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.
Interesting, I was always of the opinion that because of the bioflavonoids acerola cherry behaves better than ascorbic acid. But when I look at the studies with Pureway-C, it still seems to make a difference which synthetic vitamin C form I take, in terms of absorption and retention time in the body. This is not really synthetic vitamin C, as it is obtained from citrus fruits and corn.
Here about the absorption rate(https://medscimonit.com/abstract/index/idArt/502324) (https://medscimonit.com/abstract/index/idArt/869441)
I was never sold on Kombucha & 'biotics as part of Huel anyway, but you did go pretty hard on explaining the benefits so this feels a positive but curious change.
Whatâs the impact on Essential? That was introduced as a cheaper option largely thanks to the removal of these same ingredients.
Can we expect âproperâ Huel to come down in price now too?
Thank you for the reply @Dan_Huel.
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.
But, based on everything discussed, it IS less favourable, no?
More or less favourable? Probably a subjective question.
Maybe itâs just as favourable, a different balance of good things, but still no price increase, which in the circumstances is just great.
No, itâs probably all the fault of @Tim_Huel - he goes into product marketing and it all goes tits up. (only jokinâ Tim).
Youâre never going to get an invite to Timâs inaugural wine and cheese garden party working lunch at this rateâŚ
You do know that carbon footprint was coined by big oil companies to adjust the focus on emissions from them to us, it was a nifty trick that the entire world bought hook line and sinker, bit sad how fickle we are as humans tbh
Thatâs true it was â that doesnât negate the fact that it is a âthingâ though - and that now it used as broad, generally accepted umbrella term that covers everything from industry, individuals, products etc.
Agreed, whatever we choose to call it (and whoever coined the descriptive terms for it) is completely irrelevant. The only thing that matters is what weâre doing about it.
Interesting, I agree with you there, thanks for sharing the studies. It looks like that company has specifically formulated a vitamin C product to have a higher bioavailability - pretty cool!
Essential remains unchanged, as do the rest of the Huel product lines. The price of v3.1 wonât drop. We have only increased our prices once since food prices have gone through the roof.
No, I donât think so.
Hi all
Since we announced the new v3.1 Powder, some of you raised concerns over the changes weâve made to the formula. Iâd like to clarify our reasoning.
The key focus for the version change was to improve the taste and texture of Huel Powder, following your feedback and our data.
In line with our sustainable nutrition mission, we have also been able to improve Huel Powderâs sustainability, most notably the productâs carbon emissions.
However, some of you have taken issue with the changes relating to the removal of some ingredients. This was not helped by mistakes we made in our initial communications around the removal of prebiotics (impossible, as they are naturally present), and Calcium-L-Methylfolate (which is still present in v3.1). We apologise for the confusion and will improve our processes to ensure crystal clear comms moving forwards.
At Huel, we continually try to innovate, so we may add or remove ingredients from our products. In the case of these changes (removal of acerola, kombucha, probiotics and lycopene), we felt that they werenât providing significant nutritional benefit. Although these changes are minor, I completely understand why some of you are unhappy: we are, after all, taking stuff away from your Huel.
Some have suggested that cost saving was âthe realâ motivation behind these changes. You all know too well how the prices of everything are going up. As these ingredients added little, removing them has helped us keep Huel Powder affordable, whilst still providing all the nutritional quality youâd expect. This is in line with our mission of continuing to offer sustainable nutrition in an affordable way.
Huel Powder v3.1, as with all our products, has been developed with nutrition at the forefront and continues to provide excellent nutrition.
Rest assured, weâre listening to all feedback. Thanks.
James
Iâm down with the lack of repeated price increases, which has been great historically, but I guess my follow up is, well, how can the price not change?
Macroâs are somewhat different, but my understanding was that Essential is cheaper specifically because of the removal of the ingredients that have now been removed from proper Huel.
And then from here
And of course Jamesâ comment above:
Proper Huel is now stripped back in the same manner, so I donât understand how it can remain 51p more per 400kcal than Essential?
Was wondering this myself. The price distinction vs. contents of v3.1 and Essential has me considering making the switch to Essential.
wasnât the price difference in Essential clarified at the time as being mainly down to the type of oats being used and absence of certification/testing by Huel?
Hi James, particularly with regard to lycopene, could you share your basis for that opinion please?
Proper Huel is now stripped back in the same manner, so I donât understand how it can remain 51p more per 400kcal than Essential?
Fair question, @Tristan, but youâve made the key point here:
Macroâs are somewhat different, but my understanding was that Essential is cheaper specifically because of the removal of the ingredients that have now been removed from proper Huel.
Essential has a higher proportion of oats to the protein ingredients. Oats are both cheaper and, more importantly, easier to flavour than other ingredients, meaning that we can use less of the flavour components which are also more expensive. This along with several other differences.
Lycopene is an antioxidant. Huel Powder v3.1 contains other antioxidants, both micronutrients (like vitamins C and E and selenium) and phytonutrients like lutein, zeaxanthin (both from the vitamin mineral blend), ferulic acid, avenanthramides, lignans, phytic acid and tocols (all from the ingredients).