a few weeks ago i decided to try a few soylents, since the original is not available in Europe. I planned to replace every meal with soylent, which i otherwise would take alone (means: most of the meals!). I order starter kits of the above mentioned companies.
The first one was: Veetal
I made my shake (by the way, the same shaker Huel uses) and added some oil. I had to provide my own oil, but this isn’t a problem. It is pretty tasty, like choclate. It is quite expensive (3 Days test package: 35 Euro), the cheapest price for one day would be 8.80 Euro (no, you won’t find your strange island currency in this post )
After getting more informed about the topic, i found the doubts about maltodextrine. Veetal is using it. I’m still not sure, how bad it actually is. But at this point, i haven’t had even less of a clue (can i say this in english?)than today about this stuff. Veetal was okay but quite expensive compared to the next one… Joylent
Nice shaker, and the oil was already in the powder. And it was so cheap! Cheapest price per day is 5 Euro. And it was quite tasty, too. And with different flavours! Veetal was already out of my personal competition, since it wasn’t better than Joylent but far more expensive. But i wanted to try more, since i want to try something without maltodextrine: Huel
This stuff is nearly as expensive as the Veetal stuff! I wanted to order the smallest package, and these guys charge me 5 strange bugs (which are actually more worth than my lovin Euros)??? Okay, it has to travel over the water but still… Thanks to google, the calculation wasn’t that hard: 70 Euro for one week (includes delivery). Edit: no free delivery(If i would late order more, there will be no delivery fee). So the cheapest daily portion cost me 8.20 Euro. A little bit cheaper than Veetal but about 50% more expensive than Joylent! But it sounds pretty good, the web site is pretty authentic… and it is actually cheap enough. Okay, ORDER! But they have to be very good to take the lead in my competition.
Well… unfortunatly for my wallet… it was good! After getting a good mix (the instruction wasn’t that clear! I would have prefered something like: 150g powder with 500ml water) i was astonished. By a long shot better in terms of taste and feeling! And without these strange maltodextrine stuff. I loved the large bags on the first sight. Far easisier to scoop the powder out and less waste. I planned already to buy a container for it (like i did here).
But i wanted to try a last soylent… i went for Mana
On first sight, without maltodextrine! Nothing on the first homepage suggests, that it contains it. And it is quite cheap (larges package: 6.5 Euro for a day). And pretty well known. I ordered the smallest package without shaker and scoop, since i already had 3 shaker ;). They delivered the oil on its own in small flasks. Not a problem, but not so convenient. It tastes… well, actually not bad but not that good like Huel. And it doesn’t filled me up like Huel. After some more research the insight: They use maltodextrine! That was a bummer. I would place it behind Joylent, but thats a close thing. Veetal was simply to expensive…
Now i have a few soylent derivates i have to consume first, until i order more Huel.
I went for this forum and was happy to see how Julian is working here. What i read up to now, i agree with him in most aspects, Let it be the gluten free oats topic or other things. Very authentic and trustworthy.
It will be Huel over the others, even if i have to pay with this strange expensive bugs which symbol is an “L” but is called pound. Which doesn’t make any sense for guy with solid ground under my his feet
PS: If i used strange idioms you don’t understand please let me know. I probably messed something terrible up I prefer good writing in german but lacking the routine in english
By “your strange island currency”, do you mean the strange currency of our island or the currency of our strange island? I think I prefer the second one. This is a crazy island. We’re all jam packed in here, all getting in each others way and acting like maniacs.
There is a great video on YouTube by American comedian Doug Stanhope about how crazy we are compared to Americans. I haven’t linked directly to it here because it contains swearing (although I have to say, if anyone is shocked by swearing, maybe they shouldn’t be allowed on the internet unsupervised), but if you search for it on YouTube it’s called “Doug Stanhope on USA vs UK Violence”.
Anyway. back on topic. Thank you for doing the comparison. It’s nice to know that Huel is better than some of the others in terms of flavour. I think the cheapness of some of the others must be due to the Maltodextrin. But hopefully Huel will one day come down in price a bit.
Excellent work @Stolen it’s interesting to read a comparison of these four product, it’s the first comparison of these four I’ve seen. I agree with @Ric it’s a great post and worth posting on reddit soylent.
Also Huel is the one that is closest to a wholefood product that actually can keep you sustained. If you google for “wholefood” or “raw” or “vegan” meal replacer, you get lots of products out there, but do the mathematics on the calories and other nutrients and read carefully. You have to have your wits about you to not fall for the hype. Some say that you will be getting 100% of the RDA of the vitamins and minerals, but only if you ave the full 2000 kcals. If you were to have that much you would be consuming a whole packet of some of these “raw” or “wholefood” products and costing you a bomb.
Once Huel is gluten free and therefore perfectly safe then there will be no stopping the product.
Some of the ones I have seen ONLY provide a meal amount of 250 Kcal and a serving amount of 125. So 2 “meals” (4 servings) = the same as one huel meal of 500. The container doesn’t contain that many scoops. So not all powdered foods are alike and the nutrient % RDA on servings of that one product was shockingly bad. It may have been “raw and vegan” but it was rubbish.
I will post my test on reddit tomorrow!
If it is gluten free, some people will find another “bad” stuff. No food will ever be perfectly save. Gluten free is, in my opinion, totally overrated. Yes, there are people reacting bad on gluten. Yes, these people need special food. But all others doesn’t care a bit about gluten. Afaik gluten isn’t bad per definition. And gluten free oat is a lot more expensive than nearly gluten free oat. I have eaten gluten full, self baked bread for decades. If i die early, than most probably because of the “extensive” use of alcohol, gluten free whisky (from your neat island)
Hey,
oh, there wasn’t a free delivery to germany if i order 28meals at once. Apparently I mixed it up with Mana…
i have to correct the text above… thats a little bit sad
)
