What could feel more Silicon Valley than finding a technology solution for a problem that humanity seemed to have solved already: food. Five years after it debuted in the US, meal replacement shake Soylent is now available in the UK, where it’s joined by rival brand Huel.
These shakes and powders are not only aimed at the weight conscious or fitness and muscle-obsessed, but aiming to bring precision and efficiency to how we feed ourselves. But does it work? Does it feel natural to skip the burger, chocolate bar and bag of crisps and opt for downing a bottle of a chocolatey-tasting drink instead?
For an answer, I tried to supplement or replace (some of) my food intake first with Soylent and then with Huel, each for a month, to see whether it made a difference to how I feel.
All of these food replacement drinks share the same philosophy, which Huel co-founder Julian Hearn sums up like this: For too long we have optimised food for taste instead of its primary purpose, namely to provide all the nutrition your body needs. “As a population we have made food so delicious that we crave it, get addicted to it, and over-consume it,” he says.
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Well, to cure us from our bad habits, here come the drinks. Huel was founded in 2014 in Aylesbury, UK, developed by Hearn’s fellow co-founder James Collier. Last year, the company sold over 20 million meals in more than 80 countries. At around the same time, Soylent was launched in the US by software engineer Rob Rhinehart; already a West Coast favourite, it came to the UK in September last year.
Soylent is sold in the UK only in ready to drink bottles (a powder version is promised to come soon); each bottle is the equivalent of a small meal packing 400 calories. With 20g of protein per bottle, it’s pretty filling. The drinks come in three varieties: unflavoured, mocha (with a caffeine kick) and cacao. The latter two taste sweet, I found, but are pleasant enough, like a regular chocolate milk or latte milkshake. I’m not a fan of the unflavoured version; it’s drinkable, but rather boring.
Huel is different. There are bottled versions, which I didn’t enjoy at all and therefore only tried once. I quickly decided to stick for one month with the powder that you mix for a shake yourself. One scoop is about 150 calories. Still, if you mix it with water only – which is the recommended way – it tastes pretty horrible. I tried, boy did I try, but I couldn’t finish a single drink.
I decided to cheat and mix the powder with almond milk (I don’t drink dairy) and that dramatically improved the experience. Huel comes in three main flavours – berry, vanilla and coffee – but there are numerous taste boosters to mix it up (pineapple, strawberry, chocolate and more). Again, I was not convinced. Instead, I found that if I threw a handful of blueberries or similar into the blender, the shake tasted way better.
Once I had overcome the original taste hurdles, I discovered a new problem: taste fatigue. After a few weeks of regular Soylent or Huel intake, I just couldn’t take it anymore. With that I was definitely not alone. Forums discussing meal replacement drinks are dotted with people complaining of similar maladies. It’s especially true for Huel, which – unlike Soylent – didn’t taste for me like a milkshake, but rather like drinking a cold, very liquid porridge. I needed a break.
Rather than give up on the drinks, I decided to change strategy: I started with having Soylent for breakfast, followed by a coffee at about 11:00, then either some high-protein, low-calories real food or two scoops of Huel with almond milk for lunch, followed by a healthy afternoon snack (or maybe half a Soylent bottle at around 16:00, and finally rounding off the day with a light but high protein dinner at home or – sometimes – a couple more scoops of Huel.
As a long-term approach, it was a strategy that taste-wise worked for me. And by paying close attention to my daily calorie intake – carefully counting the bottles and scoops – I managed to avoid hunger and stay in shape. It obviously helped that I also treated myself to three gym visits a week (opting for yet another West Coast-fad, the dimly lit but high intensity workouts in Barry’s Bootcamp).
Soylent, with its on-the-go bottle packed with 20g of plant-based protein plus 26 vitamins and minerals promises to ensure “you get all the nutrition you need,” says CEO Bryan Crowley. With Huel, says Hearn, you get “super convenient, nutritionally complete food” that’s also formulated with 26 vitamins and minerals. Both products have carbs that come from oats, which generally have a positive effect on blood sugar.
In other words, neither product is designed for people who aim to lose weight, but target those who either want to know exactly what they eat or are too busy for sit-down meals. Still, Crowley says that many consumers of Soylent do use it for the weight loss, because “they find that they don’t have to worry about food so they consume less calories throughout the day.”
But dieticians and nutritionists not tied to any of the meal replacement manufacturers are cautious. Fiona Lawson, a nutrition expert based in London, says that if you want to control your food intake, it’s best to opt for home-made smoothies from real food. “Claiming you can get all the nutrition you need from a manufactured drink is nothing short of hubris. We don’t yet know all the vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients and other substances that make up whole, natural food — so how can we possibly recreate it?” she asks. Comparing between the two, she says, “Huel seems to contain slightly fewer processed ingredients.”
Some studies show that certain meal replacement drinks designed for a low-calorie diet can even be used successfully for short-term weight loss. But Daniel O’Shaughnessy, communications director of the British Association for Nutrition and Lifestyle Medicine, warns that relying on any kind of formula food is not the right approach, because weaning oneself off it is tricky. Alana MacDonald, a specialist dietitian based in Glasgow, agrees. Rather than getting your meal out of a bottle, it’s more important to re-train people’s eating patterns to include appropriately sized meals, a balanced diet incorporating a range of food, and regular eating – or your weight will simply skyrocket in no time.
As for the ingredients in Soylent and Huel, O’Shaughnessy says that while they both offer 100 per cent of the recommended daily allowance (RDA) in vitamins and minerals, these can be in inactive synthetic forms, plus sometimes people simply need more than the RDA. “The RDA values were set a long time ago and since then things have changed and a lot of multivitamins now put more than 100 per cent in,” he says. “Really these formulas are for someone who needs an extra bite of nutrition but doesn’t have the time for it; the office worker constantly in and out of meetings for example.”
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O’Shaughnessy doesn’t recommend either Huel or Soylent, and proceeds to rip into other meal replacement products: “Slimfast is not good, contains sugar and maltodextrin, which can give blood sugar spikes, pointless levels of vitamins and minerals – if someone wants to lose weight on this, then they are going to be very hungry. Yokebe is a bit like Slimfast, marginally better but I wouldn’t advise. It’s bulked out with maltodextrin, which is a simple carb.”
Meal replacements are not for the long-term, argues Stacey Lockyer, a nutrition scientist with the British Nutrition Foundation, and “should only be done for a limited time with medical supervision”. But if a meal replacement drink is nutritionally complete, it may be preferable to a snack that’s high in fat, sugars and salt, adds Lockyer – only occasionally though.
To sum up: I quite liked both Soylent and Huel, but not for too long. And I agree with Lawson that while “cracking open a bottle of these products feels easy, throwing a pre-cooked salmon fillet, a cold sweet potato and a few salad leaves on a plate is just as quick — and far better for you.”
