How Is The Quality Of Your Workout Supplement?

Do you spend a lot of money on workout supplements? Do you know if they really do what they say? ConsumerLab tested popular creatine and BCAA brands and came to some devastating results.

It’s In The Fine Print!

A while ago I had a guest post on here by Asagaard, who looked at how much of an ingredient supposed to do wonders is in a supplement. He reported that they often have much too little of the good stuff to make you go boom.

Asagaard simply squinted his eyes and read the fine print on the labels, but now ConsumerLab put their manpower and laboratories behind it and did a real scientific check. And it doesn’t look good either.

19 Products, 4 Failed Entirely

Of 19 creatine and BCAA supplements tested, four failed quality testing altogether. Two creatine products, Muscle Marketing USA’s ATP Creatine Serum and VPX’s Creatine Plasma, contained only trace amounts of creatine. That does nothing, because you need way more.

In general, ConsumerLab advises, you should go for products that clearly state what’s in the bottle. The worst they found were those hiding behind ingredients listed as “patented protein formula” etc. because you’ll never know what’s in that formula. I already told you how easy it is to patent crap.

Some Bargains

But there is some good stuff to buy. A representative of ConsumerLab said that the lowest cost creatine of “high quality” was Vitacost Creatine, which averages at nine cents per 5 mg of creatine monohydrate. And I agree: Vitacost uses Creapure, the highest quality creatine available.

For BCAA products, they said the best deal is Ultimate Nutrition’s 100% Crystaline BCAA 12,000, that on average costs 31 cents per 5 mg of BCAAs. Here I believe the price calculation, but still don’t advise you to buy BCAAs. Because they likely  don’t do more than your regular protein powder.

Picture courtesy of David van der Mark.