Honest Huel Review

Read our honest review of Huel and discover a really yummy recipe in the process - hope you enjoy! Would love to know what you think and hear about your own experiences :slight_smile: Huel Review

I’d be more comfortable if the review didn’t feature three professional Huel promotional photos and a “thumbs up” from a dietician drafted by the company.

Review also states “It is low GI.” That is directly a talking point from the company; the author has no idea what the GI is since the company has never released that information.

I won’t even mention how having 37 links to the Huel homepage in the “review” reeks of blatant marketing, rather than a good-faith review.

[I’m a supporter of Huel; but this review doesn’t read “honest.” to me.]

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It definitely sounds more like a paid advertisement than an independent review.

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I was bothered that it didn’t mention Soylent in any way as inspiration. I love Huel, but this really left a bad taste in my mouth.

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Thank you for your replies. I felt I should respond as my article has obviously caused a bit of annoyance. Firstly, I would like state that I am in no way whatsoever connected to Huel, they haven’t paid me to write the article, or asked me to do it. I run a healthy living website which features health related articles and reviews. Yes, they emailed me PR info when I requested it for my article, but this would be the same for any publication/website wanting to write an article. I am not proclaiming to be a health expert, hence why I am relying on information given to me. But the review I gave was my honest opinion, based on taste, smell, usability etc. OK I may have gone slightly overboard on the links (I am still learning the ways if blogging) but I think the article reads well and is genuinely what I think about the product. I struggle to understand how a marketer would try to sell Huel as ‘watery Ready Brek’… I hope that clears it up.

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I would also like to note, we never pay for reviews.

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If that was the case, I’m upset Soylent doesn’t state Huel is a far better product. Because it is.

#NotPaidForThisComment

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Oh I completely agree with that! No question about it :slight_smile: (And I definitely didn’t mean to imply that it wasn’t)

My issue is that Soylent did, as far as I’m aware, come first, and for myself and a number of other geeks was a revolutionary concept that was then taken across the globe due to the lack of availability outside of the US - initially through them making the formula opensource, and then it being adopted by other companies such as Joylent and later Huel.

Now, if Huel weren’t aware of Soylent at the time they were in development, that’s a different story, but unless it was an extremely long time in development, that doesn’t seem plausible. So being asked a question about what inspired Huel and not mentioning Soylent and wanting to develop a better product seems edgy to me - it actually put more of a question in my brain about whether the writer of the blog had done their research properly, but it was phrased as an interview style question.

Does that make my position on it a bit better?

I am excessively happy with Huel, drinking it right now, and there’s a big box containing a month of it in my living room :wink:

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I can confirm that the interview questions were sent to Huel and the answers your read in the article are word for word the response i was given.

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For the record, I’m glad you did write the article! I think these drinks are phenomenal - in the highly developed world, it’s easy to treat food as a luxury rather than a necessity and this strips it back to its basic purpose as Human Fuel

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I was the one who got the answers together and gave them for this piece.

Julian didn’t actually know about Soylent when he first came up with the idea. Soylent was first announced in 2013 and in America where obviously it would get better media coverage than here in the UK.

At the same time, Julian was running his other business venture, a fitness company where he was a guinea pig for it, eating the same food every day to conform to strict calorie and macronutrient limits.

It was around this time that Julian first got the idea and started to work on it. He was having to eat the same food to stick to these limits but it was incredibly cumbersome and a long process, so he started thinking if he could speed it up. We started selling in 2015, but the product was developed for well over a year with James before that, and Julian had to do work on his own for about a year before this could even happen.

He did eventually hear about Soylent, but this inspiration for the idea came from a previous business he had. Soylent has obviously had an impact on Huel in the time between then and now, but we were telling the story of how Huel came about which is why we didn’t mention them.

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Good clarification :slight_smile:

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There are maybe 20+ products that were released before Huel. All of them (and I really do mean, “all of them”) say that they were inspired from Soylent.

I’m not sure it is believable that a 21st product (Huel) wasn’t inspired by Soylent, when products 2-20 were inspired by Soylent.

Had the company not heard of Joylent? Joyent beat Huel to the market by a full year (July 2014 vs June 2015). And Joylent coming to market was also “cumbersome and a long process.”

I’m well aware of Julian’s previous business venture (www.bodyhack.com). But since he is so tied into the fitness community, it is hard to believe that he had never heard of Soylent, Joylent, Ambronite, Queal, 100%Food, Jake, etc.) when he came up with the idea of Huel.

Let me stress, I’m not saying that Huel isn’t an improvement on ALL of the previous powdered foods. I’m saying it is improbable that a product that came out two years after the original wasn’t inspired by the original, or any of the numerous following products.

Julian and I started working on Huel in June 2014 - that’s when he first commissioned me to work with him on a formula.

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The idea of Huel arising independently does sound unlikely, but actually, I’m inclined to believe it. Primarily because I was attempting to homebrew a similar thing, before I had even heard of the soylent debacle.

However, it’s a stupidly complex thing to attempt on your lonesome.The crux of the problem is that the guidelines vary between sources, so unless you know stuff about nutrition you just have to take a guess at who is right. Also, there are some nutrients that are tough to get from “unprocessed” foods. So I was pretty surprised, and happy, when I found out that this was an idea that lots of other people were pursuing.

I reckon its down to a new cultural trend for optimization and minimalism.

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