Huel advert banned for suggesting it could ‘replace every meal’

An advert for the meal replacement shake Huel has been banned for suggesting the drink could “replace every meal”.

The Instagram video and pre-roll ad on YouTube for Huel featured brand ambassador Spencer Matthews sharing an anecdote of a person he met who "only eats Huel" and who won a 260km race.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said the advert implied that Huel could replace all conventional food and that it was “nutritionally appropriate” for an elite physical performance.

Speaking to the founder of Huel, Julian Hearn for the advert Mr Matthews said: “He doesn’t eat any solid meals ever. He eats Huel and only Huel everyday.”

He added: “When I was doing the Amazon Ultra, there was a guy there called James and he only eats Huel. Literally, when he told me that I was like, he’s not going to manage the race. It's a 260 km race through the Amazon rainforest. You know it’s quite full on. He won it by miles, like literally just left us all in the dirt.”

In response to Matthews Mr Hearn said: “In an ideal world, you should have nutritionally complete whole food. If you could do that for every meal that would be the best solution for life. Most people either don’t do that or can’t have the time to do that, and therefore that’s where Huel fits in the gap.”

In the advert Mr Hearn also claims he has Huel for breakfast and lunch during the workweek, only eating a “traditional meal” for dinner when he goes home.

The ASA received four complaints about the advert, two of which challenged whether the health claims made breached the advertising watchdog’s code.

In its ruling the ASA said the ad "did not explicitly recommend that consumers replace all conventional foods with Huel", but consumers could nonetheless interpret the anecdote as "an acceptable dietary practice".

ASA also highlighted in its ruling that a diet consisting only of Huel would not provide the same variety in nutrients and other benefits as eating only whole foods. It added that Huel’s products provide up to 400 calories per serving and that a person would need multiple servings throughout the day in order to meet average daily energy requirements.

“The ads suggested that the complete replacement of conventional food with Huel was nutritionally appropriate and presented no barrier to achieving a high level of physical performance. We considered that message encouraged or condoned irresponsible dietary habits,” the ruling said.

The watchdog also upheld the complaint regarding the health claims and said Matthews’ anecdote "implied a beneficial relationship between consuming Huel and the ability to sustain exceptionally high levels of physical and endurance performance".

In response to the complaints, Huel said "the ads were specifically designed to address that some consumers used Huel as 100 per cent of their diet, and to correct any misconception that was its intended use.”

The meal replacement company said the advert "unambiguously positioned Huel as part of a balanced diet for occasions when preparing whole food was not practicable".

It added that Matthews reacted with "extreme scepticism and disbelief" to the idea of a person solely consuming Huel.

"The anecdote was recounted as a remarkable and unexpected occurrence, not as a representative outcome or a recommendation or instruction to consumers to replicate,” it added.

"At no point in the ads did either speaker suggest that consumers should adopt a 100 per cent Huel diet."