Buying guide

The protein powder answer nobody gives you straight

By Robin Marsh · Everyday Blender

What the lead testing actually found, what the seals on the tub mean, and the powders I would buy today.

If you have put protein powder in a smoothie this year, you have probably seen a headline about lead in protein powder. If you have not, the short version: independent testing, including a widely covered Consumer Reports investigation of popular powders, found measurable lead and other heavy metals in a meaningful share of them, and plant-based powders tested worse on average than whey.

The metals are not an ingredient anybody adds. They come up out of the soil into rice, pea and cacao, which is exactly why the word "clean" on the front of a tub tells you nothing at all about what is inside it.

Here is the part the headlines never get to. There is already a working answer, it is printed on the tub, and almost nobody explains it.

The seal is the answer

Three certifications are run by independent labs that test the actual finished product, batch after batch, for contaminants and for whether the label is telling the truth:

1. NSF Certified for Sport. The strictest of the three. Professional teams use it, and they use it for a reason.
2. Informed Sport, or Informed Choice. The same idea, running a very large testing program.
3. USP Verified. Pharmacy-grade verification. Less common on protein, but it counts.

If a tub carries one of those marks, an independent lab is standing behind what is inside it. If the label only says "third-party lab tested" in the brand's own font with no seal, that sentence was written by a marketing department, and I say that as somebody who spent a career sitting next to the people who write them.

What I would actually buy

Certifications re-checked at publication. Seals do change, so if you are buying months from now, look for the mark on the tub in front of you rather than taking my word for it.

If you drink whey

1. Klean Athlete (NSF Certified for Sport). About the straightest certified whey on the market.
2. Momentous Whey (NSF Certified for Sport).
3. Optimum Nutrition Gold Standard (Informed Choice). The widely available one. If you want certified without hunting, it is in every big store.
4. Dymatize ISO100 (Informed Choice). If you want an isolate that mixes thin.

If you want plant

1. Garden of Life Sport (NSF Certified for Sport). The Sport line specifically, not the brand's other tubs.
2. Ritual Essential Protein (Informed Sport).

Plant powders are where certification earns its keep, because plant sources are where the testing found the most trouble. An uncertified plant powder is the one product in this category I would simply not buy.

If budget is what decides it: a certified whey on a subscription is usually cheaper per serving than an uncertified "premium" plant tub. You are not being asked to pay more to get the seal.

The greens powder question, since you will ask

The $79 green tubs are mostly a multivitamin with a podcast budget. The testing picture is no better than protein, and a handful of frozen spinach costs about eighteen cents and brings the fiber the tub filtered out. I do not link one here, and that is not an oversight.

The one-morning fix

Go and look at the tub in your kitchen. If it has a seal, you are done and you never have to think about this again, which is the best kind of problem to have. If it does not, finish it or do not, and put a certified one in the next grocery order.

Once the powder is settled, the thing that decides whether a smoothie holds you to lunch is the rest of the build: why your smoothie doesn't keep you full. And if it is the mornings rather than the recipe, that is the twenty-minute freezer system.

Questions, or a powder you want me to look at? robin@everydayblender.com. I read every one.