Protein Powder Comparison

What do you talk about with your friends when you meet up? Jobs? Holiday plans? Love life? It seems a certain set of my friends and I can spend the better part of an evening geeking out about health and fitness. One of the reasons I love the twitter and facebook communities I’m part of is that I can talk about these sorts of things with like-minded people and not bore them to tears. It’s even better that I can do this in real life too!

Aside from discussing our training goals, race plans and the January over-crowding in the gym we got on to nutrition; a subject which is at the forefront of my mind these days. Specifically we started discussing the merits of different protein powders. I use products from MyProtein and TheProteinWorks. My friend uses MonkeyNutrition and I’ve recently discovered Pro-10 and TheNatural Whey Company. It got me wondering about the merits of different brands and the comparison between whey and soy proteins. I’ve written a number of articles about soy protein for TheProteinWorks but have never looked in detail at the differences between the products. So I’ve put together a handy table comparing five brands of whey and soy protein that I’m familiar with and reproduced it below for you as a handy resource.

 Whey Protein

Soy Protein

I included Holland & Barrett to represent the high street as I know not everyone buys online. Neither Monkey Nutrition nor The Natural Whey Company stock a soy protein at present (that I could find) so we can’t compare them on that count.

It truly depends on what your priorities are, as to which you think is best. At the top end of the price bracket online we have Monkey Nutrition and Pro-10 pretty much level pegging on calories and protein content with Pro-10 Whey Protein Isolate coming in at around half the price. However MyProtein’s Soy Isolate just about pips them both to the post considering cal/protein content and value for money. If you want something low-fat and low-carb then I’d say Monkey Nutrition’s the one to choose but MyProtein Soy Isolate is the best value for money.

Across the board, where a brand stocks both a whey and a soy protein, the soy protein gives you a bigger protein hit with less fat content and is around half the price by weight. The soy comes in slightly higher on calories but you’d need to consider the carb and sugar levels… some brands soy protein are higher in these than their whey counterparts, some aren’t.

It’s certainly made me consider what I want from my protein. I currently use Whey Protein 80 from TheProteinWorks most frequently. They do an amazing range of flavours and the carb content doesn’t bother me. I’m just trying to get some more protein in my diet. I may switch brands in the future if my goals change but it still has to taste good!

Was this article helpful? What brand of protein do you use (if any) and what are your reasons for using it?