Are Popular Protein Powder Brands Safe to Use?

The protein powder you like to mix with your favorite veggies and fruits for a nutritious breakfast and post-workout smoothie may include some other ingredients you’d rather avoid.

A report released last week by the nonprofit Clean Label Project found unsafe levels of cadmium and lead in many popular protein powders, with plant-based, organic, and chocolate-flavored products being the worst offenders. Cadmium is a known carcinogen, and lead has long been considered harmful to human health.

“While many assume that widely consumed protein supplements are safe, the Clean Label Project’s Protein Category Insights Report highlights important data regarding potential contaminants in protein powders that consumers should be aware of,” the authors note.

The organization sent 160 protein-powder products to an independent laboratory, which tested them for more than 250 harmful ingredients, including heavy metals, bisphenol A (BPA), bisphenol S (BPS), and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). Results revealed that nearly half of the samples exceeded California’s Prop 65 regulatory guidelines — which are far stricter than federal limits. More than one in five samples contained twice the amounts allowed.

The lead content of plant-based and organic protein powders was particularly noteworthy, with about 80 percent of the products tested exceeding the California guidelines. And those flavored with chocolate contained four times more lead and 110 times more cadmium than vanilla-flavored products — both well over the regulatory limits.

Collagen- and whey-based powders fared much better: Only 26 percent of the former and 28 percent of the latter exceeded the guidelines.

“For people following a full plant-based diet, protein powders made from peas appear to have the lowest levels of heavy metals,” explains Jaclyn Bowen, Clean Label Project’s executive director. “If you don’t have any dietary restrictions, the data suggests that whey-based or egg-based, vanilla-flavored protein powders will have the least amount.”

Plants absorb small amounts of heavy metals in even pristine soil, but when harvested from ground contaminated by mining, pesticides, fertilizers, and industrial waste, they may contain more hazardous levels.

An industry trade group challenged the report, arguing that the Clean Label Project should have revealed the selection process, as well as the criteria used to measure contamination levels. “Without such clarity, consumers and industry stakeholders cannot fully evaluate the validity of the claims,” notes Andrea Wong, senior vice president of scientific and regulatory affairs for the Council for Responsible Nutrition.

But some protein-powder purveyors, including Life Time, embraced the findings as a way to motivate the supplements industry to better regulate itself and provide consumers with safer products. “I like that they’re doing these studies and releasing these reports,” says Paul Kriegler, RD, director of nutrition product development for Life Time’s LTH nutritional line. “It draws worthwhile attention from consumers, who have a lot of blind trust. They deserve more transparency.”

We asked Kriegler to offer some insight on the regulatory challenges the industry faces and how Life Time’s product-testing process helps the company stay ahead of the curve.

Experience Life | What’s your overall takeaway from this latest report?

Paul Kriegler | The Clean Label Project and other consumer protection advocates have the right intent — they want to keep the industry as clean as possible. And they know that, in the current regulatory framework, the industry really regulates itself. So, companies only get in trouble if they get caught.

EL | The Council for Responsible Nutrition, a trade group, criticized the report for its lack of transparency. Is this a fair criticism?

PK | The 2018 report from the Clean Label Project named brands that fell into different categories of test results, which created a huge amount of criticism of those brands. In this report, they tested all the brands, but didn’t identify them. I think the Council for Responsible Nutrition was right to call that out — there’s been a change in how transparent the Clean Label Project’s report has become.

There are other ways to do the same work, which I think is worth discussing for the next round of reports. But you have to give the Clean Label Project credit because they did compare several of their latest findings to their prior report — that’s really cool. Even if they didn’t name names of the bad actors, they could have identified the brands that were most improved.

EL | The guidelines the Clean Label Project uses, however, have come under some scrutiny for being too strict. Does that negate some of the report’s findings?

PK | If you look at any produce item in the grocery store — even organic produce — it will fail California Prop 65 standards for one or more heavy metals. The downside of Prop 65 is that those limits have come under scrutiny as well. For mercury and lead, they’re [much] lower than other governing bodies’ thresholds. And we really don’t know if there’s any justification for those super-low limits.

So, the Clean Label Project’s findings are sensational — 47 percent exceed “federal or state limits” — but if you’re using California Prop 65, you’re never going to pass that. And if all these packaged goods have to carry a warning but strawberries don’t, it’s very confusing for consumers in that regard.

EL | Still, there needs to be some changes at the industry level . . .

PK | Oh, for sure. What has transpired in the last couple of years is really encouraging. Major retailers, like Target, CVS, Walgreens, Wegman’s, and Amazon, have come out and said, “Starting now, you are required to have third-party testing and certificates of analysis if you want to sell in our channels.”

EL | How does Life Time test its protein powder and other supplements?

PK | We work with our manufacturers and, obviously, our raw-material suppliers; they have protocols for qualifying raw-material providers. Each batch of raw materials they receive for our orders gets quarantined before it enters the production phase and is verified for purity, potency, identity, and contamination. There’s a whole battery of tests that every raw material goes through before it gets queued up for production.

Once all the ingredients are blended, the manufacturer then pulls additional samples to ensure that nothing new has been introduced. There’s a similar round of testing for identity and purity — [to confirm it contains] the desired ingredients and nothing else. It’s not diluted down. [The testing confirms] potency, so it’s got the right dose, and then [looks for] contamination, which includes heavy metals and dozens of common and ubiquitous industrial, agricultural, and environmental contaminants. Once it’s packaged, the final product is also tested before it’s released to our warehouse.

EL | How does this differ from other supplement brands?

PK | Usually a manufacturer has a lab that does full bacterial and microbe testing, and then they send out to third-party labs to test everything else. We send our products out for NSF testing — an extra layer of assurance. We trust our manufacturers to do the right thing on our behalf, or they risk losing our business. But we verify it by doing independent testing too.

A lot of brands participate in NSF or similar testing, but there aren’t a lot of brands that publish those reports. You can go on NSF sites and search for brands and their products, and you’ll see which products are certified. But you won’t be able to drill into the results of the reports. Life Time is not perfect yet, but most of the products on our shop have a PDF of the report, so you can see every single thing that’s tested.

We’re making sure what’s on the label is in the bottle, but we’re also making sure that these several other things are not. Or if they are, that they’re not exceeding the established limits. And, for the most part, on heavy metals specifically, NSF is not using California Prop 65 goals, because they know that they’re not achievable.

We are hell-bent on following the rules for science and safety, and if those rules change, we will change.

EL | How can consumers be sure that they’re getting a safe protein powder?

PK | Look for the NSF mark: NSF content-certified or NSF board certified. Both mean that product, that formula, has been tested annually. And the manufacturer has been physically audited by NSF and they’re following specific current Good Manufacturing Processes (cGMP’s)— that they’re doing business the right way to be a safe consumer brand.