I hear good things about drinking MCT in coffee in the mornings, particularly for energy and mental focus.
I know Huel as got MCT in, so would you get the same effect from just drinking Huel or would it be benefitial to have the liquid form as well?
Anyone into drinking MCT oil?
Huels formula contains LESS THAN 1% of MCT oil
So basically nothing, adding in extra will be of benefit
It’s a little more than 1% by mass, working out to ~2.5% of calories, but your point is valid, and I believe closer to 10% of calories from MCTs would be optimal.
Regarding the topic at hand though, OP, I would recommend consumption of coconut oil, not MCT oil. MCT oil is great for providing an energy boost when inducing ketosis, but for general purposes, perhaps the most beneficial of the MCTs - lauric acid - is removed from coconut oil to produce MCT oil. Lauric acid has a huge number of benefits, and coconut oil is ~50% lauric acid, with smaller amounts of the other MCTs and some longer-chain saturated fats. Also it is far less likely to cause GI distress like MCT oils can.
I’m doing the low carb Hack using 30gms of desiccated coconut to 48gms huel, 22gms of protein isolate 90. 3 shakes a day, so 90gms coconut. Is this enough MCT or should I be adding MCT oil as well?
Oh yeah, that’ll be plenty. Desiccated coconut has the same ratio of fatty acids as coconut oil, just slightly fewer of them due to small amounts of protein and carbs. Based off this page, 100 grams of dessicated coconut contains 69.1 grams of fat, so your 90 grams per day will contain 62.19 grams of fat. That fat will be coconut oil, so we can use the ratio of fatty acids in coconut oil here to work out your MCT intake.
According to that page, coconut oil is ~7% C8 (caprylic acid), ~8% C10 (decanoic acid aka capric acid), and ~48% C12 (lauric acid), so a total of ~63% MCT. That means from that alone you’re getting 39.1797 grams of MCTs, and added on top of that, you’ll be getting an extra 1.584 grams from the Huel. That brings your total to 40.7637 grams of MCT per day, or ~18.3% of calories assuming a 2000 calorie intake. Certainly no need for MCT oil in my opinion.
Thank you. It hadn’t occurred to me until tonight that the MCT oil everyone talks about in forums was already in my mix in the desiccated coconut. It does make the shakes gritty though lol. (When I make my chocolate peanut flavour mix I pretend I’m chewing on the peanuts)
No problem at all, coconut is a great source of MCTs, though it leaves the lauric acid in, whilst MCT oil generally doesn’t. If you don’t like the grit, try a coconut milk powder like this one. You’ll need to push it through a siiv and mix it with the Huel powder before adding water to prevent clumping and ensure it mixes in cold water, but it will remove any grittiness. You’ll use a very similar amount for the same amount of fat too.
Thanks, , will take this into account if I get Huel again.
Archimedes,
How do you know how much MCT oil is in the formula?
Thanks!
They didn’t, Icy corrected them in the following post 
The total MCT content in Huel Powder v3.0, Huel Black Edition and Huel Hot & Savoury is approximately 1.1g per 400kcal and provides over 2.5% of the total energy of both powders. Roughly 46% of the saturated fat content of Huel Powders therefore comes from MCTs. While a bottle of Huel Ready-to-drink contains 2.8g of MCTs which is 72% of the saturated fat content. Of the MCFAs in Huel Products, roughly 30-50% are capric acid, 52-70% are caprylic acid, 1% are caproic acid and 1-2% are lauric acid.
source: https://uk.huel.com/pages/benefits-of-medium-chain-triglycerides-mcts