It’s fantastic for you that you have the time, knowledge, facilities and motivation to plan, prepare and eat three balanced meals a day. A lot of people are missing one of those four and I think that’s where the appeal may be. I probably wouldn’t replace one of my meals with something like this but I can totally understand why it’s appealing to people. That’s not even taking into account the cost for those who would otherwise be buying lunch on a work day. The powdered Huel is less than £1.50 a meal - you can’t even get a coffee in London for that.
(You both have very different recollections of military rations to me. We called them ‘Rat Packs’ for a reason… )
Thank you for taking the time to reply. It feels like it’s down not only to time, but also to priorities. I have a friend on twice my salary who focuses all his spare time on producing music - and so has turned to Huel to cover some of his needs. Which does baffle me.
I wouldn’t say each of my meals individually is balanced, but overall, the nutrition they provide me is.
Another factor is I get no enjoyment working out how to make a meal as healthy or nutritious as possible - especially over lunch when I want something quick and easy to make and eat. Hence why I go RTD for lunch.
Some people love cooking a big chicken and sub dividing it into meals to last the week but it’s not something I have ever wanted to do (for example).
I’m not even sure I’d know if anything I have ever eaten is balanced by modern standards. Used to be you threw some meat in there and some veggies and that was it, now there’s all sorts of rules - a look at the back of a bottle of saturo is brain melting (mind you, I grew up with <random tomato sauce based product of the day>+chips, as my childhood predated decent ready meals, so back then we weren’t even trying).
I know that half my calories came from a balanced source, that puts me in a good starting point. The rest I can’t do much about, so I just eat what tastes nice and hope.
The “Eatwell Guide” is a good starting point for what the UK consider “balanced” - it splits out into food categories rather than pure nutritional facts, which may be more useful: (link)
In terms of actual pure nutritional intake, this table from here is a good starting point, and foods with ‘traffic light’ guides on the front will give you an overall indication if what your eating is low / medium / high in the various macro nutrients.
Energy
8,400kJ/2,000kcal
Total fat
less than 70g
Saturates
less than 20g
Carbohydrate
at least 260g
Total sugars
90g
Protein
50g
Salt
less than 6g
And if you look at how Huel, for example, performs, scaled up to 2000kcal, you get this:
I’ve been trying https://www.theproteinworks.com/vegan-meal-replacement-shake for a few weeks. I’m doing it on an alternate day fasting(fasting being 500kcal limit) basis, day 1 is 2 shakes nothing else, day 2 is 1 shake and whatever in evening. I tried out another vegan powder but wasn’t impressed(seemed thin and grainy in comparison)
There should be a pencil at the top of the wiki for you to edit it and add your referral code, you are not supposed to post referrals anywhere else. If you PM me I can add it for you if you’re having issues.
Just a random one but thanks to this thread my partner and I have moved over from Huel to YFood.
It’s so much nicer! And is the first meal replacement drink she’s been able to actually enjoy. Apparently it tastes like drinking custard
Interesting… they came out about the same for me. Yfood is my go to now until something better comes along. More flavours would be nice (coconut is nice but pity it’s just a ‘special’ and can go away).
If they did a vegan coconut flavor that’d tip the scales for me to order some. That’s my favourite flavour. Saturo had one before, but it was limited edition and doesn’t appear to be available anymore.
Tomorrow Huel are launching a new ‘Hot and Savoury’ product. I ‘think’ this could be a first for nutritionally complete food like this - super exciting!
No idea about the cost per meal yet (which could be a killer) but having something that retains the benefits whilst providing a totally different texture and flavour profile is very interesting.
)