YFood Review

Meal replacement shakes are quickly gaining popularity, as the fast pace of modern life makes it difficult to find time to eat a proper meal. However, choosing a meal replacement shake that’s both great tasting and effective is almost as difficult.

In this article we’ll look at one of the meal replacements gaining lots of attention on social media, Yfood. We’ll examine all its unique pros and cons, to help you get to know the product.

So, you want to know how Yfood compares to top meal replacements like Rootana and Instant Knockout Complete? This review will do just that.

What Is Yfood?

Yfood is a nutrition company that specialises in producing meal replacement shakes.

Available ready to drink or in a powder version, both of which come in classic or a vegan alternative, and a choice of 8 flavours, they aim to provide a delicious, nutrient rich drink everyone can enjoy on a regular basis.

Yfood drinks are quite high in calories (400), fat (19g), carbs (30g), protein (25g), and fibre (6g). This, in theory, makes them suitable as a meal replacement you can have for lunch or when you feel hungry on the go or when you don’t have time to eat.

With a reasonable price per meal and a great deal of choice, Yfood drinks are appealing for some, but there are some drawbacks.

The Yfood formula uses both proprietary blends and artificial sweeteners. The former stops you from knowing exactly what you;re consuming, while many avoid the latter due to health concerns linked to them. This can easily push users to brands that avoid them, like Rootana.

What Activities Or Sports Is Yfood Best Suited To?

Yfood is designed as a meal replacement, rather than to aid your sporting or physical performance.

With a decent calories, carbs, and protein, there’s no reason you can’t use it post workout to help your muscles recover, it just won’t be as effective as a proper protein shake. The high fat content also means it isn’t ideal to use pre-workout, as fat takes longer to digest.

Yfood Ingredients

With Yfood available as both original and vegan meal replacement shakes, while they share a similar formula, there will obviously be some differences. We’ll therefore look at not just what ingredients Yfood uses and what they do, but also how they vary between the versions.

Protein

The original version of Yfood features a blend of casein and whey proteins known as milk protein that’s great for helping build, repair, and maintain muscles. It then has the digestive enzyme lactase added to it, making it suitable for people on a lactose free diet (1).

Whey is absorbed and used immediately, while casein is slow release. The combination of the two is ideal for people wanting to see results and be satiated around the clock.

The problem with milk protein, however, is there’s no way to know what percentage of each protein is present. This is an issue for people with specific needs or following strict diets, as you don’t know exactly what you’re consuming.

In the vegan version, lactose free milk protein is swapped for soy, pea, and sunflower proteins.

While pea protein is fantastic and contains an almost complete amino acid profile, sunflower and soy are less effective. As all three are lumped into a proprietary blend, and the latter two are cheaper, it raises questions about how much of each is used.

Fibre

The fibre content of Yfood comes from chicory root fibre and gluten free oat fiber. Gluten free oat fibre consists of both soluble beta-glucan fibre and insoluble fibre, while chicory root fibre is soluble and rich in the prebiotic inulin.

In the vegan shake, you’ll find chicory root has been replaced by rice and quinoa flours and soluble corn fiber, which do a similar job.

Between them, they aid digestion by boosting nutrient absorption and relieving constipation, while also lowering inflammations, cholesterol, and blood sugar levels, all of which enhance your overall gut health, promote healthy gut bacteria, and induce a feeling of fullness (2) (3).

Unfortunately, the exact amount of each fibre in Yfood is hidden in a proprietary blend. This makes it impossible to determine the precise effects you’ll get from the shake’s fibre content.

Vegetable Oils

The vegetable oils used in Yfood are sunflower oil and rapeseed oil. Sunflower oil is rich in omega 3 and omega 6 polyunsaturated fatty acids, while rapeseed oil has omega 3 and omega 6 unsaturated fatty acids. This combination can produce a range of effects.

This includes reducing cholesterol, blood pressure, and the risk of heart attacks, heart disease, and strokes, and improving skin and eye health. However, consuming too much sunflower oil can actually be dangerous, and rapeseed oil is far safer and more balanced (4)(5).

This makes the Yfood proprietary blend somewhat worrying as, with rapeseed oil being twice the price of sunflower, they could easily fill it with the cheaper, riskier option, without you knowing.

Coconut Milk

Coconut milk is a naturally sweet liquid in the flesh of coconuts. Used in the original version, it’s rich in healthy fats, antioxidants, electrolytes, and antimicrobials, which can reduce inflammation and improve the health of the cardiovascular and digestive systems (6).

However, while it’s great for sweetening a meal replacement shake and boosting its healthy fat content, it’s also high in calories, sugar, and saturated fats.

With these linked to issues like heart disease and weight gain, Yfood’s lack of transparency on ingredient quantities again provides as many questions as answers.

Fat Reduced Cocoa

Cocoa has a pleasant taste and is full of antioxidants. It’s inclusion in Yfood adds to the flavour and potentially provides a range of cardiovascular and cognitive benefits, while the low fat variety used shouldn’t add many calories or make you bloated.

However, the exact effects of cocoa aren’t yet proven, so it’s possible it does nothing besides add to your enjoyment of the drink (7). It also isn’t present in the vegan shakes.

Vitamins & Minerals

Yfood contains a fantastic range of vitamins and minerals, which is vital if it’s to be used as a meal replacement in a healthy diet. With 26 different vitamins and minerals, it offers various benefits to your mind and body.

Unfortunately, many are present in quite low quantities. This means Yfood may not be an ideal meal replacement for those severely lacking in a specific area and hoping to significantly boost their levels.

Vitamins – vitamin a, vitamin c, vitamin d, vitamin e, vitamin k, vitamin b6, vitamin b12, biotin, folic acid, niacin, pantothenic acid, riboflavin, thiamine.

Minerals – calcium, chloride, chromium, copper, iron, iodine, magnesium, manganese, molybdenum, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, zinc.

Other Ingredients

Other ingredients present in Yfood drinks are modified starch, waxy corn starch, tapioca starch, and the artificial sweeteners maltodextrin and sucralose.

The starches are used mainly to help preserve a powder and improve its texture. Both waxy corn and tapioca starch also add some sweetness too, which is why they’re only used in the vegan shakes, which omit some of the other sweetening ingredients.

Both the artificial sweeteners are used as they’re cheaper than sugar, and sucralose has no calories.

Unfortunately, these additives seem to have been used mainly to save costs, as they can all cause side effects. This includes allergic reactions, bloating, diarrhoea, a spiked blood sugar level, diabetes, digestive problems, fatigue, headaches, inflammation, obesity, and a reduction in healthy gut bacteria (8).

Who Is Yfood Suitable For?

Yfood shakes are a suitable meal replacement option for anyone just wanting to stay full and get some nutrients while they’re on the go, provided they don’t worry too much about what they’re consuming.

Being gluten free makes them a good choice for those with coeliac disease or a gluten intolerance. An emphasis on climate neutral packaging and having a low environmental impact will also appeal to those who care about the planet.

Do The Ingredients In Yfood Work?

While all the ingredients used in the Yfood powder can indeed benefit the human body, the proprietary blend makes it impossible to know if they “work”.

Without seeing the exact quantities present, there’s no way to know exactly how they’ll effect you, if they’ll produce the results you’re seeking, or even if they’ll cause side effects or health issues.

Yfood Nutrition Facts

Yfood has 400 calories, 19g of fat, 30g of carbohydrates, 25g of protein, and 6g of fibre per serving. This looks good on the surface and compares well to many other meal replacements.

That said, it would’ve been nice to know how much of each ingredient was used, so we could see where these figures are coming from.

How To Take Yfood

To use Yfood powder, you mix a single serving sachet or 4 level scoops (88g) of the powder in 300ml of water and shake or mix until smooth. For the ready to drink version, just take the lid off and enjoy.

Yfood Benefits

Yfood is a fine product that can provide a number of benefits, including:

• Keeping you full
• Helping you preserve and maintain muscle
• Improving your health and wellbeing

Yfood Side Effects

Yfood meal replacement shakes haven’t been linked to any specific side effects. However, it’s possible some of the ingredients could cause an issue.

This includes allergic reactions, bloating, diarrhoea, blood sugar spikes, diabetes, digestive problems, fatigue, headaches, inflammation, obesity, and a reduction in healthy gut bacteria.

Where To Buy Yfood

Yfood is available to buy direct from their website. It’s available throughout the EU, and they have dedicated stores in the UK, Netherlands, Germany, France, Poland, and Switzerland.

Alternatives To Yfood

The best alternative to Yfood is Rootana. Another meal replacement shake from the UK with similar goals, people who like the idea of Yfood but find it fails to deliver are recommended to try this instead.

Instant Knockout Complete is another great choice for anyone wanting a drink that aids their sporting or physical performance too.

Yfood Review Concluson: My Verdict

Yfood meal replacement shakes are decent and will appeal to a certain demographic, like those who can’t consume gluten or are environmentally conscious. That said, there’s far better meal replacement drinks available.

For almost the same price, Rootana provides all the nutritional benefits of Yfood and more, while being transparent on its ingredients and not using soy or artificial sweeteners or preservatives. This makes it a better meal replacement shake choice for most people.