2 January 2020

Huel - modern meal or Hipster Gruel? (@NLi10) @gethuel #NewYear

Happy New Year everyone!  Well - I say happy - I decided to give this a go.


Huel is the heavily targeted advertisement face (on FB at least) of the Male Meal Replacement Drink.  This is only V1.0 of the drink and the one that keeps showing up on my feed is V3.0 - my guess is the new one has smarter nanobots. My assumption has always been that the name is short for Hipster Gruel, but I'm guessing it's Fuel.

There have been lots of people at work (smart people - doctors too) who've switched to these because it's cheaper, healthier and faster than scavenging for lunch on site. Just before Christmas our hospital's charity outlets were banned from selling sandwiches, so I thought I'd give at least one of these a try.


It has a lot of your daily vitamins in - and the consistency of the stuff means that it's likely to hang around long enough for them to actually get digested into your system (unlike those chalky supplements you've been buying - sorry, you are just paying to have nutritious urine!)


Flash photography reveals a slime not unlike something from popular TV show Rick & Morty - what could possibly go wrong.

The taste is good, it has a little papery aftertaste like many 'protein' drinks, but it's certainly a sweet vanilla flavour.  The texture is very gloopy but not too unpleasant if you popped it in the fridge.  Warm this would certainly cause a gag reflex.  But - it did keep me away from the snacks, and I was so full that when I ate my 2 person pizza later I barely had space for the whole thing.  I also felt like I'd eaten and I did sleep well.  I really craved water afterwards and would recommend that you drank a pint after you'd finished this so that you felt a little less parched.


All joking aside this is a lot healthier for you than a lot of trendy things are - you are getting a reasonable diet out of the drink and you still get to eat dinner (like a Slim fast from 20 years ago, but with a little more science).

So maybe the hipster's have it right - keeping a few of these at work would make my lunchtime be a lot more relaxing and I'd even save a bit of cash - more if I got the powdered version.  I found myself having a look for these in the supermarket (couldn't find them in Asda) to get more flavours and see what else is on offer.

If this gets a decent amount of clicks (see how shallow I am) then I'll go ahead and request some of the latest version to see if that perks me up even more - and I really wanted to try mixing some Matcha powder in to really get the system going (and to add some interesting flavours).

I have managed to get hold of a friends referral code which I add here for the curious - apparently it gets you £10 worth for free but only if you spend £40 which would get you 34 meals of powder, 16 of these bottles.  They even have snack bars - which I find more exciting.  With their quirky version numbering systems and no claims but lots of nutrition they have me certainly interested enough to keep an eye out in the shops.

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