Taste & texture - advice needed

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Just tried huel and need help!

Trying to come up with quick, healthy meals that’ll help me lose some weight.
Have happily used various other pre-prepared meals and meal substitute products in the past, but I’m reactive to gluten and in recent years have become violently allergic to alliums (onions, garlic, leeks, chives… anything in that family of vegetables). Also my young daughter has coeliac disease so I won’t have gluten in the house for her safety.

Unfortunately the product I was using before has changed their recipe and are no longer gluten free, so I searched for something else to replace it. Ended up with Huel black edition as it seems to be GF and compatible with my allergies.

Ordered strawberries and cream flavour and tried it for the first time today. Wow. It’s the most indescribably repulsive thing I’ve ever put in my mouth. Mixed it up with water per the instructions, and one small mouthful had me retching immediately. Poured it down the sink, and made up another portion with skimmed milk in the hope that it would be better, but it wasn’t much improved. I choked down the portion as best I could, in between bouts of gagging, but there’s no way I could possibly face another. I’m still gagging and retching three hours later.

I am not used to overly sweetened or processed food, on the contrary because of my allergies almost everything I eat is made fresh from scratch, because manufacturers put onion or garlic powder in almost every premade savoury food product. I don’t sweeten my food and use little salt. However I’ve also travelled fairly widely and enjoyed a wide variety of foods over my life, including a lot of challenging flavours and textures. My palette is not at all restrictive.

I am not a naturally queasy person, either. I have a pretty strong stomach. I’m 40, and the one and only experience that has ever elicited this sort of reaction from me before was when I spent 3 days working on the gantry over an aeration tank at a New York sewage treatment works one hot July. And I’m pretty sure I feel more ill now than I did then.

How do people actually consume this stuff? I don’t expect a meal-replacement shake to be delicious, but I would expect it to be at least tolerable. The flavour and texture of this huel black edition are both so overpoweringly disgusting that I can’t imagine how anyone actually chokes it down on a regular basis. I have had a toddler vomit directly into my mouth, and that was nothing compared to this.

So, help! Any advice? Is it just the S&C flavour that’s horrifically disgusting, or is the whole range like this? Is there anything that can be done to mask or improve it? How do you do it?

Thanks!
A

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Strawberries and cream is my favourite flavour, I think it’s delicious! How are you making it? It helps to leave it in the fridge overnight or even just for a few hours. This really helps with the texture and huel tastes much better when it’s cold. It also helps to blend it if you have a blender. If you’re not used to the taste it’s a good idea to blend with berries or ice while you get used to it.

I usually tell people to be persistent because generally once you get used to the taste of huel it’s really nice, it just takes time to get there, but that’s a pretty strong reaction from you. Did you buy any other flavours? Are you putting the liquid in before the powder? It’s also worth trying with oat milk if you haven’t already.

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Thanks Herbivore!

I followed the instructions to make it - fill cold water to the line on the shaker, put in the powder, give it a good shake.
I did try extra shaking but it didn’t seem to make any difference - the mixture wasn’t lumpy, it was definitely mixed, but it was sort of gritty and slimy.

I do have a blender, but that’s not really a solution as the whole point is something quick and easy, which is what huel is advertised to be. By the time I’ve set up, used and washed up and dried a blender several times a day I might as well just have made myself an actual meal?

I also bought some banana flavour huel, which is usually my favourite flavour of this sort of thing, but I’m reluctant to open it in case it’s the same and I’m left with another wasted packet. After all, I like strawberries and cream but the “strawberries and cream” huel has absolutely no hint of flavour of strawberries nor cream… I’m kind of at a loss to even describe it, it doesn’t taste like anything I’ve ever eaten, tbh it doesn’t taste like food at all. I understand it’s basically ground up vegetables but it certainly doesn’t taste of vegetables.

I tried it with skimmed cow’s milk, I’m not a vegetarian and I much prefer real milk to almond or oat milk, plus a lot of oat products contain gluten so I tend to avoid them as a rule anyway. I found milk improved it slightly, to the point where instead of being completely impossible to swallow without vomiting it was just extremely unpleasant.

Thanks

1 Like
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Oh no, I am sorry to hear that you find it so repulsive. I also think Strawberries & Cream is delicious so let me just share how I make it:

  • I put a little less water than the suggested 500 ml in a blender (Let’s say 475 ml)
  • I then put two scoops of the powder
  • I blend it a lot, like a whole minute or two
  • Add a good serving of ice
  • Blend it some more to melt and dissolve the ice

I understand that taste is subjective (and that this is not the easiest approach in terms of cleanup), but the drink that comes out this is both delicious and has no weird texture.

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Thanks for trying out Huel, Adam! I’m certain we can get you loving Huel in some way!

I’m incredibly surprised to hear of such an extreme reaction. The texture is not dissimilar to that of a smoothie. Are you ok with them? Did you get any other flavours as well as Strawberries and Cream? The flavour is perhaps not like eating a bowl of fresh strawberries with cream but perhaps more like a Campino sweet

If blending isn’t an option then definitely try refrigeration. Or perhaps give our RTD a go! It’s incredibly smooth and has the texture of a milkshake. You can grab one in a few places around the UK - you can find your nearest one here!