I was originally SB-Huel but got locked out of my account (and have no access to the alias email it was set up with).
I’ve recently decided to go 90% Huel again as my previous endeavour to go back to whole foods, meats and things was costing so much, wasn’t really any better in calories and more times than not, was really high in salt - plus who knows what else. A silly little point too.. but I keep accidentally burning my mouth and I don’t like that - can’t be good for health long term, and then the piping hot food making its way down… causing damage no doubt. No more.
Had my first powder Huel shake today - i see they now recommend it’s made in a blender with ice, where has that advice been all my life? It came out closer to ‘RTD’ than I ever could manage in the shaker, without the lumps or the fact it was less than chilled. I don’t know what I’ll do in work… but I am tempted to bring the blender in my bag to be honest, and use the actual chilled water from the dispenser.
Going for the Black / Protein stuff from now on most of the time, as I prefer the protein. Read some not so promising things about how over-carbs can impact the brain over time… I also realised a lot of my whole foods were rice etc, which were carb heavy.
Ordered some hot and savoury, so delighted to see the bags are gone. As a former heavy buyer, the pasta ones never cooked right, ones like Chicken and Mushroom were nice, but often way too strong or too watery, with pasta not cooking right (I had the same experience with other dried pasta pot based snacks in the past). I noticed this evening that the Cajun pasta now has the protein bits and twisted pasta instead of tubes, sure enough, it had the perfect cooked feel, perfect ratio of pasta and powder. I like this. It would also be easier than stuffing the big 7 pack pouch into a backpack.
I forgot about the benefits of Huel really… having something in for dinner every day, fast and easy to make, no guilt over it being fried… or salty as hell for flavour… less dishes.
I will likely get food out the odd time, and even then try to be healthier. I honestly struggled at the supermarkets looking for seasonings, or meal kits or jars. Even if you use herbs and spices and veg, to make them as tasty, it’s a lot of salt or thickening creams so not much healthier, nor does it keep. The quantities of what you buy are usually too much at minimum for one person or two days of a meal. For example… buying chilli’s and coriander, it goes bad well before I get around to it. Supermarket chicken is also nasty. But working to 5, it’s hard to get an open butchers counter, it’s just their pre-packed stuff which is pricy and also, sometimes hard to keep fresh by the time it’s used. The cost then goes up a lot buying a 3 pack or more… £5.49 extra to that weeks budget.
I had a few ready meals while I waited for Huel to come and skipped the usual big spend on groceries. They’re so well priced, so convenient but I’ve noticed how tasteless and slimey they are compared to whole food recipes. They don’t even keep me full, and I’ve got a pretty poor appetite. Then the salt, sat fat, preservatives and other nastiest to keep them ‘good’. If only they worked, we’d all be flying health and nutrition wise but they’re so poor health wise.
Huel seems the only food without a ‘gotcha’ with high salt, or sugar, or nasty chemicals lurking. Other than the limited flavours / cold shakes and the limited flavours of H&S - which personally I’m okay with rotating around - there doesn’t seem like many drawbacks. Even at £3.80 for a RTD, what would you get at McDonald’s or KFC for that price? Nothing. A few days I even bought this from Sainsbury’s at £3.25, a bar for £2… still less than a meal at McDonald’s and 600kcal.
One final note… a lot of the whole food meals I was making didn’t really tip the scales of beating a Huel meals 400 calories, at best, they came close but not more. I tried calorie shakes - one is a protein / workout ‘gainer’ shake. It wasn’t so bad, 600 calories for a scoop (although the scoop is HUGE compared to a Huel scoop). The vanilla got a bit sickening after a few days, and some days it went down fine, others left me feeling a tad sick. This was as my weight dropped to 51kg at one point in July… the food I was making (and spending a fortune on) wasn’t really calorie heavy, though it was salt heavy more times than not. So something had to change. So I came back to Huel.
I’ll still stick to porridge every morning, plain instant stuff. It’s been working, easy to get down and ‘safe’. A Huel shake back when I last was 90% Huel was quite hard to stomach half of the mornings for me personally. It also didn’t leave me feeling too excited for another one come lunch time. Now I’ll have a Huel Black / Protein shake at lunch, with me on my walk or cycle or maybe even the hour before lunch to fuel that. Previously I was having a snap pot of beans with reduced salt/sugar and some jasmine rice (those half packs that microwave). I switched the beans for a random variant of Heinz soup in recent weeks, actually putting the rice into it and breaking it up into a sort of DIY risotto. It was nice, but the salt was shocking. I noticed the figures were for half a can also… then combining that with dinner.. absolutely not, long term, no good. I found myself grabbing a Gregg’s sausage roll or something from town on my lunch breaks on top of this. Hardly good in terms of nasty, salt, fatty processed food either long term.
I’m even cutting out caffeine, moving to tea and decaf coffee as the dependence / impact on my mood at the various stages of pre- and post- coffee wasn’t making me a nice person or a consistent person to be around… Last Friday I had one of those pre-workout caffeine shots reduced at Holland and Barrett… on top of a large McDonald’s latte. I was kind of scared that it’d make me anxious and sick feeling… but it didn’t. It made me sharp, in an incredibly good mood and just someone who was much nicer and more pleasant than what I am (although I wish I was like that 24/7!). Despite it going pleasant, it made me realise that I’m growing a dependence on it. I think that was around the 400mg mark - recommended maximum for a typical adult. The temptation to go chasing that was there but it’s not sustainable. It’s an unnecessary thing for my body. So it’s decaf or tea from now on, decaf tea as well when my normal stuff runs out. Headaches and withdrawal symptoms be damned.
That’s a bit of my dilemma with food as of lately. Hoping that Huel (with plenty of water) will overcome 90% of the issues.
I’m happy to be back. And excited to try those new Huel cans in the fridge. PS, will we ever get a Huel Tea? #productsuggestion
