Hi @vanndrage
Thanks for raising both these valid points. I was actually expecting them to be raised, but on the US forum, not the UK one. (Out of interest, why did you raise them here?)
1) RTD 'Tapioca Maltodextrin’
The US and UK formulas for Huel Ready-to-drink are exactly the same and made, currently, in the same place. What is in there is tapioca starch. However, US labelling requirements mean we have to label it as ‘Tapioca Maltodextrin’, whereas in the EU we can label as ‘Tapioca Starch’. It is not maltodextrin the the same form as normal maltodextrin and is not produced in the same way. I don’t know why US labelling requires it to be labelled this way and I have asked an expert and she didn’t know either. it’s frustrating.
Either way, we have had the GI of Huel Ready-to-drink tested and it’s low GI at 25. Read more here.
2) New US Powder v1.1
The carrier for the US vitamin mineral blend is indeed maltodextrin whereas the carrier for UK/EU powder is mainly coconut flour. Our aim was to have coconut flour as the carrier in this new US version too. However, our vitamin mineral supplier wouldn’t pass the raw material from two possible suppliers as they claimed there was a risk of microbial spoilage in their overly-strict onboarding process. The facility where the EU vitamin mineral blend is produced in France raised this as a potential issue but still found it acceptable to pass. Of course, we test both the raw material and final product Huel in our strict quality procedures in both the EU and US (read more here), and there is absolutely no microbial issue. So this is the reason why we had to use maltodextrin as the carrier. However, the amount of maltodextrin used in the vitamin mineral blend is tiny and works out at less than 0.2% of Huel - is this really an issue? We don’t yet have a GI test result for v1.1 US Huel (the trial is happening but takes a few weeks), but as the formula from a macronutritional perspective is very similar to EU v2.3, I’m confident it will still be around 27 (low). I really see no issue being concerned about any tiny amount of maltodextrin here.
Thanks
(UK folk - if the links don’t work (as I used the US URLs), click Guides and Articles and you’ll find the relevant articles)