Hi, only a few days into Huel and loving it so far. However, as someone who’s always eaten a healthy balanced diet I’m struggling to get my head around how a powdered food can be as beneficial as fresh fruit and veg. Anyone else find this hard - or have any tips on how to explain it to others??
I’m certainly no expert, and I’m sure there will be people here who can explain it far better than me, but as I see it, it’s not a question of which foods are considered healthy so therefore you should eat those foods. You have to think about why those foods are heathy, which is the nutrients etc that they contain, and make sure you are getting all that. So there may be, as indeed there are, many food sources of calcium, of protein, of fibre, of the various vitamins and minerals etc; where you get them from doesn’t really matter, as long as the final overall balance is what the body needs to function well.
It is hard to believe when you first start on Huel, that it can be so easy to have a healthy balanced diet, because up til now the onus has been on you to ensure you get decent nutrition. The guys at Huel have done all the hard work for us, and we can just kick back and relax. Once you’ve been having Huel for some time and reaping the benefits, you won’t be struggling to understand anymore.
Thanks, I’m already loving the ease of it rather than balancing foods etc to get the right macros. It’s probably just a mindset thing!
It’s going to be no better than a healthy diet filled with fruit and veg., but it will be better than the diets of many people that are laden with saturated fat, salt, fibre etc. No surprise that we have an obesity crisis; no surprise that 4.6 million people in the UK have diabetes; heart disease is the 2nd biggest killer in UK, stroke 3rd most, and liver disease 5th.
Huel is a healthy alternative to the usual diet, and contains good ratios f macros and micros; it is quick and convenient. I’ve been a long term consumer of Huel (drink it every day pretty much for over 2 years), and love it, yet I still wouldn’t recommend it over a balanced vegan diet. Also I wouldn’t be able to use it as my sole food source 24x7x365.
Welcome to the forum! Great question and one that is raised regularly. TL;DR I think Wendy and John have nailed it pretty much.
We’re not saying that Huel is better than a healthy, balanced diet full of a wide spectrum of fruits, vegetables and more, but it does contain all the known nutrients that are both contained in a diet like that and recommended to us by food/health bodies.
But the point is that most are not eating a diet like this and are in fact relying on and resorting to fast food options that aren’t providing them with much they really need. In addition to the nutritional benefits of Huel, you’ll also find that if you are resorting to those classic high street convenience food options that you’ll save a fair whack of money with Huel too since it’s around £1.70-£1.31 per meal.
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Everything around us is basically made out of atoms, molecules, compounds etc. which can be thought of as structures made out of different lego pieces. Our body needs different lego pieces for energy, growth and defence etc. Fresh food will be better but we can only consume a certain amount of calories per day and our bodies need a very specific proportion of lego pieces. If this gets out of balance then our bodies can compensate but over a long period of time this can change how the body works (if our body needs green it will grab some blue and yellow blocks for example).
If you already get everything in the right proportions (which is easier said than done nowadays) then its all good, Huel is just food for lazy people or people who want something quick and healthy.
Essentially Huel gives you all the lego pieces in almost perfect proportion so your body doesn’t have to compensate and you can focus on what’s important.
I’m gonna have to disagree with that, just in order to point out another couple of benefits of Huel.
- Zero food waste - you don’t end up with food that has gone out of date and ends up being thrown away. Once opened a bag has a shelf life of 12 months which is plenty when you consider a bag is 14-17 meals depending on serving size.
- Huel is also highly sustainable as it is entirely plant based and so avoids the extraordinarily wasteful process of feeding grains to livestock with an approx 10% yield - ie to produce 1kg of meat approx 10kg of grain is needed.
- And because it is plant based it is vegan and cruelty free - better for the planet all round.
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Haha yea and many more benefits. I’m not vegan but I do agree we should all cut down on meat consumption for various sustainability reasons too.
About this time last year I was waiting to see the doctor at the HIV clinic when I got nabbed by the dietitian who was fresh off maternity leave. She was well aware of the problems I’ve had, like may other PwHIV, around nutrition in the past (when we first met in 2001, she later admitted, she didn’t expect me to live more than a couple of years). I told her what I was now eating and she immediately went to this site and read down the list of nutrients… “I bet they haven’t thought about… bloody hell they have! But they can’t have remembered… Oh - they have…”
Literally her only worry was that I might get bored with eating the same thing all the time. Otherwise, she said, it was as close as anyone could get to an optimum diet. Huel got Kath the Diet’s stamp of approval, and that’s high praise indeed.
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