Hi,
So I believe, after all, Huel is not meant to be 100% of your daily food?
I’ve never really understood this. If someone told you that they ate a healthy, balanced meal yesterday, you wouldn’t take it to mean they only ever eat that meal, and wanted you to, forever, until you die. Something being balanced/complete doesn’t mean it doesn’t go with anything else – it means it goes with everything!
Some people decide to eat 100% Huel, short term or longer term, and see benefit in it. I’m a moderate nutritional geek and am not aware of any problem going 100% Huel, and more knowledgeable folk feel the same. But the vast majority of people just have it occasionally, or for a meal or two a day. I for one have it for breakfast and work lunches, but eat other food the rest of the time.
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Hi Joey
Not sure what you mean by this. Could you expand a little?
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Huel is aprox 65% of my diet but depends a lot on the week
That’s why none of the Complete Food brands recommend 100% diets… because the science just isn’t there as to whether there are benefits or problems with long term heavy use.
100% Huel for decades may well be absolutely fine, and most likely is, but there’s always the chance that we’re missing some vital ingredient that’s currently unknown to nutritional science and without which we’ll be left with big problems. Or maybe there’s an ingredient in Huel that we shoudn’t have for some reason, but science doesn’t realise for another ten years.
Yeah, good point. I think another piece of this puzzle, though, is that it’s probably unlikely there’s a big gotcha’ around the corner. It seems like there’s a disconnect between how hard it is to ‘crack’ nutritional science, and how easy it is to eat some stuff and live healthily into your eighties.
While not guaranteed, I think it’s a decent hypothesis that in the scenario you describe (Huel is still missing something vital), many of our ancient ancestors’ peers would’ve dropped dead from accidentally missing that too, and our ancestors would be the survivors who craved it – or at least learned it was important. (Or evolve to not need it!)
Granted, obviously these days we’re trying to do evolution one better (not just live healthy long enough to raise some children), and there’s doubtlessly more areas for optimisation along the lines of lutein and zeaxanthin for vision.
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There is one thing with absolutely 100% huel, that might be critical in the long run and has been underdiscussed here: It excludes choosing your food according to the appetites that come from the body’s demands for some nutrients/combinations of them/whatever at specific times.
This is a situations our ancestors never had. While the choices of edibles may have been restricted in quantity, quality and variety often, it was always more, mostly far more than 1 type of edibles over a longer time period.
So for long term use (speaking years and decades) I would recommend giving the body at least a little wiggle room by letting it choose part of the intake, even a little would be better than none for this.
I don’t plan meals around my body’s appetites, otherwise all my meals would be ten KitKats. Our bodies are idiots. All they know is EAT MORE EAT ENERGY EAT NOW IN CASE LATER THERE IS NO FOOD.
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You are not talking about my body here. Vegetables never seemed as attractive as after some months of huel.
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Mine just wants KitKats more than ever.
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we got a big box of new flavour Kit Kat samples at work on Monday - I tried one (for scientific purposes) and it tasted great but then almost immediately afterwards I felt nauseous. I gave it the benefit of the doubt and tried a different one yesterday with the same result. Maybe i’m cured of any KitKat/chocolate addiction permanently.
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Heh, I wish I could say the same.
Same here. I eat more vegetables now than ever before.
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No such thing exists.
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Question: Which flavours did you have? Matcha and Strawberries and Cream are my favourites, both impossible to get without sacrificing an organ or two 
Gold Choc Whirl and Roasted Almond & Orange
The almond and orange one is from a hand done batch, the production ones don’t look like that (like they’ve been dropped a lot) - by far the worst one I’ve ever had was a sample given to us last year - Chestnut, Purple Sweet Potato and Apple Pie Flavored
I think you just cured my addiction.
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I’d at least try that. It could be good, although it probably isn’t. The other one could only be foul.