I’ve been reading up and educating myself on nutrition and nutrient density from the information you post on your website, since starting my Huel journey.
I came across this page on Flaxseed which I found very interesting, but wanted to check the data listed in Appendix 1 - as surely flaxseed isn’t 30g carbohydrates per 100g?
Please could you advise?
Also, do you have similar info pages and nutrient breakdown tables for the other key ingredients (oats, tapioca, pea/rice protein, coconut etc)?
Hey John, love that you’ve been reading through the articles on site!
30g of carbs is about right, in the table fibre isn’t classified as carbs because they’re indigestible, and there’s a lot of fibre in flaxseed. What gives you pause for thought?
We don’t have pages for every ingredient, it’s mainly for the ones that some people have an issue with, such as flaxseed and sunflower oil so we address those concerns.
The nutritional information for flaxseed is a rough average. The FDA (US government) has a cool site that allows you to look up the nutrition information of lots of different foods.
If you have any questions about the ingredients I’ll try to answer them
Oh that’s really interesting, thank you. My pause was because I hadn’t appreciated that the table didn’t separate out fibre - thanks.
So that’s led me down a bit of a rabbit hole learning about soluble vs insoluble fibre, which I’m just trying to get my head around.
In the context of Huel, I understand the main two sources of fibre are Oats and Flaxseed, but the former is soluble whereas the latter is insoluble.
Does this mean these are handled differently in the nutritional info of Huel - as in, the fibre from Oats is counted under ‘fibre’ because its soluble, whereas the fibre contribued by flaxseed is counted under ‘carbohydrates’ because its insoluble. If that makes sense?
You got it. Oats and flaxseed will contain both insoluble and soluble fibre, but like you said there’s more of one than the other in each.
No I think you’re overthinking here. Soluble fibre is fibre that can partially dissolve in water so it forms a gel, insoluble fibre can’t do this. Fibre is classed as fibre and not (available) carbohydrate because it can’t be digested in the small intestine, it’s why fibre can also be classed as indigestible carbohydrate.
I’ve just re-read my question and realised it didn’t make a lot of sense! Sorry - let me try again!
I think what you’re saying is the way nutritional information is represented in the flaxseed table is in a different format to how it is on the Huel labelling
So, for example for Huel 3.0, per 100g there is 37g of carbohydrate, andan additional 7.5g of fibre.
But, in the flaxseed table, per 100 grams flaxseed contains 30g of carbohydrate, 27g of which is fibre. An equivalent way of saying this would be either:
Huel contains 45g of carbohydrates, 7.5g of which is fibre; or
Flaxseed contains 3g of carbohydrate and 27g of fibre
Ah so that’s what I don’t understand, and was throwing me originally, as it doesn’t seem right that flaxseed has 30g of carbohydrate plus and an additional 27g of fibre, and these figures don’t seem to match other sources.
For example, this flaxseed product is 3.0g of carbohydrate and 24g of fibre, per 100g. This is roughly similar across different versions of the same product.
Why are these numbers so vastly different to this table - literally a 10fold difference in carbohdrates?
(I should clarify - I’m by no means saying this is wrong or trying to ‘catch you out’, I hope it doesn’t come across that way, just trying to educate myself and understand )
The table I linked above should be digestible carbs + fibre however, the numbers have been lifted from an example US nutritional specification that we have.
The US does their nutrition labels slightly differently where it’s digestible carbs and fibre + of which is fibre.
So what I’m trying to say is like you’ve said, the table incorrectly uses UK labelling but the values are following the US rules, we’ll get that corrected.
Dan thank you, I appreciate you sticking with me an explaining that to me! Glad we got to the bottom of that!
Do you have a similar nutritional breakdown for the sunflower oil powder - I’ve been trying to educate myself on this also but can’t really find much information on it.
Yeah totally understand that of course, thanks Dan. Is sunflower oil powder a product Huel has developed itself - I’ve not really been able to find much about it, elsewhere.
Follow up on this - do you have general macronutrient data + amino acid profiles for pea protein and rice protein (appreciate the exact details of your products may be confidential, but just general ballpark figures) as I’m really struggling to find anything reliable online.
Cheers John
Hey John, I think the figures online are pretty reliable e.g. the first two hits on google for pea protein per 100g are within 6kcal of each other and 5g of protein difference - first hit and second hit.
This is a good source for the amino acid profile of pea protein.
