Nutrition is hard. Eating well is hard. And I'm a low energy person who doesn't like cooking. What's a health-conscientious autistic adult to do?
Well, science is starting to offer very low-effort solutions to the problem. After decades of research, we're starting to get a handle on exactly which nutrients, and how much, the average person needs in a day. So then the challenge is simply to provide those nutrients in a simple to use form. Enter Huel, and its main competitor in the US, Soylent. These are both complete meal replacement powders, which is to say, instead of making a nutritious meal with lots of fruits, vegetables, and healthy grains and proteins, you can have a serving of this powder and receive relatively similar health benefits. At least in theory. Basically, you can "skip" a meal and just drink a serving of the powder. It's meant to be both a convenience food, and at least in Huel's case, a possible cure for world hunger.
I opted to try Huel rather than Soylent for a few reasons. First and foremost, I ran the ingredients of both products by my doctor, who has a PhD in Nutrition and works with special needs people mainly. She frowned over them both, but told me the Huel had the better nutritional profile. She also commented that it'd be better to avoid soy as a rule, as it's a common allergen and I have a sensitive system. Also, as a rule, since Huel originated in the UK, its formula has to meet the much stricter and more rigid health standards of Europe. That means far fewer colors, weird additives, etc.
The last thing my doctor commented on was the sweetener additive. Both Soylent and the sweetened version of Huel use sucralose, which is a neurotoxin. It's over a hundred times sweeter than cane sugar, which throws off the brain's understanding of sweetness for natural foods. Huel, however, also offers an unsweetened/unflavored variety, which contains no sucralose. Since it's easy enough to add sweeteners on my end (my kitchen alone has sugar, honey, cocoa powder, monk fruit sweetener, stevia, and erithrytol), that seemed like the better bet.
It also doesn't hurt that my very first friend, a Britishman, tried it before me and informed me that it works pretty well. (As a sidenote, there is also a gluten-free version of Huel, which is an important thing to note for some people on the spectrum as well as anyone with Celiac disease.)
It's a bit pricey to try either Huel or Soylent, as they like to send you a big bag or two. (Huel is $66 for 28 meals, which comes out to about $2.36 per meal.) Fortunately, that's what budgeting is for! I had the money together a few months after consulting with my doctor about the idea.
So this was what came after I ordered it. I was actually a derp and accidentally ordered one bag of the sweetened variety instead of having both be the unsweetened, so I'm contending with the sucralose.
The powder itself is relatively fine, and very oaty-smelling. The basic serving directions are to mix five parts water with one part Huel, so you get a decent amount of water along with your calories, particularly since an entire "meal" serving is three of those scoops, or 1 cup. You can also bake the powder into things like pancakes, cookies, etc. Their website has a number of recipes for that.
I've mostly been having it straight, just mixed into water as per the recommendation. At least for the vanilla stuff, the flavor is basically like oatmeal. I can vaguely taste the vanilla and the sweetener, but the strongest flavor is simply its first ingredient: oats. I'm basically fine with that, though cocoa powder or other flavors from my kitchen might be in order in the future.
These powders are built with the idea that you could potentially replace all your meals, for weeks or months at a time, with them. I have not tried that, though some people have, and there are articles written on their experiences. I've been leery of that. While I have replaced an entire meal or two, with decent enough results, I prefer to combine a snack-sized serving (1/3 or 2/3s of a meal) with a serving of solid food. Today's breakfast, which I'm eating right now, is an apple and a single scoop of Huel (1/3 of a meal) mixed with water. Even before I started using Huel, I'd been having trouble figuring out how many calories makes for a decent breakfast and lunch. I don't seem to need a lot of food in a meal sometimes, which is confusing because I'm 5'8", heavy-boned, and weigh over 200 pounds.
With luck, I can try to get that confusion straightened out. Huel is nice in that you don't really have to count calories, just portions. So if I wanted, I could try the "whole week of just Huel" thing that some articles talk about, and see how much I seem to need in a day. I'm wary of doing so, though, because I like the various textures and flavors of solid food. My mother raised me on a relatively varied diet, so it's difficult to commit to ditching all of that, even for a single week. The experience would probably be very educational, though...
If I end up doing that, I'll write a "I tried meal replacement for a week, this is how it went" article of my own. I'm not raring to go on it, though, because of the very last thing my doctor mentioned regarding meal replacement...
You see, humans are designed to eat solid food. Digestion starts with chewing, and we're encouraged by health professionals to eat a varied diet because we don't know everything about nutrition. So, in hospitals, you can keep people alive by feeding them via tube. That's been doable for quite awhile, and hospitals even have nutritionists on staff who can calculate how many calories a person needs, and specific nutritional needs that correspond with what conditions the person has. The thing is, people fed that way don't really thrive. They survive, definitely. But they don't thrive. They look sickly, have low energy, and overall just don't do well.
So things like this meal replacement powder, meant to replace all your meals (in theory) should be used with care. Particularly for people whose systems are very sensitive anyway, like people on the autism spectrum, or who have a lot of food allergies. This is very much an experimental technology as of yet. We don't have large scale studies on what happens if you stop eating solid food for a month using Huel or other meal-replacement substances. So while it would be amazing to just jump right in and swap over to meal replacement substances, especially in food deserts and low-income areas, it's wise to be cautious.
But it is kind of awesome to just stir some powder into a glass of water and have lunch without getting slowed down by food prep.
Well, science is starting to offer very low-effort solutions to the problem. After decades of research, we're starting to get a handle on exactly which nutrients, and how much, the average person needs in a day. So then the challenge is simply to provide those nutrients in a simple to use form. Enter Huel, and its main competitor in the US, Soylent. These are both complete meal replacement powders, which is to say, instead of making a nutritious meal with lots of fruits, vegetables, and healthy grains and proteins, you can have a serving of this powder and receive relatively similar health benefits. At least in theory. Basically, you can "skip" a meal and just drink a serving of the powder. It's meant to be both a convenience food, and at least in Huel's case, a possible cure for world hunger.
I opted to try Huel rather than Soylent for a few reasons. First and foremost, I ran the ingredients of both products by my doctor, who has a PhD in Nutrition and works with special needs people mainly. She frowned over them both, but told me the Huel had the better nutritional profile. She also commented that it'd be better to avoid soy as a rule, as it's a common allergen and I have a sensitive system. Also, as a rule, since Huel originated in the UK, its formula has to meet the much stricter and more rigid health standards of Europe. That means far fewer colors, weird additives, etc.
The last thing my doctor commented on was the sweetener additive. Both Soylent and the sweetened version of Huel use sucralose, which is a neurotoxin. It's over a hundred times sweeter than cane sugar, which throws off the brain's understanding of sweetness for natural foods. Huel, however, also offers an unsweetened/unflavored variety, which contains no sucralose. Since it's easy enough to add sweeteners on my end (my kitchen alone has sugar, honey, cocoa powder, monk fruit sweetener, stevia, and erithrytol), that seemed like the better bet.
It also doesn't hurt that my very first friend, a Britishman, tried it before me and informed me that it works pretty well. (As a sidenote, there is also a gluten-free version of Huel, which is an important thing to note for some people on the spectrum as well as anyone with Celiac disease.)
It's a bit pricey to try either Huel or Soylent, as they like to send you a big bag or two. (Huel is $66 for 28 meals, which comes out to about $2.36 per meal.) Fortunately, that's what budgeting is for! I had the money together a few months after consulting with my doctor about the idea.
 |
| Pictured: the starter kit. Two bags of powder, one portioning scoop, and one "shaker" (basically a water bottle meant to be shaken to help break up powder chunks) |
The powder itself is relatively fine, and very oaty-smelling. The basic serving directions are to mix five parts water with one part Huel, so you get a decent amount of water along with your calories, particularly since an entire "meal" serving is three of those scoops, or 1 cup. You can also bake the powder into things like pancakes, cookies, etc. Their website has a number of recipes for that.
I've mostly been having it straight, just mixed into water as per the recommendation. At least for the vanilla stuff, the flavor is basically like oatmeal. I can vaguely taste the vanilla and the sweetener, but the strongest flavor is simply its first ingredient: oats. I'm basically fine with that, though cocoa powder or other flavors from my kitchen might be in order in the future.
These powders are built with the idea that you could potentially replace all your meals, for weeks or months at a time, with them. I have not tried that, though some people have, and there are articles written on their experiences. I've been leery of that. While I have replaced an entire meal or two, with decent enough results, I prefer to combine a snack-sized serving (1/3 or 2/3s of a meal) with a serving of solid food. Today's breakfast, which I'm eating right now, is an apple and a single scoop of Huel (1/3 of a meal) mixed with water. Even before I started using Huel, I'd been having trouble figuring out how many calories makes for a decent breakfast and lunch. I don't seem to need a lot of food in a meal sometimes, which is confusing because I'm 5'8", heavy-boned, and weigh over 200 pounds.
With luck, I can try to get that confusion straightened out. Huel is nice in that you don't really have to count calories, just portions. So if I wanted, I could try the "whole week of just Huel" thing that some articles talk about, and see how much I seem to need in a day. I'm wary of doing so, though, because I like the various textures and flavors of solid food. My mother raised me on a relatively varied diet, so it's difficult to commit to ditching all of that, even for a single week. The experience would probably be very educational, though...
If I end up doing that, I'll write a "I tried meal replacement for a week, this is how it went" article of my own. I'm not raring to go on it, though, because of the very last thing my doctor mentioned regarding meal replacement...
You see, humans are designed to eat solid food. Digestion starts with chewing, and we're encouraged by health professionals to eat a varied diet because we don't know everything about nutrition. So, in hospitals, you can keep people alive by feeding them via tube. That's been doable for quite awhile, and hospitals even have nutritionists on staff who can calculate how many calories a person needs, and specific nutritional needs that correspond with what conditions the person has. The thing is, people fed that way don't really thrive. They survive, definitely. But they don't thrive. They look sickly, have low energy, and overall just don't do well.
So things like this meal replacement powder, meant to replace all your meals (in theory) should be used with care. Particularly for people whose systems are very sensitive anyway, like people on the autism spectrum, or who have a lot of food allergies. This is very much an experimental technology as of yet. We don't have large scale studies on what happens if you stop eating solid food for a month using Huel or other meal-replacement substances. So while it would be amazing to just jump right in and swap over to meal replacement substances, especially in food deserts and low-income areas, it's wise to be cautious.
But it is kind of awesome to just stir some powder into a glass of water and have lunch without getting slowed down by food prep.
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