Why isn't Huel way more popular?

Nutrition
#1

There’s plenty of people looking for a way to lose weight. They struggle with cooking healthy meals, but couldn’t you theoretically just measure this stuff out to the appropriate caloric intake and just do that every day? Why bother cooking stuff you don’t even like as a lot of people seem to report? A lot of people complain “healthy food tastes bad,” so wouldn’t they rather just consume something that tastes okay and gets the job done rather than force themselves to eat meals they don’t even enjoy? Cooking a meal takes way more energy. And so does figuring out if you’re getting a proper balance of vitamins and minerals and whatnot. With Huel, most of the work is done for you from my understanding. Just do the initial math of how many calories you need, drink that much per day, and unless you consume something else, you’re golden.

And I get it, cravings are a thing. But like you could just drink Huel most of the time and then, as a treat, eat something else you like to satisfy your cravings (remember to factor it in to your daily intake), and it would work. So like if it were Thanksgiving for example, you can give yourself a break. You don’t HAVE to miss out on the social aspect of eating. Have a normal meal sometimes. It’s not all or nothing. But just from experience I eat most meals by myself at home anyway so it’s not a huge issue and I would only rarely have to make exceptions.

So Huel seems to solve so many problems. It lessens one’s daily workload so much and it even costs a bit less than a normal diet (in my case anyway) if you do the math. I don’t understand why it isn’t more widespread. Am I missing something here? For context I am new, I just ordered my first batch, but just in theory I don’t understand why something like this wouldn’t be incredibly popular. Thoughts?

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#2

People are weird?

This is a relatively new food and changing habits/ behaviors is slow. People think “3 squares” of meat, veg, starch (potato or rice) is “normal” and correct. So Huel has to overcome this perception. “I like to chew” might be the reason Hot & Savory is doing so well.

Someone I work with (who has above average understanding of diet/nutrition) asserted that she couldn’t do intermittent fasting because she wouldn’t have the carb-energy needed to do her early morning exercise. That’s also not true, but additionally proves the point that people don’t even try to understand anything that they don’t already believe.

We also need to convince people that eating animals is not absolutely necessary. I hope the plant-based movement continues to gain momentum: it’s going to take further price reduction and more marketing/advertising to mainstream. The good thing about that would be that it would make the general public more open to Huel.

You ask a good question. I’ve thought about it too

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#3

I think this partially answers your question, yes? Huel has been around for quite some time, and yet you are new to it. I imagine there are simply tons of people who have never even heard of Huel, and for those that have, without someone to help convince them of it, they might never try it. I would not have tried Huel if it wasn’t for an amazingly comedic article written by some British bloke. Anywho, just my thoughts on the subject.

edit: This is the article that sold me on Huel: https://medium.com/@jamchiller/one-week-on-huel-one-small-step-for-man-one-giant-leap-for-my-bowels-a9026a48d94d

2 Likes
#4

I personally love Huel but I think Huel is the sort of thing that you have to manually search for and if you’ve never thought about it, you’re less likely to hear of things like Huel unless it’s in a supermarket chain.

There’s also multiple reasons, there’s a lot of myths and half truths out there with dieting and a lot of pseudoscientific nonsense, if I said which nonsense it would turn into an essay. You have the rise of “YouTube” doctors and the reactionary anti vegan crowds that are content spreading myths around like carbs are bad mmmmkay.

You also have the naturalistic fallacy, Huel in my opinion counts as food because it has a solid whole foods ingredient profile but there’s a bunch of people who think otherwise because we have a counter movement that relies on “natural is always best” even though everything we do is natural because we’re part of nature but natural doesn’t always mean “best.” However people are indoctrinated with believing that there’s a strict definition of what is natural and what isn’t, even though it’s a complete lie.

We have to overcome that in order to move on, we are kind of leaning there already but we have a ways to go.

3 Likes
#6

Many people are weirded out by the idea of consuming calories in liquid form. Others just rather not give up on solid food or their junk food.

Many people I’ve come across think Huel is some kind of special diet food and others think it’s bad that you’re getting calories from liquid. Neither is true of course.

3 Likes
#7

Marketing
Like others here mentioned, I stumbled across Huel almost by accident. I was looking for something along similar lines to incorporate with a new exercise program I was getting ready to start. There are too many supplements, vitamins, and meal plans out there…if a company doesn’t take a proactive stance on advertising then the few others like myself might give it a go…most likely not, though, because of the saturation.
I belong to several message forums and have posted about Huel, to no fan fare. One other person had told me they are using the shakes. Couldn’t drum up any excitement offering the provided 10% discount code.

Saturation
There’s just too many shakes, supplements, and vitamins out there to shake a stick at. If you know anything about exercise and vitamins most products on the market are so much junk. Not many people enjoy sifting through hundreds of products to find the beneficial ones. Food is rigjt there, consumed easily enough.

QA
Huel isn’t necessarily getting promoted by employees all that great, either. Take a stroll through the forums and look at some of the questions people ask about the product, preparation, side effects, and shipping…the representatives dole out the same boilerplate answers a lot of the time without answering the questions themselves. I find this confusing.

TL;DR - too much, too little

#8

Something I haven’t seen others in this thread mention is that this is more of a niche market than you might believe. Food is about more than just getting nutrients into your body; it’s also a stimulating sensory experience, a social activity steeped in culture and tradition, and making it is an enjoyable hobby for many, while an entire career for many more. Prepared liquid diets have their place (obviously) but they’ll never supplant traditional meals or even fast food to any significant degree, not on a society-wide scale at least.

1 Like
#9

thank you @Pibblepunk. i’ve commented on this in these forums before myself. food is way more than fuel for most people, and huel’s relative blandness/earthiness/gritty texture presents a hurdle that many new users can’t get over (as does the gas!).

the increased grit with the last unnecessary powder version change was almost enough to make me quit, and i’ve used huel for years.