This is the Future of Staple Food

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Yesterday, after my swimming session, I was sat in my car drinking some Huel. I was thinking about just how easy Huel makes it to have healthy food whenever you need it. Surely, eventually this will be accepted as the norm. The baseline staple food. So, just as water is the default drink if you are thirsty and can’t think what to drink, products like Huel will become the default meal if you’re hungry but can’t decide what to eat. After all, it’s so easy. You just add water and shake it up.

New things do take a while to gain popularity. After the World Wide Web was invented in 1989, for several years it was only for nerds who didn’t have a life. Now it would be considered weird if someone never used the web. I mean, if you met someone now who was under the age of 40 and had never searched on Google, you would actually think there was something wrong with them, wouldn’t you?

I remember in 1997, there was a young guy on my college bus who was waving his fancy new mobile phone around. I thought he was a right prick. Now, all people seem to do with their free time is stare at their smartphones, even when they should actually be doing something else (like driving, for example). I’m actually in the minority in that I still don’t have a smartphone.

And take Facebook, for example. It’s not even existed for 13 years yet, and for many young people they probably wouldn’t be able to cope if it was suddenly taken away. Again, as with smartphones, I’m one of the weird minority who isn’t part of it. And I’ve tried. I’ve joined and left multiple times since about 2007, and it’s just not for me. But I know I’m unusual.

And so, at some point in the future, maybe 5 to 10 years, it might be considered weird not to have something like Huel for most of your meals. So, just as it would probably seem rather eccentric for me to send my friend John a hand written letter inviting him to a social event the following weekend, it would be considered weird for people to eat old fashioned solid food for most of their meals.

“What? You prepare your lunch from scratch every day? Why? What’s wrong with you?”

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I wonder if it will be used in homeless shelters, or replace food stamps

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or in areas of the world where people are starving - aid agencies would surely be interested.

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They’d need to make sure there was a secure, clean water source first. That can be a huge problem in war/disaster zones where food needs to be distributed.

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Huel have started doing that:

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I can’t help but feel it’s actually taken humans far too long to get to this point. I know meal replacement drinks have been around for a while, but they’ve tended to be for weight loss or protein shakes for bodybuilders. But the idea of replacing normal healthy meals with an all-in-one drink, why did it take us so long?

Just think of all the technological advancements we’ve made - cars, helicopters, space shuttles, computers…but the idea of creating a powder that you only have to add water to for it to be a complete meal. Why didn’t that become mainstream years ago? After all, isn’t food the most fundamental thing?

I’m trying to think whether I’ve had anything other than Huel for breakfast in the past year, and I’m really not sure I have. Possibly once, I don’t know. Huel has become as normal to me as bread is for most other people.

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I’ve had a non-huel breakfast probably twice since January…and that was due to being unprepared at friends’ houses…but yeah, Huel is the norm for me in the morningtoo…not sure I could be 100% Huel though…!

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I’ve just sat and had a delicious ice cream in the sunshine in Scarborough. I started to wonder if you could make a Huel ice cream rather than the wonderful chocoholic fudge brownie heaven delight I devoured. Then I thought, no, sometimes it’s nice just to eat for the sake of flavour and enjoyment rather than fuel for the body. I guess that’s the problem with most modern food these days, it’s all about enjoyment rather than basic necessities.

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Actually, I have bookmarked this to try with Huel…just haven’t gotten around to it yet. Don’t see why it would’t work though…

http://www.pulsin.co.uk/blog/recipes/fudgy-banana-chocolate-protein-popsicles/

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There’s a company in Canada/America that makes nutritionally complete ice cream. Not at all like Huel really (it contains only 16 grams of sugar per 100 calories), but interesting anyway:

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they look damn good actually, a Huel ice cream should be simple enough, except I don’t have a freezer !

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Ah…no freezer is a sticking point to the plan…

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wouldn’t trust those dodgy blokes with 70s porno moustaches.

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If we can come up with a delicious Huel ice cream recipe I might be able to convince my other half to eat healthily, at present she thinks I drink crazy fad health food slop and is constantly trying to feed me chocolate, pizza, chips etc etc. In fact she’s just bought me a chocolate tiffin and rocky road from a patisserie, that was before the ice cream. I think she likes me chubby :slight_smile:

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Well, Huel 1.0 tasted quite like melted vaniila ice cream. Back then I was tempted to buy an ice cream maker and see if I could make Huel ice cream.

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It’s really handy as a convenience thing for breakfast but it’s not for everybody and it gets boring. I’m using Huel as a convenience food to replace breakfast & supplements before exercise, some of the time. I look forward to proper meals in a way that I don’t look forward to Huel.

Huel should look to develop vending machines for sport centres and gyms it would be really popular in that setting.

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Use frozen bananas and blend with Huel to make some ice cream! There is the full recipe in the recipe book, check it out. Also, sorry for shameless promotion of the recipe book, it’s just that it’s really pretty!

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Well I never !! You guys at Huel have thought of everything :grin:

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I’ve mentioned Huel to approx 100 people at work. Zero of them were even tempted, and this is an audience with a lot of engineers and smart people… :confused: I think there are very large cultural and societal issues which need to be overcome before Huel becomes a staple food.

The most common question people have is if it gets boring.

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I think for a lot of people, eating the same thing day in day out can be very boring and that is a challenge.

Huel doesn’t need chewing, isn’t great with savoury flavours (at least I haven’t mastered them), and that is something that makes it difficult for me to focus on 100% Huel.

My vegan friends mainly think it is not a real food, with the vitamin mineral blend etc., although I think quite a few vegans beside me do use Huel or are tempted to try it…I know I mention it in various vegan pages…normally when someone asks about a protein shake…I mean where do vegans get their protein?

Eating can also be quite a social thing…although seems to be becoming less so as families seem to less and less be sitting down together at mealtimes.

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