Coffee is great for me because, as others have said, it is less sweet than the other flavours. Even original I find too sweet.
Fiddling around with unsweetened and unflavored, I could never get something I liked.
I have tried the Coffee Caramel black and didnât care for it, so I hope that this change wonât make them too similar.
I am ordering as much Coffee as I can before it goes awayâŚplease do not change Berry as thatâs the one other flavour thatâs not too sweet.
How do you determine that the changes have come from the majority and is in fact something that people care about or need or want, most of the time letâs be honest you donât ever hear from people that are perfectly happy with a product, you hear from people who take issue or donât like taste etc. so how do you determine if the change is something that will appease the masses or do the opposite, if 10 people donât like a taste or texture is that worth changing the entire thing to improve on if you had say 7million other people happy with it.
I guess when you see endless versions and variations being chopped and changed and things added taken awayâŚI can understand improving a product but I canât help but feel like you change or try to improve certain products for the sake of it & very often to the excess, and does that alone as a company not cost you more money, you invest time and money getting something to a certain point and then change it again instead of certain people liking something and certain people donât, then you change & the ppl that didnât like it do and the people that did like it suddenly donât, kind of an endless merry go round not for a huge amount of gain in my opinion.
I dunno with a product like huel and the price of it you spend quiet a bit of money as a customer finding a flavour of black/white etc getting one you do like and could keep drinking for the next 5+years no issueâŚthen it gets changedâŚthen you have to start the process again either not liking the new version or then having to cycle through flavours or editions tryna find one you do.
I guess as a consumer I get baffled by the endless versions because even if I did find I liked 3.1 I just know in 6 months or 12 months there will be a 3.2 appearing somewhere.
Interesting points there about changes. I tend to admire a company thatâs regularly trying to make improvements, even if they donât always please all of the people all of the time. Like I appreciate innovation and development rather than stasis and predictability, or even complacency⌠I suppose it depends on how curious we are to try different things, or how much we like sticking with the familiar. Different strokes for different folks.
Hi @Rafi_Clang
as @rikefrejut said, you might be confusing pro- and prebiotics. MTCC 5856 is a probiotic and will not be present in v3.1. The naturally occurring prebiotics fibre will be plentiful.
Listening to you guys on the premium line idea 
Iâve just done the same thing regarding ordering as much of the coffee as I can. Sad times when you have to panic-buy & hoard the post-apocalyptic food in a non-post-apocalyptic setting. 
Thanks again, @JamesCollier for at least listening to the feedback. Much appreciated.
You guys are experts in your products, no doubt about that. But, as a marketeer, I wanted to create a table for a potential reshuffle in Huelâs line of products for Huel Powder, in the hope that it can be simplified.
| Premium (Black) ÂŁ2.49 per meal |
Standard (The Original) ÂŁ1.99 per meal |
Essential ÂŁ0.99 per meal |
|
|---|---|---|---|
| Protein Options | High in Protein Balanced |
Balanced | Low in Protein |
| Carb Options | Low Carb Balanced |
Balanced | High in Carbs |
| Gluten Options | Gluten-free Contains Gluten |
Contains Gluten | Contains Gluten |
| Essentials | 26 vitamins and minerals | 26 vitamins and minerals | 26 vitamins and minerals |
| Prebiotics | YES | YES | NO |
| Probiotics | YES | NO | NO |
| Antioxidants | YES | NO | NO |
| Artificial Sweeteners | NO | YES | YES |
| Batch tested by Informed-Sport | YES | NO | NO |
| CO2 Offset Add-on | Included | Optional | Optional |
In the table above, Protein, Carb and Gluten are given as an option for the customer to select.
Also, a new option named âCO2 Offsetâ is added to the Standard and Essential products, in which the customer can choose to contribute offsetting the productâs carbon footprint. I am assuming this would be just a few pence per order ( but donât quote me on that )
The Premium Line should ensure that the ingredients are the best the money can buy. Itâs not for everyone, itâs not a mass market product. Itâs the Apple Studio Display of Huel Powder. Itâs the Mac Pro of Huel Powder.
Just my two cents.
Itâs impossible to have Huel without prebiotics, because they are part of the carbs used in the powder.
Itâs also impossible to have Huel without antioxidants, because they also come from the carbs.
The informed-sport tests are pointless for everyone unless youâre a world-level athlete where your trainer requires every single food item (including apples at a grocery store!) to be tested for performance-enhancing drugs. No need to have it be a default part of any premium line.
I donât like this as a customer at all. Iâve been using Huel on and off since the beginning, and Iâve always trusted and used it as Iâve bought into the brand. I could go in Holland and Barret and get their equivalent or lots of other places, but Iâve always trusted for the product type, Huel is the top of the line.
But when you see the company is prepared to remove ingredients, and an ingredient previously claimed might help against certain illnesses, in the name of emissions, thatâs crazy.
Itâs crazy because the UK as a whole is responsible for just 1% of global emissions. Now Huel is just one small company in the UK, if huel saves 15% of its emissions, this will have zero impact on the environment, itâs like a grain of sand compared with every beach on the entire planet. I know companies love to push the âgreenâ marketing to consumers, but I think your consumers would rather the old ânutrition firstâ, which has clearly fallen at the way side.
This is tragic.
Fair, but Iâm just going to add my voice here - Iâd rather there were incremental price increases in line with inflation, than reducing the quality and keeping the price the same. Hope you guys will consider this too!
Tragic indeed.
Just because Huel canât impact the environmental crisis to any greater extent than is possible right now given its market share, it shouldnât bother and we shouldnât care.
Thatâs depressing.
Thatâs why I made a poll regarding this:
Not at the expense of product quality no, Itâs devaluing a product to look good for marketing.
The VAST majority of emissions is agricultural, military, mining etc. Itâs not companies like huel, itâs a worthless pursuit to think otherwise.
Nutrition wise, itâs not better at all is it. Youâve taken things out. Itâs cheaper for you to make it this way isnât it, letâs not make out thereâs any other reason for taking things out that are of a nutritional benefit.
Yes, they produce all of their raw ingredients using Star Trek food replicators â not grown, harvested, processed and shipped from various locations around the Globe at all.
âI know companies love to push the âgreenâ marketing to consumersâ
âItâs devaluing a product to look good for marketingâ
Denigrating Huelâs efforts to reduce harmful environmental impacts as âmarketingâ seems absolutely desperate. The most responsible companies make changes for more urgently consequential reasons.
Huel was already an amazing product for the climate, so while further reductions in carbon footprint are admirable, please consider the indirect carbon footprint of losing so many loyal customers with these changes, since you are giving them a lot of strong reasons to leave and very few reasons to stay.
The company has decided to give us no other option (at least if we do not want to, or maybe canât for health reasons, switch to the lower carb black edition) but to consume a product that is without question of poorer nutritional quality and, in my opinion, no longer nutritionally complete after the removal of probiotics and lycopene. I think this reflects very badly on your brand, especially because you are charging just as much as before for worse nutrition.
Furthermore Kombucha and acerola cherries, although not essential, were healthy and indeed welcome and I am sure they encouraged a lot of people (I know of some) to try out the product and end up becoming long time users.
For customer retention, please consider keeping something in the same spirit as the previous formula (v3.0) available at a price that is sustainable for the company.
Acerola cherry has better bioavailability and tolerability as a source of vitamin C than ascorbic acid. So this was not just a nice optional ingredient. Would also be interesting to know if alternatives such as Pureway-C were considered when deciding on the 3.1 formulation. This has similar bioavailability and tolerability to acerola cherry but should cost much less and keep the carbon footprint low. It has also been tested in several studies.
The guyâs only been in the job for a week or two. Nothing to do with him.
Itâs not something we can share at the moment as weâve been doing a lot of work behind the scenes. Bear with us as we have some exciting news to come regarding sustainability!
Great question. We have an entire team called Customer Insights whoâs job it is, is to collect reliable data and analyse it. This includes sending interviewing existing customers and people who have never bought Huel.
We also have a Sensory team who test every change that we make to understand if people can detect these differences when they blind taste a product.
I can understand your frustration Tracy. @Tim_Huel is still mourning the loss of Huel Granola. So much is changing outside of Huel that all these factors need to be balanced to try and keep Huel the same and to be the best that we can be we also donât want to stand still.
All our products are nutritionally complete and this hasnât changed, @JamesCollier wrote a great article explaining our definition of nutritionally complete.
Without using expletives I would recommend getting nutritional advice from somewhere other than Huberman. The study linked does not suggest that high fibre intake reduces gut microbiome diversity.
Thanks for your feedback. I think this is an interesting point and something to consider is just how much ingredient costs have increased e.g. oats
Thanks Jack, Iâm not sure this would work for us though! Black Edition is defined as being lower carb and high protein so this is pretty fixed. Essential is also not low in protein (20% of calories comes from protein) itâs just lower than the rest of the range, a small but important difference I think.
All Huel powders contain prebiotic fibres, this wonât change as theyâre naturally occurring from the main ingredients and the same is true for antioxidants as vitamins C and E have antioxidant activity.
This is a really poor take. Add up the emissions of all the countries that emit less than 2% each and they emit more than China, imagine if all those countries decided to do nothing. As Iâve said elsewhere to be a healthy individual you have to care for the climate. You can eat the best diet in the world but if the environment goes to shit so does your health.
This is a fair point. I will say just looking at vitamin C that weâve found ascorbic acid is equally beneficial as the natural vitamin C found in wholefoods.
Iâm not sure this is true, would you mind sharing any sources you have on this? The EU doesnât have a tolerable upper intake for vitamin C, regardless of source and this study states " all steady state comparative bioavailability studies in humans have shown no differences between synthetic and natural vitamin C, regardless of the subject population, study design or intervention used."
As quickly as David works he canât work that quickly!
Apologies to anyone if you feel I havenât replied to everything you said/asked; I had a lot to get through! I also want to repeat what @JamesCollier said last week âWeâve not done as good a job with our comms on this as you should expect from us. Some of the changes highlighted have made Huel v3.1 look less favourable.â I know this has created some of the issues above and we will do better next time.