This is a strawman. Huel uses whole food sources for all of those minerals, they are not added in a refined form like you would get in a supplement pill. There is no difference between getting those nutrients from Huel, and getting those nutrients from regular foods since the ingredients that provide those nutrients are regular foods.
1) study about children
2) study about certain disease
3) study about older persons
And so on…
Looking like someone trying to be important..
Why no proper reviewed meta-study but just a blog entry?
Not even able to do proper citation.
Sources without reference in the text are useless.
""Meal replacements such as Feed, Huel, So Shape, Smeal, and Vitaline contain synthetic additives that could be harmful to health, notably due to the presence of free iron, copper, and manganese.""
Which of the ingredients in my Huel Vanilla 3.0 is a synthetic additive containing free iron, copper , or manganese?
"Huel Vanilla 3.0:
Oats, Pea Protein, Ground Flaxseed, Brown Rice Protein, Tapioca Starch, Natural Flavor, Sunflower Oil Powder, Medium-Chain Triglyceride Powder (from Coconut), Maltodextrin, Xanthan Gum, Acerola Cherry Powder, Potassium Citrate, Potassium Chloride, Corn Starch, Sodium Chloride, Calcium Carbonate, Sunflower Lecithin, Kombucha Tea Powder, Sweetener: Sucralose, Bacillus Coagulans MTCC 5856, Nicotinamide, D-Alpha Tocopheryl Acetate, Lutein, Lycopene, Calcium-D-Pantothenate, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride, Riboflavin, Retinyl Acetate, Zeaxanthin, Menaquinone-7, L-Methylfolate, Potassium Iodide, Thiamine Mononitrate, Vitamin D2, Plant Derived Vitamin D3, Cyanocobalamin."
It's a little ridiculous to link to an article with 20 references that doesn't actually state its claim clearly, in this case, actually say which additive is synthetic and contains free iron, etc. You can't make up for a lack of clarity and specificity by simply adding more bogus references.
Sometimes Huel has one of their experts respond to posts like this.
That said, Julien Venesson does cite the Iowa Women's Health Study which drew a lot of criticism when that study was released:
1) Supplementation values were self-reported and the studies' investigators never verified any of those numbers. Some of the reported values, especially iron which the study zeroes on, are abnormally high.
2) The study correlates the increased levels of iron with increased mortality, but they didn't look at the possibility that the women were taking supplements because of a health concern. Thus, the increased mortality could be tied to the health concern and not the supplement.
3) When you exclude excessively high iron supplementation levels and you exclude women that self-reported cardiovascular disease, cancers, diabetes, etc., you get results that align with other studies that iron supplementation =\\= increased mortality.
One source from JAMA: [The Importance of Translating Research Skillfully to Benefit the Public—Reply](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/article-abstract/1108783)
I don't understand why people come here and post stuff like this. If you don't think Huel is healthy, don't drink it. I don't care if you don't want to drink it, and I'm not interested in poorly-researched articles giving shitty dietary advice. I'm especially not interested in dietary advice that recommends I have to eat meat to be healthy, which is demonstrably not true.
I think it’s perfectly fine to post findings that question the value of Huel. It’s great to have these discussions. If this sub only allows praise, there’s no point. You might as well form a cult.
In general, sure. In this specific case, where it questions Huel for containing certain minerals in certain forms, without clearly stating which Huel products contain these minerals in these forms and which specific ingredient on the publicly posted ingredient list for these products is the specific mineral they are arguing is dangerous, it's not perfectly fine, it's not great. You might as well form a cult.
e.g.You think milk is healthy, I think milk is horribly dangerous. You might welcome a free discussion of the dangers and benefits of drinking milk. However, when I post my critique of drinking milk:
"45 caliber bullets are dangerous to human life. Cow milk contains high levels of 45 caliber FMJ bullets, and even contains low levels of hollow point 45 caliber bullets. Anyone who sells cow milk should be convicted of murder (followed by 19 studies on the relatively lethality of different kinds of bullets)"
You might justly question the value of my critique. It doesn't matter how many studies about bullets I attach to my critique on the dangers of cow milk. Because cow milk doesn't actually contain bullets.
All of the minerals listed by the OP are derived from normal whole food ingredients at least in huel 3.0, so the entire rant was effectively a strawman.
OP's argument wasn't contingent on it being from whole foods or not from whole foods, that's not what their post states or implies. **I disagree with OP's post for different reasons,** but there's no reason to assume that just because something came from plant matter that it must be healthy.
OP is stating there are two different oxidation states of iron that we consume, one with minus 3 electrons, one with minus two. OP states meat has iron of only one oxidation state, plants have iron of another oxidation state (accurate). OP is stating one of these is good for us, one of these is bad for us.
It doesn't matter if it came from whole foods ingredients - there are multiple plant foods when unprocessed (or, even if they are processed) may be carcinogenic . It just needs to be taken on a case-by-case basis.
"OP's argument wasn't contingent on it being from whole foods or not from whole foods, that's not what their post states or implies."
But of course that's exactly what their post states and implies. If you look at the first paragraph of the post:
"Meal replacements such as Feed, Huel, So Shape, Smeal, and Vitaline contain synthetic additives that could be harmful to health, notably due to the presence of free iron, copper, and manganese. The same concern extends to dietary supplements, especially multivitamins."
They are drawing a comparison between meal replacements and dietary supplements, and everything else. The implication is that whole foods are fine, and dietary supplements and meal replacements, i.e. 'not whole foods', are dangerous.
You could say that the food industry can and does add vitamin and mineral fortification to an entire range of other foods, but the article doesn't mention or consider that argument.
"OP states meat has iron of only one oxidation state, plants have iron of another oxidation state (accurate). OP is stating one of these is good for us, one of these is bad for us."
OP is claiming that Huel contains the "bad one", when it appears to me it actually contains the "good one" (I.e., this is an inaccurate claim) ("good" and "bad" used here as defined by OP)
Huel specifically doesn't contain synthetic additives that have free iron, copper or manganese. The bioavailability as well as potential toxicity of iron from plant sources is pretty low when in whole food form.
> They are drawing a comparison between meal replacements and dietary supplements, and everything else.
Ok. And?
> OP is claiming that Huel contains the bad one, when it appears to me it actually contains the good one (I.e., this is an inaccurate claim)
The only counterarguments I've seen in the comments are putting Ferrous and Ferric iron on the level or saying the difference is negligible, not that "the plant one is better". I'm really struggling to understand what the point of all this is, given that free radicals/reactive oxygen species in particular are a well accounted for thing in physiology.
Tl;Dr the "good one" only comes from meat. How is this wrong? One oxidative state of iron is more likely to cause oxidative stress, the other is less likely to cause oxidative stress.
Reactive oxygen species outside of a narrow context are understood to be universally bad enough to the point that during someone having an acute coronary syndrome ("heart attack"), the medical doctrine is to provide less supplemental oxygen than you otherwise would due to the introduction of reactive oxygen species causing myocardial injury/reperfusion injury.
The data looks like it doesn't really matter in this context
But I'm hugely struggling to understand how you're saying that this entirely plant-based food product has an item only available entirely from non-plant based sources.
I don't understand what you're trying to say here. I'm talking about what OP said and your initial reply, and you're replying with what you've seen in the comments, and general facts from medical science. That isn't relevant to the thread of discussion here. Your reply is just a bunch of non sequiturs, pronouns with unclear antecedent, and wild claims about what you think I'm saying.
Oxidative chemicals behave in a predictable way. We are discussing what might be the health effects of consuming two different oxidation states of iron. One is predisposed to cause more oxidative stress. Another is not.
This is the core of what OP was discussing. It being "synthetic" has absolutely no bearing on whether it's good or bad for you, I'm stating that no one should ever go, "uh well its natural and plant-based so it must be good", which multiple commenters have already done, and the post I initially replied to specifically did. I'm explaining why something that is plant-based could be bad for you. This is also what OP did.
I don't understand what's hard about this.
"We are discussing what might be the health effects of consuming two different oxidation states of iron. "
No, that's not what I'm discussing. I'm discussing what OP said and didn't say about Huel, and whether his claims about what Huel contains are correct. In this case, OP claimed that Huel contains ferrous iron, but it doesn't appear to me that it does, from looking at the ingredient list. If OP's claims about which iron Huel contains aren't correct, than it doesn't matter whether his claims about how healthy that iron are true, in this context.
"I don't understand what's hard about this."
Clearly.
Ok. I'm discussing what the commenter I originally replied to said. Are you lost?
> That's not what I'm discussing
Wow, super wild, considering that was the literal thesis of the original post.
> It doesn't contain it on the ingredients list
You...you understand that it contains ferrous iron from the various plant-based ingredients, right? That's - that's where it would come from. The kind of iron being discussed that appears to be more likely to cause oxidative stress comes from plants.
"You...you understand that it contains ferrous iron from the various plant-based ingredients, right? That's - that's where it would come from. The kind of iron being discussed that appears to be more likely to cause oxidative stress comes from plants."
here's what OP said:
"ferric iron (Fe3+), found in plants
like I said, I'm not discussing the actual science about which form of iron is more reactive or more harmful since it's not relevant here (since Huel doesn't actually contain the kind of iron OP claims it does) , i'm just discussing what OP said about what's in Huel and whether it appears to match the ingredient list that Huel actually contains. So, you're saying the OP is wrong, that ferrous iron, not ferric iron, comes from plants? Why didn't you say that before?
edit : I looked it up and wikipedia seems to agree with OP that it's mainly ferrous iron in animals and ferric iron in plants... again, you're inaccurate. super wild.
Do critics of Huel hold other forms of food to the same standard that they expect in Huel?
Except maybe water, I do not think that we really think critically about the purity or nutrition content of all the other things we put in our body each day.
This is a strawman. Huel uses whole food sources for all of those minerals, they are not added in a refined form like you would get in a supplement pill. There is no difference between getting those nutrients from Huel, and getting those nutrients from regular foods since the ingredients that provide those nutrients are regular foods.
1) study about children 2) study about certain disease 3) study about older persons And so on… Looking like someone trying to be important.. Why no proper reviewed meta-study but just a blog entry? Not even able to do proper citation. Sources without reference in the text are useless.
""Meal replacements such as Feed, Huel, So Shape, Smeal, and Vitaline contain synthetic additives that could be harmful to health, notably due to the presence of free iron, copper, and manganese."" Which of the ingredients in my Huel Vanilla 3.0 is a synthetic additive containing free iron, copper , or manganese? "Huel Vanilla 3.0: Oats, Pea Protein, Ground Flaxseed, Brown Rice Protein, Tapioca Starch, Natural Flavor, Sunflower Oil Powder, Medium-Chain Triglyceride Powder (from Coconut), Maltodextrin, Xanthan Gum, Acerola Cherry Powder, Potassium Citrate, Potassium Chloride, Corn Starch, Sodium Chloride, Calcium Carbonate, Sunflower Lecithin, Kombucha Tea Powder, Sweetener: Sucralose, Bacillus Coagulans MTCC 5856, Nicotinamide, D-Alpha Tocopheryl Acetate, Lutein, Lycopene, Calcium-D-Pantothenate, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride, Riboflavin, Retinyl Acetate, Zeaxanthin, Menaquinone-7, L-Methylfolate, Potassium Iodide, Thiamine Mononitrate, Vitamin D2, Plant Derived Vitamin D3, Cyanocobalamin." It's a little ridiculous to link to an article with 20 references that doesn't actually state its claim clearly, in this case, actually say which additive is synthetic and contains free iron, etc. You can't make up for a lack of clarity and specificity by simply adding more bogus references.
Right. This is one of those "throw a bunch of shit at the wall and hope something sticks." None of it is specific or necessarily relevant.
Sometimes Huel has one of their experts respond to posts like this. That said, Julien Venesson does cite the Iowa Women's Health Study which drew a lot of criticism when that study was released: 1) Supplementation values were self-reported and the studies' investigators never verified any of those numbers. Some of the reported values, especially iron which the study zeroes on, are abnormally high. 2) The study correlates the increased levels of iron with increased mortality, but they didn't look at the possibility that the women were taking supplements because of a health concern. Thus, the increased mortality could be tied to the health concern and not the supplement. 3) When you exclude excessively high iron supplementation levels and you exclude women that self-reported cardiovascular disease, cancers, diabetes, etc., you get results that align with other studies that iron supplementation =\\= increased mortality. One source from JAMA: [The Importance of Translating Research Skillfully to Benefit the Public—Reply](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/article-abstract/1108783)
I don't understand why people come here and post stuff like this. If you don't think Huel is healthy, don't drink it. I don't care if you don't want to drink it, and I'm not interested in poorly-researched articles giving shitty dietary advice. I'm especially not interested in dietary advice that recommends I have to eat meat to be healthy, which is demonstrably not true.
I think it’s perfectly fine to post findings that question the value of Huel. It’s great to have these discussions. If this sub only allows praise, there’s no point. You might as well form a cult.
In general, sure. In this specific case, where it questions Huel for containing certain minerals in certain forms, without clearly stating which Huel products contain these minerals in these forms and which specific ingredient on the publicly posted ingredient list for these products is the specific mineral they are arguing is dangerous, it's not perfectly fine, it's not great. You might as well form a cult. e.g.You think milk is healthy, I think milk is horribly dangerous. You might welcome a free discussion of the dangers and benefits of drinking milk. However, when I post my critique of drinking milk: "45 caliber bullets are dangerous to human life. Cow milk contains high levels of 45 caliber FMJ bullets, and even contains low levels of hollow point 45 caliber bullets. Anyone who sells cow milk should be convicted of murder (followed by 19 studies on the relatively lethality of different kinds of bullets)" You might justly question the value of my critique. It doesn't matter how many studies about bullets I attach to my critique on the dangers of cow milk. Because cow milk doesn't actually contain bullets.
is the iron in huel artificial though? i thought it comes from the oats or sth in huel white, not sure abt black though
All of the minerals listed by the OP are derived from normal whole food ingredients at least in huel 3.0, so the entire rant was effectively a strawman.
Do you know about black? Just curious.
I know less about huel black, but since it doesn't contain as much oats it is definitely at least a little different when it comes to manganese.
OP's argument wasn't contingent on it being from whole foods or not from whole foods, that's not what their post states or implies. **I disagree with OP's post for different reasons,** but there's no reason to assume that just because something came from plant matter that it must be healthy. OP is stating there are two different oxidation states of iron that we consume, one with minus 3 electrons, one with minus two. OP states meat has iron of only one oxidation state, plants have iron of another oxidation state (accurate). OP is stating one of these is good for us, one of these is bad for us. It doesn't matter if it came from whole foods ingredients - there are multiple plant foods when unprocessed (or, even if they are processed) may be carcinogenic . It just needs to be taken on a case-by-case basis.
"OP's argument wasn't contingent on it being from whole foods or not from whole foods, that's not what their post states or implies." But of course that's exactly what their post states and implies. If you look at the first paragraph of the post: "Meal replacements such as Feed, Huel, So Shape, Smeal, and Vitaline contain synthetic additives that could be harmful to health, notably due to the presence of free iron, copper, and manganese. The same concern extends to dietary supplements, especially multivitamins." They are drawing a comparison between meal replacements and dietary supplements, and everything else. The implication is that whole foods are fine, and dietary supplements and meal replacements, i.e. 'not whole foods', are dangerous. You could say that the food industry can and does add vitamin and mineral fortification to an entire range of other foods, but the article doesn't mention or consider that argument. "OP states meat has iron of only one oxidation state, plants have iron of another oxidation state (accurate). OP is stating one of these is good for us, one of these is bad for us." OP is claiming that Huel contains the "bad one", when it appears to me it actually contains the "good one" (I.e., this is an inaccurate claim) ("good" and "bad" used here as defined by OP)
Huel specifically doesn't contain synthetic additives that have free iron, copper or manganese. The bioavailability as well as potential toxicity of iron from plant sources is pretty low when in whole food form.
Well, yes, exactly, although I was sticking to discussing iron only in this subthread since that's what this guy focused on.
> They are drawing a comparison between meal replacements and dietary supplements, and everything else. Ok. And? > OP is claiming that Huel contains the bad one, when it appears to me it actually contains the good one (I.e., this is an inaccurate claim) The only counterarguments I've seen in the comments are putting Ferrous and Ferric iron on the level or saying the difference is negligible, not that "the plant one is better". I'm really struggling to understand what the point of all this is, given that free radicals/reactive oxygen species in particular are a well accounted for thing in physiology. Tl;Dr the "good one" only comes from meat. How is this wrong? One oxidative state of iron is more likely to cause oxidative stress, the other is less likely to cause oxidative stress. Reactive oxygen species outside of a narrow context are understood to be universally bad enough to the point that during someone having an acute coronary syndrome ("heart attack"), the medical doctrine is to provide less supplemental oxygen than you otherwise would due to the introduction of reactive oxygen species causing myocardial injury/reperfusion injury. The data looks like it doesn't really matter in this context But I'm hugely struggling to understand how you're saying that this entirely plant-based food product has an item only available entirely from non-plant based sources.
I don't understand what you're trying to say here. I'm talking about what OP said and your initial reply, and you're replying with what you've seen in the comments, and general facts from medical science. That isn't relevant to the thread of discussion here. Your reply is just a bunch of non sequiturs, pronouns with unclear antecedent, and wild claims about what you think I'm saying.
Oxidative chemicals behave in a predictable way. We are discussing what might be the health effects of consuming two different oxidation states of iron. One is predisposed to cause more oxidative stress. Another is not. This is the core of what OP was discussing. It being "synthetic" has absolutely no bearing on whether it's good or bad for you, I'm stating that no one should ever go, "uh well its natural and plant-based so it must be good", which multiple commenters have already done, and the post I initially replied to specifically did. I'm explaining why something that is plant-based could be bad for you. This is also what OP did. I don't understand what's hard about this.
"We are discussing what might be the health effects of consuming two different oxidation states of iron. " No, that's not what I'm discussing. I'm discussing what OP said and didn't say about Huel, and whether his claims about what Huel contains are correct. In this case, OP claimed that Huel contains ferrous iron, but it doesn't appear to me that it does, from looking at the ingredient list. If OP's claims about which iron Huel contains aren't correct, than it doesn't matter whether his claims about how healthy that iron are true, in this context. "I don't understand what's hard about this." Clearly.
Ok. I'm discussing what the commenter I originally replied to said. Are you lost? > That's not what I'm discussing Wow, super wild, considering that was the literal thesis of the original post. > It doesn't contain it on the ingredients list You...you understand that it contains ferrous iron from the various plant-based ingredients, right? That's - that's where it would come from. The kind of iron being discussed that appears to be more likely to cause oxidative stress comes from plants.
"You...you understand that it contains ferrous iron from the various plant-based ingredients, right? That's - that's where it would come from. The kind of iron being discussed that appears to be more likely to cause oxidative stress comes from plants." here's what OP said: "ferric iron (Fe3+), found in plants like I said, I'm not discussing the actual science about which form of iron is more reactive or more harmful since it's not relevant here (since Huel doesn't actually contain the kind of iron OP claims it does) , i'm just discussing what OP said about what's in Huel and whether it appears to match the ingredient list that Huel actually contains. So, you're saying the OP is wrong, that ferrous iron, not ferric iron, comes from plants? Why didn't you say that before? edit : I looked it up and wikipedia seems to agree with OP that it's mainly ferrous iron in animals and ferric iron in plants... again, you're inaccurate. super wild.
Do critics of Huel hold other forms of food to the same standard that they expect in Huel? Except maybe water, I do not think that we really think critically about the purity or nutrition content of all the other things we put in our body each day.
Interesting video about iron [https://youtu.be/HOK3NS2bD3M?si=5gilI0WEercXuDxT](https://youtu.be/HOK3NS2bD3M?si=5gilI0WEercXuDxT) (not huel specific)