I gave up solid food for a week and lived on meal replacement drink Huel
Huel is developed by a UK company of the same name. It's pretty similar to Soylent, a buzzy Silicon Valley startup that also makes a meal-replacement drink.
It promises to offer you everything you need in a drink. Protein, vitamins, carbs, minerals, fibre — it's all in there. A typical serving is about 500 calories.
It comes as a dry powder that you then mix with water, much like a protein shake. You can also bake it into fancy recipes, and add all sorts of extra ingredients, with Huel enthusiasts sharing recipes online. But I wanted the hardcore, "pure" Huel experience.
The company sent me two bags — one unflavoured, and one vanilla-flavour. I also got three Huel-made flavour additives (Huel call them "flavour systems") — chocolate, banana, and toffee.
For my first meal (drink?) of the week, I opted for the standard unsweetened, unflavoured Huel. So how was it?
In a word: Dreadful. It tasted like flour, and was full of awful lumps. (That second one was mainly my fault though. I had failed to mix it properly.)
Once I got the ratio right-ish, I grimaced and got it down my gullet. Not a promising start.
At work, a colleague made things worse with a worrying anecdote: Apparently, if you don't chew enough, your teeth becoming loose and fall out. That's why in Victorian-era workhouses, kids drinking gruel would have their teeth fall out. So now I had my pearly whites to worry about as well.
Towards the end of the first day, I found myself daydreaming about supper. It was Friday night, and I couldn't wait to get home and order a good pizza ... then reality hit me. It was going to be a long week.
What was the longest you've ever been without food? A day, maybe two? Even if you're not actually hungry, it's still a very strange experience not to eat. It was, I realised, the longest I'd gone without solid food since I was still being breastfed.
On Saturday night, I put my Huel diet to an important test: How would it handle alcohol? Some friends and I went clubbing, and it held up surprisingly well. I didn't seem to get drunker any faster on a liquid-only diet. (No, I didn't make Huel cocktails.)
The next morning I felt absolutely terrible, but I can't blame Huel for that. I hopped on a train and headed home to see the family for a few days — putting a real strain on my commitment to the diet.
Don't tell them, but my parents are pretty good cooks. It was torture not to be able to indulge in luxurious Sunday lunches and hearty suppers. While everyone else wolfed down their meals, I sat there anti-socially supping my Huel.
Again, you don't have to give up solid completely food to use Huel. Cofounder Julian Hearn says he has Huel "during the day to replace my time pressured meals, e.g. breakfast and lunch. Then sit down to a 'traditional' family meal in the evening. This gives me the best of both worlds." But I didn't want to do things by half.
From early on, I chose to exclusively drink the chocolate-flavoured Huel. It was the only one without the flour-y taste, and was reminiscent of chocolate Wheetos (a breakfast cereal). 8-year-old me would've loved it. 24-year-old me was less sure.
I only screwed up my diet once — and that was an accident. While at home, I took the dog for a walk and absent-mindedly plucked an apple from a tree from the garden. It was only mid-chew that I realised what I'd done. It tasted like failure, and it was wonderful.
Here's the thing: I didn't like the taste of Huel. That should be obvious. But it definitely *worked*. So long as I remembered to drink enough, I didn't feel hungry, or tired, or like I was missing anything. I missed real food terribly, but I didn't feel any different to how I did on a normal, solid diet.
When I went climbing that week in the Forest of Dean, I felt great. I had plenty of energy, and managed some pretty tough climbs. It was easy to prepare too — I could definitely see its utility for someone on the move, or in a rush.
And because everyone wonders, even if they're awkward about it: My stomach was fine. Huel actually warns that it can cause gassiness or flatulence, but I didn't experience any ill-effects from my Huel-only diet.
Huel brands itself as "the future of food." But that's not the right way to look at it. It's never going to compare to food — whether that's on taste, texture, variety or anything else.
Instead, Huel is fuel. It's all the nutrition you need, in an ultra-efficient package. And in that sense, it totally works! Drink it quickly, don't treat it like a "meal" in the traditional sense, and it'll do you well.
P.S. And no — my teeth didn't fall out. Phew.
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