Should I Eat Huel for Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner?

At Huel, a major part of our mission is to make ‘nutritionally complete’ food. This means that Huel can provide all the nutrients, vitamins, and minerals you need to thrive (assuming standard adult dietary needs of 2,000 kcal per day). 

Since our products offer everything you need for a healthy diet, you might be wondering if this means you should have Huel for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. This is a common question among Hueligans - so we’ve put together this guide to help you decide. 

In this article, we explain:

• If it’s safe to have Huel for each of your daily meals 

• Why we don’t advise purely eating Huel breakfast, lunch, and dinner

• Ideas for ways to enjoy Huel in your diet

Can you have Huel for breakfast, lunch, and dinner?

Yes, it is technically possible to use Huel as your only food source. In fact, we did a study in 2022 where a group of 20 adults consumed nothing but Huel for four weeks. The results showed that, across numerous measures, the participants’ health had significantly improved. 

This is because Huel provides nutritionally complete food. Every Huel breakfast drink, snack, lunchtime shake, or dinner hot meal contains a significant proportion of the nutrients you need. If you were to eat Huel for all three main meals (plus snacks), you could all but guarantee you’d meet your body’s requirements (in line with UK and European government-recommended intake guidelines).

However, while it is possible to get all your dietary needs from Huel, we don’t actually recommend doing so. 

Why we don’t promote a Huel-only diet

When we created Huel, our goal was never to entirely replace food from people’s diets. Our co-founders have always maintained that Huel is meant to be used as a way of giving you a convenient, nutritional meal or snack to support a balanced diet. 

Speaking with The Guardian in early 2025, our co-founder James Collier said: “People can have a 100% Huel diet, but I would never encourage that – in fact, I would discourage it. But it can be one meal a day, or a couple of meals a week, or just have it in your cupboard for whenever times are hard”.

There are a couple of reasons we don’t promote exclusively eating Huel for lunch, dinner, and breakfast.

The social side of food

Food is about more than just consuming enough calories to survive. There’s a really important social aspect to sitting down with family, friends, flatmates or coworkers over a lovingly prepared meal. Eating together gives people an opportunity to share stories, solve problems, tell jokes, and bond with one another. We’d never advocate switching all your meals to Huel at the expense of spending time with the people you’re close to. 

Food opens up a world of new experiences

Eating is a great way of experiencing new flavours, textures, and combinations - whether you’re cooking at home or visiting new restaurants. It also gives you an entry point into other cultures - whether you’re traveling abroad or eating foreign cuisine in your local neighbourhood eatery. 

Preparing food can be fun

Everyone has a different relationship with preparing food - for some it’s the main focus of their day, for others it’s a chore. All the same, we do believe that preparing food can be a genuinely fun, creative, and enjoyable activity, and can help everyone understand more about what they’re eating. 

If you only ate Huel for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, you’d potentially be missing out on the pleasure of gently cooking a stew, whizzing up a healthy soup, or putting together a fresh salad. 

Ideas for building Huel into your diet

When you’re thinking about when and how to eat Huel, it’s helpful to take a look at your regular eating patterns. 

In most Western and industrialised societies, people typically have around three main meals per day, plus three snacks spaced throughout. So, that’s six ‘eating occasions’, seven days a week, or 42 eating occasions in total (as the graphic below shows). 

Assuming you have 42 eating occasions (snacks and meals) per week, you could look at swapping out roughly a third of those with Huel. 

For example, you could have Huel for lunch every day (seven meals per week), plus a daily Huel snack. Alternatively, you could have Huel for breakfast and a Huel lunch Monday to Friday, plus two snacks per day at the weekend. 

Ultimately, how you do this depends on your routine, needs, and lifestyle. To give you some inspiration, we’ve suggested a couple of ways to integrate Huel into your weekly eating occasions below (read our meal planning guide for more tips). 

Monday to Friday routine

If you have a 9-5, Monday to Friday job, this plan focuses on using a Huel lunch replacement and breakfast replacement when you’re time-poor, while you cook meals when you’re less busy. 

Related: Why Huel Hot & Savoury is the ultimate lunch hack

Protein power routine

If you’re looking to build muscle, the following routine focuses on including a higher proportion of protein into your diet and includes using Black Edition Huel for dinner. 

Related: Protein-packed breakfast foods

Human Fuel for Your Lifestyle

Huel is built to give you versatile, convenient, and easy-to-use meals, drinks, and snacks that fit your lifestyle. Whether you have Huel for breakfast, Huel for dinner, or Huel for lunch - or a combination - it’s totally up to you. But whenever and however you eat Huel, you can always be confident you’ll be getting a genuinely nutritious, filling, and healthy meal.