Is Huel too good to be true? In this full Huel review, we will break down the products offered, the pros and cons of the brand, and answer the question: is Huel healthy?
If you are concerned about your health, and wondering what the best supplements are for reaching peak performance as an athlete, then this Huel review is for you!
What is Huel?
Huel is a brand of meal replacement products that provide a convenient, nutritionally complete option for those looking to save time on meals.
Their offerings include powders, ready-to-drink shakes, and bars, which are designed to deliver a balanced mix of carbohydrates, proteins, fats, vitamins, and minerals.
Huel is often used by people looking for quick meal solutions, those managing specific dietary needs, or anyone seeking a convenient way to ensure they're getting a well-rounded diet. The products are typically vegan and aim to use sustainable ingredients.
What supplements does Huel offer?
Next in our Huel review, let’s go over the products the company offers. Huel has a wide range of products from full meal replacements to supplementary options.
Daily Greens
Daily Greens is a wellness supplement that is a blend of 91 vitamins, minerals and wholefood-sourced ingredients. You can think of it like a replacement for your daily multivitamin.
Daily Greens is packed with superfoods and antioxidants and is a 100% vegan and gluten-free protein.
It includes ingredients like spirulina, broccoli, green tea, cranberry, ashwagandha, maca, pea protein, and much, much more.
Daily Greens is not intended as a meal supplement. On their website, Huel states that you probably don’t need Daily Greens if you are already using their other products. It would be redundant.
Daily Greens Cost: $1.50 per serving/$45 per bag
Daily Greens Flavors: Watermelon, Lemon & Ginger & Original (said to taste like pineapple)
Daily Superblend
Huel Daily Superblend is a nutrition that is only 250 calories, compared to the typical 400-calorie Huel Powder, Black Edition, and Instant Meals.
The Daily Superblend is a nutritionally complete, powdered food that is high in protein, high fiber and packed with 87+ vitamins, minerals, and wholefood-sourced nutrients.
It contains 25 grams of plant-based protein and 6 grams of fiber.
Daily Superblend Cost: $3 per serving/$57 per bag
Daily Superblend Flavors: Chocolate and Vanilla
Ready-to-drink
Huel Ready-to-drink is a pre-mixed shake for those who don’t want to deal with powders or making their own shakes. It contains 22 grams of plant-based protein as well as 27 essential vitamins and minerals.
Each bottle contains 400 calories, which is perfect for a light meal.
Huel Ready-to-drink Cost: $4.42 per bottle/ $53 per box
Huel Ready-to-drink Flavors: Chocolate, Vanilla, Banana, Berry, Strawberry, Salted Caramel, Iced Coffee Caramel, Cinnamon Roll
Ready-to-drink Black Edition
Huel Ready-to-drink Black Edition is targeted towards athletes. It contains 35 grams of plant based protein. Unfortunately your body cannot process that much protein at one time, so a lot of that will go to waste.
Huel Ready-to-drink Black Edition Cost: $4.83 per bottle/ $58 per box
Huel Ready-to-drink Black Edition Flavors: Chocolate and Vanilla
Huel Powder
Huel Powder is the company’s original product that contains 30 grams of protein and 27 vitamins and minerals. It is a nutritionally complete meal replacement product.
Huel Powder Cost: $2.21 per meal/ $37.50 per bag
Huel Powder Flavors: Chocolate, Vanilla, Mint Chocolate, Salted Caramel, Coffee Caramel, Cinnamon Roll, Banana, Berry, Original, and Unflavored.
Huel Powder Black Edition
Huel has introduced their Black Edition powder, which is targeted at athletes. The Black Edition has an enormous amount of protein: 40% of the powder consists of protein, for a total of 200g per 2000 calories.
While that sounds great, studies have shown that protein consumption beyond about 0.85g/lb/day does not provide any benefit to building muscle.
If you're a bodybuilder trying to gain muscle and eating 3000 calories per day, you would need to weigh more than 350 pounds for this amount of protein to be necessary.
Unfortunately, the Black Edition completely eliminates the oats from the formula and uses only tapioca for carbs, reducing the fiber content.
Huel Powder Black Edition Costs: $2.50 per meal/ $42.50 per bag
Huel Powder Black Edition Flavors: Chocolate, Vanilla, Banana, Strawberry Shortcake, Coffee Caramel, Salted Caramel, Cookies & Cream, Cinnamon Roll, and Unflavored.
Complete Protein
Complete Protein is Huel’s protein powder and the only complete protein they offer. It is a plant-based blend of pea, brown rice, and fava bean protein.
Huel Complete Protein includes 20 grams of protein per serving.
Complete Protein Costs: $1.25 per serving/ $32.50 per tub
Complete Protein Flavors: Vanilla, Chocolate Fudge Brownie, and Strawberry.
Hot & Savory
Hot & Savory is Huel’s line of vegan cup meals. After receiving multiple negative reviews about their Hot & Savory options, they have changed the favors on their website. All you have to do is add water to enjoy.
Hot & Savory Costs: $4.95 per cup/ $39.60 per box
Hot & Savory Flavors: Chick’n & Mushroom Pasta, Cajun Pasta, Korean BBQ Noodles, and Spicy Gochujang Noodles.
Energy+
Energy+ is Huel’s energy drink. It contains 27 vitamins and minerals, just like their protein powders. Energy+ also contains 35 calories and 200 mg of caffeine.
Energy+ Costs: $2.50 per can/ $30 per box
Energy+ Flavors: Blue Raspberry, Watermelon, and Pineapple & Mango.
Complete Nutrition Bar
The Complete Nutrition bar is a protein bar snack by Huel. It is not intended as a full meal replacement. Complete Nutrition bars contain 13 grams of plant-based protein.
Complete Nutrition Bar Costs: $2.71 per bar/ $32.50 per box
Complete Nutrition Bar Flavors: Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, Chocolate Fudge Brownie, Dark Chocolate & Raspberry, Chocolate Caramel, and Peanut Caramel.
Huel review: Is Huel healthy?
Huel is full of healthy, organic ingredients…but is Huel healthy?
Dr Alain Gregoire did an experiment where he ate nothing by Huel shakes for four days. Over the course of the experiment he lost 1.6 Kg in weight.
He believes this is because he consumed about 400 calories less each day on the Huel diet.
Alain’s high blood fat levels came down to a healthy level after the experiment.
So there were some benefits to be seen in this Huel review. That being said, Alain noted that he experienced rapid energy expenditure. That’s because your solid food takes longer for your body to digest than Huel, which keeps you fuller for longer.
So Huel is most likely healthy overall, but may not work for you long term as your only source of food. You would be much better off on a diet of whole foods – just supplementing with Huel or another health supplement occasionally or once throughout the day.
One of the concerns with Huel products is that they replaced oats with tapioca flour in version 3.0 of their powder. Compared to oats, tapioca flour is an inferior source of nutrition.
The change decreased the amount of fiber from 9g to 7.5g in a 400-calorie serving of the vanilla flavor, which means that someone who consumes 2000 calories of Huel a day will lose 7.5g of fiber. This is a significant change.
Tapioca flour is generally not recommended in your diet because of its lack of nutritional value compared to other grains and flours.
Essentially, Huel has now filled their product with empty calories.
Pros and cons of Huel
Next in our Huel review, let’s break down some pros and cons of their products:
Pros of Huel
Nutritionally complete: Many of Huel’s products are nutritionally complete meal replacements, which makes them convenient for your diet.
Powder liquid and bar options: Huel has lots of product options for your convenience, so you can choose which product suits your lifestyle best.
Organic: You don’t need to worry about any harmful additives or pesticides in your product.
Vegan: If you are vegan, then Huel is a great animal-free protein option for you.
Cons of Huel
Poor customer service: Customers often have to wait a week or more for responses from the company and are sometimes not happy with the level of service they receive.
Issues with stocking: Users complain that often the flavors they want are out of stock on the website.
Tapioca flour: As mentioned above, Huel now uses tapioca flour as the main carb in many of its products. Unfortunately, this is empty calories.
Plant-based protein: Not all of Huel’s proteins are complete proteins. Unless you are getting their specifically labeled Complete Protein product, you are receiving an incomplete protein, which isn’t nearly as effective for your body to use.
Other Huel reviews
There are plenty of both positive and negative Huel reviews online, so let’s take a look at some other Huel reviews to see what customers are saying about it:
As you can see, this is a very positive Huel review. The customer loves their experience with the company and feels like it is a cheap and healthy dietary option for them.
Unfortunately, not all Huel reviews are so positive.
The next Huel review says the products are great, but that there is a real lack of delivery options for rural areas, which is certainly inconvenient if you are using Huel regularly as a meal replacement.
Yikes. So not all of Huel’s products are a hit. Clearly the person who left this Huel review did NOT like the Hot and Savory meal options – so some of the products are hit or miss depending on your tastes.
In another poor Huel review, the client claims that they have received four packages in a row that are defective. This is concerning, considering the price of the product and the fact that the product has become open to potential contaminants.
In yet another Huel review online, a customer complained about the poor customer service and the addition of a shellfish allergy to their new products.
“After Huel released their new website, I submitted a ticket to the company asking for clarification on the shellfish allergy and whether there was any original vanilla flavor available. The ticket was submitted on December 18, and I finally received a reply on December 24.
I've only ever received replies from customer service from the same person - Dominique - and the replies only ever arrive on weekdays. Huel states on their website that they don't do business or ship on weekends. I work every day of the week, the Internet is open 24/7, and all the delivery companies now even deliver on Sundays. The world doesn't stop because the calendar says it's Saturday.
I've noticed that when we don't reply to a ticket for a few days, I look at customers' accounts and find that they stopped mining during that time. In our case, most of those customers tend to return after a reply, but there is no upfront investment in mining. With the purchase of a product, you are locked in until you run out. There are certainly many customers who bought alternatives to Huel in the week it took them to reply.”
Huel vs Frog Fuel
As you can see from the Huel reviews above, there is some room for improvement for the product and services. But what is a good alternative to Huel?
Well, if you are an athlete looking to reach peak performance, then Frog Fuel collagen protein might be a better option for you than Huel’s Black Edition line.
Frog Fuel is 15 grams of pure collagen protein that has been nano-hydrolyzed for easy absorption.
Unlike Huel, all Frog Fuel products are complete proteins because they have tryptophan added in. This makes them more effective for your workout.
There are so many liquid collagen benefits that you simply can’t get from a Huel product. Not only is it fully absorbable, Frog Fuel helps with injury prevention and post-workout recovery because collagen is the protein your body needs to build new tissue fibers.
Just like Huel, Frog Fuel is a completely dairy-free protein, so you don’t have to worry about stomach aches you might get from whey protein.
Frog Fuel is made by athletes, for athletes, and has been studied extensively to help you reach peak performance in the gym or in your sport.