Flavour wise, I’ve been totally happy drinking Vanilla all day every day for the 6 months since starting Huel (I find the New Vanilla variant palatable too) but I’ve grown concerned about the quantity of Sucralose I’m consuming - it appears the jury is still out on the extent it accumulates in the body (in fat?) over time and what negative outcomes, if any, that could lead to. (same goes for sweeteners propensity to train flavour preference)* - For the record, I’ve steered clear my entire life of the daily consumption of artificial sweetener containing products.
I find U/U on its own OK, but can’t see myself keeping up the habit; with no sweet or savoury kick to it I’m left craving food and generally feeling un-satiated where I wasn’t before with Vanilla.
It strikes me that short of using an artificial sweetener (and I count Steviol glycosides in with these because even though it’s from a natural source, it is still ultimately a relatively new chemically-isolated sweetening substance that hasn’t had long term human studies done on its daily consumption), one has to use sugar/honey/syrup of some description to give a sweet kick. Of course none of these things are bad occasionally or in small quantities but there is a reason that pre-meal replacement shakes people didn’t consume sweet foods for breakfast, lunch and dinner (or that if they did, it wasn’t considered healthy). I’ve used fruit like bananas, blueberries, dates etc to flavour U/U and find either that they don’t replace the ultra sweet, ultra satiating kick of sucralose or that I need to use so much of them that the level of fructose intake starts to become an issue. I also find that I hate the feeling on my teeth following drinking Huel prepared with honey or brown rice/date/carob syrup etc and keep feeling compelled to brush them (not the case with sucralose/savoury food)
I’m in search of a simple savoury flavour solution for U/U that satisfies the following criteria;
- I can blend up a day’s worth of it each morning and leave it refrigerated
- It doesn’t require any prep beyond chucking a couple eyeballed amounts of things into a blender
- It doesn’t involve using anything which contains substances it’d be unwise to consume all day, every day (ie; off the shelf soup mixes or stock cubes containing artificial flavourings/colourings/large quantities of salt)
- Ive tried adding black pepper, smoked paprika, tabasco sauce etc and haven’t had much joy in creating something that’s more satiating than U/U on its own just yet.
Is anyone in the same boat as me and if so have you come up with any viable solutions? be really interested to hear if so.
By the way - appreciate this is all pretty lazy & paranoid sounding, but the thing I love about Huel, and one of the main things I think it sets out to achieve as a product, is that you can drink it all day, every day, and not have to worry about preparation, a calculated/considered variation in consumption, nor have concerns over putting chemicals in your body every day for which there is arguably inconclusive evidence that they don’t accumulate over time and cause problems, be it in the gut, to the immune system, or otherwise.
- I’m quite open to people talking me down about Sucralose btw, which is key in all of this for me. Here is a great, non-bias and in-depth article about it (check the comments section too for good further reading/studies)