Well, unhappy for what reason? If people are unhappy because all of a sudden their shakes don’t make them feel as full, I can empathize with that. If the previous threads on this topic are any indication though, there are a lot of people who seem to have delusions about how much protein their bodies need on a daily basis and get unhappy at the mere suggestion that Huel has more than is actually necessary. I don’t respect that perspective at all, because there’s simply no evidence that 150g of protein per day is nutritionally beneficial for the vast majority of people. It’s in extreme excess of what is recommended even for most amateur athletes.
And really, my point is that we already have a range of 3.0 with varying protein, in that Black is just 3.0 reformulated to shift some of its calories from carbs to protein. So… why does the base 3.0 powder need to have borderline unsafe amounts of protein?
Regarding the protein levels, there hasn’t been a single report of kidney damage caused by Huel in 7 years of people eating it for 100% of their calories. It’s enough people for enough years by now to know it’s not a concern.
Yes but also appreciate that not everyone does 100% huel so it can be beneficial for people knowing they are getting a decent protein amount from huel if other areas of their diet are lacking somewhat.
There are so many different variables from person to person in how they use huel, complete meal replacement, replacing just one, using after exercise or for weight gain or weight loss.
Oh really? Have people been surveyed for their Huel consumption habits and GFR? If so, how many? Is there a control group?
You can’t just say “I haven’t seen anyone report catastrophic renal failure in the last few years, therefore Huel is 100% safe for long term consumption.” That isn’t even how stereotypically unhealthy diets manifest health problems; it takes decades for diets dangerously high in salts, trans fats, sugars, etc. to cause issues of medical significance. You can’t look at a 27 year old person who’s still basically healthy after several years of eating nothing but red meat and french fries and say “well I guess that diet is safe.”
I don’t disagree with this, but again, if people want something high protein, Black exists. And while Huel does sort of tip-toe around the question in niche forums like this, their marketing and branding absolutely does not convey the idea that a 100% Huel diet is not known to be safe for long term consumption. The evidence of that is clear in how common it is for people to do 100% Huel diets.
What I’m saying is not really controversial at all, or shouldn’t be. I think it’s easy to perceive the 3.0 Huel powder to have an adequate amount of protein, and to perceive what I’m saying as asking for a low-protein version, but that is simply not the reality. The reality is that the 3.0 powder is extremely high in protein, to a potentially dangerous level, and what I’m asking for is a version with a normal amount of protein.
Like, maybe I’m crazy, but I feel like “why does Huel’s flagship powder have more than the recommended upper limit of daily protein consumption for a person of average height and healthy BMI?” is a totally reasonable question.
You keep referring to huel black existing but you are forgetting that was only released in 2019 so there was a long time where black was not even an option, which means that 30ish grams of protein has existed in huel since 2015, black was for lower carbs, not just the higher protein.
I’ll leave huel to comment on the danger protein side but I’m bemused as to if you deem it to be so dangerous why you would drink it for half a decade.
Yes, that’s why I’m posing the question. Now that Black exists, there is no longer any need for the base powder to be so high in protein. And yes, Black is still based on 2000 kcal/day, so of course it has to cut one of the other macros.
Because I wasn’t aware that the protein level was so far above the recommended level? Because with Huel’s seeming focus on nutrition and numerous blog posts detailing their nutritional approach I trusted that they weren’t getting something as basic as macros wrong?
I don’t get 100% of my calories from Huel anymore, so it’s no longer a concern for me, but I think you and everyone else in this thread are being way too cavalier about an obvious nutritional risk in a product that specifically markets itself as being convenient near-optimal nutrition. The same problem exists with several of the newer Hot and Savory meals: they have extremely high levels of sodium, but the product page on the site states that they are as nutritious as the powders and buries the recommendation that they only be eaten once or twice a day in the nutrition facts. I’m not saying it’s malicious or anything, but it’s a little irresponsible.
It is worth pointing out also, that the core powder still has the same protein levels as it did when it launched with version 1 - eight years ago - and there are many customers who have been using it regularly since then. I’d say that as a product it has sufficient longevity for it to be known if those levels of protein are harmful to consumers.
As an example if you had Huel for breakfast, you could compare it to a more ‘conventional’ healthy one:
2 Weetabix with skimmed milk 13.6g
1 slice toasted whole wheat bread (no spreads) 2.4g
I wouldn’t say we can definitively conclude that the protein content isn’t harmful based on that. How many of those customers have been consuming 100% Huel that whole time? Of those, how many calories do they consume per day, and what is their body weight? Have they undergone routine kidney function tests? How do their GFR values track over time? You need all of this information to be able to make any kind of conclusion at all, because eight years isn’t a particularly long time from a nutritional perspective. The risk isn’t that people’s kidneys are going to fail after a couple years, it’s that they’ll start experiencing clinically meaningful symptoms of kidney disease at 50 rather than 70.
The protein content of any individual meal isn’t the issue though, the total protein content over the course of the day is. The breakfast you’ve outlined has more protein than a single serving of Huel, but are you going to eat that meal five times a day every day like you might with Huel?
The point was that, unless you specifically seek out low protein conventional food sources to populate your diet with, you will be most likely be having far more protein through the day than you either imagine or what is in Huel.
You cannot possibly extrapolate from one hypothetical meal that most people meet or exceed the amount of protein found in a 100% Huel diet. On its face, that is just not a logical thing to claim. If I give you a different example breakfast that doesn’t include greek yogurt (which constitutes a majority of the protein in your example), would you accept that as evidence that it’s difficult for the average person to get enough protein from their diet? I would hope not.
Most estimates I can find put average protein intake in the US somewhere between 80 and 100 g/day. That’s far less than the 150g five servings of Huel would get you, and the comparison is skewed massively in Huel’s favor to start with because average caloric consumption in North America and Europe is a whopping ~3500 kcal/day (see page 32), compared to the 2000 kcal/day you’d get from that amount of Huel. I don’t see any evidence to support a claim that an average diet contains as much protein as a 100% Huel diet. Let alone a healthy diet, given that, again, most nutritional organizations recommend an upper limit of 2.0 g/kg of protein per day.
I’m not. Most people are blissfuly unaware of the protein content they have. As you are focused on the daily total example and eating 5 times (granted this example is 3 meals and 3 ‘snacks’) - here’s another example - again with nothing excessively unhealthy or out of the ordinary that people might eat:
“Nothing excessively unhealthy or out of the ordinary” is not how you describe a diet that includes two full breakfast meals, a chicken salad large enough to contain 64g of protein on its own, a medium sized latte and muffin as an afternoon snack, a whole roasted chicken for dinner, then a hot chocolate and a piece of banana bread for desert.
I have to ask, how many calories do you believe you’ve just included in that hypothetical diet? Because it isn’t anywhere near 2000.
Since hypotheticals are basically worthless, here’s a systematic review examining protein intake in various types of diets, including meat-eating and strict vegetarian. Notice that in all the studies that were reviewed daily protein intake was found to be roughly 80g, and percent energy from protein was found to be between 10 and 20%.
Edit: And if that diet is somehow somewhere near 2000 calories, the protein content is still a problem. Again, the recommended maximum upper limit of daily protein consumption is 2.0 g/kg. You don’t get to hand-wave that away with “well everyone eats that much, so it’s fine,” in the same way you don’t get to hand-wave away sodium with “well the average person in the US consumes 3400mg of sodium every day, so it’s fine.”
I don’t want to keep talking about this, even though we could, because none of it is relevant. The recommended maximum upper limit for protein intake is 2.0 g/kg/day, so your diet contains a dangerous level of protein regardless of its other nutritional content (if you were to consume it every single day), and there simply is no data which suggests the average person is routinely consuming that much protein. Average protein consumption in the US is roughly 80 g/day and roughly 15% of total energy. This has been validated by many different studies, several of which are reviewed in the review I linked above.
Edit: And just to be very clear about this, Huel’s justification for its high levels of protein is based in part on studies having found a difference in deleterious effects between plant and animal protein. The jury is out on whether diets high in plant protein pose a risk of kidney disease, but it is known that diets high in animal protein pose that risk. So if you personally are eating anywhere near what I assume is the ~2.7 g/kg/day of animal protein contained in the diet you described, you really should stop.
You can, their cholesterol levels will be bad. Next example.
7 years of daily alcohol consumption, or daily smoking, or daily red meat, or daily … will show up in numbers on the yearly health check. 7 years of daily Huel are fine, including eGFR.
What’s the recommended upper limit (provide reference)? Huel v3.1 has 150g of protein per 2000kcal. That’s 2g/kg for a 75kg male 175cm tall (average height in UK) with a normal BMI needing 2000kcal/day for maintenance (not gaining nor losing weight) having a sedentary lifestyle. I suspect you did some mistake in your calculations.
To give you an idea of what resources we’d expect you to provide, it would be something like:
This resource Dietary protein intake and human health - PubMed says “Long-term consumption of protein at 2 g per kg BW per day is safe for healthy adults, and the tolerable upper limit is 3.5 g per kg BW per day for well-adapted subjects.”
Quoting from that study, “Although a tolerable upper level of intake has not yet been set, French Agency [22] used the upper threshold to characterize protein intake and estimated that most children, especially in the younger age groups, had intakes qualified as “high” or even “very high” (i.e., exceeding 3.5 g/kg/day).”
So we still have no idea where you’re getting your numbers from to claim that Huel has dangerously high levels of protein.
Seems like an odd thing to do when you are so dissatisfied with it.
I’d like sweets and cakes to be good for me. They aren’t.
I don’t get my kicks arguing with strangers on the internet so I won’t bother commenting further.
Not all protein is the same though and you are stating animal protein, huel is pea protein.
To protect the kidneys it’s having good quality protein over reduction of protein
The problem are not the carbohydrates, but the carb source - oats. Gluten-rich oats.
I would prefer something like maltodextrin. I have no problems with carbs, quite the contrary - but with grains.
