ASA bans Huel ad over claim one man ate nothing else
Four complaints were enough to pull a sponsored video featuring Huel's founder and its brand ambassador. The ruling sets out which substitution claims a consumer brand cannot make.
The Advertising Standards Authority has banned a Huel advert for encouraging or condoning irresponsible dietary practices.
The video ran as a sponsored Instagram post and a YouTube pre-roll. It was shot like a podcast, with brand ambassador Spencer Matthews talking to Huel founder Julian Hearn.
Hearn said in the video that he has Huel for breakfast and lunch on working days and a traditional meal at home. The Instagram caption read: "Here's how our founder uses Huel. Spoiler alert it's not for every meal."
The problem was what Matthews said next. He described meeting a man at an ultramarathon who "only eats Huel", said he had been sceptical, then added: "He won it by miles, like literally just left us all in the dirt."
The ASA received four complaints. All four challenged whether the content was irresponsible. Two also challenged the health claims against the advertising code. Both grounds were upheld.
The regulator accepted that the advert did not explicitly tell anyone to replace all conventional food with Huel. It found that consumers could still read the anecdote as an acceptable dietary practice.
On the health claims, the ASA said the ultramarathon story implied a beneficial relationship between consuming Huel and sustaining exceptionally high levels of physical and endurance performance.
Huel argued the opposite reading. The company said the advert positioned its products as part of a balanced diet for occasions when preparing whole food was not practicable, and pointed to Matthews reacting with "extreme scepticism and disbelief".
"At no point in the ads did either speaker suggest that consumers should adopt a 100% Huel diet," the company said in its response. Huel told the BBC it had complied with the ruling and does not position its products as a complete diet replacement or claim they improve athletic performance.
This is not Huel's first ASA trouble over its products being presented as a replacement for conventional food.
The ruling lands while the company is being bought by the French conglomerate Danone. Huel was founded by Hearn in 2015 and is based in Hertfordshire.
The lesson for any founder selling a substitute product is narrow and useful. A disclaimer in the caption did not save the advert, and neither did the on-screen scepticism.
What counted was the implication a viewer could draw from a story told approvingly: that the extreme use case works, and works well enough to win a 260km race. An anecdote you present as remarkable is still, to the regulator, a claim about what your product can do.
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