Just this morning, I had an 880 calorie breakfast from Wetherspoons. That is just over a Huel breakfast and lunch for me which would be 800 calories. Okay, that breakfast will keep me full until dinner time tonight. My daily calorie intake is less than 1,500 calories and I can function and thrive on that and lose weight too. The real benefit of Huel is that it does keep you full for five hours before you need to have more.
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Well answered Tim and Dan.
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I’m exhausted!
Interesting read tho.
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Hi all,
Abilton made a great point here, it’s about misleading advertising, but somehow it got lost in a discussion about meal sizes.
Opening the Huel front page shows the claim under question here, see screenshot. The word “meal” is mentioned several times, then it says “from only £1.32 per serving”. There is no *, qualification, or small print.
Additionally, £1.32 is the subscription price, even though it shows at the top of the site “Subscribe and save 10%”. A customer would expect they could save a further 10% from £1.32.
Whether a customer would choose to live on Huel alone or if Huel claims/recommends customers could live on Huel alone is immaterial. What is important is the calculation a prospective customer is likely to make when deciding on the relative cost of Huel vs other food: “how much would it cost per day to live on Huel alone?”
The average person consumes three meals a day. The wording misleads the customer into making that calculation as 3 x £1.32 = £3.96 with an additional 10% discount for subscribing. The result induces the belief Huel is extremely cheap.
At non-subscription prices, a Huel meal/serving is £1.47/1.63/2.61 Regular/Black/H&S, giving £7.35/8.15/13.05 a day @ 2000kcal and £8.82/9.78/15.66 a day @ 2400kcal.
While these prices might be considered cheap by some, in percentage terms, they represent a range of 185% (Regular @ 2000kcal) to 395% (H&S @ 2400kcal) misrepresentation of actual “daily cost” of Huel.
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If you can’t get the math to work for you, don’t buy it.
If you don’t find it’ll work out cheap for you don’t buy it.
If you don’t think you’ll have enough calories per day, don’t buy it.
If you don’t like it…then don’t buy it.
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Tough crowd! 
Then… have more than 400 calories worth for your meals? Are you ok mate? They aren’t saying that 400 calories is the limit you’re allowed for each meal 
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I sort of agree Huelinator.
When I came back to Huel and found the standard meal had dropped to 400 cals from 500 (or was it 600) I felt a little cheated.
I just let it go as it’s all subjective and the Huel marketing could be seen as misleading, I still think it’s far more clear and fair than the health food market and it’s “healthy” products
Yeah, I’m not going to continue in the main thread but yes, the overarching point keeps getting lost… or dodged.
They are still yet to acknowledge in any reply that after ample research it is the government saying an average adult requires 600kcal for a meal in 400-600-600 splits (or 533 if you split it evenly), not my personal preference! If they are marketing to the average adult, their portion size and recommendations should reflect that.
Any time I brought up the outright science based fact, there is some anecdotal reply like ‘I heard somebody once ate a slice of toast for breakfast and didn’t have anything else until lunch, therefore 75 calories is an expectable meal’!
Yeah, my point being one Huel portion does not represent a meal FOR THE AVERAGE ADULT to which they market, and therefore their product is either 50% more expensive than advertised (for those who realise and use a correct meal portion) OR an average adult who is unaware will be unknowingly in calorie deficit.
I don’t think the average adult is this dense. It clearly states how many calories per scoop, how many scoops they’re showing the price for, and also have links to calorie calculators that show how many calories someone would need at their height and weight. It’s very easy for someone who’s completely new to Huel to understand how much they’d need and how many bags that would equal. I don’t think anyone is out there using two scoops every meal just because that’s the suggestion on the bag with absolutely no understanding how much it is.
I also think 400 calories is a fine baseline. You keep talking about the “average” adult but I really don’t know anyone who has this set amount for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, with no snacks all day.
That’s because this scenario is very very normal. The average adult has 100s of variations in how they eat every day. Many people skip breakfast. Many people have a huge breakfast and a tiny lunch. Many people snack all day and the only meal they eat is dinner. Many people eat very little all day and then eat a huge amount in the evening. Many people work night shifts and only eat two big meals before and after work. Many people do eat standard equal meals three times a day and snack in between.
With Huel, as long as you know roughly how many calories you need each day to maintain your weight, it’s then up to you to figure out how it fits into your day best. 400 calories is a good baseline for this because most people snack, and most people are using Huel alongside “real” food and it gives them more calories to play with for those meals.
600 calories would be way way way too much for me, but if it was marketed at 600 I’d just use one less scoop? If 400 is too little for you because you personally don’t snack then just use an extra scoop.
I wouldn’t worry yourself over the average adult who is now malnourished or spending 50% more than they think, because these replies suggest that the average adult has managed to figure this out.
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I guess I just disagree with that, I think many people will follow the suggestions given by the company who produce the product.
I never said there were no snacks in that diet format:
400 + 600 + 600 = 1600
Average adult daily calorie intake (female 2000kcal, male 2500kcal) = 2250
2250-1600 = 650kcal for snacks, roughly equivalent of another full meal over the day.
Ummm… yes, it’s very obvious that diets vary person to person. Again, my point is the product is marketed to the average adult, therefore the average of all those scenarios combined… which is the government backed and recommended 400-600-600. You can’t just pick the lower end examples of all scenarios and then pretend that makes it acceptable to the average person. To take the point to a slightly greater extreme, a small 10 year old girl could say her daily intake is 1100kcal, that doesn’t give Huel the go ahead to base their portion size on that one lower end value. If the gold standard value of a portion is not the scientifically researched and identified, government backed value… it is completely irrelevant. You can’t ethically take that small child’s 1100kcal daily intake value and market that portion size to the average adult just because you have evidence that is suitable for at least one person.
I’m all for people being solely responsible for using Huel to fit into their diet, knowing the calories they require and most impotently figuring out what a portion is for them. The issue is Huel marketing that 400kcal IS an average adult meal. If they want people to use it individually and healthily within their own diets that needs to be the forefront of the marketing describing it as a food only, but they still describe one portion of 400kcal as meal and recommend it in replacement of a meal and keep throwing the word meal around. Even if portion size is only there as a legal requirement, the only value that should ever be considered to go on the packet is the value of the actual average adult portion, not a lower value with no scientific basis. You say people can work it out for themselves, and that would still be true if the portion size was a realistic average adult portion size. The ONLY difference in those two scenarios is the portion size they choose for no scientific reason is misleading for the average adult and only serves to make the product look cheaper.
I don’t care about any recommendations for me and how I should use Huel, this entire discussion is nothing to do with any individual instance and is about the disparity between a Huel advertised portion for a meal and the portion required by the average adult in this country, to which they market their product.
Have you considered that Huel might not be right for you?
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