Influencer ad for meal replacement shakes pulled over "only eats Huel" race story

An advertisement for Huel, the meal replacement shake brand, has been banned by the Advertising Standards Authority after the watchdog found that it encouraged or condoned "irresponsible" dietary practices. The ruling centres on an anecdote told by brand ambassador Spencer Matthews about a competitor he met who survives on nothing but Huel products — and who, he says, won a 260km ultramarathon "by miles".

The banned spot was published as a sponsored Instagram post and as a YouTube pre-roll advertisement, and was staged in the visual style of a podcast conversation. In it, Matthews questions Huel founder Julian Hearn about how he uses the brand's products. The Instagram caption made the framing explicit: "Here's how our founder uses Huel. Spoiler alert it's not for every meal."

Hearn's own answer was carefully limited. He said he has Huel products for breakfast and lunch during the working week but eats a "traditional meal" when he goes home. He added that, "in an ideal world, you should have nutritionally complete whole food", arguing that most people either do not do that or cannot find the time to do so, "and therefore that's where Huel fits in the gap".

Matthews then described meeting a man while competing in an ultramarathon who "only eats Huel". He said he was initially sceptical that the man would be able to manage the distance, before telling Hearn: "He won it by miles, like literally just left us all in the dirt." It is that exchange, rather than any direct instruction to consumers, that the ASA said tipped the ad over the line.

The watchdog acknowledged that the advertisement "did not explicitly recommend that consumers replace all conventional foods with Huel". Nonetheless, it concluded that viewers could take away a different message. "By presenting exclusive consumption of Huel in that context, 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," the ruling said.

A second limb of the complaints was also upheld. The ASA ruled that Matthews' story about the ultramarathon competitor "implied a beneficial relationship between consuming Huel and the ability to sustain exceptionally high levels of physical and endurance performance" — even though no such claim was made on the face of the advert. The authority received four complaints in total, two of which challenged the health claims as breaching its advertising code.

Huel disputed the findings. The company said the advert "unambiguously positioned Huel as part of a balanced diet for occasions when preparing whole food was not practicable", pointing to the visible scepticism and disbelief with which Matthews reacted to the idea of a person living solely on Huel. It maintained that the anecdote was "recounted as a remarkable and unexpected occurrence, not as a representative outcome or a recommendation or instruction to consumers to replicate", and insisted that "at no point in the ads did either speaker suggest that consumers should adopt a 100% Huel diet".

The brand also said the campaign's stated purpose was to challenge the misconception that Huel could replace every meal. Huel is best known for shakes that it describes as a nutritionally complete meal, and the business is built around consumers who are short of time but conscious about their health.

The timing is notable. Huel, which is based in Hertfordshire, was founded by Hearn in 2015 and is currently in the middle of a takeover by French food and drink conglomerate Danone, a deal approved by a watchdog in August. A ruling of this kind arrives while the brand is under extra scrutiny from regulators, investors and consumers about the central claim on which its products rest.

Huel is not a small operation. The market for so-called complete nutrition products, aimed at time-poor, health-conscious shoppers, is thought to be worth $5.9bn (£4.4bn), and Huel is one of the best-known names in a category that has expanded rapidly as consumers have turned to ready-to-drink nutrition.

The ruling is also not the first time the company has fallen foul of the ASA over the use of its products as a substitute for conventional food, a pattern that suggests regulators regard claims of nutritional completeness as requiring particular restraint. The episode comes as nutrition experts have questioned the effectiveness of replacing meals with nutritionally rich drinks, adding weight to the argument that a shake may not do the same job as food, however complete its label.

That tension sits at the heart of the case. Huel's marketing has long rested on convenience and near-total nutritional completeness; the ASA's judgment is that pairing that pitch with a superhuman endurance anecdote goes further than the company intended, and communicates a guarantee the evidence does not support. Advertising rules generally prohibit ads for misleading claims about health and wellbeing, and the authority's reasoning here shows that such a claim can be made by implication as easily as by statement.

Huel told BBC News it had complied with the ruling. A spokesperson said: "We do not position Huel as a complete diet replacement or claim that it improves athletic performance." The company will nonetheless have to work out how to talk up the products' benefits without straying back into the territory the ASA has ruled on — a challenge made sharper by the fact that the ambassador who delivered the offending anecdote was one of the brand's most recognisable faces, and by the ongoing Danone takeover, which puts the brand's reputation in a corporate owner's hands.

For regulators, the case is a reminder that the reach of influencer-led advertising on social platforms and pre-roll video is expanding faster than the boundaries of what is being policed there. For Huel, it is a reminder that a carefully worded script cannot entirely control how an audience reads a punchline.