I met someone once who said he used Huel for most of his meals because he couldn't afford regular food or even fast food. It was the only thing keeping him from starving. I can see a lot of reasons why something like Huel would be a lifesaver for people suffering from poverty, chronic illness and/or extreme work schedules. Probably not the customer-base those meal replacement companies were originally aiming for....
Someone needs to introduce this man to Asian foods. Asians mastered the art of feeding ourselves on next to nothing. Try tofu + some kind of sauce/seasoning (go spicy, sweet, savory, whatever). Try adding some tofu to eggs to stretch your eggs. Especially in scrambled eggs, you almost won't notice
@@jake9764where in america? you can buy cereal and flour and rice. but actual vegetables? I've done both. huel is definitly cheaper if you're actually trying to get all your micros and macros
Yeah that's what I was thinking. I have auDHD and so does my son, and we both have food aversions that make it hard to get enough nutrition. I looked into those and had to take a hard pass because it was too expensive.@@jake9764
I've found Huel to be instrumental in building a well-rounded healthy relationship with food. Instead of worrying about planning and prepping three meals and multiple snacks each day, I can consume Huel for breakfast and/or lunch, know I'm meeting my caloric and nutritional needs, and spend the time I do cook making fresh, healthy meals with local ingredients. If meal replacements are replacing dining out or worse from processed foods, it's an improvement for most people. These discussions don't have to be all or nothing. You don't have to choose between Huel and real food-you can have both. You don't have to go vegan to cut back on meat consumption. You don't have to exercise every day to get benefits.
I've eaten a similar, solid meal replacement product called Mealsquares for years, and I feel the same way. I rarely if ever make it 100% of my diet in any given day, but it simplifies the tricky nutritional and time-scheduling calculus to always have it as an option. And if you have unpredictable GI issues like I do, finding a stable, healthy comfort food can ease that "food-body relationship" as well. Every once in a while I still enjoy going all-out and cooking new recipes from scratch, not because it's time, money, or health-efficient but just because I do value the emotional and cultural relationship we have with food. Meal replacement products just allow people to opt out of that relationship when they're not interested. Will that increased liberty be to our societal detriment? Who knows.
How dare you make such a nuanced, reasonable statement! Don’t you know this is the internet where it’s all or nothing and the more extreme the better?!
We still have a long way to go , someday humanity will notice that once every human on this planet has a delicious meal a day for every day of his life there will be no reason to fear and instead use their time for science
@@skedaritou8138 That goal will neve be achievable thanks to Capitalism. As long as McDonalds and Coca-Cola make their burgers and drinks cheaper and more convenient, people in low income communities in particular are gonna opt for the number 1 combo over a grilled chicken and veggie bowl that's twice as expensive. Imagine if every McDonald's was replaced with a health foods store, and it was open late nights. What an amazing world that would be...
I have watched dozens of these videos and they all tick me off because all of them assume people just want a quick weight loss fix or don't have time to eat or cook without ever considering some of us cannot eat even semi solid food because of missing teeth. Cannot afford dentures or implants. I went in a year from my normal weight of 120 lbs for my height to 94 lbs. Trying Huel in hopes it can get me above 100 again if i can maintain 3 shakes a day at 400 calories each. The stuff is nasty nasty so it's very hard but otherwise I will die.
"If you want to be sad about that, too." This line made me chuckle, but I don't just feel sad when I watch your videos. I feel like I'm enjoying another informative deep-dive into an aspect I've not given much thought to. Thank you for producing them.
As a person who struggles with mental illness and her relationship with food as well as having money for food. Hule has been a lifesaver and a crutch i can come back to time and time again. I love cooking and it can never replace that, but without it I think i would be in a much worse position today then I am. Im glad Hule is "not the wrost" and I hope they can keep that title, because without them Life just wouldn't be as accessible for someone like me.
agree - it's a life saver for when I'm just totally out of whack and can't even think about a meal let alone cooking one. I have also suggested Huel for when a friend was in crisis and also couldn't conceptualise eating. It's also beneficial for those with additional physical needs or post hospitalised patients etc.
@@alexandra_viola234 yeah and it's become a way that I can show myself love when I have very little to offer. Some frozen fruit and a cheap blender with some Hulett go a long way when your struggling to get going at all. Sometimes I add food dye or sprinkles low effort. But those small things at times can mean the world to me.
@@Luciferisking512 now I wouldn't go that far he does put a Caviate in the beginning of the video expressing these same values. But I just wanted to share my opinion so people wouldn't go away thinking these products are holistically evil.
@@Luciferisking512he did say it is great for people with a disability, or mental illness. The thing is, the brands don’t market towards these individuals, so that’s why he isn’t talking about them.
Something that annoys me is when people don't realise not _everyone_ is a Foodie. It's something that comes up a lot in Huel reviews. I'm whatever the opposite of a Foodie is. Sure, tasty meals are nice, and I enjoy eating meals with people I love, but it's not a major motivator in my life, and that's _okay_ . On the point at 11:00 - that isn't everyone's ideal world. Again, I like social eating, but not every single meal can practically be a wholesome bonding experience, and I fail to see why the extra time/effort/money is worth it for the meals that aren't. I'm not willing to invest more than than 10 minutes a day and significantly more disposable income than I have to on food. I get more enjoyment out of life doing other things with my time and money. And again, _that's okay_ . Personally, about 35-50% of my meals have been Huel for the past two years. It's great: -takes
That's the thing that gets me about everyone's complaints about meal replacements, like... Yeah, I personally love food. To an extent. But the food I love, the stuff that makes me jump for joy and love the sensation of being a human being? Even the stuff that I love to cook, feel proud of making, and want to share with loved ones? I can't eat that 3 times a day, every day of my life, and expect to survive. If we base our feelings of food off of what feels good, I'd be living off of pizza, crab, cheese, pasta, and eggs. But the fact is that at some point, I'd probably get scurvy or never poop again. Or still be malnourished because I just don't like veggies that much. Like even in this guy's perfect fantasy land... Do these people not get tired? Of cooking everything from scratch? Once again, three times a day, every day, for your whole life? I do eat because it brings me joy, sometimes. I cook because it brings me joy and can foster a sense of community. But most of the time... Eating is simply a prerequisite to staying alive! The idea that I should get rainbow fuzzy wuzzy happy feels from EVERY meal is just absurd to me. Just hand me a shake sometimes so I can get something green in my body.
This comment is well put together. The dude makes a huge leap of logic at your timestamp, and there's an implication that the rise in popularity of meal replacements would somehow threaten "normal food" which we're wired to seek in the first place anyway? And that people will think less about what they put in their bodies, as if the hundreds of bucks on meal replacement subscriptions don't come from people who have put considerable thought into that? People rightfully point out it is not, and it will not ever be an all or nothing situation, not as long as we're human.
Spot on! I enjoy food at times, but overall I only eat because I need to stay alive, not because I love all the delicious flavors. This video complete ignores that perspective as well as people who don't like eating due to mental health or physical issues.
@@rasurin You can go on Huel's homepage and see there's nothing as dichotomous as what you suggest, to quote verbatim: "Huel is the no-prep meal that doesn’t compromise on your health. Less time cooking, more time living." "Switch to Huel for your weekday lunches and get five hours back in your life. Inexpensive, quick to prepare, and delicious." This is their marketing, a very direct suggestion to try it for 5 meals a week. Get out of my face with that polarizing junk. I like sharing a meal with my loved ones and I dislike wasting time, I balance both. I'd wager this goes for the majority of people, shocker I know. Life goes on and we as a species are where we are because of automation.
i believe he spent all of his research time on the food itself and not the psychological aspect... i have become a lot more active since starting college, and especially when i have so much other shit to do, something that just makes my hunger go away without requiring too much thought is what i NEED sometimes. sustainable and local farming is not something that i expect to see within my lifetime. the current state of grocery shopping and cooking is absolutely a burden on me at times, and many of those times, i end up eating something unhealthier because it's easier. he seems to have ignored that reality. i imagine his ideal is easier when you aren't living paycheck to paycheck....
I tried Huel and Saturo. Here's where it stands to me: sometimes I'm too focused on other things and I get really hungry. At that point I will eat anything, crisps, other random crap, etc... I always place meal replacement packs before snacks in the cupboard. Since it's easy to prepare and generally doesn't taste bad, that becomes my choice for a snack or quick in-between-meetings-lunch.
I AM OUTRAGED AT HOW MUCH YOUR VIDEO ALIGNS WITH MY OPINIONN!!! THANK YOU FOR TAKING SUCH A NUANCED STANCE ON A TECHNOLOGY TREND THAT MAKES PRACTICAL SENSE IN TODAY'S WORLD, YET FORESHADOWS A POSSIBLY BLEAK FUTURE. I MYSELF FIND HUEL A HELPFUL TOOL IN MANAGING MY 1-PERSON HOUSEHOLD AS A STRUGGLING STUDEND. AND I USE IT DESPITE THAT I LOVE COOKING AND CONNECTING WITH THE SOURCE OF MY FOOD, SO MUCH THAT I HAVE GROWN TOMATOES AND PEPPERS FOR MY FAMILY WHEN I HAD THE OPPORTUNITY TO DO SO. KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK AND KEEP IT REAL!
I have had Huel for breakfast or lunch or both every day pretty much since 2015 when they launched, it was the main thing which helped me come out of my eating disorder and I genuinely don’t think I’d be here without it. It saved me in my depression pits, it saves me on anxious days or agoraphobia ridden days. I work an office job and it helped me stay consistent in my recovery and to this day I stick with it even though I work from home now! I recommend to anyone with mental health struggles even though it’s mainly aimed at busy professionals
I'm also struggling with eating disorders and I always felt like meal replacements would be a life saver for me, but people keep going on and on about how bad they are and how I should just eat a normal, balanced meal. Your comment confirmed my initial instincts... I think maybe I will give them a chance. It's great to hear your journey! My best wishes!
@@lrizzardMy Soylent drinks say, ""While not intended to replace every meal, Soylent can replace any meal." Sure Huel and Soylent aren't ideal, perfect meals, but toss just a couple in every now and again in between eating mostly healthy, real food. Then, their negative aspects become a blip in your personal health radar, but they still make it easier for you to get your meals in. I keep it to a rare few x a month, but if I'm ever too lazy to prepare food & don't want to $ on delivery, I just pop open a Soylent. Sure, i don't feel as satiated and I can tell my "gut" isn't the same later on or the next day, but it's categorically better than eating either nothing or pure junk food/snacks.
@@lrizzard well, then the real question is if you would eat this "normal, balanced meal" if you dont use meal replacements. or, to put it differently, how healthy your average meals are. are they perfectly balanced, very varied, made with a lot of veggies and you avoid unhealthy things like highly processed foods, animal fat and fried foods? if so then yeah, obviously thats healthier. but who even eats like that? if we compare meal replacements to some abstract ideal diet then yea, ofc they gonna loose. but if we compare them to actual peoples diets then a lot of time they will be healthier than their "normal meals". and if you add health issues to it, for me its obvious that its at leat worth a try. if those powders improve your condition then thats a huge improvement and a much better argument for what diet to choose than "well, technically you could eat a bowl of salad and some hummus instead (but you wont)". and ofc you could eat both, or use the powders in such a way that you cook a nice healthy meal when you feel like it and have the meal replacement when you dont have time or energy.
As a health care worker I do not have time to eat healthy consistently. I started with Soylent all the way back in 2013 and it's impacted my life for the better. Today meal replacements are a staple for me. They will never take away a healthy balenced home cook meal but it's preventing me from skipping meals, or eating junk, unhealthy over processed food. Meal replacements may not be perfect, but in our current society, they can support our busy lifestyles. I will forever be grateful to Soylent for paving the way for other companies to join in! The more competition the better! I'll continue to recommend them to anyone as a alternative or substitute to an unhealthy meal.
I liked Huel for my office job. Basically, it replaced my lunch meal which would either be terrible canteen food or terrible supermarket food (at 2x the price of huel). But I’d never use it when I meal prepped and immediately dropped it when I started working from home. I think that’s actually a decent use case. As a meal to replace meals that are purely functional and serve no joy. But as a wholesale replacement, that’s just sad.
That's IT really a joyless meal. There should be NO joyless meals EVER. If you come to all your meals hungry then 3x times a day you will be doing something you have been looking forward to, something fantastic and fun and relaxing and you will be rewarding your body and boosting your health.
Yup that's what I'm using it for too: office days. I prefer eating a warm breakfast in the morning, but on days I work in the office, I just don't have that kind of time. Instead, I just mix in the Huel powder and head out (takes like 5 min tops). If I'm only taking it like 2-3 times a week, I think it's fine. Plus, it uses less dishes overall, which saves on water and personal time 👍🏽.
@1050cc - It is not a joyless meal. I use Huel shakes for breakfast ~4-5 times a week, they are quite tasty and enjoyable. More importantly they are fast and I can make them the night before - they replaced cereal for me on the days I have to work and don't have time to prepare a real breakfast. Way less added sugar and way more protein than I was getting before at breakfast.
@@1050cc I have issues with repetition. Doing something, even eating, multiple times a day, everyday is just laborious. Soylent ensures I don't skip meals. Mixing it with coffee and cocoa, then stirring just right makes it nice, light and frothy.
I have IBS, and just having huel for lunch at work has saved me a lot of hassle and stress. It being low Fodmap, affordable and quick to prepare is pretty great.
I’ve been using Huel for over a year now. As a vegetarian who is trying to get more protein in my diet, it’s kinda hard to hit over 100g of protein each day. The Huel Black Edition helps this out so much. I have for breakfast probably 3 times a week. It has 400 calories with 40 grams of protein and I usually have that with a fruit or something. It’s really a great way to jumpstart my protein for the day. I still do eggs, overnight oats, or something else for breakfast on other days cause you gotta change it up. I have tried all their other products and honestly they all taste awful. Pouring water into a bowl and microwaving some stale rice and quinoa does not taste good. Get your food normally and every now and then do the Huel Black Edition for breakfast. I think a bigger topic is that alll these companies use the term “Natural Flavors” in their ingredients but I believe that should be illegal. What the heck does Natural Flavors mean? Why is that in the ingredients portion and why don’t they have to write out the exact natural flavor that they are using? I think it’s a larger topic to discuss.
The term “natural flavors” isn’t necessarily because they are trying to be shady or hide something, it’s also so that other companies can’t just look at the ingredients list and copy the product completely
I work in the food science industry so I have some insight to the natural flavors claim you are questioning. Flavor houses are a big industry in industrial food and they basically breakdown the chemical compounds of food because certain compounds taste like certain foods people want the flavor of. So eventhough they aren't getting say a strawberry flavor from a real strawberry, the chemical compound that tastes like it can be found and utilized from other natural sources. If companies just listed a chemical flavor compound on a package it would just scare people. That's why it's pretty standard to just see natural flavor listed on packaging.
Real food is an experience for all the senses: taste, smell, mouth feel, and even the sounds of cooking and crunching a fresh carrot. That's something Huel can never replace. But as so many other commenters have said, powdered food does have its place, and is better than going without any nutrition at all.
@@ryandodd8941 Maybe most. And that's sad. I remember I hated spinach because I was raised where it only comes in a can. You get that sickly yellow-green juice with it and it's limp and unappetizing. When I first saw spinach in a market and someone told me that those leaves were spinach, I thought they were pulling my leg. I had no idea. I think a lot of people, because of how they were raised -- limited access, parents poor cooks or cooked a very narrow diet, etc. -- also have no idea how good and interesting food can be. And not because they've been there, done that. Though they may think they have. But because they haven't.
@@ryandodd8941 I do care about that, a LOT. For about 10% of the time. The rest of the time I'm just glad I got the executive skills that day to make a sandwich, or a bowl of cereal.
As a person who used to reach for snacks between meals, Huel has been a life saver to help me eat healthier and not more expensive. Not to mention it’s a good workout drink.
I LOVE cooking, eating, and sharing meals with people. On the other hand, I am often rushed in the mornings and dont like eating microwave meals. So Huel has been a time-saving game changer for me. I drink about 5 Huel shakes per week, for various breakfasts and lunches. Even replacing some meals is very helpful to me. Having Huel at home also means i have a quick, easy snack at home and dont turn to junky snack food as easily.
I love the Huel Hot&Savory line. It’s my go-to most days. While I know how to cook and do sometimes, the honest truth is that I want to spend my time doing other things. There is no other solution to eat healthy and less expensive than this without spending a lot of time cooking, so that’s what I do.
I've been using Huel for about 3-4 years now. I'm a very fussy eater and don't really eat a balanced diet. I started drinking huel over lockdown as being stuck at home made me very aware of what I was eating daily. I wanted something healthy I could use to fill me up. Huel now makes me feel really good and I feel a much heathier with it. I don't get heart burn any more which is a plus. I drink 2 a day during the week while at work. At the Weekends have 'normal' and 'normal' food for dinner each night. Good stuff aside, it can get very boring and dull drinking it 10 times a week. But it does make the 'normal' food I eat so much nicer. I think of it as part medicine just something that keeps me healthy. Its not for everyone, but it works great for me.
@@craigharkins4669 breakfast and lunch. I was doing that mostly, but more recently it's been harder to want to have the second one so I've replaced my second one of the day with fruit. This usually keeps me full till dinner. Works differently for different people, just got to find how it works for you, if it does at all.
I'm glad to see this because I'm just about to try it for the exact same reason. Very fussy eater, also have allergies that restrict some healthy options... I'm hoping for a healthy lunch replacement that will help me avoid snacking.
I hate consuming Huel myself, but I think it's an awesome product and company from what I've seen. It's as you say, it's a bandaid solution, but in a world where we're suffering from a million minor cuts, quality bandaids can be pretty helpful.
I’ve been eating/drinking HUEL for almost 4 years. I’m now down 30 pounds, off blood pressure meds. Dr. loves all my labs and I love the taste. I’m not saying that’s due to anything magical about HUEL itself probably more about going plant-based, which HUEL is. I also hate cooking and the cleanup after.
Don't think it's plant based. Plant based is not good and your claim will lead people to lack nutrients. We aren't plant based animals we need meat and plants, with meat being the main course or what makes up the meal, sort of like spaghetti
A very good argument that supports incorporating huel in your diet is that most people have absolutely no idea how a balanced diet should look like. They don't consult health professionals and simply buy stuff that they like, and that they THINK is healthy. As a result, a huge number of people are deficient in various minerals like magnesium, iodine or calcium. Replacing 20-40% of your daily calorie intake with huel basically assures that those deficiencies won't progress to the point of becoming serious, even if your diet is lacking.
the other problem too is health professionals can be expensive to access. There's a lot of misinformation out there about nutrition. Doctors are misguided at times making general statements that are barely true, and millenials (women and people socialised as female growing up) have a really shitty relationship with macronutrients. All or nothing statements really damage this too e.g. kale is a superfood, and butter is full of saturated fats, therefore to be healthy we should eat a whole kale every day and never touch butter again?! Info is overwhelming for a lot of us who just want enough energy to get through the day. I'd love to see more govt supported programs for free nutrition assistance etc
The real things to watch out for with meal replacement shakes and protein powders: 1. The purity rating- how well the product has performed on tests for things like heavy metals which can be quite high depending on sourcing or how the different ingredients are processed. 2. I love protein shakes as an easy breakfast item that helps me get way better nutrition than something like toaster waffles, which a lot of people will eat without considering how little nutritional value that food really has for them. At least with a meal replacement shake, you have enough protein and maybe some other essential nutrients like a multivitamin in shake form- without lots of sugar or sodium. Those two are huge concerns for me, and protein shakes are EXCELLENT at providing an option that has way, way less sugar and salt than most of the other convenience foods people are eating regularly. However, you need to pay attention to what sweeteners are being used in the product. A lot of shakes use things like erythritol, sucralose, stevia, etc. You wanna limit your intake of these things long term. Erythritol has been linked in studies to an increase in blood clots, which can lead to adverse health events like stroke and heart attack. Sucralose was recently found to cause DNA damage, which is not great because that can increase your risk for some cancers. Stevia and monk fruit sugar replacers can contain added erythritol, and stevia has been linked to cancer when consumed in large quantities. A lot of other artificial sweeteners, like aspartame, are known carcinogens and known neuro-toxins. It is worth being very discriminating in which meal replacement brands you decide to use for all of these reasons.
I'm a Chef, my profession has notoriously bad nutrition. Through a combination of lack of time, and the cost to cook on shift most end up with some chips or bread (although this is changing). Huel was a game changer for me. In spite of using supplements my diet had become deficient and after a few months on huel my joint pain eased and I had more energy and focus. My mood improved, as I had started to actually feed my body instead of just fueling it. I think it works well in the western diet as a replacement for breakfast or lunch, which for most people are nutritionally deficient meals.
@@yakovhadash Kitchen crew have the worst diets, because they're too busy shoving food out the door as quickly as humanly possible (or faster) to eat. There's a lot of truth behind the trope of kitchen staff all looking like malnourished strung-out roadies hunched over a garbage can shoveling half an appetizer plate down their throats during rare and fleeting lulls between customer waves.
Chef here also, at work I eat bread and fruit. At home it's a peanut butter sandwich or healthy cereal to keep me alive. After cooking all day I'm not cooking anything.
@@yakovhadash the cobbler's children walk barefoot, this saying exists for a reason, doctors neglect their health, psychologists are often fucked up, etc
I never liked the idea of using meal replacements instead of eating proper meals. I totally agree with you. If you look closely at the ingredients, you can see how ultra processed are meal replacements including huels. It makes me sad that influencers on TH-cam have endorsed it without knowing that it can be bad for our health and bodies in the long run. You need proper fruits , vegetables, grains and meat for a good health. Cooking food has therapeutic effect on you, so it's good for mental health too. These big companies use celebrities and influencer to make people fool. They are not cheap either. Please don't fall for them. Thank you
I was working as on site IT support for a Trading company, the day to day was a huge mess with an excessive level of stress. Things had to be solved yesterday. In that enviroment, a healthy lunch was a far fetched dream. We ate whatever we could as fast as we could so we could be back on the front lines as soon as we could. Huel, was a life saver for many of us, a colleague started with it and spread like a wildfire in our department. We all very much hated the taste of it, but at least it kept us going in a quick way and we could use the extra time to relax a bit more instead of shoving food in our facehole as quickly as possible. So while I do understand the concerns of meal replacements, Huel was the only reason I didn't destroyed my health during those years. It was a positive thing for that time in my life. Plus their bag shelf life is surprisingly long too. I lead a much quieter life now where I can have a proper well prepared meal during lunch and Huel isn't part of my daily life anymore but every now and then when I need food in body and I only have 5-10 min for it, I still keep a pack of Huel around for these few occasions.
@@chrisowens4550 no unions, it was in Europe and we were all external contractors. Closest thing ever to modern corporate slavery, the pay is relatively high but it wasn't worth burning ourselves like this.
I use this for 7 years now. And used it very often as my only meals. Especially when I was in my era of "malnourishment", It was a game changer. I don't see how can anyone be against this, especially knowing it has all the vitamins and minerals you need which is very difficult to do even if you do the most healthy food. Now of course at some point you want real cooked food and it gets difficult to want to drink only that. I dont think anyone wants powder instead of a real delicious food, but clearly this is great.
As someone who relies on meal drinks to fill the gaps bc of Gastroparesis (and I know a lot of others who rely on them more than I do) I'm glad that there are affordable options, especially for plant-based, as I have dietary restrictions on top of the GP. I would love to be able to eat and be nourished from whole foods if I could, it's what we've evolved millions of years to eat, it's just better for us. I miss salad. Cooking has also always been an issue for me because of executive dysfunction and fatigue. I imagine the more social aspect of it could turn into "Only rich people can eat tasty, real food bc the working class is too busy, overworked, underpaid, etc"
Agree with you on that. These products are great, but sometimes I'm also getting the vibes of the possibility of rich people directing poor people towards these foods, and we end up declared 'undeserving of fresh unprocessed food' by them on the basis of making little money. Probably they need to be marketed differently tbh. These are ideal products for people with illness and disability, but it's kinda sad to see otherwise healthy people having no time to prepare food bc they need to grind for the shareholders.
Kind of @@Vizivirag , today you can also become a shareholder easly, about the rich making you eat that, could only be the case for urban areas on rural areas the prices will regulate the market by exporting more, wich is kind of the situation now but some politics are in the way and that is the problem I most probably can not sell you my mangos at 5 cents or less because some politician thinks i should be taxed 30 cents and so on and so on
I am a medical student with chronic illness and it has been lifesaving to have meal replacement shakes for both my patients and myself. I don’t think I’d be able to maintain weight without these products. I do kind of supplement this with my own concoctions for meals, like having all my greens at once in a really bad smoothy.
Meal replacement definitely have their place. I remember trying it in college when they hadn’t solved the satiety problem yet and I saved a lot of money on it, even thought I felt hungry all the time. If you have depression too, this makes it pretty easy to get some nutrition and calories in you (maybe because the flavor is so neutral). I tried huel and the nutty aftertaste is not great. Made me miss Soylent, huel’s packaging is WAY better.
LOVE YOUR VIDEOS! 😆Joke aside, I live in Eastern Europe so reality for us still a lot different. But I love how you always find the exact topic to keep the consumerist pulse in check. May we never stop thinking about what we consume in every sense of the word.
Huel is great as an OCCASIONAL meal replacement. I've bought a few bags of the "Hot and Savory" stuff that basically equated to mac and cheese and quinoa and it is fantastic as a back-up meal. I compare it to stocking your freezer full of microwavable meals that are more than likely filled to the brim with sodium and just not that healthy. I know how to cook my own meals and regularly meal prep but sometimes you just don't want to cook anything and their "mac and cheese" that is ready in about 5 minutes is filling, seems to be quite healthy, and its cheap! The shelf life is fantastic too. The powder protein shakes don't really do it for me. I want to chew my food, not drink it.
I came to this video prepared to call you out but I think you tackled this really well. I have an ED that makes it very difficult to eat at times and having a stock of soylent and Jimmy Joy around is crucial for me. I'm so grateful options like this exist for people like me. Or people like my sibling who naturally can't get enough calories because their high metabolism and drinks like ensure are just so full of sugar. It's nice to have a low sugar option that is still high cal for them to consume. However, the goal really should be making food more accessible. These meal replacers are not that cheap compared to actual food but we need to do more to make real food accessible to more people. Still, to the naysayers in the comments, products like this really are great for people like me and have more of a place in the mainstream too (when is the last time sat down to eat a proper breakfast?). But it can be a cure all.
Hey thanks for sharing this perspective. We can research these subjects but how individuals use a product like this is always going to add insight we can't find otherwise. ❤
@@FutureProofTV I think your videos could go a long way by not making generalizations or mass assumptions about how people live their lives. People take meal replacements for a variety of reasons to enjoy some people who simply don't get enjoyment from eating food.
I watched this video while eating my dinner of a homemade Chipotle-style bowl: homemade carnitas, homemade hot sauce and homemade verde sauce with rice, beans and sour cream. The quality of the Chipotle restaurants near me has been declining so I got fed up and made my own! I'm fortunate enough to have time to cook and the 2nd best part (after eating what I made) is sharing with friends. We can never replace cooking, for nutritional and social reasons.
Thank you! I was so surprised that he didn't mention the irony of the company naming itself Soylent! I looked for other comments that mentioned Soylent Green and only found yours and one other. LOL! "It's people! It's people!"
@@vbrown6445 It definitely helps (or doesn't help, depending on how you look at it) that Gen Z and Alpha and even a lot of millennials don't know about the reference because the movie's old. I had to Google it back when Soylent was brand new because I was like 17 at the time and hadn't heard of the movie. I don't even remember what it's called lol
Soylent Green was only one of the "flavours" - the others were Soylent Yellow and Soylent Red. They were just made from soy and lentils (hence the name: soy-lent!)
The idea that someone would call a food replacement Soylent was incredibly macabre in my opinion when you consider the 1973 film Soylent Green (a dystopian movie about overpopulation, resulting in food shortages and government encouraged suicide), in which a government food replacement called Soylent Green was discovered at the end of the movie to be made from human bodies.
100% agree. My brain stopped for a few seconds when I saw "Soylent" as the brand name for a food replacement. It appears no one on the founding team likes 1970's thriller movies. Too dark and twisted for me to ever try those products.
@@pogoshinysearch1239 Oh, they were well aware of the source material the name was taken from. It was chosen intentionally (and somewhat tongue-in-cheek) as a nerdy throwback to that story/film.
They even had a line of T-Shirts with the tag line that was something like "as good as humanly possible!" . . . But the name was chosen based more on the novel where there was many different versions of nutritional wafer and only Soylent green was people. Soylents original plan was to engineer algae or yeasts to create the protein people need, but it ended up just being a basic nutritional beverage. Though these days there are products like Whey Forward which is a vegan whey protein (though, not made from whey) made by a similar process to what the founders of Soylent had envisioned.
I've had to be on food replacements and tubed foods for the past 4 weeks post op esophageal and stomach surgery. Most pharmaceutical brands have dairy. I'm lactose intolerant. I appreciate there being an option.
I like how you touched on the disconnect between processed powders and where the food actually comes from. So many people have no idea about actual farm/food production. OPINION! OPINION! OPINION! I think it would benefit everyone (who can) to learn how to actually grow something fresh and edible. And no, you don't need land to do it. It can be as simple as upcycling that plastic food tray that DoorDash just delivered, and use it to grow microgreens in your kitchen.
As someone struggling with mental health and often falling way short of my minimum daily nutrition target, the idea of an easy complete nutritious meal that requires zero thinking or preparation time is appealing for the days when a freezer meal is too hard.
I've been replacing about a quarter of my meals recently with plant-based protein powder for both cost and protein-deficiency reasons, so this actually has convinced me to buy Huel since it at least has more nutrients. Edit: I also plan to stop by a grocery store this evening to pick up more fresh vegetables and fruit, though. The goal is for this to replace the crap I end up picking up for lunch at work or when my refrigerator's getting a little bare. I really don't like pre-packaged frozen or canned vegetables (there's always bad bits in it that I can cut out easier when purchased fresh) so when I run out of vegetables in the middle of a week, I end up buying a lot from restaurants. I'm going to try Huel out to see if it works better as a holdover food
I've been using Huel as a replacement for lunch, while at work for a while now and I'm quite enjoying it, and I like the taste(tastes like chocolate oatmeal), but I can see why people wouldn't like it.
Huel stuff is handy for me, since I'm disabled. I can get two meals a day, five days a week. That leaves two days a week and breakfasts to take care of. Let's say that I can take care of breakfast. That means if I can't get out of bed except to waddle painfully to the bathroom. To me, the Huel meals can start making sense, especially since I have an electric kettle and just sit in pain on the chair while waiting for water to boil.
I used huel for about a year as a bandaid solution to my terrible budgeting so there'd always be food when I'd inevitably spend too much money and couldn't afford groceries for a week til I got paid
Tbh, I never saw Huel as this replacement for every meal, but for, like you alluded to, the meals where you don’t have a lot of time to prepare (e.g. breakfast and lunch). There’s something really satisfying in knowing that I’m getting a complete meal in where I don’t have to worry about tracking calories or wondering if I’m hitting my nutritional requirements, can easily consume within 10 minutes and then go about my day. When I was using Huel, it ironically, made me enjoy cooking more because those were two meals I didn’t have to worry about preparing and I could just focus on dinner. While the founder of Soylent, Rob Rhinehart, is kinda of a strange dude, and his whole schtick feels very “new age, Silicon Valley, unnecessary optimization” culture, he did say something I found super poignant in an interview with Motherboard over 10 years ago that sort of put Soylent on the radar. “It’s really nice to be secure in something as important as health and diet. And then we can enjoy this stuff because we want to, not because we have to.”
@@floppademon1506 cooking most definitely takes more time than literally mixing power and water together. Also the act of consuming your meal take significantly more time for most types of food compared to meal replacement shakes like what is being discussed here.
As someone with bad sensory issues especially related to food from my Autism, having something that could even just knock one meal out of the day so I don’t have to think about it would help me mentally so much. Something consistent, easy to make, and tastes and smells decent/good.
I like Huel, its my lunch plan for today. I'm a college student, so it is the best balance of cheap and healthy that I can manage on campus. I do not have the time to prepare meals to take, and I love that I can drink my huel in class, instead of trying to wolf down something expensive from a food truck or super unhealthy from a vending machine in 15 minutes in between classes.
I like the idea of meal replacements for those days I can't be bothered with food. There are days I just don't feel like eating at all, like I don't fancy any meal, nothing seems tasty, but I'm sill hungry. I feel like those powders would come handy for such cases but I wouldn't use them regularly.
I completely agree that the quality and the social side to food, cooking and eating it, are important. I was convinced when I saw that a popular local "meat" (párizsi) had bubbles in it! But I've also been eating (drinking?) huel a couple of times a week for a few years now. I believe it is a much easier and faster way to get a healthy meal than almost anything else. Buy, cook and enjoy local foods when you can. But at other times, I think huel is far better overall than other near instant alternatives (pizza, sarnie, burger, noodles etc.)
It's a very simple question of "what's the alternative". People (like myself) who would choose Huel for a meal would not otherwise cook ourself a hearty vegan curry for that particular meal. We would eat ramen. Or get some pastry from the corner shop. Which would be a) more expensive b) way worse for our health. So it has its place. I don't think anyome at Huel really believes people would switch to Huel for most of their meals. They know full well that the reason they can get away with shipping only if you pick at least three bags of the stuff is because it has a good shelf life. So even if you ever only use it to replace a quick meal that would otherwise be by default worse for you and your purse, it's still a win for you and for them. Likely the planet too. I don't have a real beef with this solution.
I use Huel Black Edition as my breakfast daily. It’s much better than what I was eating for breakfast, and it’s much faster than what I should be eating (which I tried but couldn’t sustain because it took too long each day). I’m only fairly confident I’m not eating cake batter for breakfast daily, but I’ll never know for sure.
@@chloephelps2602 It helped me keep track of my intake, and it also allowed me to pre-portion for on the go. I've lived car free my whole life, so I needed something that I could stash easily on my moped. Been doing it for 7 months now.
As a physician, I would strongly advise AGAINST more than 1 liquid meal replacement per day. I have had several patients who went on meal replacements for all their daily meals and almost all of them developed moderate to serious gastrointestinal issues. Our intestines and stomach were designed and intended to break down solid mass to extract nutrients. When you stop eating solid food, the intestines no longer need to work much to absorb nutrients from what we eat. They become weak and effectively atrophy. Your intestines can eventually lose the ability to properly absorb nutrients, causing bouts of severe diarrhea, constipation and trouble eating in general. It took my patients around 2 months of VERY slowly eating solid food again in very small quantities before they mostly returned to normal (though some still have persistent GI issues after half a year.)
Theyve been around for decades. I used Complan to supplement my nutrition intake during cancer treatment. I used old hospital recipes from the facility where my parents worked and incorporated it into puddings and desserts too. I needed 6000 calories a day during my treatment. I now sneak it into my mum's food as she's very unwell and its keeping her weight stable.
I’m big fan of Huel. Black edition for breakfast as I start work early and have it on my way to work. Pretty healthy and easy, then eat more substantial meals the rest of the day.
As somebody stuggling with disordered eating I'd love to never have to eat again in my life. It's just so annoying. So compared to my regular eating habits these kind of shakes are pretty healthy and they have helped me a lot getting a more stable intake of nutrients. Though in the end you're totally right, eating proper food would be the single best and healthiest option
I don't understand this type of videos: a thumbnail with "Do not buy" Huel products + a title "the truth about meal replacements" and yet it is only an opiniated video with no science-based facts explaining why these products are bad (according to the author of the video). Blank statements like "let's face it, corporations probably don't have your best interest in mind" are just here to persuade you that the product is bad without facts to actually make a point. Yes it's a business but why couldn't a business bring a product that is also good for the consumers? Also, it's not like these products are meant to be used 5 times a day forever. I believe they have a place for their target audience. I typically cook all my meals with whole foods but the Huel shakes help me when I am travelling for a week or from time to time when I have a busy day and don't want to rely on junk food out of lack of time (or when I get a bit lazy which can also happen :-)) My feeling after watching this is that this was a click-bait video
I’m broke as shit and I have to survive on soup cans and Huel to even have a full diet everyday. When I cook, I cook the cheapest and healthiest food I’ve researched a billgion times and it astounds me how many people just say to have a full Huel diet. I love the brand and the food, but it isn’t food food. Tasty and so fucking helpful? Hell yes. Real food that leads to a happy diet and is More sustainable for your life? Fuck no. Especially if you working out constantly. No, food won’t be replaced and that shouldn’t be the intend of Huel. It’s amazing when you can’t afford the time or price to eat full cooked meals everyday
I didn't realize Huel was doing actual food now. Not sure how it tastes but $/calories they're coming in way cheaper than other backpacking freeze dried meals like Mountain House or Peak. Even if you wanted to add some freeze dried chicken to their meals, still cheaper.
All I’m getting is dystopian corporate. Add more fiber filler to shave cost of protein. Maximum deskill humans from cooking so they’re reliant on one company for all their food (nestle and Unilever and Kraft and 95% of everything in the supermarket is all owned by the same handful of corporates who own each other anyway). Time not spent cooking can be spent working. A product so removed from the source you can’t even go “that farming practice is unethical” because 1000s of farms involved.
I've tried Huel for some time. imo a large issue is that while it is technically sufficient, it wasn't satiating or satisfying for me (taste and texture wise). A big part of food is enjoying the taste and texture; huel/soylent/etc cannot really address those aspects.
Maybe if you added some instant mashed potato, but not enough that you couldn't drink it. If you don't mind eating it with a spoon or fork, you could even do that and be even more satisfying. Potatoes are one of the most satiating foods available. Instant mashed potatoes are very convenient. I get them from Whole Foods and Sprouts to avoid preservatives, etc. The one from Sprouts is organic!
Huel gets me through the work hours. Lets me eat while working and spend that saved time with my family instead of at lunch. But at home, real food wins every time. The downside is all that fiber makes me crazy gassy. TMI, I know, but its a valid concern for people who dont live alone.
I have both poor mental health and bad mobility, to the point where cooking is a real challenge at times. The savoury Huels allow me to create a meal easily without falling back to other easy, but not necessarily healthy foods. So I certainly think they have their place. And the more people who eat them, the more affordable and available they become for people like me. I can see them being a practical solution for many peoples' problems. But as with everything, I do think they need to be taken in moderation.
Without huel: must cook every meal, cooking is a chore, dread cooking and eating. With huel: cooking is a fun and optional daily activity that i look forward to.
I don't believe for a second that you don't think those videos wouldn't perform well on your channel. Otherwise, print them behind a paywall wouldn't entice anybody to join your Patreon. Just be honest
I've been taking Huel as my last meal (early dinner) most days for the past few weeks, especially before going to a workout. It has been a great way to get a lot of protein before a workout, make me feel satiated, and it is super convenient. Plus, it just happens to cost about $2 a meal. As long it doesn't make me feel unwell, I will continue to "eat" it. Also, it has helped me not eat too much for dinner, which I used to do, so it is also helping me not gain more weight and avoids the issue of having trouble sleeping due to being too full. I understand what you mean when you say we can't really tell what goes into making Huel (and other products like Soylent), but that can be said about any food that isn't cooked from scratch at home, and even then, you have no idea what pesticides and hormones were used, unless you go all organic, which is also not sustainable globally and extremely expensive. The convenience of a meal replacement like Huel is too great to not take advantage of.
Here's my argument against: Too much soy is a real problem. It causes a lot of hormonal issues for everyone and cancer risk in women. And, years ago, my boyfriend was hit by a car and had his jaw repaired. One of the most important parts of his recovery after his jaw healed was to use the muscles in his jaw, i.e. eating normally, to preserve the strength of the muscles and keep as much bone density as possible. That is so important.
I've been drinking huel shakes for almost two years now. It's part of my work week meal planning so I can have one meal a day that takes minimum effort. I meal prep on my weekends, creating two sets of meals for lunch and dinner, and use Huel for my breakfast by making it before I go to bed and drinking it just after getting dressed before going to work, mostly because breakfast meal preps dont hold well and if I go back to having to eating overnight oatmeal for breakfast again I will actually snap. That and I dont have a lot of time to actually eat it. It's cheap, it's quick to consume, it's not actively killing me, suits my work schedule, and it's consistent nutritional qualities gives me a foundation to build my other meals around. There are a plenty of worse things and plenty of better things to do for breakfast, but I pay about two dollars a portion for something vaguely in the ballpark of healthy that suits my needs and I get to have something that isnt instant or overnight oatmeal for breakfast five days of the week. On my weekends though, I will have literally anything else before I have a plain huel shake. Making it with ice and some fruit in a blender (making it a better shake, essentially) is way better than than just adding water and shaking it if the flavor of the powder is something palatable with fruit flavors, like banana or vanilla. It just doesnt sit as well in the fridge when made that way. Would I recommend it to just anyone? Probably not. But if you're eating something processed anyways like a sugary breakfast cereal, a sandwich or bagel from the coffee place you hit before work, or a frozen breakfast sandwich before running out the door because a proper breakfast isnt an option for you, Huel is *probably* cheaper in the long run and is most likely healthier. It would make for a better meal than whatever else you would if you're a busy person, so it does actually hit one of its most important selling points, but I aint gonna pretend it's a luxurious experience. It's calories, it goes down the hatch without a fuss, and I instead focus on making the other meals in my life more enjoyable. It suits my needs, and so I pay money for it. 7 out of 10. Better than overnight oats.
I've had Huel for breakfast and lunch for over 3 years now. It saves me an incredible amount of time and money compared to eating out or buying a crappy sandwich at the corner store every day. I still cook a proper dinner every day, which I wouldn't have the energy or time to do if I also had to cook lunch every day.
I had jaw surgery a while back-- why someone would willingly opt for meal replacement goo is beyond me. It's needed for medical reasons of course!-- but as a trend it's like.... why...?
Tastes good, can 'eat' with one hand. Not bogged down and exhausted from digestive processes as much. Can grab and go, no mess. Most importantly, can continue gaming/coding/enjoying life without having to waste 30 mins or an hour preparing food and sitting down and slowing munching it. I already do one meal a day diet because I dont want to waste time on breakfast and lunch, and if I can just drink my dinner I spend less than 5 mins a day on meal prep and downtime from eating.
I'd ask the same to the opposite group! I struggle to wrap my head around why people find joy in shoving large chunks of food matter into their mouths, crush it for an extended amount of time until it's drenched in saliva and then swallow the crushed goo to sit heavily in their stomachs until it's digested enough to start making its way through your intestines. And even turn it into a social event where they inform each other of how pleasurable the experience is?? like how?? I think every step is uncomfortable and gross 😭 But then again, I guess it just means people experience food differently! I'm happy enough with a flavored meal replacement drink, but if I was forced to drink it like you were I'm sure the experience would be a lot more sour.
Yes !! I was waiting for this one !! 🔥 I’ve been eating like 80% Huel for the last 6 months, I’ve never felt so great physically, it’s really great and allows me to actually have time to cool an appetizing dinner
Get therapy that’s not a normal thing to say I swear it’s like this comment section is 80% anorexic people. I don’t mean this to insult you. You really need therapy. Eating like this can cause diabetes it’s not healthy
You did already say it, but i can speak up as someone with both intestinal issues and mental illness that meal replacements can be a life saver. They taste fine and you can drink them at times you can't eat anything else, preventing your hunger urge from dying away and minimizing weight loss
My family is very much into fitness and bodybuilding and Huel black has been a godsend. It’s so much more healthy than other protein powders, and it supplements our intake of greens. We all have busy lives working in the legal and medical fields and there isn’t always time to make breakfast or dinner and this helps us from missing a meal due to work. People need to remember these are supplements, even if marketed as meal replacements. It’s still important to eat real foods, but these have their place to support a healthy diet.
I have been breakfasting on Huel shakes for 3 months now, and it saves me from the 100% carbohydrate and 0% fibre "meal" I would otherwise be eating if Huel weren't in my cupboard. Also my stool improved like magic, since I have Huel once (or occasionally 2 times) a day - for me, it's been a total hit :)
It’s works great for truck drivers. I can wake up at a rest area and have a ready made meal (ready-to-drink version) drive for a bit, then stop for lunch. Or, sometimes we get stuck parking in the evening with no food options available. Yes we have small fridge & a microwave, but it’s nice to just grab & drink.
Yes. Just commented on the one other person who mentioned Soylent Green in their comment. I can't believe he missed an opportunity to point out the irony. I know the movie is old, but it came out before I was born, and I still know the reference. "It's people!"
The kitchen is sensory hell for me, and I hate going in there for anything. I've never tried meal replacement stuff, but sometimes it really does sound enticing.
it's important to know that whole foods cannot be replaced and deliver the same nutrition. the big one to pay attention to is fibre. consuming whole, long, stringy fibre is important to digestion and how nutrients get in and waste gets out. turning fibre into power (including smoothies) removes a significant part of what fibres job is when it's consumed. powders and smoothies can never replace whole foods because they remove the important job of whole foods.
Meal replacements have been a life saver for me. I struggle around food and cooking (i.e. thinking about holding a cooking knife stresses me out, and the pressure of cooking makes me sweat more than my college intake exams did). My doctor insisted that I start eating better, but I know myself well enough that a 'varied and balanced diet' is just not happening unless my circumstances magically improve. It led me to try meal replacement drinks in early 2023, and since then I've settled into a pattern of drinking one or two a day alongside my regular diet (with less snacks, since the drinks are very filling). Turns out that my diet was bad enough that my hair had started to fall out, and meal replacements balanced out my diet enough that it decided to grow back. Now I have a bunch of awkward three-inch long hairs sticking out of my long hair, but at least it's promising good things lol So yeah, I can 100% say that meal replacements have been good for my mental and physical health, and I feel a lot of joy drinking them-- plus I think they taste good, but then again my taste buds have never been the most sophisticated ^^
In 2017, I went hard into the Soylent powders for about 2 years. I would make 3 servings (1200 kcals), 1 for breakfast and 2 for lunch. Then I would make actual food for dinner. It helped save time, and save $10/day on getting food from whatever burger joint was calling my name that day. I don't think there was much health benefits or anything like that (didn't lose or gain weight, and my cholesterol/bp were still high the entire time), but it was very convenient.
Levi's energy in these videos is really something. It's a goofiness I really like and don't see as much in the main channel but I know you're all funny and smart! I really liked the caveat about accessibility because until you made that point, I was a little frustrated by some of the assumptions about eating. I'm disabled and eating can be excruciating and challenging for me, it's so bad sometimes I can't even lift a fork up, which means I don't get to eat when I need it most. We live in a society now where so many of us are being forced into 'busy-ness' that the most helpful thing is a service like this. Until we're able to fix that, people are going to do what they can to survive, and if that means ingesting dubious powders from questionably ethical food sources, then that's what's gonna happen.
Others have already made this comment, but Huel has been a great crutch to get me eating more (and more consistently) alongside covering some weak points in my nutrition. Slurries like this have also introduced me to ingredients that I hadn't heard of, since it's nice to read what all is in these blended concoctions. This may be anecdotal, but I grew up eating a lot of boxed foods. My parents didn't teach me cooking because they didn't enjoy cooking, and culturally I'm from a predominantly white American landlocked state which reduced my introduction to things like seafood and international cuisine. Cooking meals and using fresh ingredients requires a lot of planning or intuitive knowledge, so I'm curious if some of the hypothetical solutions have more to do with teaching cooking and introducing foods to kids when they're younger to make it routine rather than expecting adults to simply cook given more time and money.
NGL, this was a great advertisement for Huel. You actually convinced me and my gf to get some. Because we love to cook but we don't always NEED to cook. I was expecting the food to be poison. Turns out they are open and decent. I'll pick some up 😀
I've got a few concerns about food replacement shakes. 1. Gut microbiome, our body is meant to digest food. Not food replacements. I'm not familiar enough with huel to say one way or another how good it is at preventing this issue, but repeatedly eating exactly the same thing, isn't good for our digestive health. Now using this as a suppliment for when you can't get a meal otherwise, it's probably not a big deal. But if used to completely replace what you eat, I'm almost positive you will see a difference over time. 2. Calories. How filling is this food? I'm going to guess the answer is 'not very.' It's just, 'enough.' The issue with turning food into a shake is that a shake is a hell of a lot easier to digest, and a hell of a lot less filling over time. So you may wind up eating more calories rather than less. Solid foods on the other hand, take time to digest because of the surface area. Smaller the surface area the faster something is to digest in most cases. Food replacements though have a much smaller surface area. This might actually wind up being a wash given the average american diet, but it should be kept in mind. 3. Protien. The reason most vegans can't maintain the diet longer than a few years is because most plant based diet's don't have the full range of protiens that we need. It takes more than just a generic "protien", there are specific types that humans usually get from meat. Plant sources just aren't as nutritious in that manner. Again this is probably a wash given that we aren't encouraging complete abandonment of food, but those that take food replacements regularly might find it worth it to consider the possible issues.
The problem I've had with Huel is that it just isn't very filling. Yes, you're getting all the calories and nutrients you need, but you're always going to be hungry since liquid food is so much easier to digest that your stomach is empty again very quickly.
When i stopped oral birth control and went to the iud (in addition to recovering from a ton of mental side effects from the pill), i had zero appetite for nearly a year. Soylent was great at that time because i found no joy in making or consuming food, and before I started meal replacement, i had lost weight that landed me into an unhealthy bmi. I now have other quick food options in addition to soylent, but it helped me through a rough couple months
In my country, even in the capital city which is relatively the most developed place here, meal replacement is still more expensive than a regular ol' meal, especially the traditional ones. And you know what, i'm still happy that's the way it is! The other way around just feels so insidious.
I almost bought meal replacement drinks in college. I was really looking into it, debating huel or soylent. My probablem was that my schedule of classes was so tightly packed, I barely had time to actually eat lunch two days of the week. I was powerwalkinh to class with a chicken breast in a napkin. I hated it. When I could eat I would shove food in my mouth so quickly it was unhealthy. Having a meal replacement would have been so helpful to curb hunger and to make sure I was getting sufficient calories. Unfortunately, I already paid for the dining plan so I didn’t feel like shelling out extra money.
I’m an Uber driver that also has a part time job. The days that I do work, I work 12-16 hours. I hate going out to eat because it costs a bunch of money and it takes up valuable time. Just today I packed a car camping kit into my trunk so I can cook on the go to save money. I may look into Huel. But unless if Huel comes in at like 800 calories a serving it doesn’t serve me. I already have AG1 for nutrition, now I need filling cost effective meals.
I drink Huel several times per week for dinner, since by the time I get home from my 996 schedule it's too tiring to cook and too unhealthy and expensive to order. And I will say that this video is low-key the best commercial for Huel. Is it perfect? Absolutely not, and the general critique of how the modern society makes it difficult to live the Hallmark postcard lifestyle is very true and very real. But in an imperfect world, an imperfect solution is kind of fitting.
I met someone once who said he used Huel for most of his meals because he couldn't afford regular food or even fast food. It was the only thing keeping him from starving. I can see a lot of reasons why something like Huel would be a lifesaver for people suffering from poverty, chronic illness and/or extreme work schedules. Probably not the customer-base those meal replacement companies were originally aiming for....
Huel and Soylent are way more expensive than basic healthy food.
Pretty sure it’s still cheaper to eat simple food like potatoes/rice/pasta and vegetables
Someone needs to introduce this man to Asian foods. Asians mastered the art of feeding ourselves on next to nothing. Try tofu + some kind of sauce/seasoning (go spicy, sweet, savory, whatever). Try adding some tofu to eggs to stretch your eggs. Especially in scrambled eggs, you almost won't notice
@@jake9764where in america? you can buy cereal and flour and rice. but actual vegetables? I've done both. huel is definitly cheaper if you're actually trying to get all your micros and macros
Yeah that's what I was thinking. I have auDHD and so does my son, and we both have food aversions that make it hard to get enough nutrition. I looked into those and had to take a hard pass because it was too expensive.@@jake9764
I've found Huel to be instrumental in building a well-rounded healthy relationship with food. Instead of worrying about planning and prepping three meals and multiple snacks each day, I can consume Huel for breakfast and/or lunch, know I'm meeting my caloric and nutritional needs, and spend the time I do cook making fresh, healthy meals with local ingredients. If meal replacements are replacing dining out or worse from processed foods, it's an improvement for most people.
These discussions don't have to be all or nothing. You don't have to choose between Huel and real food-you can have both. You don't have to go vegan to cut back on meat consumption. You don't have to exercise every day to get benefits.
I've eaten a similar, solid meal replacement product called Mealsquares for years, and I feel the same way. I rarely if ever make it 100% of my diet in any given day, but it simplifies the tricky nutritional and time-scheduling calculus to always have it as an option. And if you have unpredictable GI issues like I do, finding a stable, healthy comfort food can ease that "food-body relationship" as well.
Every once in a while I still enjoy going all-out and cooking new recipes from scratch, not because it's time, money, or health-efficient but just because I do value the emotional and cultural relationship we have with food. Meal replacement products just allow people to opt out of that relationship when they're not interested. Will that increased liberty be to our societal detriment? Who knows.
Nice
How dare you make such a nuanced, reasonable statement! Don’t you know this is the internet where it’s all or nothing and the more extreme the better?!
Really great points that everyone should consider.
I love this but you forgot to use all caps :P
Yes! I think meal replacements have their place, but end goal is making nutritious foods more accessible 👍
This 🎯💯
Big time!
We still have a long way to go , someday humanity will notice that once every human on this planet has a delicious meal a day for every day of his life there will be no reason to fear and instead use their time for science
@@skedaritou8138 That goal will neve be achievable thanks to Capitalism. As long as McDonalds and Coca-Cola make their burgers and drinks cheaper and more convenient, people in low income communities in particular are gonna opt for the number 1 combo over a grilled chicken and veggie bowl that's twice as expensive.
Imagine if every McDonald's was replaced with a health foods store, and it was open late nights. What an amazing world that would be...
I have watched dozens of these videos and they all tick me off because all of them assume people just want a quick weight loss fix or don't have time to eat or cook without ever considering some of us cannot eat even semi solid food because of missing teeth. Cannot afford dentures or implants. I went in a year from my normal weight of 120 lbs for my height to 94 lbs. Trying Huel in hopes it can get me above 100 again if i can maintain 3 shakes a day at 400 calories each. The stuff is nasty nasty so it's very hard but otherwise I will die.
"If you want to be sad about that, too." This line made me chuckle, but I don't just feel sad when I watch your videos. I feel like I'm enjoying another informative deep-dive into an aspect I've not given much thought to. Thank you for producing them.
Thanks for this, we're trying our best!
As a person who struggles with mental illness and her relationship with food as well as having money for food. Hule has been a lifesaver and a crutch i can come back to time and time again. I love cooking and it can never replace that, but without it I think i would be in a much worse position today then I am. Im glad Hule is "not the wrost" and I hope they can keep that title, because without them Life just wouldn't be as accessible for someone like me.
agree - it's a life saver for when I'm just totally out of whack and can't even think about a meal let alone cooking one. I have also suggested Huel for when a friend was in crisis and also couldn't conceptualise eating. It's also beneficial for those with additional physical needs or post hospitalised patients etc.
@@alexandra_viola234 yeah and it's become a way that I can show myself love when I have very little to offer. Some frozen fruit and a cheap blender with some Hulett go a long way when your struggling to get going at all. Sometimes I add food dye or sprinkles low effort. But those small things at times can mean the world to me.
Right? Everything this guy says is incredibly ableist and privileged in every video.
@@Luciferisking512 now I wouldn't go that far he does put a Caviate in the beginning of the video expressing these same values. But I just wanted to share my opinion so people wouldn't go away thinking these products are holistically evil.
@@Luciferisking512he did say it is great for people with a disability, or mental illness. The thing is, the brands don’t market towards these individuals, so that’s why he isn’t talking about them.
Something that annoys me is when people don't realise not _everyone_ is a Foodie. It's something that comes up a lot in Huel reviews. I'm whatever the opposite of a Foodie is. Sure, tasty meals are nice, and I enjoy eating meals with people I love, but it's not a major motivator in my life, and that's _okay_ . On the point at 11:00 - that isn't everyone's ideal world. Again, I like social eating, but not every single meal can practically be a wholesome bonding experience, and I fail to see why the extra time/effort/money is worth it for the meals that aren't.
I'm not willing to invest more than than 10 minutes a day and significantly more disposable income than I have to on food. I get more enjoyment out of life doing other things with my time and money. And again, _that's okay_ .
Personally, about 35-50% of my meals have been Huel for the past two years. It's great:
-takes
That's the thing that gets me about everyone's complaints about meal replacements, like... Yeah, I personally love food. To an extent. But the food I love, the stuff that makes me jump for joy and love the sensation of being a human being? Even the stuff that I love to cook, feel proud of making, and want to share with loved ones? I can't eat that 3 times a day, every day of my life, and expect to survive. If we base our feelings of food off of what feels good, I'd be living off of pizza, crab, cheese, pasta, and eggs. But the fact is that at some point, I'd probably get scurvy or never poop again. Or still be malnourished because I just don't like veggies that much.
Like even in this guy's perfect fantasy land... Do these people not get tired? Of cooking everything from scratch? Once again, three times a day, every day, for your whole life? I do eat because it brings me joy, sometimes. I cook because it brings me joy and can foster a sense of community. But most of the time... Eating is simply a prerequisite to staying alive! The idea that I should get rainbow fuzzy wuzzy happy feels from EVERY meal is just absurd to me. Just hand me a shake sometimes so I can get something green in my body.
This comment is well put together. The dude makes a huge leap of logic at your timestamp, and there's an implication that the rise in popularity of meal replacements would somehow threaten "normal food" which we're wired to seek in the first place anyway? And that people will think less about what they put in their bodies, as if the hundreds of bucks on meal replacement subscriptions don't come from people who have put considerable thought into that?
People rightfully point out it is not, and it will not ever be an all or nothing situation, not as long as we're human.
Spot on! I enjoy food at times, but overall I only eat because I need to stay alive, not because I love all the delicious flavors. This video complete ignores that perspective as well as people who don't like eating due to mental health or physical issues.
@@rasurin You can go on Huel's homepage and see there's nothing as dichotomous as what you suggest, to quote verbatim:
"Huel is the no-prep meal that doesn’t compromise on your health. Less time cooking, more time living."
"Switch to Huel for your weekday lunches and get five hours back in your life. Inexpensive, quick to prepare, and delicious."
This is their marketing, a very direct suggestion to try it for 5 meals a week. Get out of my face with that polarizing junk. I like sharing a meal with my loved ones and I dislike wasting time, I balance both. I'd wager this goes for the majority of people, shocker I know. Life goes on and we as a species are where we are because of automation.
i believe he spent all of his research time on the food itself and not the psychological aspect...
i have become a lot more active since starting college, and especially when i have so much other shit to do, something that just makes my hunger go away without requiring too much thought is what i NEED sometimes.
sustainable and local farming is not something that i expect to see within my lifetime. the current state of grocery shopping and cooking is absolutely a burden on me at times, and many of those times, i end up eating something unhealthier because it's easier. he seems to have ignored that reality. i imagine his ideal is easier when you aren't living paycheck to paycheck....
I tried Huel and Saturo. Here's where it stands to me: sometimes I'm too focused on other things and I get really hungry. At that point I will eat anything, crisps, other random crap, etc... I always place meal replacement packs before snacks in the cupboard. Since it's easy to prepare and generally doesn't taste bad, that becomes my choice for a snack or quick in-between-meetings-lunch.
I AM OUTRAGED AT HOW MUCH YOUR VIDEO ALIGNS WITH MY OPINIONN!!! THANK YOU FOR TAKING SUCH A NUANCED STANCE ON A TECHNOLOGY TREND THAT MAKES PRACTICAL SENSE IN TODAY'S WORLD, YET FORESHADOWS A POSSIBLY BLEAK FUTURE. I MYSELF FIND HUEL A HELPFUL TOOL IN MANAGING MY 1-PERSON HOUSEHOLD AS A STRUGGLING STUDEND. AND I USE IT DESPITE THAT I LOVE COOKING AND CONNECTING WITH THE SOURCE OF MY FOOD, SO MUCH THAT I HAVE GROWN TOMATOES AND PEPPERS FOR MY FAMILY WHEN I HAD THE OPPORTUNITY TO DO SO. KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK AND KEEP IT REAL!
Why so much caps, dude please stop
Calm down now no need to shout lol
@@NachitenRemix 14:53
The caps.....all those caps
completely agree but why are you yelling
edit: nvm just saw 14:53 lol. sponsorblock had skipped it
I have had Huel for breakfast or lunch or both every day pretty much since 2015 when they launched, it was the main thing which helped me come out of my eating disorder and I genuinely don’t think I’d be here without it. It saved me in my depression pits, it saves me on anxious days or agoraphobia ridden days. I work an office job and it helped me stay consistent in my recovery and to this day I stick with it even though I work from home now! I recommend to anyone with mental health struggles even though it’s mainly aimed at busy professionals
Proud of you! day by day! brick by brick :)
Sounds like you need a hug, Great work! remember to mix up some of the normal stuff when you can
I'm also struggling with eating disorders and I always felt like meal replacements would be a life saver for me, but people keep going on and on about how bad they are and how I should just eat a normal, balanced meal.
Your comment confirmed my initial instincts... I think maybe I will give them a chance.
It's great to hear your journey! My best wishes!
@@lrizzardMy Soylent drinks say, ""While not intended to replace every meal, Soylent can replace any meal." Sure Huel and Soylent aren't ideal, perfect meals, but toss just a couple in every now and again in between eating mostly healthy, real food. Then, their negative aspects become a blip in your personal health radar, but they still make it easier for you to get your meals in.
I keep it to a rare few x a month, but if I'm ever too lazy to prepare food & don't want to $ on delivery, I just pop open a Soylent. Sure, i don't feel as satiated and I can tell my "gut" isn't the same later on or the next day, but it's categorically better than eating either nothing or pure junk food/snacks.
@@lrizzard well, then the real question is if you would eat this "normal, balanced meal" if you dont use meal replacements. or, to put it differently, how healthy your average meals are. are they perfectly balanced, very varied, made with a lot of veggies and you avoid unhealthy things like highly processed foods, animal fat and fried foods? if so then yeah, obviously thats healthier. but who even eats like that? if we compare meal replacements to some abstract ideal diet then yea, ofc they gonna loose. but if we compare them to actual peoples diets then a lot of time they will be healthier than their "normal meals". and if you add health issues to it, for me its obvious that its at leat worth a try. if those powders improve your condition then thats a huge improvement and a much better argument for what diet to choose than "well, technically you could eat a bowl of salad and some hummus instead (but you wont)". and ofc you could eat both, or use the powders in such a way that you cook a nice healthy meal when you feel like it and have the meal replacement when you dont have time or energy.
As a health care worker I do not have time to eat healthy consistently. I started with Soylent all the way back in 2013 and it's impacted my life for the better. Today meal replacements are a staple for me. They will never take away a healthy balenced home cook meal but it's preventing me from skipping meals, or eating junk, unhealthy over processed food.
Meal replacements may not be perfect, but in our current society, they can support our busy lifestyles. I will forever be grateful to Soylent for paving the way for other companies to join in! The more competition the better! I'll continue to recommend them to anyone as a alternative or substitute to an unhealthy meal.
I liked Huel for my office job. Basically, it replaced my lunch meal which would either be terrible canteen food or terrible supermarket food (at 2x the price of huel).
But I’d never use it when I meal prepped and immediately dropped it when I started working from home.
I think that’s actually a decent use case. As a meal to replace meals that are purely functional and serve no joy. But as a wholesale replacement, that’s just sad.
I always keep extra Soylent in my desk.
That's IT really a joyless meal. There should be NO joyless meals EVER. If you come to all your meals hungry then 3x times a day you will be doing something you have been looking forward to, something fantastic and fun and relaxing and you will be rewarding your body and boosting your health.
Yup that's what I'm using it for too: office days. I prefer eating a warm breakfast in the morning, but on days I work in the office, I just don't have that kind of time. Instead, I just mix in the Huel powder and head out (takes like 5 min tops). If I'm only taking it like 2-3 times a week, I think it's fine. Plus, it uses less dishes overall, which saves on water and personal time 👍🏽.
@1050cc - It is not a joyless meal. I use Huel shakes for breakfast ~4-5 times a week, they are quite tasty and enjoyable. More importantly they are fast and I can make them the night before - they replaced cereal for me on the days I have to work and don't have time to prepare a real breakfast. Way less added sugar and way more protein than I was getting before at breakfast.
@@1050cc I have issues with repetition. Doing something, even eating, multiple times a day, everyday is just laborious. Soylent ensures I don't skip meals. Mixing it with coffee and cocoa, then stirring just right makes it nice, light and frothy.
I have IBS, and just having huel for lunch at work has saved me a lot of hassle and stress. It being low Fodmap, affordable and quick to prepare is pretty great.
I’ve been using Huel for over a year now. As a vegetarian who is trying to get more protein in my diet, it’s kinda hard to hit over 100g of protein each day. The Huel Black Edition helps this out so much. I have for breakfast probably 3 times a week. It has 400 calories with 40 grams of protein and I usually have that with a fruit or something. It’s really a great way to jumpstart my protein for the day. I still do eggs, overnight oats, or something else for breakfast on other days cause you gotta change it up. I have tried all their other products and honestly they all taste awful. Pouring water into a bowl and microwaving some stale rice and quinoa does not taste good. Get your food normally and every now and then do the Huel Black Edition for breakfast.
I think a bigger topic is that alll these companies use the term “Natural Flavors” in their ingredients but I believe that should be illegal. What the heck does Natural Flavors mean? Why is that in the ingredients portion and why don’t they have to write out the exact natural flavor that they are using? I think it’s a larger topic to discuss.
The term “natural flavors” isn’t necessarily because they are trying to be shady or hide something, it’s also so that other companies can’t just look at the ingredients list and copy the product completely
@@raeganj6744 I think it needs to be more transparent. It could literally mean anything.
@@thesailboatking yeah I agree with that, I was just saying that it doesn’t mean that there’s bad stuff in it, it’s more for protecting trade secrets
I just do not buy the "less expensive" thing.
I work in the food science industry so I have some insight to the natural flavors claim you are questioning. Flavor houses are a big industry in industrial food and they basically breakdown the chemical compounds of food because certain compounds taste like certain foods people want the flavor of. So eventhough they aren't getting say a strawberry flavor from a real strawberry, the chemical compound that tastes like it can be found and utilized from other natural sources. If companies just listed a chemical flavor compound on a package it would just scare people. That's why it's pretty standard to just see natural flavor listed on packaging.
Real food is an experience for all the senses: taste, smell, mouth feel, and even the sounds of cooking and crunching a fresh carrot. That's something Huel can never replace. But as so many other commenters have said, powdered food does have its place, and is better than going without any nutrition at all.
i think there are a lot of people out there that don’t really care about any of that
@@ryandodd8941 Maybe most. And that's sad. I remember I hated spinach because I was raised where it only comes in a can. You get that sickly yellow-green juice with it and it's limp and unappetizing. When I first saw spinach in a market and someone told me that those leaves were spinach, I thought they were pulling my leg. I had no idea. I think a lot of people, because of how they were raised -- limited access, parents poor cooks or cooked a very narrow diet, etc. -- also have no idea how good and interesting food can be. And not because they've been there, done that. Though they may think they have. But because they haven't.
@@ryandodd8941 I do care about that, a LOT. For about 10% of the time. The rest of the time I'm just glad I got the executive skills that day to make a sandwich, or a bowl of cereal.
As a person who used to reach for snacks between meals, Huel has been a life saver to help me eat healthier and not more expensive. Not to mention it’s a good workout drink.
I LOVE cooking, eating, and sharing meals with people. On the other hand, I am often rushed in the mornings and dont like eating microwave meals. So Huel has been a time-saving game changer for me. I drink about 5 Huel shakes per week, for various breakfasts and lunches. Even replacing some meals is very helpful to me. Having Huel at home also means i have a quick, easy snack at home and dont turn to junky snack food as easily.
I love the Huel Hot&Savory line. It’s my go-to most days. While I know how to cook and do sometimes, the honest truth is that I want to spend my time doing other things. There is no other solution to eat healthy and less expensive than this without spending a lot of time cooking, so that’s what I do.
I've been using Huel for about 3-4 years now. I'm a very fussy eater and don't really eat a balanced diet. I started drinking huel over lockdown as being stuck at home made me very aware of what I was eating daily. I wanted something healthy I could use to fill me up. Huel now makes me feel really good and I feel a much heathier with it. I don't get heart burn any more which is a plus. I drink 2 a day during the week while at work. At the Weekends have 'normal' and 'normal' food for dinner each night. Good stuff aside, it can get very boring and dull drinking it 10 times a week. But it does make the 'normal' food I eat so much nicer. I think of it as part medicine just something that keeps me healthy. Its not for everyone, but it works great for me.
You have it for both your lunch and dinner during the week?
@@craigharkins4669 breakfast and lunch. I was doing that mostly, but more recently it's been harder to want to have the second one so I've replaced my second one of the day with fruit. This usually keeps me full till dinner.
Works differently for different people, just got to find how it works for you, if it does at all.
I'm glad to see this because I'm just about to try it for the exact same reason. Very fussy eater, also have allergies that restrict some healthy options... I'm hoping for a healthy lunch replacement that will help me avoid snacking.
I hate consuming Huel myself, but I think it's an awesome product and company from what I've seen. It's as you say, it's a bandaid solution, but in a world where we're suffering from a million minor cuts, quality bandaids can be pretty helpful.
I’ve been eating/drinking HUEL for almost 4 years.
I’m now down 30 pounds, off blood pressure meds. Dr. loves all my labs and I love the taste.
I’m not saying that’s due to anything magical about HUEL itself probably more about going plant-based, which HUEL is.
I also hate cooking and the cleanup after.
Don't think it's plant based. Plant based is not good and your claim will lead people to lack nutrients. We aren't plant based animals we need meat and plants, with meat being the main course or what makes up the meal, sort of like spaghetti
A very good argument that supports incorporating huel in your diet is that most people have absolutely no idea how a balanced diet should look like. They don't consult health professionals and simply buy stuff that they like, and that they THINK is healthy. As a result, a huge number of people are deficient in various minerals like magnesium, iodine or calcium. Replacing 20-40% of your daily calorie intake with huel basically assures that those deficiencies won't progress to the point of becoming serious, even if your diet is lacking.
the other problem too is health professionals can be expensive to access. There's a lot of misinformation out there about nutrition. Doctors are misguided at times making general statements that are barely true, and millenials (women and people socialised as female growing up) have a really shitty relationship with macronutrients. All or nothing statements really damage this too e.g. kale is a superfood, and butter is full of saturated fats, therefore to be healthy we should eat a whole kale every day and never touch butter again?! Info is overwhelming for a lot of us who just want enough energy to get through the day. I'd love to see more govt supported programs for free nutrition assistance etc
The real things to watch out for with meal replacement shakes and protein powders:
1. The purity rating- how well the product has performed on tests for things like heavy metals which can be quite high depending on sourcing or how the different ingredients are processed.
2. I love protein shakes as an easy breakfast item that helps me get way better nutrition than something like toaster waffles, which a lot of people will eat without considering how little nutritional value that food really has for them. At least with a meal replacement shake, you have enough protein and maybe some other essential nutrients like a multivitamin in shake form- without lots of sugar or sodium. Those two are huge concerns for me, and protein shakes are EXCELLENT at providing an option that has way, way less sugar and salt than most of the other convenience foods people are eating regularly. However, you need to pay attention to what sweeteners are being used in the product. A lot of shakes use things like erythritol, sucralose, stevia, etc. You wanna limit your intake of these things long term. Erythritol has been linked in studies to an increase in blood clots, which can lead to adverse health events like stroke and heart attack. Sucralose was recently found to cause DNA damage, which is not great because that can increase your risk for some cancers. Stevia and monk fruit sugar replacers can contain added erythritol, and stevia has been linked to cancer when consumed in large quantities. A lot of other artificial sweeteners, like aspartame, are known carcinogens and known neuro-toxins. It is worth being very discriminating in which meal replacement brands you decide to use for all of these reasons.
I'm a Chef, my profession has notoriously bad nutrition. Through a combination of lack of time, and the cost to cook on shift most end up with some chips or bread (although this is changing). Huel was a game changer for me. In spite of using supplements my diet had become deficient and after a few months on huel my joint pain eased and I had more energy and focus. My mood improved, as I had started to actually feed my body instead of just fueling it. I think it works well in the western diet as a replacement for breakfast or lunch, which for most people are nutritionally deficient meals.
i figure a chef is the absolute last person who would do huel but i learned better today!
@@yakovhadash Kitchen crew have the worst diets, because they're too busy shoving food out the door as quickly as humanly possible (or faster) to eat. There's a lot of truth behind the trope of kitchen staff all looking like malnourished strung-out roadies hunched over a garbage can shoveling half an appetizer plate down their throats during rare and fleeting lulls between customer waves.
Chef here also, at work I eat bread and fruit. At home it's a peanut butter sandwich or healthy cereal to keep me alive. After cooking all day I'm not cooking anything.
@@yakovhadash the cobbler's children walk barefoot, this saying exists for a reason, doctors neglect their health, psychologists are often fucked up, etc
My husband eats mostly Huel and says he thinks it is helping a joint/tendon injury heal quicker too.
I never liked the idea of using meal replacements instead of eating proper meals.
I totally agree with you.
If you look closely at the ingredients, you can see how ultra processed are meal replacements including huels.
It makes me sad that influencers on TH-cam have endorsed it without knowing that it can be bad for our health and bodies in the long run.
You need proper fruits , vegetables, grains and meat for a good health.
Cooking food has therapeutic effect on you, so it's good for mental health too.
These big companies use celebrities and influencer to make people fool.
They are not cheap either.
Please don't fall for them.
Thank you
I was working as on site IT support for a Trading company, the day to day was a huge mess with an excessive level of stress. Things had to be solved yesterday.
In that enviroment, a healthy lunch was a far fetched dream. We ate whatever we could as fast as we could so we could be back on the front lines as soon as we could.
Huel, was a life saver for many of us, a colleague started with it and spread like a wildfire in our department. We all very much hated the taste of it, but at least it kept us going in a quick way and we could use the extra time to relax a bit more instead of shoving food in our facehole as quickly as possible.
So while I do understand the concerns of meal replacements, Huel was the only reason I didn't destroyed my health during those years. It was a positive thing for that time in my life. Plus their bag shelf life is surprisingly long too.
I lead a much quieter life now where I can have a proper well prepared meal during lunch and Huel isn't part of my daily life anymore but every now and then when I need food in body and I only have 5-10 min for it, I still keep a pack of Huel around for these few occasions.
Nice, an actual human
Sounds like you need a union more than meal replacements.
@@chrisowens4550 no unions, it was in Europe and we were all external contractors. Closest thing ever to modern corporate slavery, the pay is relatively high but it wasn't worth burning ourselves like this.
I use this for 7 years now. And used it very often as my only meals. Especially when I was in my era of "malnourishment", It was a game changer. I don't see how can anyone be against this, especially knowing it has all the vitamins and minerals you need which is very difficult to do even if you do the most healthy food. Now of course at some point you want real cooked food and it gets difficult to want to drink only that. I dont think anyone wants powder instead of a real delicious food, but clearly this is great.
As someone who relies on meal drinks to fill the gaps bc of Gastroparesis (and I know a lot of others who rely on them more than I do) I'm glad that there are affordable options, especially for plant-based, as I have dietary restrictions on top of the GP. I would love to be able to eat and be nourished from whole foods if I could, it's what we've evolved millions of years to eat, it's just better for us. I miss salad. Cooking has also always been an issue for me because of executive dysfunction and fatigue. I imagine the more social aspect of it could turn into "Only rich people can eat tasty, real food bc the working class is too busy, overworked, underpaid, etc"
Agree with you on that. These products are great, but sometimes I'm also getting the vibes of the possibility of rich people directing poor people towards these foods, and we end up declared 'undeserving of fresh unprocessed food' by them on the basis of making little money. Probably they need to be marketed differently tbh. These are ideal products for people with illness and disability, but it's kinda sad to see otherwise healthy people having no time to prepare food bc they need to grind for the shareholders.
Kind of @@Vizivirag , today you can also become a shareholder easly, about the rich making you eat that, could only be the case for urban areas on rural areas the prices will regulate the market by exporting more, wich is kind of the situation now but some politics are in the way and that is the problem I most probably can not sell you my mangos at 5 cents or less because some politician thinks i should be taxed 30 cents and so on and so on
I am a medical student with chronic illness and it has been lifesaving to have meal replacement shakes for both my patients and myself. I don’t think I’d be able to maintain weight without these products. I do kind of supplement this with my own concoctions for meals, like having all my greens at once in a really bad smoothy.
Meal replacement definitely have their place. I remember trying it in college when they hadn’t solved the satiety problem yet and I saved a lot of money on it, even thought I felt hungry all the time. If you have depression too, this makes it pretty easy to get some nutrition and calories in you (maybe because the flavor is so neutral). I tried huel and the nutty aftertaste is not great. Made me miss Soylent, huel’s packaging is WAY better.
LOVE YOUR VIDEOS! 😆Joke aside, I live in Eastern Europe so reality for us still a lot different. But I love how you always find the exact topic to keep the consumerist pulse in check. May we never stop thinking about what we consume in every sense of the word.
YOU WANTED IT, SO HERE IS MY ALL CAPS OPINION! YOU GUYS ARE GREAT AND DOING AWESOME WORK! KEEP IT UP! THANK YOU!!
Huel is great as an OCCASIONAL meal replacement. I've bought a few bags of the "Hot and Savory" stuff that basically equated to mac and cheese and quinoa and it is fantastic as a back-up meal. I compare it to stocking your freezer full of microwavable meals that are more than likely filled to the brim with sodium and just not that healthy. I know how to cook my own meals and regularly meal prep but sometimes you just don't want to cook anything and their "mac and cheese" that is ready in about 5 minutes is filling, seems to be quite healthy, and its cheap! The shelf life is fantastic too. The powder protein shakes don't really do it for me. I want to chew my food, not drink it.
I came to this video prepared to call you out but I think you tackled this really well. I have an ED that makes it very difficult to eat at times and having a stock of soylent and Jimmy Joy around is crucial for me. I'm so grateful options like this exist for people like me. Or people like my sibling who naturally can't get enough calories because their high metabolism and drinks like ensure are just so full of sugar. It's nice to have a low sugar option that is still high cal for them to consume. However, the goal really should be making food more accessible. These meal replacers are not that cheap compared to actual food but we need to do more to make real food accessible to more people. Still, to the naysayers in the comments, products like this really are great for people like me and have more of a place in the mainstream too (when is the last time sat down to eat a proper breakfast?). But it can be a cure all.
Hey thanks for sharing this perspective. We can research these subjects but how individuals use a product like this is always going to add insight we can't find otherwise. ❤
Sorry about your ED. I hope things start looking up for you
Jimmy joy holller!
@@FutureProofTV I think your videos could go a long way by not making generalizations or mass assumptions about how people live their lives. People take meal replacements for a variety of reasons to enjoy some people who simply don't get enjoyment from eating food.
I work at 6 a.m. so I get up at 4 a.m. to get a proper breakfast. You just have to pick your priorities and act accordingly.
I watched this video while eating my dinner of a homemade Chipotle-style bowl: homemade carnitas, homemade hot sauce and homemade verde sauce with rice, beans and sour cream. The quality of the Chipotle restaurants near me has been declining so I got fed up and made my own! I'm fortunate enough to have time to cook and the 2nd best part (after eating what I made) is sharing with friends. We can never replace cooking, for nutritional and social reasons.
I still find it funny that soylent is named for soylent green. Something from a dystopian movie where it was made from people
Thank you! I was so surprised that he didn't mention the irony of the company naming itself Soylent! I looked for other comments that mentioned Soylent Green and only found yours and one other. LOL! "It's people! It's people!"
@@vbrown6445 It definitely helps (or doesn't help, depending on how you look at it) that Gen Z and Alpha and even a lot of millennials don't know about the reference because the movie's old. I had to Google it back when Soylent was brand new because I was like 17 at the time and hadn't heard of the movie. I don't even remember what it's called lol
@saltiestsiren I mean I'm a millennial but I know the movie refrance from futurama
Soylent Green was only one of the "flavours" - the others were Soylent Yellow and Soylent Red. They were just made from soy and lentils (hence the name: soy-lent!)
this is not a coincidence, they really were inspired by the movie... i'm not sure if they are either dense or evil geniuses
The idea that someone would call a food replacement Soylent was incredibly macabre in my opinion when you consider the 1973 film Soylent Green (a dystopian movie about overpopulation, resulting in food shortages and government encouraged suicide), in which a government food replacement called Soylent Green was discovered at the end of the movie to be made from human bodies.
100% agree. My brain stopped for a few seconds when I saw "Soylent" as the brand name for a food replacement. It appears no one on the founding team likes 1970's thriller movies. Too dark and twisted for me to ever try those products.
@@pogoshinysearch1239 Oh, they were well aware of the source material the name was taken from. It was chosen intentionally (and somewhat tongue-in-cheek) as a nerdy throwback to that story/film.
You successfully identified the joke
And the movie is set in 2022.
They even had a line of T-Shirts with the tag line that was something like "as good as humanly possible!" . . . But the name was chosen based more on the novel where there was many different versions of nutritional wafer and only Soylent green was people.
Soylents original plan was to engineer algae or yeasts to create the protein people need, but it ended up just being a basic nutritional beverage. Though these days there are products like Whey Forward which is a vegan whey protein (though, not made from whey) made by a similar process to what the founders of Soylent had envisioned.
I've had to be on food replacements and tubed foods for the past 4 weeks post op esophageal and stomach surgery. Most pharmaceutical brands have dairy. I'm lactose intolerant. I appreciate there being an option.
I like how you touched on the disconnect between processed powders and where the food actually comes from. So many people have no idea about actual farm/food production.
OPINION! OPINION! OPINION! I think it would benefit everyone (who can) to learn how to actually grow something fresh and edible. And no, you don't need land to do it. It can be as simple as upcycling that plastic food tray that DoorDash just delivered, and use it to grow microgreens in your kitchen.
As someone struggling with mental health and often falling way short of my minimum daily nutrition target, the idea of an easy complete nutritious meal that requires zero thinking or preparation time is appealing for the days when a freezer meal is too hard.
I've been replacing about a quarter of my meals recently with plant-based protein powder for both cost and protein-deficiency reasons, so this actually has convinced me to buy Huel since it at least has more nutrients.
Edit: I also plan to stop by a grocery store this evening to pick up more fresh vegetables and fruit, though. The goal is for this to replace the crap I end up picking up for lunch at work or when my refrigerator's getting a little bare. I really don't like pre-packaged frozen or canned vegetables (there's always bad bits in it that I can cut out easier when purchased fresh) so when I run out of vegetables in the middle of a week, I end up buying a lot from restaurants. I'm going to try Huel out to see if it works better as a holdover food
I've been using Huel as a replacement for lunch, while at work for a while now and I'm quite enjoying it, and I like the taste(tastes like chocolate oatmeal), but I can see why people wouldn't like it.
you got me to try it , chocolate sounds good
Huel stuff is handy for me, since I'm disabled. I can get two meals a day, five days a week. That leaves two days a week and breakfasts to take care of. Let's say that I can take care of breakfast. That means if I can't get out of bed except to waddle painfully to the bathroom.
To me, the Huel meals can start making sense, especially since I have an electric kettle and just sit in pain on the chair while waiting for water to boil.
I used huel for about a year as a bandaid solution to my terrible budgeting so there'd always be food when I'd inevitably spend too much money and couldn't afford groceries for a week til I got paid
You're taking responsibility while other commenters are making excuses. I like that.
Tbh, I never saw Huel as this replacement for every meal, but for, like you alluded to, the meals where you don’t have a lot of time to prepare (e.g. breakfast and lunch). There’s something really satisfying in knowing that I’m getting a complete meal in where I don’t have to worry about tracking calories or wondering if I’m hitting my nutritional requirements, can easily consume within 10 minutes and then go about my day.
When I was using Huel, it ironically, made me enjoy cooking more because those were two meals I didn’t have to worry about preparing and I could just focus on dinner.
While the founder of Soylent, Rob Rhinehart, is kinda of a strange dude, and his whole schtick feels very “new age, Silicon Valley, unnecessary optimization” culture, he did say something I found super poignant in an interview with Motherboard over 10 years ago that sort of put Soylent on the radar.
“It’s really nice to be secure in something as important as health and diet. And then we can enjoy this stuff because we want to, not because we have to.”
It’s incredible how the world is broken and the system is so compromised to make us buy intensely
Nobody is making you buy meal replacements bro
@@floppademon1506 thanks
@@floppademon1506except that meal replacements or a solution sold by capitalism for the problems caused by capitalism
@@Nanook128not really a problem, cooking isn't that expensive and it isn't the most time consuming either
@@floppademon1506 cooking most definitely takes more time than literally mixing power and water together. Also the act of consuming your meal take significantly more time for most types of food compared to meal replacement shakes like what is being discussed here.
As someone with bad sensory issues especially related to food from my Autism, having something that could even just knock one meal out of the day so I don’t have to think about it would help me mentally so much. Something consistent, easy to make, and tastes and smells decent/good.
I like Huel, its my lunch plan for today. I'm a college student, so it is the best balance of cheap and healthy that I can manage on campus. I do not have the time to prepare meals to take, and I love that I can drink my huel in class, instead of trying to wolf down something expensive from a food truck or super unhealthy from a vending machine in 15 minutes in between classes.
I like the idea of meal replacements for those days I can't be bothered with food. There are days I just don't feel like eating at all, like I don't fancy any meal, nothing seems tasty, but I'm sill hungry. I feel like those powders would come handy for such cases but I wouldn't use them regularly.
I completely agree that the quality and the social side to food, cooking and eating it, are important. I was convinced when I saw that a popular local "meat" (párizsi) had bubbles in it!
But I've also been eating (drinking?) huel a couple of times a week for a few years now. I believe it is a much easier and faster way to get a healthy meal than almost anything else.
Buy, cook and enjoy local foods when you can. But at other times, I think huel is far better overall than other near instant alternatives (pizza, sarnie, burger, noodles etc.)
It's a very simple question of "what's the alternative". People (like myself) who would choose Huel for a meal would not otherwise cook ourself a hearty vegan curry for that particular meal. We would eat ramen. Or get some pastry from the corner shop. Which would be a) more expensive b) way worse for our health. So it has its place. I don't think anyome at Huel really believes people would switch to Huel for most of their meals. They know full well that the reason they can get away with shipping only if you pick at least three bags of the stuff is because it has a good shelf life. So even if you ever only use it to replace a quick meal that would otherwise be by default worse for you and your purse, it's still a win for you and for them. Likely the planet too. I don't have a real beef with this solution.
I use Huel Black Edition as my breakfast daily. It’s much better than what I was eating for breakfast, and it’s much faster than what I should be eating (which I tried but couldn’t sustain because it took too long each day).
I’m only fairly confident I’m not eating cake batter for breakfast daily, but I’ll never know for sure.
This helped keep me going while I was recovering from a serious binge eating disorder. Huel is worth every penny.
How did Huel help with your BED? I am struggling too, so curious
@@chloephelps2602 It helped me keep track of my intake, and it also allowed me to pre-portion for on the go. I've lived car free my whole life, so I needed something that I could stash easily on my moped. Been doing it for 7 months now.
As a physician, I would strongly advise AGAINST more than 1 liquid meal replacement per day. I have had several patients who went on meal replacements for all their daily meals and almost all of them developed moderate to serious gastrointestinal issues. Our intestines and stomach were designed and intended to break down solid mass to extract nutrients. When you stop eating solid food, the intestines no longer need to work much to absorb nutrients from what we eat. They become weak and effectively atrophy. Your intestines can eventually lose the ability to properly absorb nutrients, causing bouts of severe diarrhea, constipation and trouble eating in general. It took my patients around 2 months of VERY slowly eating solid food again in very small quantities before they mostly returned to normal (though some still have persistent GI issues after half a year.)
Theyve been around for decades. I used Complan to supplement my nutrition intake during cancer treatment. I used old hospital recipes from the facility where my parents worked and incorporated it into puddings and desserts too. I needed 6000 calories a day during my treatment. I now sneak it into my mum's food as she's very unwell and its keeping her weight stable.
I’m big fan of Huel. Black edition for breakfast as I start work early and have it on my way to work. Pretty healthy and easy, then eat more substantial meals the rest of the day.
As somebody stuggling with disordered eating I'd love to never have to eat again in my life. It's just so annoying. So compared to my regular eating habits these kind of shakes are pretty healthy and they have helped me a lot getting a more stable intake of nutrients. Though in the end you're totally right, eating proper food would be the single best and healthiest option
I don't understand this type of videos: a thumbnail with "Do not buy" Huel products + a title "the truth about meal replacements" and yet it is only an opiniated video with no science-based facts explaining why these products are bad (according to the author of the video). Blank statements like "let's face it, corporations probably don't have your best interest in mind" are just here to persuade you that the product is bad without facts to actually make a point. Yes it's a business but why couldn't a business bring a product that is also good for the consumers? Also, it's not like these products are meant to be used 5 times a day forever. I believe they have a place for their target audience. I typically cook all my meals with whole foods but the Huel shakes help me when I am travelling for a week or from time to time when I have a busy day and don't want to rely on junk food out of lack of time (or when I get a bit lazy which can also happen :-)) My feeling after watching this is that this was a click-bait video
I hope this guy gets more dislikes for the wasted time he's put everyone through lol
I’m broke as shit and I have to survive on soup cans and Huel to even have a full diet everyday. When I cook, I cook the cheapest and healthiest food I’ve researched a billgion times and it astounds me how many people just say to have a full Huel diet. I love the brand and the food, but it isn’t food food. Tasty and so fucking helpful? Hell yes. Real food that leads to a happy diet and is More sustainable for your life? Fuck no. Especially if you working out constantly. No, food won’t be replaced and that shouldn’t be the intend of Huel. It’s amazing when you can’t afford the time or price to eat full cooked meals everyday
I didn't realize Huel was doing actual food now. Not sure how it tastes but $/calories they're coming in way cheaper than other backpacking freeze dried meals like Mountain House or Peak. Even if you wanted to add some freeze dried chicken to their meals, still cheaper.
All I’m getting is dystopian corporate. Add more fiber filler to shave cost of protein. Maximum deskill humans from cooking so they’re reliant on one company for all their food (nestle and Unilever and Kraft and 95% of everything in the supermarket is all owned by the same handful of corporates who own each other anyway). Time not spent cooking can be spent working. A product so removed from the source you can’t even go “that farming practice is unethical” because 1000s of farms involved.
I've tried Huel for some time. imo a large issue is that while it is technically sufficient, it wasn't satiating or satisfying for me (taste and texture wise). A big part of food is enjoying the taste and texture; huel/soylent/etc cannot really address those aspects.
Some people with low appetite just wanna get it done with
Maybe if you added some instant mashed potato, but not enough that you couldn't drink it. If you don't mind eating it with a spoon or fork, you could even do that and be even more satisfying. Potatoes are one of the most satiating foods available. Instant mashed potatoes are very convenient. I get them from Whole Foods and Sprouts to avoid preservatives, etc. The one from Sprouts is organic!
Huel gets me through the work hours. Lets me eat while working and spend that saved time with my family instead of at lunch. But at home, real food wins every time. The downside is all that fiber makes me crazy gassy. TMI, I know, but its a valid concern for people who dont live alone.
I have both poor mental health and bad mobility, to the point where cooking is a real challenge at times. The savoury Huels allow me to create a meal easily without falling back to other easy, but not necessarily healthy foods. So I certainly think they have their place. And the more people who eat them, the more affordable and available they become for people like me. I can see them being a practical solution for many peoples' problems. But as with everything, I do think they need to be taken in moderation.
Without huel: must cook every meal, cooking is a chore, dread cooking and eating.
With huel: cooking is a fun and optional daily activity that i look forward to.
I don't believe for a second that you don't think those videos wouldn't perform well on your channel. Otherwise, print them behind a paywall wouldn't entice anybody to join your Patreon. Just be honest
The way the algorithm works it’s possible they wouldn’t.
I've been taking Huel as my last meal (early dinner) most days for the past few weeks, especially before going to a workout. It has been a great way to get a lot of protein before a workout, make me feel satiated, and it is super convenient. Plus, it just happens to cost about $2 a meal. As long it doesn't make me feel unwell, I will continue to "eat" it. Also, it has helped me not eat too much for dinner, which I used to do, so it is also helping me not gain more weight and avoids the issue of having trouble sleeping due to being too full. I understand what you mean when you say we can't really tell what goes into making Huel (and other products like Soylent), but that can be said about any food that isn't cooked from scratch at home, and even then, you have no idea what pesticides and hormones were used, unless you go all organic, which is also not sustainable globally and extremely expensive. The convenience of a meal replacement like Huel is too great to not take advantage of.
At some point I’ve come to the understanding that this channel is the definition of DOOM SCROLLING.
Here's my argument against:
Too much soy is a real problem. It causes a lot of hormonal issues for everyone and cancer risk in women.
And, years ago, my boyfriend was hit by a car and had his jaw repaired. One of the most important parts of his recovery after his jaw healed was to use the muscles in his jaw, i.e. eating normally, to preserve the strength of the muscles and keep as much bone density as possible. That is so important.
I've been drinking huel shakes for almost two years now. It's part of my work week meal planning so I can have one meal a day that takes minimum effort. I meal prep on my weekends, creating two sets of meals for lunch and dinner, and use Huel for my breakfast by making it before I go to bed and drinking it just after getting dressed before going to work, mostly because breakfast meal preps dont hold well and if I go back to having to eating overnight oatmeal for breakfast again I will actually snap. That and I dont have a lot of time to actually eat it. It's cheap, it's quick to consume, it's not actively killing me, suits my work schedule, and it's consistent nutritional qualities gives me a foundation to build my other meals around. There are a plenty of worse things and plenty of better things to do for breakfast, but I pay about two dollars a portion for something vaguely in the ballpark of healthy that suits my needs and I get to have something that isnt instant or overnight oatmeal for breakfast five days of the week.
On my weekends though, I will have literally anything else before I have a plain huel shake. Making it with ice and some fruit in a blender (making it a better shake, essentially) is way better than than just adding water and shaking it if the flavor of the powder is something palatable with fruit flavors, like banana or vanilla. It just doesnt sit as well in the fridge when made that way.
Would I recommend it to just anyone? Probably not. But if you're eating something processed anyways like a sugary breakfast cereal, a sandwich or bagel from the coffee place you hit before work, or a frozen breakfast sandwich before running out the door because a proper breakfast isnt an option for you, Huel is *probably* cheaper in the long run and is most likely healthier. It would make for a better meal than whatever else you would if you're a busy person, so it does actually hit one of its most important selling points, but I aint gonna pretend it's a luxurious experience. It's calories, it goes down the hatch without a fuss, and I instead focus on making the other meals in my life more enjoyable. It suits my needs, and so I pay money for it. 7 out of 10. Better than overnight oats.
I've had Huel for breakfast and lunch for over 3 years now. It saves me an incredible amount of time and money compared to eating out or buying a crappy sandwich at the corner store every day. I still cook a proper dinner every day, which I wouldn't have the energy or time to do if I also had to cook lunch every day.
I had jaw surgery a while back-- why someone would willingly opt for meal replacement goo is beyond me. It's needed for medical reasons of course!-- but as a trend it's like.... why...?
Great amount of protein, vegetarian, dont feel like cooking. I mix mine with chocolate syrup a bit and mine comes out like chocolate milk.
It replaces useless bad meals for me. No more fast food on the road or meal deals in the office. But never actual proper meals to be enjoyed.
@@ARYouCool Not just vegetarian- they're vegan compatible, as long as you don't add dairy milk, etc.
As you might guess...
I'm actually vegan. lol
Tastes good, can 'eat' with one hand. Not bogged down and exhausted from digestive processes as much. Can grab and go, no mess. Most importantly, can continue gaming/coding/enjoying life without having to waste 30 mins or an hour preparing food and sitting down and slowing munching it. I already do one meal a day diet because I dont want to waste time on breakfast and lunch, and if I can just drink my dinner I spend less than 5 mins a day on meal prep and downtime from eating.
I'd ask the same to the opposite group! I struggle to wrap my head around why people find joy in shoving large chunks of food matter into their mouths, crush it for an extended amount of time until it's drenched in saliva and then swallow the crushed goo to sit heavily in their stomachs until it's digested enough to start making its way through your intestines. And even turn it into a social event where they inform each other of how pleasurable the experience is?? like how?? I think every step is uncomfortable and gross 😭
But then again, I guess it just means people experience food differently! I'm happy enough with a flavored meal replacement drink, but if I was forced to drink it like you were I'm sure the experience would be a lot more sour.
Yes !! I was waiting for this one !! 🔥 I’ve been eating like 80% Huel for the last 6 months, I’ve never felt so great physically, it’s really great and allows me to actually have time to cool an appetizing dinner
Get therapy that’s not a normal thing to say I swear it’s like this comment section is 80% anorexic people. I don’t mean this to insult you. You really need therapy. Eating like this can cause diabetes it’s not healthy
I am SO NEEDING this information!!
You did already say it, but i can speak up as someone with both intestinal issues and mental illness that meal replacements can be a life saver. They taste fine and you can drink them at times you can't eat anything else, preventing your hunger urge from dying away and minimizing weight loss
This is the moment Huel became Heisenberg
Heisenhuel
My family is very much into fitness and bodybuilding and Huel black has been a godsend. It’s so much more healthy than other protein powders, and it supplements our intake of greens. We all have busy lives working in the legal and medical fields and there isn’t always time to make breakfast or dinner and this helps us from missing a meal due to work.
People need to remember these are supplements, even if marketed as meal replacements. It’s still important to eat real foods, but these have their place to support a healthy diet.
I have been breakfasting on Huel shakes for 3 months now, and it saves me from the 100% carbohydrate and 0% fibre "meal" I would otherwise be eating if Huel weren't in my cupboard. Also my stool improved like magic, since I have Huel once (or occasionally 2 times) a day - for me, it's been a total hit :)
Totally, huel is 1000% better than American breakfast.
It’s works great for truck drivers. I can wake up at a rest area and have a ready made meal (ready-to-drink version) drive for a bit, then stop for lunch. Or, sometimes we get stuck parking in the evening with no food options available. Yes we have small fridge & a microwave, but it’s nice to just grab & drink.
I just have to write it: "Soylent Green is People!" (kudos to those who get the reference)
Yes. Just commented on the one other person who mentioned Soylent Green in their comment. I can't believe he missed an opportunity to point out the irony. I know the movie is old, but it came out before I was born, and I still know the reference. "It's people!"
It's not exactly an obscure reference, anyone that's glanced anything to do with science fiction probably knows it.
I WANT TO ARGUE WITH SOMEONE ABOUT HOW INTERESTING I FOUND THIS VIDEO. KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK.
The kitchen is sensory hell for me, and I hate going in there for anything. I've never tried meal replacement stuff, but sometimes it really does sound enticing.
it's important to know that whole foods cannot be replaced and deliver the same nutrition. the big one to pay attention to is fibre. consuming whole, long, stringy fibre is important to digestion and how nutrients get in and waste gets out. turning fibre into power (including smoothies) removes a significant part of what fibres job is when it's consumed.
powders and smoothies can never replace whole foods because they remove the important job of whole foods.
Meal replacements have been a life saver for me. I struggle around food and cooking (i.e. thinking about holding a cooking knife stresses me out, and the pressure of cooking makes me sweat more than my college intake exams did). My doctor insisted that I start eating better, but I know myself well enough that a 'varied and balanced diet' is just not happening unless my circumstances magically improve.
It led me to try meal replacement drinks in early 2023, and since then I've settled into a pattern of drinking one or two a day alongside my regular diet (with less snacks, since the drinks are very filling). Turns out that my diet was bad enough that my hair had started to fall out, and meal replacements balanced out my diet enough that it decided to grow back. Now I have a bunch of awkward three-inch long hairs sticking out of my long hair, but at least it's promising good things lol
So yeah, I can 100% say that meal replacements have been good for my mental and physical health, and I feel a lot of joy drinking them-- plus I think they taste good, but then again my taste buds have never been the most sophisticated ^^
In 2017, I went hard into the Soylent powders for about 2 years. I would make 3 servings (1200 kcals), 1 for breakfast and 2 for lunch. Then I would make actual food for dinner. It helped save time, and save $10/day on getting food from whatever burger joint was calling my name that day. I don't think there was much health benefits or anything like that (didn't lose or gain weight, and my cholesterol/bp were still high the entire time), but it was very convenient.
In the future, chewing is a luxury
Levi's energy in these videos is really something. It's a goofiness I really like and don't see as much in the main channel but I know you're all funny and smart! I really liked the caveat about accessibility because until you made that point, I was a little frustrated by some of the assumptions about eating. I'm disabled and eating can be excruciating and challenging for me, it's so bad sometimes I can't even lift a fork up, which means I don't get to eat when I need it most. We live in a society now where so many of us are being forced into 'busy-ness' that the most helpful thing is a service like this. Until we're able to fix that, people are going to do what they can to survive, and if that means ingesting dubious powders from questionably ethical food sources, then that's what's gonna happen.
The ED in me wants meal replacements to be healthy so bad
What's ED?
Others have already made this comment, but Huel has been a great crutch to get me eating more (and more consistently) alongside covering some weak points in my nutrition. Slurries like this have also introduced me to ingredients that I hadn't heard of, since it's nice to read what all is in these blended concoctions.
This may be anecdotal, but I grew up eating a lot of boxed foods. My parents didn't teach me cooking because they didn't enjoy cooking, and culturally I'm from a predominantly white American landlocked state which reduced my introduction to things like seafood and international cuisine. Cooking meals and using fresh ingredients requires a lot of planning or intuitive knowledge, so I'm curious if some of the hypothetical solutions have more to do with teaching cooking and introducing foods to kids when they're younger to make it routine rather than expecting adults to simply cook given more time and money.
NGL, this was a great advertisement for Huel. You actually convinced me and my gf to get some. Because we love to cook but we don't always NEED to cook. I was expecting the food to be poison. Turns out they are open and decent. I'll pick some up 😀
I've got a few concerns about food replacement shakes.
1. Gut microbiome, our body is meant to digest food. Not food replacements. I'm not familiar enough with huel to say one way or another how good it is at preventing this issue, but repeatedly eating exactly the same thing, isn't good for our digestive health. Now using this as a suppliment for when you can't get a meal otherwise, it's probably not a big deal. But if used to completely replace what you eat, I'm almost positive you will see a difference over time.
2. Calories. How filling is this food? I'm going to guess the answer is 'not very.' It's just, 'enough.' The issue with turning food into a shake is that a shake is a hell of a lot easier to digest, and a hell of a lot less filling over time. So you may wind up eating more calories rather than less. Solid foods on the other hand, take time to digest because of the surface area. Smaller the surface area the faster something is to digest in most cases. Food replacements though have a much smaller surface area. This might actually wind up being a wash given the average american diet, but it should be kept in mind.
3. Protien. The reason most vegans can't maintain the diet longer than a few years is because most plant based diet's don't have the full range of protiens that we need. It takes more than just a generic "protien", there are specific types that humans usually get from meat. Plant sources just aren't as nutritious in that manner. Again this is probably a wash given that we aren't encouraging complete abandonment of food, but those that take food replacements regularly might find it worth it to consider the possible issues.
This man's just spent 15 minutes telling me 30 seconds worth of information.
The problem I've had with Huel is that it just isn't very filling. Yes, you're getting all the calories and nutrients you need, but you're always going to be hungry since liquid food is so much easier to digest that your stomach is empty again very quickly.
for me the fiber slows the digestion which makes me feel fuller
I enjoy eating. Something I can’t say for meal replacements
When i stopped oral birth control and went to the iud (in addition to recovering from a ton of mental side effects from the pill), i had zero appetite for nearly a year. Soylent was great at that time because i found no joy in making or consuming food, and before I started meal replacement, i had lost weight that landed me into an unhealthy bmi. I now have other quick food options in addition to soylent, but it helped me through a rough couple months
"prepared with love?" is that a joke? Even farming is industrialized food production.
In my country, even in the capital city which is relatively the most developed place here, meal replacement is still more expensive than a regular ol' meal, especially the traditional ones. And you know what, i'm still happy that's the way it is! The other way around just feels so insidious.
I almost bought meal replacement drinks in college. I was really looking into it, debating huel or soylent. My probablem was that my schedule of classes was so tightly packed, I barely had time to actually eat lunch two days of the week. I was powerwalkinh to class with a chicken breast in a napkin. I hated it. When I could eat I would shove food in my mouth so quickly it was unhealthy. Having a meal replacement would have been so helpful to curb hunger and to make sure I was getting sufficient calories. Unfortunately, I already paid for the dining plan so I didn’t feel like shelling out extra money.
I’m an Uber driver that also has a part time job. The days that I do work, I work 12-16 hours. I hate going out to eat because it costs a bunch of money and it takes up valuable time. Just today I packed a car camping kit into my trunk so I can cook on the go to save money. I may look into Huel. But unless if Huel comes in at like 800 calories a serving it doesn’t serve me. I already have AG1 for nutrition, now I need filling cost effective meals.
Lol, I jumped on the Soylent bandwagon way back but I stopped when it started giving me the squirts. 😆
I drink Huel several times per week for dinner, since by the time I get home from my 996 schedule it's too tiring to cook and too unhealthy and expensive to order. And I will say that this video is low-key the best commercial for Huel. Is it perfect? Absolutely not, and the general critique of how the modern society makes it difficult to live the Hallmark postcard lifestyle is very true and very real. But in an imperfect world, an imperfect solution is kind of fitting.