I might give Huel’s Ready to Drink a miss.

Huel’s new RTD is official and is almost here. I’ve been patiently waiting for this to be announced since Soylent 2.0 was first released and I was super excited to rush to Huel and place a pre-order – but then I changed my mind, and now I might not buy any at all.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. The bottles, are awesome…

…and being a Huel product the nutrition is similarly superb and overall the new Huel Ready to Drink matches Huel Powder relatively well but for a couple of key changes.

On the left we have the differences per meal, on the right the overall differences if you used it for 100% of your diet. Obviously most Huelers don’t go 100%, but considering full nutrition helps the differences stand out – and one certainly does. The drop in carbs is welcome but is my maths right? 9.3g less protein per meal and 46g less over the course of a day? They’re still nicely within the recommended 50 to 175 grams of protein recommended for 2000 to 3000kcal diet, but it’s a reduction I’m not immediately fond of.

This isn’t simply a case of selling pre-mixed Huel. Ingredients have had to change for this 500ml 400kcal meal in a bottle to stay shelf stable for it’s 6 months shelf life. Looking at the ingredients list we have…

Powder: Oats, Pea Protein, Flaxseeds, Brown Rice Protein

In the UK manufacturers have to list ingredients by weight, so from the above we know that the main ingredient of Huel Power is Oats, followed by Pea Protein, flax, etc.

Huel RTD: Water, Pea Protein, Tapioca Starch, Gluten-Free Oat Powder

Water, unsurprisingly is the first ingredient, but what’s Tapioca Starch and why has it supplanted Oats?

100g of Tapioca Starch is 350 Calories and almost pure carbohydrate, with little to no essential health benefits or adverse effects apart from ticking the gluten free box. It’s almost certainly replacing Oats as the primary carb source to stop the drink being too thick in texture.

One of the things I really liked about Huel when I first found it was the use of Oats rather than maltodextrin. Mainly because the GI level of Oats is so far below that of maltodextrin (Oats is roughly 55 whilst maltodextrin ranges between 85-105). Honestly; I’ve never really heard of tapioca starch before so I need to do some proper research, but from what I’m reading it has a GI of 85 – on par with Maltodextrin. Though the rest of Huel’s recipe likely brings the overall GI down.

So, packaging good, nutrition good, ingredients good. oh and the packaging is 100% recyclable and made from 25% recycled plastic. So why am I probably going to give it a miss?

Pricing is part of it. Let’s get the comparison with powder out of the way first because obviously Ready to Drink is going to be more expensive, just over double in fact with 500kcal of powder coming out at £1.47 a meal whilst the RTD is £3.14 per 500kcal in the UK (at time of writing). Compare Huel pricing by region though and things get interesting…

Huel, in case you didn’t know, has three websites: Huel UK, Huel EU, Huel USA. And so, three sets of pricing to compare. Each seem pretty keen for me to buy 24 bottles in an order (my screen kept defaulting to that anyway) so I’ll compare pricing for 24 bottles (and display pricing for each in £, $ and € to keep it easy. Each row is a Region).

So we can see that the UK is cheapest and EU and US pricing is a touch more. That makes sense, Huel is a UK made product after all. Except if you take a look at the UK RTD’s faq you’ll see this:

That’s right: the UK RTD stock is made somewhere in the United States, shipped a couple thousand miles by container and then after arriving in the UK goes on sale cheaper than where it was made. And that’s forgetting the EU RTD which is made in Austria and only shipped within the EU, but is £20 more expensive.

Is my maths right because that just looks, odd, and regional differences aside, who are they competing with here? There are already a number of great RTD’s on the market and Huel’s foray into RTD is one of the most expensive per 500kcal; with only Saturo’s limited editions and Kate Farms Komplete costing more.

My main problem isn’t the pricing though; it’s that what looks to be a great product crosses far too much distance between being made and arriving at my door. My once “local” order that shipped from a county away suddenly covers more miles than I travel in a year. I loved Huel because of their environmental aims but there’s been a marked departure from the “minimum impact on animals and the environment” promised in their mission statement. All but one of their main ingredients are now sourced from outside of the UK with mixed products travelling by bulky containers around the world. Good nutrition is the main goal of course and in that respect the Huel product line remains impressive – but it’s sad that they don’t seem to be able to keep true to their mission statement as they’ve grown.

Not to mention the price impact that international shipping must have on the UK bottles. But then, how is does it come out cheaper than where it’s being made?

I love Huel (I’m drinking some right now as it happens) but this is a bit of a disappointment and it seems like a few Huelers share my opinion with reception on the forums not being as positive as it could be – but time will tell. I’m sure this will sell well and introduce a lot of new customers to the brand.

You can read more user reviews of Huel’s product selection over here. Want to try it? Click here for Huel UK or here for Huel USA – both links get you either £10 or $10 off your first order. Then let me know what you think 🙂