An advert for Huel featuring television personality Spencer Matthews has been banned by the Advertising Standards Authority, which ruled today that it encouraged or condoned replacing conventional food entirely with the meal replacement brand’s products.

The regulator upheld four complaints about the video, which ran as an Instagram post and as a pre-roll advert on YouTube in April and May. It also found the advert made unauthorised health claims.

Filmed in the style of a podcast, the video shows Matthews in conversation with Huel founder Julian Hearn. The Instagram post carried the caption: “Here’s how our founder uses Huel. Spoiler alert it’s not for every meal”.

Hearn says in the video that he has Huel for breakfast and lunch during the working week, then a “traditional meal” in the evening and at weekends.

Matthews recalls meeting a competitor at the Amazon Ultra, a 260km race through the Amazon rainforest, who “only eats Huel”. The former Made in Chelsea star says he doubted the man would “manage the race”, but that “he won it by miles” and “left us all in the dirt”.

Hearn responds: “In an ideal world, you should have nutritionally complete whole food. If you could do that for every meal that would be the best solution for life. Most people either don’t do that or can’t have the time to do that, and therefore that’s where Huel fits in the gap.”

The ASA accepted that the caption and Hearn’s account of his own habits meant the ads “did not explicitly recommend that consumers replace all conventional food with Huel”.

However, it said the ultramarathon anecdote presented an all-Huel diet in a positive light and that its overall effect was not cautionary.

The ASA noted that Huel’s products provide up to 400 calories per serving, meaning someone relying on them alone would need several servings a day to meet average energy requirements. It said the ads did not make that clear, and concluded they breached the CAP Code rule on social responsibility.

On the second issue, the regulator ruled that the race anecdote implied a link between Huel and endurance performance, a specific health claim not authorised on the GB nutrition and health claims register. It found that the line that Huel “gives you everything that you do need” was a general health claim that was not accompanied by an authorised one.

Huel told the ASA the ads were designed to correct the misconception that its products were intended to make up a person’s entire diet, and that the anecdote was recounted as a one-off rather than a recommendation. The company said it was arranging mandatory compliance training for its marketing team after wording explaining the term “nutritionally complete” was left out through an oversight.

The ASA said the ads must not appear again in the form complained of, and told Huel to ensure future marketing did not encourage or condone the exclusive consumption of its products in place of conventional food.

The regulator banned Huel adverts in 2023 that claimed its shakes could help cut food bills, and in 2024 it banned ads featuring Steven Bartlett that did not disclose his links to the company. The latest decision follows Danone’s agreement in March to acquire Huel in a deal valued at around €1bn.

George McLellan, a partner in the dispute resolution team at law firm Sharpe Pritchard who has defended advertisers against allegations in ASA investigations, said: “This ruling shows how hard it is for advertisers to know where the line is.”

“If an advert whose clear and stated purpose is responsible guidance can be found irresponsible, no business can safely advertise with confidence,” McLellan said. “There is now a perverse incentive for brands to say nothing about how their products are misused. That is bad for business and bad for the advertising sector.”

McLellan said: “If I were advising an advertiser in this situation, I’d have said this ruling potentially amounts to a disproportionate interference with rights to freedom of expression and property rights, and would be difficult for ASA to defend.”

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