I feel like there are a lot of people who avoid Huel specifically because…
It uses plant proteins exclusively which are linked to increases in estrogen in men (also giving it a slighty “off” taste and texture). Many serious atheletes refuse to use plant proteins of any volume outright due to estrogens effect on muscle mass. The “soy boy” stigma.
That dreaded CR report that just keeps popping up about your lead content, even if it is blown out of porportion a bit. Is also directly related to your reliance on entirely plant products.
Having a product that nutritionally duplicates the Huel Black but with animal proteins as the base would make it both easier to produce (cheaper, you wouldn’t have to bend over backwards to build an required BCAA profile for one), easier to make taste good with the correct textures people expect, would naturally remove two major barriers to entry for your entire product portfolio, and thus either increase profit margins or increase market share through higher volume for those of us who are not in it for the moral/ethical reasons.
Many of your users like myself simply don’t care that Huel is vegan or kosher and use it solely for the health benefits, and many of your potential customers would use it if it wasn’t wholly plant based (or could lower lead content, which would naturally happen moving to animal proteins).
(I know, I pitch Huel to almost everyone I meet who even remotely mentions wanting to get into shape, and I discuss it on-and-off with my “gym bro” friends too, because for both groups it makes daily meal planning less of a headache)
With the purchase of Huel by Danone, is there any consideration to widening market appeal by creating a more “mainstream” product? I mean, lets face it, Vegan Kosher product users are literally sub-3% in the U.S. and sub-1% worldwide.
Thanks for reaching out on the forum and for letting us know your thoughts! However, I think we are very unlikely to produce an animal-based protein powder.
A key pillar of our business is sustainability, and Huel meals have a significantly lower footprint than many other kinds of popular food. That has a lot to do with the fact that Huel is plant-based, as plant-based protein requires less water and land per gram to produce. We have a target for all of Huel meals to be below 0.5kg of carbon, which is in-line with limiting global warming to 1.5 °C. This would be difficult to maintain with animal-based protein: Is Huel Vegan? | Huel
We don’t exactly “bend over backwards” to get a complete amino acid profile–it’s possible by just combining two plant-based proteins: where rice protein has low lysine, pea protein has high lysine. Where rice protein is low in methionine, pea protein is high in it. I’m actually unsure as to the claim that animal-based proteins would be cheaper. Huel sources a lot of ingredients in addition to pea or rice protein: tapioca, oats, oils, sugar, stevia, xanthan gum, corn starch, micronutrient components, etc. If there are any savings from switching just the protein component, our team has determined that these, in addition to the potential new audience, are not worth the new logistics, production costs, and the consequences from our existing audience of changing our core mission.
As for the “soy boy” stigma: claims that phytoestrogens found in ingredients such as flaxseeds or soybeans can alter the uptake of testosterone have long been debunked. Initially, these claims were based on poorly designed studies on rodents that were given large quantities of phytoestrogens. In this meta-analysis analyzing 38 studies, no statistically significant effects of isoflavones (phytoestrogens) on testosterone or estrogen levels in men were noted: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S089062382030292
I’d argue that the term “soy boy” has far more of a political basis than a scientific one, and those are the contexts in which you usually see it spring up.
As for the Consumer Reports article–the difference in the metal content between Huel and the animal-based protein powders is not as simple as plant vs. animal protein. Huel, being a 90g meal, has 3x the serving size as a lot of the protein products it’s compared to, which usually have a serving size of about 30g.
Because Huel is a meal, there’s also a lot more to it than protein: there’s fat (from flaxseed and sunflower/canola), fibre, and carbohydrates (from tapioca/oats). These plants are also potential sources of heavy metals. Fiber and carbs would be very hard to substitute with animal-based alternatives, and animal fats are mostly saturated fat, which we avoid due its correlation with CVD.
All that considered, there’s no guarantee that the protein switch or even a protein + fat switch would lower the metal content at all.
In sum, Huel is used by a wide variety of people, not solely vegans. Creating a product just for people who are anti-plant protein (which is also a very niche audience, I’d argue, perhaps <3% of the population as well), just isn’t worth it as a business.
A key pillar of our business is sustainability, and Huel meals have a significantly lower footprint than many other kinds of popular food. That has a lot to do with the fact that Huel is plant-based, as plant-based protein requires less water and land per gram to produce. We have a target for all of Huel meals to be below 0.5kg of carbon, which is in-line with limiting global warming to 1.5 °C. This would be difficult to maintain with animal-based protein: Is Huel Vegan? | Huel
If you want to stand on principle, that’s fine.
I won’t pretend industrial farming is better for the environment though, being directly linked to the mass-death of almost half the worlds flying insects (in some places topping 3/4ths) over the course of only a couple decades.
Like most things, when you hyperfocus on one specific thing as a company you often can’t see the forest for the trees.
Commercial farming does more critical immediate damage than the loose potential for increased carbon output per unit of animal protein produced depending on method of livestock raising.
TBH, the proliferation of hypermassive corporate farms has been linked to an absolutely ridiculous amounts of damage.
Also, you ship your ready to drinks in plastic bottles, not paper, I can’t even begin to describe the increase in trash output I have had since switching a large portion of my diet to the ready to drinks.
So clearly the company is willing to bend their moral stances when it comes to marketability and profitability… Danone wouldn’t have bought you if you didn’t being it’s famously amoral (bordering on immoral).
We don’t exactly “bend over backwards” to get a complete amino acid profile–it’s possible by just combining two plant-based proteins: where rice protein has low lysine, pea protein has high lysine. Where rice protein is low in methionine, pea protein is high in it. I’m actually unsure as to the claim that animal-based proteins would be cheaper. Huel sources a lot of ingredients in addition to pea or rice protein: tapioca, oats, oils, sugar, stevia, xanthan gum, corn starch, micronutrient components, etc. If there are any savings from switching just the protein component, our team has determined that these, in addition to the potential new audience, are not worth the new logistics, production costs, and the consequences from our existing audience of changing our core mission.
Industrial scale rarely affects total line cost relationships, only absolute cost per unit.
All of the current existing cheapest protein sources are chicken or milk based.
This is before you factor in that plant protein sources are not 1:1 equivalent to animal protein sources per gram.
Also, assuming that someone else in the company has investigated this is a logical fallacy, your company has approached this product space from a quasi-moral sustainability-first perspective, it’s actually extremely unlikely that serious considerations have ever been given meaningfully to the effectivness or viability of transitioning to animal proteins and/or fats as it would be shut down similarly to how you immediately got defensive about it here.
Specifically the "in addition to the potential new audience, are not worth the new logistics, production costs, and the consequences from our existing audience of changing our core mission."
I was not kidding when I said the total global marketspace for vegan kosher products is 1%, it’s only 3% in the U.S. because quite frankly our extreme national wealth allows people to be “more picky”. Those are not made up numbers.
Producing a line that did not conform specifically to that market space would technically open up a monumentally bigger market, lucky for you, virtually none of your marketing actually sells the fact your company cares about sustainability and just hammers the “science backed” and “total nutrition” angle.
There is no functional reason why your vegan/kosher products can’t exist side by side with “sustainable” themed animal sourcing of some components in a different product line for a different market.
Your existing audience is likely extremely biased towards only caring about the fact that Huel is a good full meal replacement, and while I am sure some are deeply vested in the vegan nature of the product, it’s functionally impossible through statistics for it to be even remotely close to a majority of users.
The minority of users of your product who are so deeply vested as to completely stop using it just because you also offer a product with animal proteins/fats is likely measured in fractions of a single percent.
In fact: Your website has near zero mentions of the fact that your product is vegan or kosher in your major marketing. It’s a footnote that you have to dig for.
As for the “soy boy” stigma: claims that phytoestrogens found in ingredients such as flaxseeds or soybeans can alter the uptake of testosterone have long been debunked. Initially, these claims were based on poorly designed studies on rodents that were given large quantities of phytoestrogens. In this meta-analysis analyzing 38 studies, no statistically significant effects of isoflavones (phytoestrogens) on testosterone or estrogen levels in men were noted: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S089062382030292
I’d argue that the term “soy boy” has far more of a political basis than a scientific one, and those are the contexts in which you usually see it spring up.
There’s a reason I specifically called it a stigma and not a fact, and even put “soy boy” in quotes.
Re-reading exactly what I wrote in hindsight I can certainly see how you would interpret me being sold on the concept in general. However I am probably one of your more heavy users so clearly I don’t totally buy into this.
That it is contested science is largely irrelevant though.
The stigma is real inside the fitness community as a whole, and not just because of the perception that it could affect male performance, but also because plant proteins are not as readily absorbed by the body (this is a fact, unlike the whole soyboy drama). This has little to do with politics and everything to do with the gym, it just happens to be that gym goers statistically lean conservative.
Please though, if you would point out the large prevalence of vegan body builders I will be more than willing to give you the win on this, the fact is that they are considered oddities in the nutritional space in general, let alone the amateur or professional athlete space.
As for the Consumer Reports article–the difference in the metal content between Huel and the animal-based protein powders is not as simple as plant vs. animal protein. Huel, being a 90g meal, has 3x the serving size as a lot of the protein products it’s compared to, which usually have a serving size of about 30g.
Because Huel is a meal, there’s also a lot more to it than protein: there’s fat (from flaxseed and sunflower/canola), fibre, and carbohydrates (from tapioca/oats). These plants are also potential sources of heavy metals. Fiber and carbs would be very hard to substitute with animal-based alternatives, and animal fats are mostly saturated fat, which we avoid due its correlation with CVD.
All that considered, there’s no guarantee that the protein switch or even a protein + fat switch would lower the metal content at all.
I know all the arguments against the CR report, they are posted here all the time.
It doesn’t matter, people read the CR report first and make their decision before ever making it to this forum.
It would be almost statistically impossible for a switch to cheap animal fats/proteins to not significantly lower the heavy metal content, as animal proteins/fats simply do not contain large amounts of heavy metals in the first place (with the notable exception of tuna and it’s abnormally high mercury, but you wouldn’t be using that as an industrial scale protein/fat source anyway).
I do want to point out that no one is asking for the entire nutritional profile of Huel to switch to animal products. The goal here isn’t a product that appeals to carnivores.
The goal is a product that does what the website says your product does, which is be the scientifically back best meal replacement shake.
Not “The best meal replacement shake that is vegan, kosher, and conforms with under 0.5kg of carbon” which, pointing out again… is not a meaningful part of your companies marketing.
Which means a mix of animal and plant sources.
Also, avoiding plant proteins as a major protein source is something quite common in athletic circles (way more than 3%), often due to a myriad of reasons (uptake, cost, and the general anecdotal bias against which is present even if not scientifically valid). So much so that the stigma is reasonably well studied. While it’s true that athletic people make up a generally small portion of total society, your product exists in the marketspace specifically with the heaviest users likely being athletically and nutritionally focused, so the representation in your users will be much higher than general population.
General population is not using Huel, outright, it is too radical a departation from the societal norm of just eating real food.
Sorry, I’m a little confused by this point. It seems like you’re parsing out “industrial farming” from livestock farming when this article makes no such distinction. Livestock farming actively requires more land than growing plant-based foods, and pesticide used for animal feed is massive.
This is more relevant to when plants are in whole form, not when they’re in isolate form. When a plant-based protein is extracted and purified from anti-nutritional factors to produce an isolate, the subsequent protein absorbability is similar to that of animal-based protein sources: The Anabolic Response to Plant-Based Protein Ingestion - PMC
Not only are the bottles 100% recyclable, they’re made from 51% recycled PET.
This isn’t really true–plastic is probably the best choice overall for sustainability. Cardboard bottles are a new technology that cannot handle some stages of production that require heat: the Ready-to-Drink needs to be pasteurized to prevent microbial contamination. A long shelf-life, which plastic provides, ultimately means less waste. You can read about why we chose this particular material here: Huel EU
This bit seems to be predicated on assumptions about myself and other Huel employees which have no factual basis. All protein sources have been thoroughly considered by Huel. We have many very competent data analysts and business strategists on the team. My role is to respond to the question posed with Huel’s reasoning. You’re absolutely welcome to disagree, and all feedback is passed on. I just ask that the conversation be respectful and not extend to ad hominem.