New plastic bottles

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55

I’ve emailed both parties separately and have cleaned up this thread to keep it on the topic of the different taste/texture of the European RTD vs the UK/USA RTD.

I will monitor it closely. Please talk to each reasonably and keep debate constructive and on topic. Replies to counter another’s point of view should address the substance of the argument, not anything else.

If any of you require some to happen with an order you have purchased, e.g. you would like a refund, then please raise this with the customer experience team via team@huel.com, live chat on site or via DM on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. Generally the forum is a place for debate and discussion as opposed to resolving problems with individual orders.

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59

Wow, I’m glad it’s not just me. My last RTD order contained the EU berry flavour - I managed to finish one bottle but the awful taste lingered in my mouth for the rest of the day and I didn’t feel great. My partner is ok with it, so she’s finishing the rest. I contacted Huel about it on Twitter and got some Huel bars as compensation. Very disappointed when I re-ordered that I got EU RTD for both chocolate and berry… I tried the chocolate to make sure that it wasn’t just a bad batch or just the berry flavour and it also has that unmistakable, disgusting, lingering flavour.

I’ve cancelled my subscription until I hear it goes back to normal (or I find a suitable replacement that isn’t Huel). A shame, been drinking Huel in one form or another for 2 years, but this and the “slight differences perceived by a few” response have really put me off!

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I’m so disappointed with this change even if it is only temporary.

My bottles say v1.0 on them so the taste should not change. The grit like texture is akin to when I used to mix my own powder. I may as well go back to doing this as the smooth texture of the RTD bottles was the only reason I bought them.

Why were we not notified, either in advance or within the delivery. We should have been given the option to wait or offered a discount to help you through your supply issues.

Can we have assurances that this won’t happen again, not without prior warning?

I would also like assurance that you won’t adopt these new bottles for the UK in future, they have a much cheaper feel to them, the silver foil is additional waste and I don’t enjoy drinking from them.

For now, I can no longer recommend the RTD bottles to friends and family.

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61

Hi the foil actually creates less waste. Its referred to as cap liner and is for induction sealing the contents of the bottle - it serves many purposes, in this scenario maintaining freshness and extending shelf life. Using this form of sealing allows the structure of the plastic bottle itself to be thinner and use less plastic than a stiffer bottle that uses mechanically sealed caps and collars (like the USA bottles) which have to be physically strong enough to be able to withstand the two piece cap being applied after filling.

There are pros and cons to using both PET (the USA bottles) and HDPE (the European ones)

PET is 30% more rigid then HDPE but equally, 30% less durable. You will notice this with regular bottled water. The PET bottle is strong enough when filled to be mechanically sealed but when its empty, it is easy to crush or even crack it in your hand. It can also crack when filled if dropped onto a hard surface if the bottle wall is too thin. The Huel PET bottle structure is thick enough to avoid this.

PET generally has better gas and chemical barrier properties but has lower temperature resistance. HDPE retains its structural integrity and barrier properties in a temperature range of -78°C to +75°C whereas PET is again roughly 30% less. Again you can see this if you were to fill a PET water bottle with hot tap water and leave it to stand – it will very quickly start to deform and lose its shape.

The reason you see PET in use more in beverages is mainly for aesthetic and tactile responses because it can be fully transparent whereas HDPE can only be semi opaque at best and feels of a higher quality even though it isn’t.

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62

Because they don’t care about you, they care about their bottom line:

Says it all really.

I don’t buy Huel for the durability or heat retention properties of the bottles. I buy it because I want something that tastes nice. It doesn’t matter if you package Huel in Kevlar plated orbs that meld ergonomically to the exact dimensions of my hand if the contents taste like piss I’m not buying it.

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i dunno, Carlsberg do ok.

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64

Must be Huel customers! :joy:

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Some great info, thanks.

Not sure the change benefits the consumer though, without this info most people will jump to the same conclusion, more waste, cheaper bottle.

Can I recycle that foil cap liner? I’m not sure, so it’s going in general waste at the moment.

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It sounds like you found an alternative product that works better for you, and that you’re no longer interested in being a Huel customer. Is there any reason you’re still here, criticising the staff and other customers that tried to help you?

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Just to reiterate – the HDPE bottle is what has always been used in mainland Europe and is being temporarily used for UK customers to ensure fulfilment during supply shortages. Yes its true, there is a lot of unawareness with consumers on the logistics of packaging creation and disposal but both HDPE and PET are inert materials so have no more or less impact than each other on the taste of the product inside (PET actually degrades faster than HDPE and should not be reused whereas HDPE can be) and both Huel bottles are fully recyclable.

There are many different kinds of cap liners used in packaging – the aluminium Heat Induction Seal Liners you see on the Huel bottle are fully recyclable. When you see a cap liner that has a small half circle shaped plastic tab to peel it back – these are generally referred to as Lift and Seal liners. They cannot be mechanically recycled because they use a mix of bonded materials with a foam (Plastisol - a foamy type of PVC) coating, a foil inner seal and a polyester tab.

If you see an easy peel ‘foamy’ seal that has no tab on it, then this is a Polystyrene Pressure Seal. These are basically the ‘budget’ end of bottle closures. They don’t use induction to seal them and instead use adhesives. Whilst the FDA currently says Polystyrene is safe to use in food packaging, a growing wealth of research into it begs to differ – primarily due to the material migrating chemicals into the food products.

The FDA says this is fine because the chemical styrene naturally occurs in tiny amounts in some foods already such as strawberries, cinnamon, coffee and beef. High levels of styrene (more than 1000 times higher than levels naturally found in the environment), can cause nervous system effects such as changes in colour vision, tiredness, feeling intoxicated, slowed reaction time, concentration problems and/or balance problems.

Hearing loss has been observed in animals exposed to high concentrations of styrene. Changes in the lining of the nose and damage to the liver has also been observed. The Department of Health and Human Services, National Toxicology Program and The International Agency for Research on Cancer all contradicted the FDA and listed styrene as “reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen” in 2011.

Given that polystyrene is also not recyclable, you should try and avoid any products using it.

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Just to check back in, in the absence of RTD Huel that’s drinkable (to me. Obviously taste is subjective, but like several others, I find the current new RTD completely undrinkable, with a strong chemical smell and aftertaste that lingers for a long time), I decided to give Saturo a go. Glad I did - at 500 calories, I feel more full, it has less saturated fat, and I prefer the flavour and texture to even the good RTD Huel. I’ve only tried chocolate Saturo, it’s a shame they don’t have quite the same variety as Huel does, but for anyone looking for an alternative, I can definitely recommend it.

Their delivery and support isn’t as good as Huel’s (at least for UK customers - Huel have been consistently pretty great over several years), but I greatly prefer the product. For the forseable future, it’s what I’ll be drinking. The shame is if Huel had handled this differently, I probably wouldn’t have been looking for alternatives and just waited patiently. Instead, by switching products without warning and insisting that they’re the same, they’ve lost my custom, at least for now. I hope Huel carry on innovating with their RTD product, I could certainly be enticed back by better flavour/more calorific options.

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Are Saturo paying people to advertise in this thread or something? Seems super weird…

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hah - nope. Just reporting back for others who had issues with Huel RTD. As someone who found the new one undrinkable, I’d definitely want to know about a potentially palatable alternative. Previous comments I read suggested it as an alternative, but didn’t really say anything about its flavour, so thought it might be useful for someone to know that I actually like the flavour.

It’d be pretty crappy advertising given that I also mention their delivery and support isn’t as good :slight_smile: To quantify that, it took about a week to deliver vs. next-day for Huel, and I contacted them on Twitter and got no reply at all (where as Huel have always been responsive and helpful). Also worth mentioning that it’s slightly more expensive.

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73

After three experiences with the European RTD, I’ve reached a conclusion.

At least in Sheffield, the RTD is expired product.

Since I’ve seen people saying it tastes bad but they finished a bottle, let me reiterate that I can only speak about the batch I had delivered, as well as two bottles I picked up in a Sainsbury’s Local. It may be that some people are getting product that is slightly different due to manufacturing, but my experience is with expired product.

When I first ordered, I got two boxes of Euro Vanilla and one normal box of US Berry. I refrigerated the Vanilla immediately, and I looked at this forum when I noticed the bottles were different. The experiences people described made me not want to try it, but eventually I ran out of everything else.

To be clear, the printed best before date on this batch says 13th September 2020. These are not expired in the sense that I waited too long. They’re expired in the sense that they were stored incorrectly, or transported from Europe incorrectly, and now they’re no longer fit for human consumption.

At first I noticed the smell was off. They smelt like expired yogurt, which shouldn’t be a smell that any product within its sellable lifetime should have. I noticed that it was somewhat chalky, separated, and just generally unpleasant like everyone is describing. Then I tasted it.

One gulp was 100% expired pea protein.

I used to drink a pea protein shake before I started buying Huel. I know what it smells like when you accidentally leave it in a bottle that isn’t refrigerated for a few days. It smells like chemicals, it smells like plastic, it smells absolutely disgusting. I’ve never drank it at this point, but I imagine the people I’ve seen on this forum saying they accidentally left Huel out and drank it days later tasted the same thing when they did so.

I probably finished less than quarter of a bottle, tasted this expired taste, and threw the rest of the bottle away. My immediate reaction when I tasted it was that Huel should NOT be selling this. I know they’re trying to make up for the shortfall in US supply but this Huel is NOT just ‘different’ as they’re telling us in this forum.

Later I tried an RTD bottle from Sainsbury’s which was chocolate. Again I could barely drink any of it without gagging, let alone finish it. This was the day I bought it, only an hour or two after it had left the refrigerator in the shop. The same thing happened with the vanilla that I bought that same day.

I didn’t want to come across as an alarmist person who is overreacting, but I know what I tasted was not a slight difference in taste. I don’t know if something went wrong in the factory, but this is an extremely expired product that should not be sold to humans.

I was thinking of sending it back for a refund, but I don’t want them to try to resell it to someone else.

It’s not safe for human consumption.

The number on the delivered batch was P20014.

The number on the Sainsbury’s ones is P20015.

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74

The EU RTD Vanilla that I tried in the summer was exactly as you described and it definitely was not expired or gone bad. It’s always like that.

75

The EU version of vanilla I am consuming tastes chalky but is in date.
The date you mentioned is a best before rather than a use by date. This suggests that although it may not have the best quality it should still be safe to consume.

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I think @Woodoutonc is suggesting that although the bottles are still in date according to the bbe printed, they taste like they have gone off.
I can’t help agreeing. I’ve historically tried a vanilla EU RTD and thought it tasted vile, sour and like gone off milk. I’ve not bought any RTD since everyone is reporting here they are getting the EU instead of the US version, but I tried one from a friend and it was truly foul. It really did taste exactly like the RTDs taste if you try to drink one after leaving it out of the fridge too long on a hot day (which I have :face_vomiting:).

It’s hard to believe this is how it’s supposed to taste?! Maybe people like the sour taste in the EU? A bit like some crazy people like soda bread made with gone off milk :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

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I couldn’t agree more. You’re proving my point by saying that you’ve let RTD get too hot, and it’s tasted like this Euro stuff. In other words, you’ve let it expire, or go off, or spoil, or whatever you want to call it, and it tastes like this. This is pretty damning evidence.

I also agree that no one would want this. I’m pretty sure that in Europe the product is correctly stored, and that’s why they’re not here complaining about it. I’ve almost thrown up multiple times trying to finish a bottle of this stuff, and that’s exactly what happens when people consume expired food.

I am not a picky eater. I don’t throw up because something tastes bad or has a weird texture. This isn’t a different manufacturing process, it’s a lack of proper storage and transport of a product that shouldn’t be allowed to get hot.

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From Consumer Reports:

——

According to Sana Mujahid, Ph.D., manager of food-safety research at Consumer Reports, the best way to know whether a perishable food has spoiled is simply to “trust your taste buds and sense of smell.”

Foods past their prime often develop mold, bacteria, and yeast, causing them to give warning signs to your senses. Spoiled food will usually look different in texture and color, smell unpleasant, and taste bad before it becomes unsafe to eat.

——

One of the main ways you know a liquid like milk has gone off is it separates so it’s no longer mixed together. Then it smells and tastes bad. These are pretty typical signs of expired food to me.

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79

They should be, because the date hasn’t happened yet. But the packaging also says store in a cool, dry place. These bottles get delivered unrefrigerated, and in my experience with US RTD, they can usually survive this process. What I’m saying is that these bottles are probably getting too hot at some earlier point in the supply chain.

If you get a delivery and leave it by the radiator for a few days, does the expiry date matter?

Food can expire when incorrectly stored, that’s all I’m saying.

We don’t know how it’s stored before it gets to us, and even though I refrigerated it, it was probably too late.