It’s simply perfect, I love it in vanilla. I have a very sweet tooth though.
