The recipe should 100% be changed, and the people who are saying the amount of salt is fine for them are missing the point IMO. You can always add salt if you want to, but you can’t remove it, and Huel is marketed as a health-conscious brand. Most of the hot and savory meals are perfectly fine, but several have ~28% RDA of sodium for 20% of your daily calories, which is egregious. It honestly feels sort of scummy to me to add that much salt for taste then bury a “please only eat 1-2 of these per day” warning somewhere people will likely not find it when your entire brand is built on providing 100% nutritionally complete meal replacements. The RDA isn’t even a recommended amount, it’s an upper limit. The powders only have, what, 11% RDA of sodium per serving?
Edit: Saying there’s a warning is disingenuous, even. There’s absolutely nothing on the hot and savory product page indicating that the product is only intended to be eaten once or twice per day. Quite the contrary, there’s a question in the FAQ asking whether hot and savory is as nutritious as the rest of Huel’s products, and the answer is an unequivocal “Yes,” and there’s a whole page on hot and savory in the nutrition section of the site explaining in some detail how it’s nutritionally complete. The entire marketing concept behind hot and savory is that they’re convenient meals that are also healthy. The only place this 1-2 per day recommendation is surfaced is through the serving size in the nutrition facts, which isn’t even the appropriate place to convey something like this.
Is there any food out on general sale that states “the product is only intended to be eaten once or twice per day”?
Yes. All snack foods are marketed this way. Huel bars are marketed this way, to name a product in Huel’s own product range. Huel powders, which are the company’s namesake product, are specifically marketed as being okay to eat for every meal.
I don’t understand why this would be controversial. This is a product that is specifically marketed as having 100% of your necessary daily nutrients. It is specifically marketed as being a nutritionally complete, healthy meal. It is egregious for it to have significantly more than the recommended upper limit per serving of sodium of all things. It’s not like it gives you a little too much folate, or something, sodium is a key nutritional focus and is a major driver of the current epidemic of heart disease across the developed world.
McDonald’s does not market itself like this.
If there is too much salt for you, just don’t eat it!
Or, and hear me out here, people who want it to be saltier can just add more salt. Because that’s not only something they can actually do, it takes no extra effort on their part. Whereas someone who wants the meals to have less salt has no recourse, because there’s no way to remove the sodium that’s already been added. Again, I don’t know why this is something that would need to be debated. How does removing a bit of sodium impact you, or anyone else? It’s trivial to add a little more if you want it.
I don’t actually have a problem with the amount of salt, personally. My blood pressure is fine. I just think this is a really dumb thing for Huel to fumble on when their whole shtick is convenient nutrition.
But that’s not answered what I asked. I cannot find a product that clearly states “the product is only intended to be eaten once or twice per day”. Marketing this way is not the same as actually stating this type of statement.
I totally understand what you are trying to get at, but the statements you are making are not factually correct.
As for McDonalds, surely by the way they market and advertise their products as available 24 hours (now even delivered to your home and office etc), this is aimed at getting “us” into their premises for every meal.
As someone who buys 16 bags of H&S per order, I appreciate the education on the salt issue which I had previously overlooked, and it will certainly factor into my buying decision going forward.
I take your point here, but per Dan’s comments earlier in the thread, the recipes do to some degree compromise nutrition for taste. That’s what I’m getting at.
I’m not sure why what you asked matters. The hot and savory products are intended to be eaten no more than twice per day, but are marketed as being healthy and having complete nutrition. That’s contradictory. Snack foods aren’t marketed that way. McDonald’s isn’t marketed that way. The fact that those other brands don’t literally say “only eat this once or twice per day” is irrelevant.
I agree entirely with this.
It’s very easy to lose focus when successful and Huel imo need to keep a sharp eye on providing the 100% complete nutrition in a healthy way.
I understand that Huel is by necessity aimed at a median market and can’t be tailored individually but salt is a huge problem in our food culture and I would expect Huel to be on the right side of this for our health.
I don’t know huels research about their core market (which may well include a lot of heavy gym users who can tolerate more salt because they sweat) but anecdotally I see a lot of overweight people
I wish there were less salt in H&S. I use Huel because I want to do the best and healthiest thing for my body. A salt content above the maximum recommended allowance clearly isn’t healthy, when we know how much damage excess salt consumption does.
1.4g seems high to me, almost a quarter of your daily allowance for a small meal. And the daily allowance isn’t a goal to hit – the further you stay under it the better.
If one H&S meal is 20% of your daily calories, then the salt content should surely be less than 20% of 6g. (And I’d guess the Huel customer base probably has a disproportionate number of physically active males, so on average 20% of daily calories is probably an underestimate.)
To me this feels like an area where Huel has really compromised on the goal of selling nutritionally balanced food, in order to sell more product because it’s tastier (although personally I’d prefer a less salty taste anyway).
I want to throw in the suggestion of using a salt that is not 100% NaCl, but one that is 2:1 NaCl : KCl.
Studies have shown a positive effect of its use on blood pressure, and the saltiness for taste is still there. I am using it in my kitchen, even though I have totally normal blood pressure, just for prevention.
probably should have specified that (maybe should have asked them directly rather than in an open discussion forum) - answer still stands in that context.
This topic has one up many times and I, for one, am pleased to see it again. The fact that it comes up so regularly suggests that it may be an important one for many people.
I think H&S is too salty.
We have heard from Huel that this is a issue of balancing flavour with health, and suggesting that it needs the salt to be a viable, saleable
product that people want to consume.
They have also given confusing and problematic advice that H&S should only be eaten once per day or …well it’s not super clear to be honest and I believe this conflicts with
“Nutrition first” and the general ethos of Huel and the articles on the website about people going 100% etc. There is a lack of clarity.
Less salt in H&S please. It’s very hard to keep to a sensible salt intake in daily life and I want Huel to help me with this.