Huel fell foul of the Advertising Standards Authority last week, and the problem wasn't an outlandish headline claim. It was a simple anecdote.
The ads were podcast-style clips (an Instagram video and a pre-roll ad on YouTube, seen in April and May 2026) featuring the Huel founder and Spencer Matthews. Relaxed and conversational, the kind of content that doesn't feel like advertising. In them, they described an ultramarathon runner who ate nothing but Huel and had won an ultramarathon by a huge distance.
What the ASA Found
The ASA found two breaches:
- Social responsibility: the story encouraged people to replace food entirely, even though disclaimers were there.
- Unauthorised health claims: the anecdote implied a performance benefit, and "gives you everything you need" was treated as a general health claim.
Three Lessons for Regulated Marketers
- A story can make a claim. If what you say implies a benefit, the regulator treats it as a claim, whatever the format.
- Disclaimers don't fix the overall impression. The ASA judges the whole ad, not the small print.
- Founder and podcast content is still marketing. Once it's paid or promoted, it needs the same review as any other ad.
The Gap We're Seeing More Often
This is a gap we are seeing more often: content made outside the usual approval process because nobody tagged it as an ad.
Classifying content when it's created, and checking it against an approved claim library and regulatory requirements, catches it before it goes live and saves a lot of running around.
Read the full ruling here: https://lnkd.in/ezZKhgWc