It’s no secret that most guys fail miserably when it comes to eating enough fruits and vegetables. According to Center for Disease Control data only about 1 in 10 adult men consume the recommended amount of fruits (1 1/2 to 2 cups) and vegetables (2 to 3 cups) per day. Well, if the ads on your favorite wellness podcast are to be believed, you should consider veggie powder as your nutritional flavor. If you can just drink all your fruits and vegetables at once and be done with it, then surely that’s easier than gnawing on a carrot, right? After all, in the hustle and bustle of everyday life, we’re all looking for ways to push the easy button.
It is still perceived as being more “manly” to cut into a steak than a piece of cauliflower. And at this time of year, the fresh produce section of your supermarket can seem quite dark (and expensive!), leaving you with even less motivation to help yourself to more salads. And we all know that preparing enough vegetables to eat every day isn’t always convenient or enjoyable. So if it remains a Sisyphean effort to get Americans to eat enough broccoli and berries, is there a way to still be able to get all the nutritional benefits, including vitamins and antioxidants they provide, without the hassle?
The promises are lofty: all the complete daily nutrition you need in just one glass of water, with virtually no effort or need to chew and chew. “It’s all you really need, really” according to one company. Since the fruits, vegetables, and other ingredients used to make the blends are known to boost immunity, support gut health, improve brain function, and boost recovery, these powdered greens claim to do the same. In other words, the selling point is that one scoop a day mixed into your aqua can help you live long and thrive. Age like a hero, if you will.
Plus, a powder is much easier to make (and clean!) than anything that requires you to whip out a blender or juicer.
This begs the question: is drinking your vegetables as healthy, or even healthier, than eating them?
Green powders have an undeniable appeal. Here, we break down whether these supplements deliver what they promise and what you need to know about them before drinking another foam green drink.
What exactly are green powders?
For the most part, greens powders are made by dehydrating various ingredients, then crushing them into a fine powder ready to be mixed with water or juice and sent down the hatch. They can also be produced by extracting the juice from the whole form of the ingredients, drying it and then grinding it into a powder. Brands vary in their production methods.
Each can give you a dizzying array of items. Don’t be fooled by the name. Many green vegetable powders also contain many non-green ingredients. Formulas vary by brand, but here’s what you can find in many supplements.
- Greens, such as wheatgrass, kale, oat grass, spirulina, barley grass, broccoli, chlorella
- Fruits, such as pomegranate, cherry, blueberry, elderberry
- Beet powder
- Mushrooms, such as reishi, cordyceps, turkey tail
- Rhizomes, such as ginger, turmeric
- Extracts and herbs, such as milk thistle, ashwagandha
- Seeds, such as chia, flax
- Priobiotics
- Prebiotics, such as oligosaccharides
- Spices, such as cinnamon, black pepper, cayenne pepper
- Vitamins and minerals
- Sweeteners, such as stevia, monk fruit extract
The stuff ain’t cheap
While most companies recommend taking one scoop daily, some will say that for short periods of stress or intense exertion, two servings can be used. And, at up to three dollars per serving, it’s not the cheapest way to live. Gram for gram, powdered greens will cost more than most actual fruits and vegetables. In other words, these are not supplements for the truly budget conscious.
You may not be getting a useful amount of some ingredients
With ingredients like grape seed extract and ashwagandha, it’s very likely that a greens powder will provide compounds that you wouldn’t typically get from munching on a salad. I don’t know many guys who serve reishi mushrooms for dinner and top their sandwiches with oat grass.
For the most part, the green powders on the market consist of proprietary blends with impressive names such as “Alkalinizing Grass Blend” and “Superfood Complex”. And although the components of these blends are listed on the label (such as wheatgrass juice powder, turmeric, beet root powder), what is almost always missing is the amount of each in the product.
With so many ingredients in the mix, it’s possible that some of them, including adaptogenic mushrooms and anti-inflammatory turmeric, are provided in amounts too low to have much physiological impact. One brand boasts of including 75 different ingredients in a single serving (YES! 75 ingredients). There is only a limited amount of each ingredient that can possibly be in the mix to keep the serving size to a manageable amount. Nobody wants to wake up and throw a cup of green powder in their water. Any brand can say it has broccoli even if it has a tiny amount. There is no minimum amount of ingredient that must be in a product.
That said, the labels are supposed to display the ingredients in order of the amount included, so looking at the first ingredients listed should give you an idea of what you’re getting the most from each serving.
Another shortcoming is fiber. For something that is so high in vegetables and fruits, you would think there would be more fiber in a greens powder. But, surprisingly, this is usually not the case. The processing involved in making greens powder extracts the fiber so you get less than you do from whole fruits and vegetables. By far, fiber is one of the biggest nutritional deficiencies in the typical American diet.
The vitamin and mineral content is another story, although
While information on the content of so-called superfood ingredients is often obscure, the vitamin and mineral content is clearer. On the nutrition label, you’ll see how much of each vitamin and mineral the product contains relative to the Daily Value. Some brands give you 100% or more of the daily recommendation for several vitamins and minerals. That means these greens powders can be an easy way to make sure you’re getting your daily micronutrient needs like magnesium, vitamin D, zinc, and folic acid. You can think of them as a well-balanced daily multivitamin with other potential health benefits.
But be aware of this, it can be a little tricky to use both a greens powder that provides high amounts of various vitamins and minerals as well as other micronutrient supplements such as multivitamins because you might end up have too much.
Don’t Expect Greens Powder to Fix Your Digestion
Most greens powders promise to support your digestive health by providing probiotics. Since not many people eat enough fermented foods like yogurt, miso, and sauerkraut, these powders can give your gut a boost of micro-benefits. Just keep in mind that research into our microbiome is still in its infancy and there will be a real possibility that the probiotic strain in a powder may not be the most beneficial for you or in the amounts needed to to have an impact. So, for now, claims about improved digestion and regularity remain largely anecdotal.
They can, indirectly, encourage you to eat better
Here’s the thing, using a greens powder can, for some people, be a catalyst for adopting a healthier diet. One healthy act begets another. Consuming powdered greens makes you think about eating more fruits and vegetables, so you end up doing just that. And if you feel better after drinking a green drink, even if it’s a placebo effect, it can also make you eat better overall so you feel good all the time.
Additionally, for most of these blends, we encourage you to mix them with nothing more than water which boosts your hydration efforts, which is essential for good health and greater gains from your time spent in the gym. gymnasium.
Remember, these are supplements, so, yeah, not much oversight here
Although the producers of green powders offer all sorts of noble benefits, these powders are considered supplements and are not regulated by the Food and Drug Administration in the same way as foods. The bottom line is that they haven’t gone through a process that proves they deliver what they promise or contain everything the label says.
You can fight back by looking for a brand certified by a third party, such as obtaining an NSF certification. This confirms that what it says is in the bottle is there and there are no surprise ingredients that you are not aware of. Some third-party companies like Informed Choice will test for contaminants that can be harmful when consumed regularly – to get the full benefit of the greens powder, you really need to use them daily, which could expose you to troubling amounts of certain contaminants like arsenic. But we don’t have a lot of good data to say whether or not green powders suffer from contamination issues.
The taste is not always yum
Although many brands have worked hard to improve flavors and texture, some are still hard to swallow. Green powders seem to fall somewhere on the flavor scale between tropical fruit and day-old grass clippings. Even in a smoothie, they can still taste way too earthy and have an unpleasant, powdery mouthfeel. In other words, it might take some trial and error to find one that you don’t dread sending down the esophagus.
Are powdered greens worth it?
Despite all the potential shortcomings, the various forms of green powders can still be a useful supplement to take even if the sales pitch is more robust than the science. They can help increase the nutritional quality of your diet in a convenient and simple way and fill in nutrient and antioxidant gaps. Be honest with yourself, most of the time your diet is lacking in certain things like eating enough, well, green vegetables, so this supplement can help get you where you need to be and is probably a choice. decent if your budget allows.
But what these powders are not is a direct substitute for vegetables and fruits and a reason to leave them out. If you’re having trouble getting some of these healthy foods into your diet, these powders may help, but they don’t have the same benefits as whole foods. If you’re expecting some sort of superhuman result, you’re going to be disappointed. No amount of powdered spinach or rose hips will make up for a poor diet. If only it were that simple.
Best Greens Powder Products
These products make your day easier to be a little greener.
