The Best and Worst Protein Powders, According to a Nutritionist

 

Click HERE to Discover these 80 Keto-Friendly and Healthy Slow Cooker Recipes

Before you add another scoop of vanilla protein powder into your shake, scan the label for these questionable ingredients.

When protein powder brands promise healthy nutrients within tasty packages, it can be hard to resist adding a scoop to your favorite smoothies. Unfortunately, too many people assume that all protein powders are created equal and that all you need to consider when choosing one is your taste preference.

There are lots of factors to consider when choosing a protein supplement that’s right for you. But first, let’s consider that protein powders aren’t a perfect food – and might actually be a big problem.

The Problem with Protein Powder

Unfortunately, supplements like protein powders are not stringently regulated by the FDA for safety. So when you pick up that expensive tub of protein powder, how can you know if it’s actually good for you?

First, let’s take a look at our protein needs. Our bodies require an average of 40 to 60 grams of protein a day, but it needs to be balanced with fat and carbs. The right ratio depends on your diet, body type, and your digestive health.

Protein in high amounts can be hard on the kidneys, and protein powders can be especially difficult because they are not balanced by other macronutrients.  We tend to assume that people need more protein, but more is not necessarily better. In reality, the average American eats closer to twice the recommended amount.

Often, protein powders are marketed as a “purified” form of protein, but the truth is that most of these products are highly refined and processed. They are often manufactured using extremely high heat, artificial ingredients, preservatives, and synthetic vitamins and minerals.

Another factor to consider is trust. Celebrity doctors sometimes sell their own brands of protein powders, creating a false sense of trust among consumers. Many of these practitioners use the same manufacturers for their products, and few actually use their own products.

So, are all protein powders bad? No, but very few are truly good. Let’s dig into some of the problematic ingredients and explore a few of the healthier products you can purchase.

The 8 Worst Protein Powder Ingredients

Protein powders often contain questionable ingredients. Here are the eight worst offenders to avoid.

1. Soy Protein

Soy protein isolate is a by-product of other soy production – literally, the leftovers. It’s manufactured at an extremely high temperature that’s closer to laboratory science than food production.

It’s boiled, stripped, and then prepared with an acid solution to extract the protein, which is dipped again in an acid solution, and ultimately, spray-dried at even higher temperatures.

Anything that survives this harsh manufacturing process is probably not going to easily break down in response to your digestive enzymes and stomach acid. If your body can’t break down these virtually indestructible proteins, you will not get any benefit from them.

Brands with soy protein: It Works, Universal Nutrition, NOW Foods, Nature’s Plus

2. Artificial Sweeteners

People looking to boost their protein might be thrilled to see an option that contains no sugar and very few carbs, but when you see the ingredient “sucralose”, steer clear. 

This is artificial sugar, and while it might make the product more palatable without a carb count, it is a fake food. Avoid any products that are sweetened with ingredients your body cannot properly digest.

Brands with artificial sweeteners: Quest Nutrition, IsoPure

3. Rice Protein

Rice protein might sound benign, but it is processed with excessively high heat and can contain anti-nutrients. The “raw” proteins that use rice are extremely hard to digest and include extra enzymes and probiotics just to help the rice break down – it’s not because you’re getting an added bonus of digestive superpowers.

Brands with rice protein: Huel, Vega, Garden of Life, Orgain

4. Pea Protein

Pea protein is processed in a similar manner to soy protein: using high heat, evaporation, spraying, and dehydration. While fresh peas might contain some nutrients that are beneficial, the overly processed powdered version will contain phytic acid and be difficult to digest like any grain or legume-based powder.

Brands with pea protein: Huel, Vega, Reset360, Garden of Life, Amazing Grass, Orgain

5. Sugar and Sweeteners

Many protein powders contain sugar or corn-derived sweeteners like fructose and glucose. Pure cane sugar is actually the least harmful type of sweetener typically found in protein powders because it is processed far less than artificial sweeteners and sugar alcohols. Even those that don’t contain sugar will sometimes contain erythritol or other sugar alcohols which, while calorie-free, will still mess with the gut.

Brands with sweeteners: Shakeology, Orgain, It Works

6. Whey Protein

Whey protein is derived from milk, and if it’s truly pure and comes from pastured cows, it can be a better option. But conventional whey protein is often highly processed and comes from cows that have been exposed to growth hormones, antibiotics, and GMO feed that makes their milk (and its whey) a junky food that offers little or no nutritive value.

Any protein that is labeled as “whey” isn’t automatically good, although some brands and products can be. The following brands don’t currently use high-quality whey protein.

Brands with whey protein: GNC, Optimum Nutrition, Isopure.

7. Additives, Preservatives, and Stabilizers

Gums, preservatives, additives, and those hard-to-read ingredients are added to protein powders to help with texture, shelf life, and taste. The downside is that most of these are not natural products and can have unnatural effects on the gut, like irritation and cramping, diarrhea, and gas.

Brands with additives, preservatives, and stabilizers: It Works, Reset360, Shakeology, Vega, Garden of Life, Amazing Grass, Orgain

8. Vegetable Oils

Whether protein powders contain vegetable oils or lecithin derived from oils, almost every product contains this – even the higher quality ones. These are used partly for texture and lubricants or emulsifiers in food products, which gives them a more pleasing texture or mouthfeel. Even if they’re present in small amounts, they’re not found in whole food sources of protein, like meat, poultry, and seafood.

Brands with vegetable oils: Profi, Reset360, Tera’s Whey, Arbonne, Orgain

The 2 Best Protein Powders You Can Buy

While most protein powders are not truly health foods, there are a few options that you can rely on if you really feel that you need extra protein. These two are the healthiest options because they each contain only one ingredient and contain zero unnecessary preservatives or sweeteners of any kind.

1. Grass-Fed Whey Concentrate

Why it works: Whey protein can cause issues for anyone sensitive to milk products, but concentrate is easier to digest and doesn’t contain any trace elements of lactose. Choosing a grass-fed product ensures that it’s a nutrient-rich product that doesn’t come from cows’ milk that has been filled with antibiotics, growth hormones, and more.

How to use it: Grass-fed whey concentrate can be added to shakes, smoothies, and soups.

Buy this: Raw Grass Fed Whey (on Amazon)

2. Collagen Peptides

Why it works: Collagen peptides contain gut-boosting amino acids and the perfect protein option for anyone sensitive to whey. Grass-fed bovine or marine collagen are available, each with a slightly different amino acid profile.

How to use it: Collagen is more versatile than whey concentrate since it virtually disappears in liquids. Add it to coffee, tea, smoothies, shakes, soups, stews, and even things like applesauce, pudding, or cakes.

Buy this: Vital Proteins Grass-Fed Collagen Peptides

What you need to know when you buy protein powder – Watch these 3 videos below –

Protein Powder: How to Best Use It For Muscle Growth (4 Things You Need to Know)

Does Protein Powder Work? (Spoiler: YES, but there’s a catch)

How to pick the best PROTEIN POWDER.  Everything you should know.

Bottom Line

Protein powders are often highly processed, hard to digest, unnatural, and packed with sweeteners. The best options are single ingredient grass-fed whey concentrates or collagen peptides, because they are the purest options available.

Nothing can replace a healthy, home-cooked meal. Before you sink $75 into a tub of protein powder, ask yourself if there are better ways to get nourishment.

Written by Aimee McNew

Author Bio:

Aimee McNew is a Certified Nutritionist who specializes in women’s health, thyroid problems, infertility, and digestive wellness. She ate her way back to health using a Paleo diet, lost 80 pounds, and had a healthy baby after numerous miscarriages. She focuses on simple nutrition practices that promote long-lasting results.

A lot of people have gotten results from the Keto diet, and enjoyed the foods that it has to offer. However, many of the people who are following this diet have a hard time finding the recipes that they need, especially ones that are quick and easy to complete.

Fortunately, Kelsey Ale, noticed this problem, and decided to do something about it. She’s found that making recipes in a slow cooker gives you meals which are not only delicious, but also take very little time to make. Mostly you just put a few simple ingredients in the slow cooker, and let it do the rest.To find out more, click on – Keto Slow Cooker Cookbook

How Anxiety Can Cause Inflammation and What Foods to Avoid

 

Click HERE to Discover these 80 Keto-Friendly and Healthy Slow Cooker Recipes

How Anxiety Can Trigger Your Inflammation (Plus: What Foods to Avoid)

Anxiety is the most common mental disorder in the United States, impacting more than 40 million adults.

While some cases can be mild and short-lived, others can be debilitating, lasting for years, or transitioning into a chronic problem.

Anxiety is connected to a number of lifestyle, health, and dietary factors, but understanding the triggers and root causes can lead to more effective treatment.

What Is Anxiety?

Many people refer to situational stress or momentary tenseness as anxiety, and often the term “panic attack” can be loosely thrown around.

But for people living with generalized anxiety disorder or one of the other recognized anxiety diagnoses – like social anxiety disorder, specific phobias, or separation anxiety disorder – these terms have meaning that delves into a feeling that can be all-consuming, debilitating, and hard to comprehend by someone on the outside.

Anxiety can refer to numerous symptoms that can include:

• Nervousness
• Fear
• Apprehension
• Worrying
• Paranoia
• Feelings of being unsettled
• Trembling
• Upset stomach or nausea
• Diarrhea
• Headache
• Heart palpitations (which can increase anxiety over worries of heart attack)
• Numbness or pins and needle sensations in extremities
• Sweating or hot flashes
• Restlessness or restless legs
• Fatigue
• Poor concentration
• Irritability or mood swings
• Muscular aches and pains from tension
• Have trouble falling/staying asleep
• Being easily startled

While almost anyone can experience temporary feelings of anxiety before impactful events, important moments, tests, or the like, anxiety is considered to be problematic when it presents for numerous events within a person’s life, and when it begins to interfere in some way with normal function, including sleep disturbances, social anxiety, or self-care.

Bottom line: Anxiety is a legitimate disorder that can range from short-term to chronic, and can have wide-ranging symptoms that can be attributed to a number of other conditions.

What Causes Anxiety?

Anxiety can be caused by a number of different factors. Some of the more common triggers include:

• Chronic stress, including depression from stress
• Excessive serotonin production or activity
• Early life stress or pressure
• 24/7 connectivity online
• Genetic mutations
• Traumatic life events
• Financial problems
• Chronic pain

While the specific triggers for anxiety may differ from case to case, there seem to be some common groupings of anxiety triggers. But what actually takes these triggers and turns them into anxiety for some people and not others?

Beyond the potential causes for anxiety, there has to be a triggering event that is significant enough to spark a chronic problem. Even in cases of genetic tendency, something still has to cause the initial episode. Anxiety and inflammation feed into each other, making anxiety triggers worsen.

What many of the causative factors listed above have in common is inflammation.

Stress can increase inflammation within the body, and one of the common factors linking each condition together is stress. Stress can also take its toll on the body in other ways that don’t lead to anxiety, and certainly people can experience stress regularly without having chronic problems as a result.

Bottom line: Anxiety is caused by numerous factors, and many of the causes have underlying issues in common with chronic inflammation and stress. Anxiety is, however, an issue in and of itself and not simply a side effect of other problems.

Inflammation and Anxiety

The link between inflammation, anxiety, and even depression is well-documented.

Inflammation is the body’s response to injury, and it’s becoming increasingly understood that this injury doesn’t have to be purely physical. Mental and emotional stress or injury can spark inflammatory responses, too.

When inflammatory processes happen within the body, one of the first things to be affected is the gut and the microbiome. Stress produces inflammatory cytokines that can actually alter the way that the gut, brain, and nervous system respond. This can include the development of depression, anxiety, and leaky gut.

Once leaky gut is present, it can perpetuate cycles of anxiety due to disrupted microbial balances in the gut, toxins in the bloodstream, and poor absorption of nutrients.

Nutrient deficiency can have a significant role in the health of the nervous system, and deficiencies in nutrients like B vitamins or vitamin D can worsen anxiety issues. Leaky gut can perpetuate the cycles of anxiety.

While anxiety isn’t necessarily best addressed in only one specific way, a thorough healing approach will take gut health and inflammatory levels into account.

Following an anti-inflammatory diet protocol and reversing leaky gut could, at the very least, prevent anxiety conditions from continuing to worsen.

In some cases, gut health could be the primary trigger of anxiety, and a gut healing protocol could actually resolve anxiety in its own right.

While testing specifically for anxiety is difficult, if anxiety is present, there are a number of tests that can be done to determine the state of gut health. Specifically, tests that look at zonulin and lactulose levels, like the ELISA test, can help to determine the severity of leaky gut by looking at factors that actually control the level of gut permeability.

Inflammatory markers can also shed some light on the state of gut health that might be contributing to anxiety. Tests such as hs-CRP, or C-reactive protein, measure cytokines in the blood that are released by damaged or inflamed tissues, presenting a decent snapshot of the body’s inflammation levels.

Homocysteine is another test that measures the levels of this amino acid in the blood. When it’s elevated, it can indicate nutrient deficiencies that can be associated with chronic inflammation (like B12) as well as general inflammation.

Bottom line: Anxiety isn’t likely caused by inflammation alone, but measuring inflammatory levels can certainly help to spell out a more direct path to resolving the issue, especially when inflammatory and gut health issues are present.

Foods and Inflammation

An anti-inflammatory diet can look different in many cases, and there isn’t necessarily a one-size-fits all approach. While some common themes will emerge, like eating plenty of leafy greens and healthy fats, others will need to take an individualized approach to get to the root of their problem.

A basic anti-inflammatory diet will include plenty of:

• Bone broth
• Leafy greens
• Cruciferous vegetables
• Berries
• Salmon
• Chicken, especially thigh meat
• Beef
• Avocado
• Sweet potatoes
• Squash

Foods to avoid on an anti-inflammatory plan will include:

• Gluten and grains
• Dairy
• Beans and legumes
• Processed or refined foods
• Sugar, even in Paleo form
• Artificial sweeteners
• Preservatives
• Caffeine
• Alcohol

Food sensitivity and allergy play a huge role in inflammation and gut health. When foods that produce an immune response are consumed, they further perpetuate leaky gut, inflammation, and digestive upset or malabsorption.

In addition to foods that are specifically aggravating to an individual’s gut, there are also certain groups of foods that can be difficult to digest or which can exacerbate issues with leaky gut. These include grains, beans, legumes, and dairy products – food groups which are already excluded on a Paleo diet.

The Paleo diet has become a popular remedy for gut health woes, but even within the confines of a Paleo diet lies plenty of room for individualization.

Some individuals do best following an AIP diet, or the autoimmune Paleo protocol. This further eliminates known inflammatory foods like eggs, nuts, seeds, and nightshades (tomatoes, peppers, potatoes, and eggplants). Paleo is enough to fix gut health for some; others need a more strict AIP diet.

Others may do better eating super low carb Paleo, or ketogenic Paleo, while still others may thrive on a high vegetable Paleo diet that limits meat intake and promotes large quantities of the full rainbow of vegetables.

Addressing anxiety and gut health issues with diet is best done with the help of a qualified professional who understands both gut health and the underlying causes of anxiety and other mood disorders. In some cases, nutrient replacement with a supplement program can further decrease symptoms and speed gut health.

Please note that while diet can be very effective, if medical prescription therapy is needed, it’s important not to quit medication protocols that are managing anxiety or depression without the assistance of someone who is qualified to do so.

Watch this video – The Anxiety/Depression Diet: This Will Help

Bottom line: Nutrition can play a key role in reducing inflammation and combating anxiety, especially when you increase high-nutrient foods like leafy greens, berries, and salmon and reduce highly processed and sweetened foods.

3 Alternative Therapies to Address Anxiety

Many who suffer from anxiety turn to medication and diet to deal with their unpleasant symptoms, but there is also another category of support than can work together with other protocols or on its own: alternative therapy.

Acupuncture

Anxiety responds well to acupuncture and other Traditional Chinese Medicine protocols.  Acupuncture works to remove energy blockages, or “chi,” within the body.

There are specific anxiety points in the ear, wrist, and feet that acupuncturists will work with. While acupuncture may seem off-putting to anyone who has never tried it or who has a fear of needles, it is well worth the effort to give it a try.

Acupuncture needles are so tiny that they are barely felt, and if they are, it feels more like a tickle than a pricking of the skin. Sessions tend to last anywhere from 30-60 minutes, and I personally find them so relaxing that I often fall asleep and wake to find I am in a much calmer state of mind.

Yoga

Yoga, too, can be effective for the management of anxiety, either on its own or in addition to other methodologies. Even if you’re not a yoga pro, or you’re not flexible at all, working with an online program, a class, or even an app can start to produce positive results.

Yoga doesn’t have to look perfect. You just need to approach it with the mindset of doing the best that you can, and focusing on breathing well and achieving the positions as correctly as possible.

Exercise

Exercise other than yoga, such as aerobic or cardio exercise, can be beneficial as well, since it reduces overall inflammation within the body. Whatever the form of exercise you begin, regularity is what will produce positive results.

Walking a few miles after work, joining a fitness class three times per week, swimming in the mornings before work, or any other possible combination can all bring you closer to your health goals, and that can definitely include reducing anxiety and inflammation.

Summary

Ultimately, the protocol that is going to address anxiety best for someone is going to be specifically targeted at their individual needs. The original trigger or reason for developing chronic anxiety needs to be considered along with other existing health conditions, lifestyle factors, and genetic health.

Exploring different healing modalities like diet, lifestyle, exercise, and alternative therapies will often have a much more significant impact on anxiety than simply waiting for it to dissipate on its own.

Written by Aimee McNew

Author Bio:

Aimee McNew is a Certified Nutritionist who specializes in women’s health, thyroid problems, infertility, and digestive wellness. She ate her way back to health using a Paleo diet, lost 80 pounds, and had a healthy baby after numerous miscarriages. She focuses on simple nutrition practices that promote long-lasting results.

A lot of people have gotten results from the Keto diet, and enjoyed the foods that it has to offer. However, many of the people who are following this diet have a hard time finding the recipes that they need, especially ones that are quick and easy to complete.

Fortunately, Kelsey Ale, noticed this problem, and decided to do something about it. She’s found that making recipes in a slow cooker gives you meals which are not only delicious, but also take very little time to make. Mostly you just put a few simple ingredients in the slow cooker, and let it do the rest.

To find out more, click on – Keto Slow Cooker Cookbook