Did Optimum Nutrition Change The Gold Standard?

Have you been using Optimum Nutrition’s Gold Standard 100% Whey protein powder for years? Did you notice they recently sneaked in a little change?

Something Is Different!

It’s no big secret that practically the only supplement I occasionally use is ON’s whey protein powder. Of all I tried it is the only one whose taste doesn’t make me want to gag and at least the milk chocolate flavor version dissolves without even needing to use a shaker.

Over the years the look of these behemoth tubs has become familiar enough to me that I don’t pay much attention when unpacking a new one: black and large enough to hint at a possible intended reuse as a small washing-machine.

But when I now had the one I recently ordered sitting right beside my old one I did notice something. At first it seemed that just the layout of the label had been redesigned, but another difference became visible when I looked really closely. Let’s see if you can tell. This is the old tub,

The old tub of Optimum Nutrition whey from last year.

and this is the new one:

The new one, bought a couple of days ago.

Can you tell what’s missing? Yup, it’s the “hydrowhey peptides.” Now have a look at the list of ingredients on the old tub,

Here be “whey peptides.”

and the new one:

Here be “hydrolyzed whey protein isolate.”

Peptides? What Peptides?

Peptides, in case you wonder, are proteins already broken into pieces, and therefore theoretically digested faster by your body. The kicker is: hydrolyzed whey protein isolate is the same thing as whey peptides, because, uh, hydrolyzed proteins are peptides (I explained that whole she-bang in this article about whey protein).

If they really make a noticeable difference for your bodybuilding efforts is anyone’s guess. But they are comparatively expensive to manufacture and one may wonder why ON dropped the prominent mention.