Huel food intolerance?

[SparkyMitch]

Hi All, I wonder if anyone could help or maybe give some advice for me to look into.

first off, the reaction I am having is not new. It is most certainly linked to diet but after years of trying to identify the cause(s), I am still none the wiser. Last year I had my full bloods done and a food intolerance test carried out. I’ll post the intolerance results below.

I have recently delved into the world of Huel. This is my first time trying it and the product, so far, has been great. I have purchased 3 bags of Black edition powder (salted caramel, Banana, Vanilla). The service and delivery were great. it tastes fantastic and it’s super easy to prepare and drink.

Although I started on New Year’s Day, this wasn’t a New Year’s resolution. My diet has always been pretty poor. I’m not too fond of veggies and I am very much a beige eater. The majority of the time I either grab a sausage and bacon sandwich from a burger van for breakfast or skip it as a meal entirely and more often than not, if I stop for a lunch break, it will be a McDonalds or something similar.

Now I’m in my thirties, these bad habits have started to catch up with me, I’ve been putting on weight steadily, I’m out of breath doing things that shouldn’t make you out of breath, and generally just feel very URGH. One thing I have noticed considerably over the last year is how I have a big energy crash around 1 or 2 pm that I really struggle to come back from and often need an hour’s nap.

Since having a shake of Huel in the mornings for breakfast and committing to drinking more water throughout the day as opposed to 4 or 5 cups of tea, I have genuinely noticed myself feeling much more energetic throughout the day. I haven’t been having the regular midday energy crashes and my focus and ability to work longer has been much better. Instead of getting home and slumping down onto the sofa I have found myself helping out more around the house and having more energy to play with the kids!

Now here comes the problem. I’m six days in and I can feel my skin beginning to react. As I mentioned above this is not new. I have always had bad face and head skin reactions when I have been using whey protein powders back when I used to exercise. My food intolerance test shows that I am intolerant to cow’s milk so I assumed that the reaction was due to using milk in the shake and the whey protein being extracted from some sort of cow’s milk or similar.

My intolerance test also shows that I have an intolerance to chickpeas, I have looked through the Huel black edition ingredients, and the protein they use is pea protein extracted from yellow split peas, which, to my knowledge, is an entirely different protein from chickpeas.

I’m going to persevere and continue drinking my shake in the mornings for now, but if my face does break out in a rash, I’ll be super disappointed not only because of the three bags of powder that would go to waste but mostly due to the health benefits that I’ll be missing out on.

I was even contemplating the option of having both a Huel BE shake for breakfast and the Huel Instant meals for lunch but if my body is going to react poorly then again I’ll

be disappointed and will feel like I’m missing out on some genuinely daily life improvements.

I’ll attach my food intolerance test and a pic or two of my skin reactions. The reaction pics are after the rash had started to heal, before this it tends to be open and extremely sore and itchy. I welcome your thoughts and any ideas on what to do next to try to get to the bottom of this!

**Edit - Unfortunately I could only attach one photo to the post! **

Thanks for your time!

[Phil_C]

While they are different to each other, the proteins/amino acids in split peas contains many of the same things as chickpeas – including Histidine, Leucine, Lysine, Methionine, Phenylalanine, Threonine, Tryptophan and Valine – so you may be having a cross-reactivity to you chickpea allergy. The symptoms certainly sound that way unfortunately.

[SparkyMitch]

I will be so disappointed if that is in fact the case. I done a little reasearch earlier and theninterwebs seemed to think that chickpea and yellow split pea were in fact quite different with one being of the bean family and the other of the pea family.

I had hoped that i may of found my ‘thing’ but it now seems that i am at a loss. Especially with the cows milk intolerance meaning that essentially any type of powder is ruled out!

[mbs]

A similar problem has already been discussed, and in that case too much Vitamin B12 seemed to be the problem.

[Phil_C]

@SparkyMitch

chickpea and yellow split pea were in fact quite different with one being of the bean family and the other of the pea family.

Yes they are different, but that’s where cross-reactivity in allergic reactions occurs. This is when the proteins in one substance are similar to the proteins found in another substance – such as if you are allergic to some pollens, eating apples can also cause a similar reaction.

Tree nuts also demonstrate cross-reactivity, which is why they are flagged as allergens - I read that there are a lot of studies at the moment considering whether peas should also be given the same general allergen treatment in food ingredient listings.

I know you are already did your main foods allergy tests – but you could do a simple process of elimination yourself and try some split pea soup or Dhal curry for example – to see if it is indeed the culprit.

[SparkyMitch]

Very interesting, especially that around the tree nuts.

For now ill continue on and keep a close eye on it.

Weirdly, although yesterday my face was itchy and you could see the redness begining to appear (early signs of an imminent outbreak) this morning i woke up with very clear skin. Maybe even clearer than normal. I had my BE salted caramel shake for breakfast and was awaiting the redness and itchiness but today it didnt seem to arrive.

Im assuming the clearer than normal skin will mainly be down to the fact that for the past week i have been drinking 2 to 3 pints of water as opposed to zero a day and limiting the amount of tea to 2 cups whereas normally id drink between 4 - 6 cups a day.

I would drink the tea with regular full fat milk too, which certainly wouldnt be helping towards my intolerance.

Maybe at some point ill try to cut out tea altogether for a week or too and see what happens.

[Phil_C]

@SparkyMitch

been drinking 2 to 3 pints of water as opposed to zero a day and limiting the amount of tea to 2 cups whereas normally id drink between 4 - 6 cups a day.

if there’s one major thing you have to do with Huel use, it’s increase your water intake - in addition to the water you use in your shakes, you need extra to accommodate for the increased fibre intake. There’s a good page on hydration in the guides section.

[Amy_Huel]

Hi there @SparkyMitch - a very warm welcome to the Huel Forum!

I’m so sorry to hear about your recent experience. Could you please email us at support@huel.com with this information along with your order number and the batch details from your Black Edition (these will be found on the back lower corner of the bag), so we can look into this with you and try to help?

[lkraav]

@SparkyMitch

Weirdly, although yesterday my face was itchy and you could see the redness begining to appear (early signs of an imminent outbreak) this morning i woke up with very clear skin. Maybe even clearer than normal. I had my BE salted caramel shake for breakfast and was awaiting the redness and itchiness but today it didnt seem to arrive.

Im assuming the clearer than normal skin will mainly be down to the fact that for the past week i have been drinking 2 to 3 pints of water as opposed to zero a day and limiting the amount of tea to 2 cups whereas normally id drink between 4 - 6 cups a day.

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[mklilley]

Hi. I’m new to the forum, but not new to Huel. I’ve been having Huel Black since 2021 and loved it and had no issues with it…until recently. Long story short (the long story is coming ) I don’t think it’s the Huel that started the whole thing but I’m not 100% sure - I want to rule out some kind of potential batch issue.

Ok, the long story.

About 6 weeks ago (May 25th) I suddenly started getting really bloated after what seemed like every meal. It got to the point where I woke up full and my first coffee of the day felt like a giant Sunday lunch and I could barely eat anything. No problems with stool - everything was normal on that front. No pain, no vomiting of queasiness. No fever. I spoke to the doctor who prescribed some generic IBS meds (Buscopan) and told me to come back in 6/8 weeks.

In the meantime I tried to exclude some things and I got some relief (although not total) when I got rid of yeast and also stopped the Huel. I did a YorkTest intolerance test and you can see the results in the picture attached. Ignore the Cows Milk - I’m a semi vegan (was a veggie since I was 7, then went to vegan+eggs in 2016) and very rarely I’ll have something that contains dairy…in this case it was a Biryani I had on June 6th.

What struck me in the results was pea+vanilla…guess what flavour my huel is . Hazlenut is a bit random because I don’t really eat those but I know there can be cross reactivity. Coconut is also up there, but not in the red. I know Huel has coconut in it…but so does vegan cheese so .

It’s a long shot but I want to check whether there was any batch issues. The bag that’s half full says BATCH FP24031 but I don’t know the batch number of the bags I was having 6 weeks ago…they are long gone.

Thanks for taking the time to read this far

Matt