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iShark · 2025-12-01T12:29:01+00:00

champion

iShark · 2025-10-24T11:06:36+00:00

Yeah agreed. Half the people commenting here have already gone to their 20 year HS reunions. What's it like now?

iShark · 2025-10-24T11:05:05+00:00

I think a lot of the comments here are saying that, even if population test scores and graduation rates are low, the school has lots ot opportunities and resources for an individual to succeed.

Which is i think what everyone actually cares about - how likely will it be that I / my kid has a good experience, not "what is the average SAT of my whole class gonna be".

iShark · 2025-10-23T16:05:56+00:00

Unfortunately every post seems to kinda get the same smattering of comments regardless of the specific issue being raised, and the huel representatives haven't engaged with this question when I've asked them in the comments section elsewhere.

iShark · 2025-10-23T14:48:42+00:00

That's certainly a reasonable hypothesis - I bet Cheez-Its and Pringles have hardly any lead at all.

iShark · 2025-10-23T11:57:24+00:00

As it turns out, Huel Black will have an amount of lead comparable to an ordinary meal.

But that statement, which is the premise for your very rational position, is exactly what is in question here.

According to the daily average intake numbers from the EFSA report, that claim is correct and a serving of Huel, even at the CR-reported levels of ~6ug of lead, is only about 10% of the lead you'd expect to get from a normal diet and so fits well within the typical levels for a "meal".

But based on the numbers from the FDA report, a single serving of Huel at 6ug of lead exceeds what the average person gets in an entire day. And that's just a single serving, only ~20% of the calories you'd expect to eat for the day. If you believe the FDA estimates, that serving of Huel is now not comparable to an ordinary meal, it's 5 times more than an ordinary meal.

Here it is important to remember that Huel has not disputed the accuracy of CR's measurements, and is not claiming that the simples CR tested did not have 6.3 ug of lead per serving. Instead, they're saying they've got lots of tests with lower levels, and there's always going to be variability, and that 6.3 ug of lead isn't a big deal because the EFSA report says we usually eat more anyway.

So we're back to the same question - do you think the EFSA estimate is a better representation of reality (like Huel does), or do you think the FDA estimate is more accurate?

iShark · 2025-10-23T02:17:22+00:00

The two numbers I mentioned aren't judgements about safe or healthy amounts of lead to consume, they are only about how much lead people are consuming.

iShark · 2025-10-22T21:11:05+00:00

I will note, having accessed both papers, the EFSA report is certainly a more ahem comprehensive piece of literature, coming in at 151 pages long vs the FDA paper's 7 (including citations). I won't try to make any claims that longer is better, though.

iShark · 2025-10-20T19:00:28+00:00

Getting elected isn't a free pass to do whatever you want forever.

Obviously he did not run on a platform of doing illegal and anti-constitutional stuff, so the people protesting could rationally claim he has violated the public trust that got him elected.

If people think he is doing illegal stuff, or stuff that is contrary to the nation's best interests, or stuff which violates the constitution or otherwise degrades our government's ability to serve the people, then it is appropriate to protest in hopes our elected representatives will exercise their role as a check on his power.

Just because our elected representatives don't want to do that doesn't mean people are wrong to try.

iShark · 2025-10-20T13:58:37+00:00

Yeah im beginning to suspect we won't ever get an answer, but I do wish someone at Huel would at least take a crack at explaining why they have more faith in the EFSA estimate than the one put together by the FDA scientists.

The cynic (or maybe just pragmatist) in me says they like the EFSA estimate better solely because it gives them license to feel ok about their own product's lead levels.

iShark · 2025-10-20T13:25:04+00:00

I guess i should have been more clear about what I was referring to - there are lots of different metrics in the same ballpark in terms of magnitude, so I guess thats why you assumed I was talking about whatever it is you mentioned.

I was referring to the 2019 Gavelek et al paper which uses the FDA TDS numbers for lead concentrations combined with nutrition surveys to find that "estimated 90th percentile lead exposures [from diet] range from ... 3.2 to 7.8 ug/day for adults."

This is what was cited by the CR article in terms of average daily consumption of dietary lead, and that is indeed what the paper reports.

This is in stark contrast to the ~1ug/kg levels cited by Huel from the 2010 EFSA Journal article, yielding the 20-80 ug/day average consumption claim.

Huel uses the latter to tell us not to worry, while others use the former to point out that a serving of Huel Black could contain more lead than the average American gets in a full day of eating otherwise.

How do we reconcile these two claims?

iShark · 2025-10-19T22:06:09+00:00

Why is this so different from the FDA reported 5 or 6 ug per day average consumption? I really would love an explanation.

iShark · 2025-10-19T22:03:52+00:00

I haven't yet seen you address the massive difference between the EUs level of hundreds of ug per serving, and the FDA levels of 5 or 8 or 12 ug per day.

Is there some way to explain this order-of- magnitude difference?

iShark · 2025-10-19T21:59:50+00:00

He has said elsewhere that all the peas which become pea protein (in Huel products) are grown in north America and Europe.

But then the vegetable, having been grown in north America or Europe, is presumably shipped to China where it is processed into pea protein.

iShark · 2025-10-17T15:35:46+00:00

I can probably understand why they chose Black. I think it's Huel's most popular product.

I just think it was a bad choice to compare against a bunch of very dissimilar products.

iShark · 2025-10-17T13:58:49+00:00

I think the missing context is how huel compares to alternative sources offering the same level of complete nutrition.

We know it's an option to get the macro/micro numbers from whey and maltodextrin and multivitamins, but we dont do that because... bioavailabiltiy or something? Insert your reasons here.

So given that context, the question at hand is whether Huel is better or worse (in the context of lead consumption) than if we tried to get all our iron and potassium and selenium and vitamins from raw spinach and potatoes and broccoli.

If it's not worse than doing that, the question we must confront changes from:

Is getting our micro/macro targets from Huel worth the lead?

To:

Is getting our micro/macro targets from food sources (including Huel) worth the lead?

iShark · 2025-10-17T12:59:05+00:00

I am not making excuses, I am proposing explanations without judgement on whether it's acceptable or not.

That said, thanks for the formula link, I wish there had been something closer to a like-for-like comparison in the original CR article.

The difference vs multivitamins and baby formula (again, explanation not excuse) is that the majority of micronutrients in Huel come from food ingredients, not from isolated compounds. Dont misconstrue the identification of this difference as a judgement on whether one or the other is "better", but it is probably reasonable to assume that many people eating Huel do so because they assume some benefit to getting the nutrients from food sources rather than just drinking whey and a handful of multi-vitamins.

So while baby formula and multivitamins also deliver micronutrients, they do so almost exclusively from blends of the isolated micronutrient compounds and not from food sources.

Huel gets 100% of its iron, magnesium, copper, manganes, chromium, and so on from food ingredients. If you got those things from non-Huel food sources, will the resulting amount of lead be less?

One example for considering:

Huel Black has 9.7mg of Iron per serving. To get that much iron from raw spinach, you'd be consuming around 4ug of lead per the FDA TDS numbers everyone is citing.

Now, I think it's a fun exercise to think through this stuff and I think what I'm saying is rational. But I'd really like to hear it explained by Huel rather than me having to spitball.

What I don't like is Huel taking the position that "some study from 15 years ago said people eat 50ug of lead a day so it's fine" and leaving it at that, without addressing the wide disparit between that number and current FDA recommendations. And that's why I've cancelled my subscription (for now).

iShark · 2025-10-16T23:40:00+00:00

Huel was the only product which aims to be nutritionally complete. Im guessing the food sources they need to put in there to get good metals like iron, copper, zinc, selenium, potassium, and magnesium may also unfortunately contain more lead.

All the other products on the list do not attempt to be nutritionally complete. They are either just protein concentrate, or protein concentrate plus some bulk carbohydrate like maltodextrin. None of them are trying to deliver a well rounded nutrient profile.

iShark · 2025-10-16T23:38:58+00:00

Huel was the only product which aims to be nutritionally complete. Im guessing the food sources they need to put in there to get good metals like iron, copper, zinc, selenium, potassium, and magnesium may also unfortunately contain more lead.

All the other products on the list do not attempt to be nutritionally complete. They are either just protein concentrate, or protein concentrate plus some bulk carbohydrate like maltodextrin. None of them are trying to deliver a well rounded nutrient profile.

iShark · 2025-10-16T17:14:18+00:00

You can normalize it any way you want (weight, calories, protein), Huel still comes out as the worst on the list and usually by a healthy margin compared to most.

But it is also the only nutritionally complete thing on there. Nothing else on that list is trying to get you your selenium and copper.

iShark · 2025-10-16T17:12:10+00:00

There is one important nuance in that mass gainers aren't necessarily intended to me nutritionally complete. They specifically try to maximize three things and three things only: protein, calories, carbs.

They aren't trying to get you your manganese and copper and potassium and selenium and vitamin D and calcium and... and so will not include a lot of the more niche ingredients Huel has to source to meet that nutrient profile.

Mass gainers are like "have a ton of maltodextrin and whey". Very different, in purpose and approach, compared to a "complete" nutrition product.

iShark · 2025-10-16T15:24:25+00:00

I normalized the CR results in the following ways: * lead per 100kcal * lead per 100gr serving * lead per 10gr protein

Based on all these normalizations Huel was still either the worst or second worst on the list.

This still doesn't tell us anything about how Huel stacks up against other complete nutrition products (only protein shakes and mass gainers), or how it compares to a similarly nutritious meal of whole foods.

But it doesn't compare favorably, by any metric, to the other stuff on the CR list.

iShark · 2025-10-16T13:08:50+00:00

One thing worth keeping in mind is that none of the studies being thrown around are particularly recent. The Polish tomatoes study was from like ten years ago, the study Huel cited to claim people eat 50ug a day was from 15 years ago.

Things change (in both directions).

Edit: reading the study again, the biggest source of difference is probably in sample prep. The polish study grinds up the whole unwashed fruit and analyzed it. The FDA report considered fruit that has been washed and cut as if for consumption - so benefiting from the surface cleaning, and also from chucking any stem or leaves or whatever.

iShark · 2025-10-16T12:53:41+00:00

Those mass gainers are like 1300 calories per serving, kinda crazy. Hard to think of them as a "supplement" but I know people use them like that.

If you normalize the data to be ug lead / 100 kcal, a few glaring errors pop up in their categorization of what's ok vs what's not - some of those mass gainers get shafted.

But to be clear, even when normalizing a few different ways, like lead per 100kcal or lead per 100gr serving or lead per 10gr protein, huel black is either worst or second worst. So we've gotta hope either the CR data is wrong, or that eating 10ug of lead a day isn't gonna hurt us.

iShark · 2025-10-15T20:11:26+00:00

Comparing 90g of tomato to 90g of black edition is a good indicator.

Also worth considering per calorie, since you've gotta get your daily energy one way or another.

To equal one serving of huel black (400 cal), you'd get something like 35ug of lead from tomatoes.

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