Huel Black Vanilla - Taste

Experiences
#1

I recently bought Huel Black Vanilla. My research results said vanilla was the best option compared to chocolate but maybe not I’m regretting not getting one of each.

Because I don’t like the taste. I’ve looked at a range of views from people and found lots of people don’t mind the taste or they really quite like it. Or like me they can’t stomach it. I love vanilla dairy milkshake and I’ve tried vanilla whey protein shakes before and they taste better than this but I can’t really have whey. I’m not vegan, I just avoid dairy.

What is the strong overriding flavour of the vanilla Huel Black? Is it the pea protein or the tapioca starch? I honestly can’t get vanilla from the taste, to me it’s just quite savoury. Is it true that stevia to some people can taste quite bitter? I’ve just stevia before and it’s tasted fine.

As I decided as I couldn’t stomach it as a drink and because I bought two bags of vanilla, I thought that I would try cooking with it. So I attempted to make the Huel pancakes. I really didn’t like the flavour and it tasted very bitter. I fiddled with the recipe and added not stevia sweetners but it didn’t help.

I’m going to try making a Huel drink with coffee , either espresso or instant and see if that helps.

Anyone tried making the Huel black vanilla savoury. As it’s not that sweet, I wonder if it’s possible to make it savoury with stocks or spices. Onion powder might be a good one or cayenne pepper and paprika.

Considering Huel can be a meal replacement it’s a shame that like most meal replacement and protein shakes they always go with the sweet flavours. I’m on a low carb diet. The fast 800. So I’m not trying the usual huel.

I still think it’s possible to crack the flavour of Huel black vanilla for me so that it’s not a waste of money.

#2

if you want a stronger taste adding a couple of drops of vanilla extract into your drink should do the trick. yes, some people get a bitter aftertaste with stevia but - as its been discussed extensively here, everybody’s taste buds behave differently so some don’t :slight_smile: adding a teaspoon of honey is also an option for you if you’re using a blender.

#3

I am with you on the taste. It doesn’t taste vanilla at all, more like a nutty flavour? I have tried this twice, once with soya milk and once with water bit it just didn’t taste right! I have the banana flavour one which is kind of ok if you mix with soya milk.

I am interested to find out what your are doing with fast800 though as I want to start this next week. Are you replacing one meal with Huel or all your meals?

#4

So the plan was that I was only go use it as an emergency. I work nights and this would come in handy as a meal replacement for nights I’m running out the door. No where is open for food at night. Remember I’m using Huel Black so I’m not sure about the banana flavour you mentioned unless you’re using the flavour boosters or an original Huel which would be higher in carbs. I’ve bought a sample of the flavour boosters including full size vanilla with the hope it improves the flavour. I also tried it with almond milk and the taste was much pleasanter but I could only use sweetened almond milk at the time which didn’t help. I’m going to try unsweetened as it’s obviously lower in carbs.

Tried making pancakes with huel black vanilla but the taste is sooo bad.

#5

I can only offer my own personal experience which might help you! When I first tried Huel I went with both flavours of the Black Edition. I tried the vanilla first and really enjoyed it from the start. When I first tried the chocolate I really didn’t enjoy it - really didn’t like the flavour at all. As I had 3kg of the stuff I preserved and after a week or so the flavour didn’t ‘bother’ me at all. Now, several months on, I have to say I really enjoy it. Not sure if there’s any science behind me adapting to the flavour etc. but might be worth just sticking with it for a while?

Everybody’s taste buds are different so there’s no guarantee this would be the case for you.

#6

There are a lot of scientific studies to peoples taste bud behaviour and, thankfully, your taste preferences are not fixed and do recalibrate with change.

A Food and Drug Administration (FDA) study showed that we are naturally predisposed to like hyper-palatable foods which can even lead to neuro-chemical addiction. You can retrain your palate to prefer healthier foods and the retraining process could take as little as three days—but longer for others.

The ‘retraining’ occurs quicker if you start by eliminating most of the hyper-palatable (sweet and salty) foods and they found that eliminating these foods completely for a month or more reset the palate faster and helped develop a revised baseline for the new flavours you were using - so your taste buds will adjust and reverse their tolerances.

#7

I usually have the white stuff, but thought I’d give black a go and bought one of each, vanilla and chocolate. I find they are both a bit lighter on the taste and create a thicker shake. I have to use flavour boosts with the black vanilla as I don’t like it.

I did read somewhere that taking Huel regularly can re-awaken your taste buds, so that things in general do taste better and I have found that to be true. For example, at first I found the white berry powder to be quite tasteless, but now I quite like it - just don’t eat/drink anything beforehand otherwise it goes back to being tasteless. Perhaps that will be the same with the black vanilla and you just need to persevere

#8

See, taste is so subjective. I like the vanilla premixes best of all, and to me the black vanilla is best tasting of all, followed by original vanilla.

I like the old banana flavour boost (RIP) the most, but not the new one.

I find most of the other pre-mix flavours bland.

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