This is an early draft. Read at your own risk.
Food is currently one of the least optimised areas of my life. I spend lots of time and money on it. I very often end up eating too much of unhealthy food. Nutritionally complete powdered food is very optimal when you consider time and price.
In theory, you would make a single shake that will contain all of the micro and macro nutrients you need to stay healthy. Given that the same can’t be said about the fast food I sometimes throw into myself, even if it’s not perfect it’s better than the alternatives.
The price you pay is taste - you end up eating the same shake every time. I still intend to eat normal food in social situations, but possibly replace all of the meals I would be eating alone by nutritionally complete powdered food. I will be analysing the powdered food products in general, and looking at some products in particular.
You can also read this post in the org mode format. This post is also just my personal notes about the subject, so I intend to keep updating this post after publishing.
This advantage is pretty obvious and the main selling point. Buying ingredients and preparing a healthy meal takes enormous amount of time. Even buying prepared food sometimes takes time, as you need to decide where to go, or leave a flat and break your coding flow.
The biggest package of 112 meals with recurring order is 56000 kcal for 149.85 GBP from the official website[4]. Delivery is free to UK.
print "{} GBP per 500 kcal".format(149.85 / (56000 / 500))1.33794642857 GBP per 500 kcal
From the official website[6]: 150 GBP for the biggest package of 90 meals. 5 GBP per bag. Each bag have 2119 calories. Shipping is free.
print "{} GBP per 500 kcal".format((500.0/2119) * 5)1.1798017933 GBP per 500 kcal
Subscription for 10 Ambronite meals costs 75.65 EUR + 11.90 EUR delivery from the official website[3]. Currently 1 GBP costs 1.31 Eur. Each ambronite meal have 500 calories.
cost_in_gbp = (75.65 + 11.90) / 1.31
print "{} GBP per 500 kcal".format(cost_in_gbp / 10)6.68320610687 GBP per 500 kcal
Official Soylent website do not ship to UK. I found some “actibest” soylent on Amazon. It does not list kcal per “meal”, but 500 is a standard. The best I found sells 42 meals for 109 GBP + 7.91 GBP delivery[5].
print "{} GBP per 500 kcal".format((109 + 7.91) / 42)2.78357142857 GBP per 500 kcal
Leon Chicken and Chorizo club hot box (5.20 GBP per 500 kcal)
667 Calories 6.95 GBP
(500 / 667) * 6.95
print "{} GBP per 500 kcal".format((500.0 / 667) * 6.95)5.20989505247 GBP per 500 kcal
Probably very unhealthy. I checked the price at my local Tesco near St. James Park in London. Price: 2GBP if you buy two items at once. 684 kcal.
print "{} GBP per 500 kcal".format((500.0 / 684) * 2)1.46198830409 GBP per 500 kcal
Italian B.M.T. costs 5gbp at my nearby subway. It has 792 calories[17].
print "{} GBP per 500 kcal".format((500.0 / 792) * 5)3.15656565657 GBP per 500 kcal
It’s worth noting that worse satiation can lead to increased weight, if you are not paying attention to calories.
Window between starving and not losing weight is quite easy to miss without counting calories. Writing down how many carrots you just ate and looking up their calories is very tedious task. It’s much easier with nutritionally complete powdered food.
Yes, I like food. And that’s the problem. If you don’t enjoy your food as much and it’s just an efficient calories delivery method, you’re less likely to experience your brain saying: “come on, order this Lamb Biryani from online takeaway just today”. If you only accept Huel et al. shake as the only acceptable evening snack, you’re less likely to have the evening snack at all.
Powdered meals are still a new area and are not fully developed yet. Even if they are mostly natural and promise to cover all of the nutrients, they are probably worse than the steamed broccoli with brown rice and salmon.
However, if you are consider the food I am eating, not the food I should be eating they become an attractive option.
I find that eating same amount of calories of “real” food makes me less hungry than Huel and similar products. Part of not being hungry is just a feeling of full stomach. I am more hungry than after a real meal with equivalent calories. It’s slightly better with Huel than other drinks, due to low GI carbs and high protein ratio.
Even if I start to feel that my stomach is empty I don’t experience other effects of hunger like brain fog or worse focus. Maybe your body needs time to adjust the hunger indicators?
I found a few hacks that make such shakes more satiating for me.
You can buy fiber independently and add it to each shake. Meals would get healthier and more satiating.
In my opinion, one of primary causes of worse satiation is the shake not being “solid” enough. Blending a 450 kcal shake with a banana works well for me. Single banana is just 100 kcal[16].
I only have my subjective opinion behind this, but I think that shake and banana work together in a “synergy”. I.e. satiation of those two things together is higher than just a sum of satiation of banana and satiation of a shake. The shake misses the solidness, while banana misses proteins and fats. Banana gives initial sugars and something solid to process, while proteins and fats increase the processing time.
If you are worried about the GI of banana, adding it won’t simply average the GI of a shake with a GI of banana. GI of the mix will likely be better than the weighted average of GI of individual components[15].
It may be psychological conditioning, but I found out that the warm shake makes me feel more full. I simply add warm water to my shake. It also reduces lumps and makes the powder easier to dissolve.
IMO the denser the shake the more satiating it feels. Sadly, increased density leads to increased amount of lumps (not dissolved pieces of powder). Good blender reduces the lumpiness. I recommend not going for the official water:powder ratio, but using blender and going for the smallest water amount that avoids lumps.
Huel offers product without added taste and you can add your own taste afterwards. There are multiple alternative products, e.g. Joylent offer 8 different tastes. I think that solution of Huel/Joylent/etc mixed with a fruit or vegetable like Banana, Mango or Avocado in a blender could be a good solution for the boring taste.
Folk knowledge says that vitamins from raw fruits and vegetables are better absorbable than vitamin blends. After some reading[1], it seems to depend on vitamin type. Chelates would be as absorbable as the real thing, but are expensive. I need to read more about vitamin types or find someone knowledgeable to be able to judge vitamin blends used by meal replacement products.
In case of long term usage, it’s a good idea to familiarise yourself with vitamin deficiency symptoms[10].
Those products mostly consists of natural ingredients. They even don’t contain preservatives. The biggest suspicion is various types of sweeteners. You can always drink it without sweetener, but good luck. The sweeteners used in Huel that I looked at, Aspartame[2] and Sucralose[7], appear to be safe and well researched.
Long term effects of Soylent and therefore Huel have not been studied yet[1]. Medical meal replacements have been around for a while.
No variety in various factors like fiber can negatively impact your gut microbial health. I found a study being performed[8] on UC Berkeley, but it’s not ready yet.
Reports of long term users have been generally positive in different areas[9]. There may be some more factors that only appear after many months of usage and have not been reported yet.
| Price per 500 kcal (London delivery) | % Carbs | % Proteins | % Fats | GI | Primary carb source | Primary protein source | |
| <20> | <30> | <20> | <20> | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Soylent 1.5 | 2.78 GBP | 57 | 20 | 23 | 65[11] | Maltodextrin (high GI)[13] | Rice[13] |
| Joylent | 1.17 GBP | 50 | 25 | 25 | Unknown, probably similar to soylent[15] | Maltodextrin/Oats[15] | ? Whey/soy[12] |
| Huel | 1.33 GBP | 40 | 30 | 30 | Unknown, probably low[14] | Oats (low GI)[13] | Pea and rice[13] |
| Ambronite | 6.68 GBP | 44 | 24 | 32 | Unknown, probably low | ? Oats[18] | ? Rice[18] |
- Low GI
- High in protein
- Hard to get in UK. Third party re-sellers with price premium and no Soylent 2.0.
- Expensive
- 5 tastes to choose from
- High GI carb source (Maltodextrin)
| Product | Comment threads mentioning it |
|---|---|
| Joylent | 16 |
| Queal | 9 |
| Jake | 7 |
| Mana | 6 |
| Ambronite | 4 |
| Nano | 2 |
| Purelent | 1 |
| Veetal | 1 |
- Only replace meals I would be eating alone.
- Not go 100% Huel, try to have at least one real meal per day.
- Take a blood test after a few months
TODO Huel FAQ https://huel.com/pages/faq
[1] http://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/20995/why-do-we-absorb-vitamins-better-from-whole-foods-than-from-pills/21103#21103 “Keep in mind the long-term effects of sticking to such a diet are more or less unknown, but it’s as close as we can likely get to an “all-in-one” meal.” [2] Safety of long term doses of Aspartane, Leon et al [3] http://ambronite.com/ [4] https://huel.com/products/huel [5] https://www.amazon.co.uk/soylent-meals-actibest-version-vegetarian-y/dp/B0177XACQE/ref=sr_1_5_a_it?ie=UTF8&qid=1464559859&sr=8-5&keywords=soylent [6] https://www.joylent.eu/ [7] http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/Goodfood/Pages/the-truth-about-sucralose.aspx [8] https://experiment.com/projects/impact-of-soylent-consumption-on-human-microbiome-composition [9] https://www.reddit.com/r/soylent/wiki/faq#wiki_how_will_it_affect_x.3F [10] Vitamin deficiency symptoms [11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_(drink) [12] https://www.reddit.com/r/soylent/comments/3aib82/huel_the_uks_first_nutritionally_complete/csd5yrn [13] https://huel.com/pages/comparison-to-soylent [14] https://discuss.huel.com/t/glycemic-index-of-huel/89/20 [15] http://joylent-blog.tumblr.com/post/112037722680/carbohydrates-whats-the-deal This post is informative even for other products or how GI works in general. [16] http://www.livestrong.com/article/298339-calories-in-1-large-banana/ [17] http://subway.co.uk/menu/subs/classic/italian-b-m-t-.aspx [18] http://ambronite.com/pages/ingredients