What matters most to you when buying protein powders – price or choice? There is certainly a wide choice of brands available but with prices on the rise, some consumers might be tempted into purchasing products that are cheaper but not necessarily the best.
Products that are correctly labelled should tell you all you need to know about whether they are worth the price. Whey protein powder, for example, has risen in cost over recent years, particularly those containing WPC80, which has an 80% whey protein concentrate. Those who use whey protein because of its known beneficial effects on building and maintaining muscle mass now face a bewildering choice of cheaper products, not all of the best quality or effectiveness.
So what should you be looking for when choosing whey protein powder? Obviously you want a product that contains the highest amount of protein but how that is achieved varies.
WPC80 is the main ingredient in most whey protein blends and then colour, flavours and sweeteners are added, all of which then dilute the amount of whey protein. What this means for the labelling is that the claim of 80% whey protein does not stack up because the effects of moisture and the other additives have to be taken into consideration. In cheaper products, what is claimed to be 80% could actually be as little as 10%, the remainder bulked out by carbohydrate powders such as dextrose.
As a consumer, you have the ultimate choice of whether to buy or not and if you are happy with the cheaper product you are using and are seeing the results you want, you won’t be too concerned about what the label says.
However, if you want to be savvy about your purchases you have to check that you are not buying something that is being sold as one thing when it’s really something else altogether. A protein powder labelled as whey when it’s really a tiny mix of whey bulked out with proteins such as soya or pea might not be worth even the cheaper price you’re paying.
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