Announcer: Doctor's Kitchen. Recipes, health, lifestyle. Welcome to the Doctor's Kitchen podcast. The show about food, lifestyle, medicine and how to improve your health today. I'm Dr Rupy, your host. I'm a medical doctor, I study nutrition, and I'm a firm believer in the power of food and lifestyle as medicine. Join me and my expert guests where we discuss the multiple determinants of what allows you to lead your best life.
Dr Rupy: So like we've discussed before, green powders are everywhere and I'm always asked about whether people should be investing in a green powder to consume every day and look, as someone who does have a green powder, I thought this was a good opportunity for me to dive into why I choose a green powder at all, what the science is behind dehydrated products that are generated from vegetables and fruits and and other sort of quote unquote superfoods. And this is going to be a special episode on the subject of green powders that you can also find on YouTube because I'm not just reviewing the evidence behind specific brands of green powders that I'm always asked about, I'm also taste testing them as well. So if you want to see my reactions, head over to YouTube, it's probably worth a watch just for that. And I'm going to give you my honest opinion on things like Athletic Greens, Huel, Thorne, Axe, Hux and more. Now, this isn't to suggest that anyone that might be sponsored by these brands or someone who takes these brands and feels the benefit is not really being honest. I think quite the contrary, aside from the fact that these products might be having a genuine benefit on someone's health, there could also be the psychological element as well. If you're taking a product every single day and it aligns with your belief that you are doing something that is good for your wellbeing and therefore it encourages other behaviours like exercising or ensuring that you're hitting your goals consistently, whatever those might be within the lifestyle medicine spectrum, I think that's a good thing. So this is my perspective, very sort of stripped back, just really focusing on what the evidence says, my sort of criteria for looking for a good quality supplemental product anyway. And this is my perspective, but this isn't to suggest that other people are wrong for promoting these or taking these. If you find benefit from them and you are happy to invest in them, then good for you. This is that's brilliant and I wouldn't want to dissuade anyone. But I thought as I'm asked about it so often, I'm just going to give you my honest take. So, check it out on YouTube if you like. It is a good listen. Hopefully it is lighthearted enough that you will laugh along with some of my reaction to some of the flavours and you can support the podcast by just hitting the subscribe button on Apple or Spotify or wherever you're listening to this. Onto my taste testing of green powder supplements.
Hi guys, I'm going to be reviewing some of the most popular green powders on the market and also going to be taste testing them all for you and giving my honest thoughts on them so you don't have to spend the hundreds of pounds getting all these different products. I'm also going to talk you through the criteria that I look for when buying a green powder. Now, I do use a green powder myself every single day. I've talked about green powders in a previous podcast and to summarise that, there's three things that you need to know. Number one, green powders do have meaningful amounts of nutrition in them. So when you dehydrate them or freeze dry them and put them into a powder, there is transfer of certain micronutrients into the powder that you consume. Number two, when you do consume that green powder, there does appear to be evidence that there are meaningful increases in micronutrients that we can measure in your blood work. So increases of vitamin C and increases in things like magnesium, there is evidence for that. And number three, that increase in micronutrients does appear to translate into meaningful health outcomes. So whether that be lowering inflammation, lowering blood pressure, improving things like cholesterol ratios, there does appear to be some evidence, scanty, but some evidence that that actually does happen. So, whether you choose to invest in a green powder or not is completely up to you. My preference is always to concentrate on diet first, and if you wanted to boost your levels of certain micronutrients, then for sure, if you can afford it, go for a green powder. But there are certain things that I feel that if you're going to be spending upwards of 80 or 90 pounds a month on any of these products, you should be looking out for. And these are the things that I always look for in a green powder. Number one, minimal ingredients. So a green powder shouldn't really be having more than seven to eight ingredients. And the reason why is because if you think about a teaspoon of your ingredient, you're not going to be getting a massive amount of every single element if they're going to be upwards of 90 or 100 different ingredients in that tablespoon. You're likely to be underdosing on any of those individual micronutrients or underdosing on a single ingredient. And we'll get into that when we review all these different products later on. The second thing is that, as we established in the previous podcast, freeze drying is the best method for preserving those nutrients from the whole ingredient like a broccoli sprout, for example, into the powder. And so, if you're just dehydrating at a high temperature, there's likely to be worse loss of nutrients from the original ingredient into the powdered form. So if you're going to be investing this much money, you want to make sure that the manufacturer has actually thought to do the best process possible, and they will be shouting about the fact that they've done a freeze drying method or fermented or a low heat method, because that is the best method for preserving nutrient value. The other thing is I would always be looking for third party testing, and not just third party testing for sport requirements or to ensure that it doesn't have any erroneous chemicals that can be picked up by sports regulators like testosterone, anabolic steroids. It's actually looking for levels of contaminants like lead, mercury, cadmium. These are things that unfortunately go into our food supply chain. And if you think about it, you're reducing a whole ingredient to its powdered concentrated form, there is a risk that you could be ingesting heavy metals and other contaminants unbeknownst to you, particularly if you're going to be having these every single day, like most of these companies suggest. I'd also be looking for organic. We've done another podcast episode on organic versus conventional. I try and eat organic as much as possible. I don't really think about it too much from the perspective of if I'm eating out or I'm eating at someone's house or I can't find the organic products. But if I'm ingesting a greens product every single day, you bet your ass I'd want it to be organic because A, I'm investing a lot more money into it and B, I'm going to be ingesting this every single day, I'm going to be opting for organic where possible. I don't want to be having pesticides in my drink every single day if I can help it. And bonus points for any of these products, if they have studies looking at the beneficial impacts, not of the ingredient itself, but of their actual product, that would be a massive bonus. I'm not too sure if there are any. I'm going to look on their websites. We're going to go through all these things together, so you have complete oversight of everything that these companies are talking about and whether there is evidence for any of these things actually working in the real world. Something specifically that I'll be looking at in the ingredients list is milligrams or the dose of the individual ingredients that they've put into the blends themselves. The reason why is because it's very easy to just sprinkle a little bit of ashwagandha, for example, into a blend without actually having the required dose that is correlated with improvements in things like sleep or anxiety. So specifically looking for milligrams on the ingredients package is something that I'll be looking at when I'm going to be doing a review of these. Things that I'm less interested in, but a lot of these companies tend to shout about are proprietary formulas. A proprietary formula sounds really impressive. Actually, it's a way, I think, of these companies clouding and hiding behind how little of the ingredients are actually in said formula. The other thing is digestive enzymes, protein content, probiotics. I'm not interested in that. I'm eating a greens product for the greens themselves. I'm not really interested in the probiotic content. If I wanted a probiotic, I'd get a good dose of probiotics from something else. RDIs, so these are recommended daily intakes of things like iron, folate, magnesium. Again, if I wanted to ensure that I was getting the RDIs for all those micronutrients, I would just take a very cheap multivitamin. I've already talked about multivitamins on another podcast. I don't invest my money in multivitamins because I feel you can get adequate amounts of all those different elements, those different micronutrients from whole foods. And the benefits of getting those whole foods are that you're getting a lot more than just those essential vitamins and minerals. Fillers and mushrooms, I'm hoping that a lot of these products don't have because I feel A, fillers are unnecessary and B, if I'm going to be taking mushrooms, I'm going to be taking individual amounts and at specific doses, things like cordyceps or rhodiola, because as a blend, as a mix, when they're all bundled together, I don't really know what kind of mushroom I'm getting. And actually, mushrooms do have a lot of medicinal value. We've talked to Dr William Li about this on the podcast before. And if you're just chucking in random mushrooms without real attention being paid to the quality and the blends that you're adding, it can lead to harm. It can overload your liver, it can flare up autoimmune conditions. So I'd prefer not to have mushrooms in a daily drink and I'd be a lot more targeted about the kind of mushrooms that I'd be consuming if I wanted to consume mushrooms at all. All right, let's start off with taste testing. First up, it's the one that everyone wants me to talk about, Athletic Greens. Now, Athletic Greens is the biggest on the market. It's also the most expensive. They are around 97 pounds if you just buy a one-off packet that should last you around 30 days, I believe. It's a scoop a day. They've got a wonderful website. I've got to commend them on the branding and everything. It's just done so, so well. And interestingly, on the website, if you look at the individual claims, so mental performance, for example, sustained focus without a coffee crash, they don't talk about the greens themselves. They talk about pantothenic acid, for example, to support your mental performance and folate and niacin. So these are different types of B vitamins that have been shown to improve tiredness and fatigue. They don't talk about the individual ingredients here. Enduring energy, copper, chromium, phosphorus. Again, they talk about the micronutrients, not the greens themselves. Heart health, again, they're talking about B vitamins, thiamine. This is an interesting play because they're probably under a lot of scrutiny knowing that they are the biggest player and they can only use very well established health claims that are regulated by the EU, the FDA, etc, etc, and not the proprietary blend of these different ingredients. So things like moringa or papaya or chlorella, for example, these have less evidence for those different claims. So it's an interesting tactic there, which allows them to still have immune defence, heart health, which are all correct, absolutely correct. And this isn't a knock on anyone that is sponsored by AG or promotes AG. I firmly believe people have benefits from consuming these and we'll get into why those might be at the end of this little segment. But these guys have tried to sponsor the podcast for years and we have a blanket note to all supplements. It's just something that we have at the Doctor's Kitchen to maintain honesty and transparency. And quite honestly, with 75 different ingredients plus, it does not meet the first criteria of what I'm looking for. I'm looking for minimal ingredients and maximum impact. I do have it on good authority that the reason why these guys can have such high amounts of vitamin A, C, E, B1, for example, it's not coming from the greens. Essentially, the greens and all the other ingredients are dehydrated, processed, and then a multivitamin is essentially crumbled into the blend to ensure that they meet these different RDIs, these recommended daily allowances and daily intakes. So that's one of the reasons why they can guarantee that the micronutrients that you're getting that could potentially support mental health and fatigue, energy, heart health are maintained consistent across the whole product. So if we're looking at the criteria, it already fails on the minimal ingredients. This is not freeze dried, unfortunately. There is nothing on the website that I can find. Yeah, there's nothing here that I can actually see that talks about freeze drying, unfortunately. And you would expect a powder company, a green powder company to talk about freeze drying and they don't. So that's a no. The other criteria is independent lab testing. This for me is quite important if you're going to be consuming a product that is meant to be drunk daily and is commonly contaminated with things like heavy metals. Now, I initially thought that NSF sport program certification, if you look on their website, it shows that their sport testing program is only for substances that are banned by major athletic organisations. So if you're an athlete and this is athletic greens and you're taking this substance every day, you want to be making sure that you are not erroneously ingesting anabolic steroids or anything else that is banned. But if you look on their website, they do have a section where it says gold standard testing and every serving of AG1 is free of heavy metals, contaminants and free of over 280 banned substances by major athletic organisations. So that speaks to me, that says to me that AG have taken that extra step to ensure that it doesn't have any contaminants in, which is a good thing. And you could argue that that is what qualifies AG to have the highest price tag out of all of these different products. But actually, when you look at the price of certification, it is punchy. It does go up to 50 grand a year, but for a multi-billion dollar company, that's kind of small fish. So it's good that they've got it. It doesn't quite qualify the price tag for me. Most of that money is probably going to go into marketing. The other criteria I'm looking at is if these ingredients are organic. I can't see that all the ingredients are actually organic here. I'm sure some of them are, but not all of them, and I'd want all the ingredients in this product to be organic. Bonus points for if they have a study. Now, look, they do have a study. It's on the homepage of the website. It's a really terrible study. And for the amount of money that these guys have at their disposal, it's kind of laughable. So in a single arm study, they've got 35 adults aged 25 to 48 and they found, you know, to their credit, 97% of participants felt more sustained energy, noticed less cravings after 90 days. Look, there's not that much you can tell from that single arm study in 35 people and I'd love to see a much broader study looking at things like blood levels of micronutrients after 30 days or something that was blinded against another green powder, let's say. It would be wonderful to see that, but obviously the incentive for that is not there. All right, let's do a taste test. They say 12 grams in one scoop. So let's go for this. You know what? It's not bad. It is not bad at all. I can see why people like this. For someone who doesn't drink green powders or doesn't like the thought of a green powder, taste wise, this is probably it's very attractive. I can see why people drink this. Mixes well with the water. Has a faint like pineappley taste. Not bad at all. Overall my thoughts, very expensive for a multivitamin. Doesn't have freeze dried ingredients, doesn't have organic, but it's probably safe to consume as a result of the third party testing. I would love to see more studies on this, even if people did studies with athletic greens and other products. Overall, I think it's probably too expensive as a multivitamin. But each to their own and whoever promotes this, I'm sure they have genuine thoughts that are positive about this product. Next, Huel Daily Greens. So Huel got popular for being like a meal replacement shake sort of thing. My thoughts on Huel, I think they sort of sit in that middle ground of like real food and like protein shakes. And then there's a bit in the middle. So there's like a higher calorie shake, I can imagine. I would never consume them. I don't think they're necessary. I don't think they have any nutritional value really to supplement a normal diet. If you're literally on the run and you have, I think they're useful in a crisis situation. So if I was in a humanitarian aid camp, would I rely on Huel for my daily needs? Yeah, probably. But other than that, I don't see the appeal if I'm honest. Maybe from a weight loss point of view, you definitely reduce your calorie intake, but it wouldn't be a very nice way of doing it. Anyway, they have a daily greens product and it sort of very similar to AG1 in terms of the marketing, the branding, the health benefits and the claims. Let's look at their website. Very nicely done website, looks very aesthetically pleasing. 170 health and wellness benefits. Wow, that's quite a few. And this is all very nicely laid out. I've got to commend them on their branding. I think the branding is epic. But let's get down to the minerals. So the first criteria I'm looking for, minimal ingredients. This has got over 90 ingredients, so definitely not what I would consider optimal. Freeze drying, these are definitely not freeze dried. I can't see anything on their website that suggests freeze drying or a low temperature preparation. Organic, some of the ingredients are organic, some of them are not. In terms of independent testing, I can't see anything that suggests that these guys have independently tested the product to be free of contaminants. They also have these quite annoying proprietary blends and you know my thoughts on proprietary blends. I really don't think it's a good thing because you don't know exactly how much of that individual ingredient in said blend is actually going into the powder. And just to do a glib example, Huel say that they have organic rhodiola root right here. Looking at the ingredients, I have no idea how much of that rhodiola is actually going to be in a tablespoon of this green powder. And if we go to examine.com, one of my favourite websites to look at supplements and some of the evidence around supplements, we've had Kamal on the podcast before, one of the co-founders, and you look at the dosage information around rhodiola, there does appear to be some benefits to having rhodiola in your diet, but at a minimum of around 144 milligrams. Specifically for fatigue and stress that I'm sure these guys are talking about, you're looking at 288 to 600 milligrams or so of rhodiola. The likelihood that this green powder has that clinically significant amount to induce some of those potential benefits is unlikely. And we could go through the same exercise with all these other ingredients, ashwagandha, Siberian ginseng, lemon balm, marshmallow root. It's all wonderful to have these ingredients in your blend, but if they're not in the amounts that are actually correlated to benefits, there is literally no point. Let's get to a taste test. It's got a bit of a chalky after texture. But as far as green powders go, this isn't bad. From a taste perspective. It's also got a healthy amount of like berries in this. They're all organic as well. Not bad from a taste point of view, slightly sweet on my side. Again, it doesn't meet the criteria that I'm looking for, minimal ingredients, third party tested. But it's significantly cheaper than athletic greens coming in at about 45 pounds. Okay, what is next? Ancient nutrition. So this is Dr Axe's supplement brand. It again has similar characters, alfalfa, organic beetroot, most of the ingredients are organic. It does have a lot of ingredients, but nowhere near as many as the previous two that we've looked at. Still around 25. I'm looking at the website and we're looking at the ingredients. You can see much fewer ingredients, but still quite a few. It's got their own proprietary fruit blend. It has a digestive blend with lipase, phytase, pectinase. That may have benefits for people's digestion of all these different green powders. Again, they have a botanical mushroom blend that I'm really not interested in. It doesn't appear to be freeze dried or at least prepared in a very low temperature environment. I can't see any evidence of third party testing to ensure that there's no heavy metals or contaminants. And there are certainly no studies looking at this particular product. At $40, it does appear to be a lot cheaper than other greens powders. Let's give it a taste. Oh gosh. Minty. Oh, wow. They've added mint to this. Organic peppermint flavour, organic spearmint flavour, organic luo han guo extract. This does not taste good. That's not for me. If you like mint, this is for you. But if you do not like mint with your greens, it is not a good flavour. I'm sorry, guys. Just an extra one on the ancient nutrition. They have some really interesting claims on the website. One claim I can definitely discount is lightly sweet mint flavour. It is not light, guys. It is not light. They've also got supports healthy energy, supports healthy detoxification, supports healthy digestive function with a little asterix next to it. And if you look down, the asterix states very clearly and truthfully that these statements have not been evaluated by the FDA. So or the food and drug administration. So it's it's it they can say it, but as long as they say that this isn't supported by evidence, it's fine to say it, but there is some small print there that everyone should be aware of. Okay, next one. Thorne. So Thorne is a very well regarded supplement company. They advertise on a number of different podcasts that I listen to. I know Rhonda Patrick is a big fan of Thorne. They appear to have a good reputation for lab testing and quality of supplements. So I'm quite excited to try this greens powder. Oh gosh, I've just noticed they've got mint flavour as well. This is mint flavoured. It's not part of my criteria, so I can't discredit them for that, but people need to calm it on the mint. Okay, so the first criteria I'm looking at, minimal ingredients. It does actually have minimal ingredients. Not as minimal as I'd like, but still pretty minimal. Matcha, spirulina, moringa, watermelon powder. They have a mushroom blend that I'm not a big fan of, but hey ho. They have an adaptogen blend with ashwagandha, rhodiola. They also have an antioxidant blend, so they've also added some extra phytonutrients and micronutrients that you don't typically find in a multivitamin, which is interesting. But one thing that I think is a big positive is they give you the milligrams of each ingredient. So if I'm looking at the ingredients list and I'm looking at moringa powder, it states clearly 500 milligrams in every serving size. It says that for every single thing, spinach powder, kelp powder, spirulina, lemon balm. I know exactly how much I'm getting in each serving of this, which I think is a big, big plus that no other greens powder so far has actually demonstrated on the label. So that's a good win. Just to put this in practice, this means, let's go back to examine.com. Human studies currently in existence have used either 500 milligrams of the leaf extract or three grams of the seeds to show some potential benefits. Now, the evidence for moringa isn't particularly strong, but if I'm interested in getting moringa and this states it has 500 milligrams of moringa in the blend, then this is a win for me. Other thing I'm looking for, is it organic? I can't see that the ingredients are organic, unfortunately. There isn't anything to suggest that these ingredients are freeze dried, so the preparation method probably isn't the best. Independent lab testing, again, they are NSF certified for sports supplements. I don't know whether that extends to lab testing for heavy metals and contaminants. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt, but I would prefer that confirmation. They do state on their website that what sets daily greens apart is Thorne's approach to total transparency, which I do appreciate. Every ingredient amount and blend is listed on the label with no proprietary blend inside. So they recognise that this whole proprietary blend phenomena is a bit of smoke and mirrors. We eliminate the guesswork from your greens. It should be the tagline. There is a really interesting warning though. Consuming this product can expose you to chemicals including lead, which is known to the state of California to cause birth defects or other reproductive harm. So maybe that speaks to the fact that their certification doesn't include contaminants because they can't guarantee that this product doesn't have contaminants like lead and cadmium and other commonly found contaminants in products of this nature. So if you're pregnant or nursing, do not use this product. And in fact, I would extend that to all these different products. I would not take these products if you are pregnant, just because there is no clear guarantee that they have tested for lead, apart from athletic greens, but you've got to trust them that that's exactly what they're doing on every single product that is shipped across the world. Let's do a taste test. Oh, that's bad. That's really bad. I'm looking at the ingredients and I've noticed glutathione, the reduced version of glutathione is also in the antioxidant blend. And glutathione is actually quite hard to put in a stable form, which is why a lot of practitioners are using liposomal glutathione. Liposomal basically means that you have a fat, a fatty cover around the ingredient and the ingredient you find in the middle because glutathione can have quite a sulfurous flavour when it's reduced. And actually, I feel that this is sort of maybe that coming into the drink itself, but this is definitely the worst tasting out of all of them. I had such high hopes for you, Thorne. Oh, gosh. Oh my word. That's the worst. I had such high hopes for that one. That was definitely the worst tasting. And the ones that I don't recommend are probably the cheapest ones and the ones that have added protein purely because the taste of that is definitely the worst. I would say out of all the true greens powders that aren't trying to pretend to be a protein, Thorne, unfortunately, was the worst tasting out of all of them. Next up, FS Greens, your favourite TikToker has probably been promoting these guys. They're very, very popular and they're certainly a lot more sort of female focused in their marketing campaigns. So let's look at our criteria. They only have 21 ingredients. That's actually kind of a plus. You know, ideally, I wouldn't want more than seven or eight, but 21 is definitely better than the 80 plus that a lot of these other ones have. Is it freeze dried? Definitely not. I can't see anything on their website that suggests freeze drying or a low temperature preparation. Organic, some of the ingredients are organic, some of them are not. In terms of independent testing, I can't see anything that suggests that these guys have independently tested the product to be free of contaminants. And even though they have minimal ingredients, again, I can't see the amount of every ingredient. So for example, it has moringa leaf powder, it's got green tea, but I have no idea about how much of those individual ingredients are actually in this product itself. Let's do a taste test. Tastes like it should, really. Tastes green. There's no artificial flavours in this. There is gold kiwi fruit powder, but I can't really taste that much sweetness. It's not overly sweet. It tastes as if it tastes like a green powder would or should. Yeah, pretty mild. I can tell why this is popular because the amount that is suggested to be put into a serving is so small, it's not offensive. If you were blending this into a smoothie, it would probably turn it green without making it taste so off-putting. So I can see why this is popular, but for the price, for the lack of transparency across organic, independent lab testing and preparation method, again, I wouldn't be a fan of it. I don't think it's necessary. I don't think it would give any potentially particular benefit. I'm going to do a rogue one next. This isn't a powder, this is actually a sachet with chlorophyll. Now, this is from a company called Symbiotica. They gained popularity for creating a liposomal vitamin C. So we were just talking about liposomal packaging. There is evidence that liposomal packaging delivers nutrients into your body's cells more efficiently. So you need a lower dose to get the same amount of effect. Whether or not people would benefit from high dose vitamin C is up for debate. There are a lot of people on both sides of the argument. I feel you can get most of your vitamin C requirements from food, but I appreciate that there might be some benefits of high dose IV vitamin C. If we look on their website, it's got loads of claims like cellular detoxification, boosting energy levels, healthy immune response. I don't think any of these are evidence-based. Again, they have a proprietary super greens complex, so I have no idea about how much each of these individual amounts are included in the product. But what is really interesting and what I would be really interested in is the broccoli seed powder extract and the glucoraphanin powder. So glucoraphanin is one of these ingredients that you find in quite high amounts alongside sulforaphane in broccoli sprouts. They are wonderful anti-inflammatory agents. People are supplementing with them even more so these days because of the potential benefits. However, in this case, I still don't know how much of that I'm actually getting. So for example, if we go on examine.com and we look at sulforaphane, it's one of these interesting molecules that you find in brassica vegetables. We're looking at around anywhere between 1.5 and 7 milligrams for an average sized person. And if we go back to this particular ingredient label, again, I have no idea how much of this is going to have the broccoli or the glucoraphanin or the sulforaphane. It's unknown to me. Going through our criteria, they do have minimal ingredients, which is a good thing, although I don't know how much of each ingredient is actually in the product itself. This isn't freeze dried. It doesn't state what the preparation method is. They state that they are GMP certified and I believe that is an independent third party, but I'm not too sure if they're looking at contaminants. I feel that it is mainly to ensure the consumer that there are no hazardous materials coming into contact during their manufacturing process, but I don't believe that means that this is free from contaminants as that's another certification. Some of their ingredients are organic, like broccoli seed extract, but not all of the ingredients are. This is actually a favourite of my wife's because it's so easy to take. You just take the sachet and you just drink it every single day. So I haven't actually tried it myself. Let's try it. Take one pouch, squeeze into mouth or stir into your favourite beverage. Very drinkable. Slight sweetness. This is citrus lime flavoured. I can't taste any harshness from the broccoli seed or the glucoraphanin, which makes me feel like there's not that much in there because if you've ever taken a broccoli sprouts extract or powdered, they are so strong because there is so much bitterness in those complex molecules that you're consuming. The fact that this is sweet is not actually reassuring at all. It's also got quite a bit of sugar in, cassava syrup, lime extract, organic citrus bioflavonoids. All in all, I think this is not bad, but at 70 pounds a month, I don't think you're going to be getting much benefit from this and I wouldn't even be able to quantify the milligrams of all the different ingredients that they have in this for you. Home straight. All right, we've only got four left. Green vibrance. Let's go for this one next. Luckily, these guys do sachets, so I don't need to buy a whole massive one. Straight off the bat, if you look at the website, 70 ingredients. So already that doesn't qualify for my first criteria. I want less. Less is more. But importantly, with all these different ingredients, they do have the milligrams of the ingredients that they have in the powder, which is good. This is a positive thing. It's similar to what Thorne did, although with a ton more ingredients. So for example, beetroot juice powder, certified organic. This has 250 milligrams of beetroot juice powder. And depending on the nitrate content of that beetroot extract, that can potentially correlate with some beneficial effects on things like blood pressure and maybe even athletic performance. So this is a positive for green vibrance. I don't have time to go through every single ingredient to determine whether it's a good dose or not, but the fact that it's there means that you can do your own homework and determine whether this is something that you'd like to have. It's non-GMO but doesn't necessarily mean organic for all the ingredients. And in fact, when you look at the ingredients label, not all the ingredients are organic. I can't see any evidence of independent third party testing on their website, so I'm not too sure whether they do or not. And the processing doesn't appear to be freeze drying and there isn't any mention of how the processing is taken out. So I'm not too sure whether this is freeze dried or not. I would assume it is not. This is 11 grams. Let's give it a taste. Oh, wow. Doesn't appear to be any flavouring in this. So it tastes very, very green, very, very pungent. And after having all the others that have been sweetened, you can really tell that this is there's some vegetables in this. I actually appreciate the fact that they haven't sweetened this because it kind of tastes like it works. And that's kind of what I'd want from a green powder if I'm honest. So the pros of this are that they actually do show you how much of each individual ingredient is in this. They have too many, they're not all organic. I can't see any evidence of third party testing. It is 50 pounds a month. Not bad if you can tolerate the taste. Let's go to the next one. Dr Schulze's original formula since 1979. This guy is like the Colonel Sanders of green powders. Oh, smells strong. So the website for these guys, A is not secure, so beware. There isn't too much information on the website about the quality of the product itself. They've stated it's a natural blend of grasses, algae, vegetables and fruit. They've talked about the individual benefits or proposed benefits of these ingredients. From the website, I can't tell whether all of them are organic. And certainly on the label, I can't see any mention of organic either. But what is interesting is that they give you the locations of where the ingredients are sourced from. So alfalfa grass comes from the USA, the purple dulse seaweed comes from Maine in the USA, the acerola cherry comes from Florida. But unfortunately, I just don't know whether these are organic ingredients or not. It doesn't appear to have that many ingredients, which is a win. I can't see anything about independent testing to determine contamination. But what I do like and this is the first time out of all these different green powders is that these botanical ingredients have been naturally dried, which means a very gentle drying process, and then tumble blended for less than two minutes to preserve their nutritional vitality and integrity. So there does appear to be some focus on reducing the processing from vegetable or herb or grass to the end product itself. As for all the other things that I would really like more information on, like the amount of each of these different grasses, the quantities in milligrams, etc, I don't have that information. Let's give this one a try. Wow, that is strong. I feel the ingredients. This is salty. This 100% does not have any sweetener in. I can certify that. It is strong, strong tasting. It tastes like it works. I think that should be their tagline. It I yeah, I can I can tell that this is as raw as it will come and it is the original formula because there's been nothing done to this formula to make it palatable or tasty or anything. If this is the kind of thing that you want from a green powder, something that is like original, robust, tastes like it works, yeah, go for it. I would put this in as minimal water and shot it because you don't want to be savouring or enjoying this at all. This is this is I mean, it's already sedimenting at the bottom. You can tell there's there's no digestive enzymes or anything like that. There's nothing breaking this down. It is as raw as you can get. But you know what? I appreciate that. I actually think that's better. This is how a green powder should you'd expect to taste very, very strong. Tastes like it works. Okay, next. All right. Last and thankfully last is HUX. So HUX, this is the original flavour. They're all over TikTok, your favourite influencer, your favourite influencer's gram. This is a hefty dose as well. Let's go to the website. So, very cool looking website. It's a cool looking little tin. They've obviously taken a leaf out of Athletic Greens' book. So you've got actually not too many ingredients. I believe there's around 17. So that's not bad. Some of the ingredients appear to be organic, which is good. There isn't a mention of independent third party testing, although it is FDA approved, but that doesn't mean anything to me. There's no description of the process, so you can assume it isn't freeze dried. They talk about 10 grams of plant-based protein, meeting your RDAs for A, C and D. That for me, I'm not interested in that whatsoever. The way you get that is crumbling a little bit of a multivitamin into the powder and then adding a plant-based protein like a pea protein, which I imagine is on the recipe list. It is. There's pea protein and brown rice protein. And as they're first on the list, that tends to be the largest ingredient amount in the total product. And so you can imagine to get that 10 grams of protein, there's going to be mostly pea protein in this. But what I do like about this website is when you go to the ingredients and you hover over them and click broccoli, for example, it will show you how much broccoli is actually in each serving. Now, each serving is quite a hefty dose. This is 30 grams. So it's a much bigger dose of your daily greens, probably because this is also trying to consider people's plant protein or protein requirements as well. It's also got 1,000 IU of vitamin D, which I don't think is enough. I think most people actually need a higher amount of vitamin D. It's also got a hefty dose of magnesium, although I'm not too sure what type of magnesium. Magnesium glycinate. And there are a couple of things that annoy me about the website. Now, this isn't to take anything away from the brand, but I just think the attention to detail is really important. So this says buffered magnesium, which is a processing technique. When you look at the label that's on their website, it says bored preparation. Now, that's a typo. I actually thought that there was a weird preparation method that I'd never heard of before, but this is a typo in the image themselves. And then also, when you go down to the ingredients list, you have the grams per serving, grams per serving. And then you look at guava and it just says 1.94 per serving. Now that I imagine is 1.94 grams per serving, but just little things like that just kind of annoy me when you're that big a brand. Let's taste it. To be fair to them, because they're trying to be a plant-based protein as well as a greens powder, you can understand the fact that it basically tastes like I've just eaten a bunch of chalk and just it's all over my mouth. The texture is horrible of this, really, really bad. I think we're going to move on from this. I appreciate the some of the things of this, but like I don't think I could have this every day. No way. No way. I wouldn't enjoy that. 50 pounds a month. A bit too much. You couldn't pay me 50 pounds. All right. So that's my review of all the greens powders that are the most popular on the market. What I would recommend instead of investing in a green powder if you are struggling to afford one, because they do cost anywhere between 30 and 100 pounds, is a fibre supplement. So looking for an insoluble and soluble fibre supplement, one that would include something like linseed or psyllium husk. That's actually been shown to improve your microbiota, improve cholesterol levels. I think that's a really good daily addition and super, super cheap as well. The other things that I'm really interested in are single ingredient additions to your diet. So something like cocoa flavanols that you can get from dark chocolate or raw cacao has actually been shown again to reduce blood pressure, improve cognitive health, improve blood flow, and even improve endurance. So that's something that I would actually spend a little bit more money on myself, or even a freeze dried powder of berries if you can't find them. But even better than all of that, frozen foods are brilliant. They're frozen at source. We've done a whole podcast on budget cooking on this topic itself. We'll put a link somewhere around here. And in that episode, I go into the details around how they preserve a lot of those micronutrients. So you can simply add frozen cranberries or frozen blackcurrants or blueberries, and that is going to be increasing your antioxidant capacity of your diet over a 24-hour period. So lean into frozen foods as well as frozen broccoli, frozen spinach, etc, if these are the kind of powders that you feel that you might benefit from but struggle to afford. My favourites out of all these, I don't particularly have a favourite because they didn't meet all the criteria that I was looking for. Independent lab testing, organic ingredients, freeze drying, and minimal ingredients. Remember, less is more. If I had to choose one, it'd probably be the more old school ones. So the Dr. Schulze, even though the flavour is really salty and strong, even the vita mineral greens, I actually like the fact that they've done third party testing. They haven't changed the ingredients much. The flavour is really strong. You know what you're getting. The ones that I think aren't worth your money are probably the cheapest ones and the ones that have added protein purely because the taste of that is definitely the worst. I would say out of all the true greens powders that aren't trying to pretend to be a protein, Thorne, unfortunately, was the worst tasting out of all of them. And the ones that I don't recommend are probably the most expensive ones because what these are are well-branded multivitamins, and I don't think that they actually can stand up to some of the claims that they have. Not to say that these might not work. And the reasons why they might work is because there is a placebo effect. There is the effect that if you are drinking a green drink and you have paid enough for this green drink, then you are identifying as someone who is healthy. It might encourage you to exercise more, eat a more varied diet, it might encourage you to go to sleep on time. You might have these intangible benefits from investing in your health using a green powder. So that's not to say that you shouldn't buy any of them, but I just think there are better ways to spend your money economically and that can have a tangible impact on your wellbeing. If I'm missing one of the green powders that you feel meets those criteria that I've been banging on about, then let me know in the comments. I'd love to see what those are. I'd love to do a little episode like this on other powders, whether it's berries or cocoa flavanols or any other nutrient dense blends because I'm a fan of getting whole food ingredients in more accessible forms. But for me, the best way is probably to get frozen foods and other single ingredient powders that are of high quality into your diet if you wish.
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