The oats in Huel contain phytic acid which binds nutrients, and also makes Huel rather high in manganese. Isomaltulose has a glycemic index of 32 and is “kind to teeth”. I guess extra fibre (and maybe other nutrients) may be needed to replace those that were in oats.
Personally I would distrust this.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve no interest in “natural” things for their own sake, but in the case of food I do think there is some advantage to be had. Nutrition is a young science and it’s still developing quite rapidly. Although we know lots, it seems likely that lots more will emerge in the near future. Maybe we will even come across substances we didn’t know we needed. We could easily be consuming these unknown necessities without realising.
Oats are more complex than Isomaltulose, big messy organic matter. There is a good chance that big messy organic matter will just happen to contain any unknown necessities. The more we refine things, the more likely we are to accidently remove some unknowen necessity. Thus, I am in favor of a product that combines good nutritional expertise with less refined substances.
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Oats do indeed offer far more nutrition wise the isomaltulose. Oats have iron and magnesium and calcium and all sorts, whereas Isolmaltulose doesn’t. We’d end up having to replace the oats with other ingredients or increase the amount we use in the vitamin and mineral blend, so there wouldn’t really be much benefit. And as you say, you’d lose out on potentially natural foods benefits that we learn about in the future, from phytonutrients or whatever they may be.
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If a man eats 2400kcal of Huel, he’ll get over the upper limit of manganese for adults 19+ according to the LPI.
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The manganese and claimed upper limits is an issue. However, we’d rather keep Huel more natural for reasons brought up in this thread: Is it really true Huel isn’t missing anything?
Isomaltulose is also expensive plus doesn’t provide so many other things that oats do - so we’d have to add more ingredients.
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The manganese and claimed upper limits is an issue.
Are you looking into reducing manganese somehow?
It’s naturally occuring so although there are ‘upper limits’ - that are unneccessarily low IMO - we’re considering options that will keep us well below them.