I love huel its the best thing I have encountered this year! However, after using huel for 2 months, I encountered meat in my mixture this morning. This might sound extremely surprising (as I was to find it). I did not take any pictures because I wasn’t aware of this forum until now (otherwise i would have for evidence)!! I am 100% sure it was meat, literally bits of fat and blood where in my mixture which had left me pretty disgusted. I am not sure if this is just a problem with my batch or perhaps an animal happened to end up in it during the process of creating huel by accident? I don’t know, but as a vegan I am pretty put-off. I used the vanilla flavour and had not previously encountered such problems.
I really really love huel so this is just quite upsetting, I was wondering if someone had an explanation? Not lycopene related because it was meat, I got my non-vegan/veggie sister to confirm this, and I don’t see how I would have a reason to lie about it, so please trust my judgement.
I am a little concerned and I guess I just wondered if someone else had a similar experience? Overall, I have temporarily stopped using my huel, as it has left a horrible taste in my mouth and conscience!
Also i just want to say that I am in no way slandering huel or trying to make it look bad at all (I am in fact an advocate), this is just my honest experience and I think its important to share it so improvements can be made accordingly.
I assume you still have the bag even if you threw away the made up portion containing the meat? Is there any other evidence of contamination in remaining contents?
By the way it’s extremely common for mice and little critters like that to get ground up into the rice, oats and flaxseed harvesting and processing production.
There is categorically no meat in our production facility. The facility holds the highest health and safety standards. On top of all government regulations we are also ISO9001:2008 certified, as well as being HACCP and SALSA certified.
Furthermore, all ingredients are food grade standard before they even reach our facility.
The ingredients are all batch tested and sifted immediately before packaging, which means there is no possibility of large particles passing through.
The red streaks in your Huel are lycopene. See previous discussions and photographs here: Red/Orange bits in the Huel?
The ‘bits of fat’ you mentioned are far more likely to be lumps of Huel, which can appear when not broken up through shaking.
We would greatly appreciate some photographic examples, so we can put your mind at ease.
I have asked my friends to test the rest of my batch and no one has found anything odd. I don’t have pictures (which is extremely silly of me) but I will keep you updated with what I find. I can also assure you that it was unlike the photographs linked in the previous discussions.
Quite often there are red bits which look like specs of blood in my Huel, and also recently tasted a slightly chewey bits (like tiny bits of gum) wouldn’t imagine these are meat, just guessed part of the Huel ingredients
My guess is the red specs are lycopene and the chewy, gum-like parts are due to the recent change in the gum used in (I believe) the unflavoured version.
I picked up a big delivery of Huel a few weeks back. I heard some squawking about 10 minutes later and noticed the box was moving like something was trying to get out.
I rushed over to open it and a Phoenix flew out! I didn’t even know they existed!
At the end of the day guys, making fun of it won’t help anyone, trust me I know it looks extremely suspicious. But I thought that at least I should share what happened because if anything, doing more checks ups in the factory etc. wont hurt anyone either way, if I’m lying or not.
To be honest this reaction is to be expected, but hopefully it triggers some sort of extra caution during production so nobody else has the same experience!
I once found a may beetle in a vegan pasty…well my girlfriend did…but only as she felt something scratching the top of her mouth as she bit into it. This was in the days before social media…I thought at first it was a cockroach but it wasn’t…unfortunately these things do happen.
I once found a caterpillar in some frozen peas…I sellotaped it to a letter and posted it to the company and they sent a load of vouchers.
Social media now allows the consumers to easily get bad press to businesses, and I will use it if I need to make a point…Trip Advisor is a good tool. Alas it makes us lazy…rather than complain direct to company, we do it in the eyes of others…I am not sure if the OP’s story is genuine or not, and I would assume not, but now there is a small lingering doubt about the product in my mind…because I don’t know the food industry I don’t know what the ISO registration really means in the scheme of things. Bug fragments, larvae etc. are commonly found (and allowed) in food, and that’s also why there are allergen warnings for milk in many vegan products, even if they are certified vegan, due to manufacturing processes and shared factories.
