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Athletic Greens

We Break Down Athletic Greens

You do your best to eat right and stay in shape but enjoying everything that life has to offer sometimes means you fall short of being nutritionally perfect. A plate of grilled mackerel and kale on a Tuesday evening is all well and good, but come Friday night the menu is likely to change up a little.

We know the score, lost weekends of beer, burgers and Mars Bars rank high as some of life's sweetest moments, but of course none of us like the payback that comes with not looking after ourselves. Low energy, mental sluggishness and a poor immune system are the tell-tale signs that we aren't nutritionally primed.

Green Goodness

After doing some research on nutritional supplements in our article Pills Vs Powders, we decided that green powders were worth trying out. We went top draw and chose Athletic Greens, which are considered the benchmark by which the rest are measured, and ordered up our starter pack.

These are our findings:

What does it taste like?

Fully braced for spinach and soil, we were quite surprised at the flavour of Athletic Greens; it is not exactly Nesquik but it does have a certain chocolaty aftertaste. That said, despite what they might tell you, this is not exactly pleasant stuff to drink. We decided to mix it with fruit juice instead of water, and sometimes with banana and almond milk to make a Class A nutritional smoothie. This definitely helps make it more palatable.

What's in it?

This stuff is a veritable nutritional arsenal, a fully loaded superfood cocktail packed with antioxidants, adaptogens, digestive enzymes, natural extracts, herbs, pre and probiotics, and a fistful of key minerals and vitamins, many of which significantly exceed the recommended daily minimum. Not bad.

What doesn't it have?

No matter what dietary intolerances, allergens or food politics you may have, Athletic Greens have made sure that you can't pass on their greens on the grounds of it being incompatible with your diet. This nutritional supplement is totally free of nasties, including GMOs, pesticides, herbicides, sweeteners, preservatives, artificial flavouring and colouring. It also steers clear of all dairy products, eggs, sucrose, dextrose, grains, gluten, peanuts, soy and yeast. Many of these ingredients are certified organic.

How do you feel on it?

It fills you up! We decided to do as suggested and take the greens on an empty stomach in the morning; though some days we mixed the powder into smoothies with half a banana and some almond milk (so not technically an empty stomach). We had this instead of breakfast and before exercising; it was surprisingly filling and we all concluded that we had a little extra energy in the gym and didn't feel hungry until after the workout.

If you aren’t hitting the gym or exercising in the morning, you could probably get away an Athletic Greens shake and nothing until late morning or lunch. Good news if you're looking to strip back the belly fat.

Peps you Up

We all avoided drinking coffee either with - or just after - taking the greens, and while they don't exactly give you a caffeine rush, they definitely get you into a state of mind where you feel alert and awake. This actually helped us cut back on our coffee intake by one or two cups per day, as the added sharpness remained present throughout the day, and felt less wired as a result. It certainly wouldn't be a good idea to take Athletic Greens at night as you'd probably feel too buzzed to sleep.

Price

Premium Price, Premium Product.

Looking around the market, you can definitely buy similar green powder products for less money, so we had a look at what you can expect from Athletic Greens that you can't from the other formulas. It seems that Athletic Greens make a selling point of the fact they use the best quality ingredients available, much of which is certified organic, and that their formula is totally free of all artificial chemicals and allergens.

Athletic Greens also uses superfood extracts, as opposed to the raw ingredient, basically it's like getting all the nutritional value of a bag of spinach in a few highly concentrated drops, so more bang per gram. The inclusion of expensive ingredients like grape seed extract, goji berries, Siberian ginseng, acerola cherry and co-enzyme Q10 will also account for a more premium price.

Is it Worth It?

For some people, the price tag might be a little hefty, as it's no snip at around $100 for a 30-day supply. That said, taking a formula that covers such a broad nutritional spectrum means you won't need to top up with any extra supplements, other than perhaps some Omega 3 (fish oil wouldn't work in a powder) which Athletic Greens also sell. In a sense, it's a bit like springing for a high-spec MacBook Pro instead of a bog-standard laptop that you’ll end up needing to buy additional software, RAM etc. for, and will probably replace sooner than the Mac.

So yes, Athletic Greens’ “nutritional insurance” (as they call it) comes at a price. But if you’re going to insure anything, it might as well be your health, right?