What Is the Cleanest Vegan Protein Powder?

When you’re looking for a vegan protein powder, it’s important to find one that is high-quality, pharmaceutical-grade, third-party tested, non-GMO, and contains no additives or emulsifiers. How “clean” vegan protein powder is, depends upon these facts as well as sourcing, manufacturing, soil health, and more. 

What Is the Best Cleanest Vegan Protein Powder? 

Vegan protein powder is a great way to support your health and wellness goals, from fitness to general health. It contains no dairy, so that makes it a great option for those with dairy sensitivities. Vegan protein powder is commonly made from pea, rice, soy, or hemp protein. 

Criteria for Determining Cleanliness

There are a few factors to consider when it comes to determining how clean a vegan protein powder is: the quality of ingredients, absence of fillers and additives, and being third-party tested and pharmaceutical-grade. 

Ingredient Quality and Sourcing

Finding a vegan protein powder with high-quality ingredients is imperative. This means not just the quality of the ingredients themselves, but also the soil from where they’re sourced. Many companies source the ingredients for their protein powder from China. Unfortunately, the soil quality in China is not good, so high levels of heavy metals and other contaminants tend to be present in the protein powder—China does not have as many safety regulations around food sourcing as we do in the United States. Here at Previnex®, our pea protein is sourced from an organic farm in Canada, and our brown rice protein is sourced from a high-quality farm in Southeast Asia. 

The other part of ingredient quality that’s important to consider is the type of ingredient—for example, we use yellow peas in our pea protein instead of green, which provides a higher protein content, milder flavor, less bloating risk, and a lower glycemic index. 

Fillers and Additives 

When protein powders have additives like gums and sugar alcohols, you can experience stomach upset, allergic reactions, and other GI issues. Common side effects of things like xanthan gum, guar gum, and carrageenan are increased gas, abdominal pain, lethargy, and constantly feeling full. Some sugar alcohols are considered fermentable oligosaccharides, disaccharides, monosaccharides, and polyols (FODMAPs)—carbs your gut cannot properly absorb and your body has a hard time breaking down. 

Third-Party Testing and Pharmaceutical-Grade

Many products in the supplement industry—including protein powders—are not regulated by the FDA. Third-party testing confirms that these products meet certain standards and are free from harmful contaminants. Third-party testing also verifies the ingredients in a product—it confirms that the amounts present on the label are consistent with what’s in the packaging and that the potency is also accurate. 

When protein powder is pharmaceutical-grade, it means it has undergone rigorous testing to ensure there are no harmful microbials, bacteria, or other contaminants. This is important, especially if you’re not 100% certain where the ingredients in a vegan protein powder are sourced from. 

Which Vegan Protein is the Healthiest? 

“Healthiest” can be subjective. However, vegan protein powder can be just as healthy and beneficial as whey protein powder. Some health benefits of clean vegan protein powder are: 

• It helps you keep a balanced diet. The best diet is a well-balanced one of protein, carbs, and fat. When this balance is missing, your body is left hungry shortly after finishing a meal. Adding a high-quality, clean vegan protein powder as a meal replacement, to smoothies, or to recipes is a great way to increase your protein intake and better balance your meals. 

• Vegan protein powder is high in iron, which your body needs to make hemoglobin—a protein in red blood cells that carries oxygen from your lungs to the rest of your body. 

• Many vegan protein powders—like Nourify® PLUS—are complete proteins (meaning they contain all nine essential amino acids). 

Are There Heavy Metals in Vegan Protein Powder? 

For better or worse, heavy metals are present in soil, and vegan protein grows from the soil. Here though, it really comes down to ingredient sourcing. This is one reason why it’s important to ensure the protein powder you get is sourced from the highest quality regions, third-party tested and pharmaceutical-grade. 

Some common heavy metals are arsenic, lead, mercury, and cadmium. While these are naturally occurring elements, they can become toxic depending on their concentration. The Clean Label Project conducted studies on products from 70 of the top-selling brands in the protein and supplement industry. From their findings, 47% of products exceeded California Proposition 65 safety thresholds for toxic metals—plant-based protein powders in particular showed 3x more lead than whey-based powders. Additionally, 77% of vegan protein powders tested over Prop 65 for lead.

With plant-based protein powder in particular, much of this heavy metal toxicity comes from ingredient sourcing. If ingredients are sourced from high-quality farms, these numbers should not be staggering. 

To ensure we’re using the highest quality ingredients available,  each ingredient that comes to Previnex® is raw material tested for contaminants, metals, microbials, and more. We also have agreements with our raw material suppliers that, if an ingredient fails our raw material testing, they are responsible for sending us new product to test and fix any problem. We have only run into one issue in our 12+ years of existence when a product failed microbial testing, and our manufacturer sent a new product and it passed the raw materials test swimmingly. We also do production run testing, which means that during manufacturing runs, we pull products aside to perform US Pharmacopeia testing to ensure product stability, hardness, thickness, dissolution, disintegration, etc. Lastly, we do finished product testing, which means we generate certificates of analysis for each product after every production run—this ensures that every little thing you read on the label is exactly what’s in the product. When choosing a clean vegan protein powder, it’s crucial that you find a product that has undergone the appropriate testing—this is the only way to guarantee your products are of the highest quality. 

Which Protein Powder Is the Cleanest? 

In addition to Nourify® PLUS, some other options for clean vegan protein powders are: 

• Truvani - their products undergo rigorous third-party testing, and their protein powders are USDA organic, have few ingredients, are dairy, gluten, soy, and stevia free, and have no unnecessary additives. 

• Wholier - their protein powder is also third-party tested, is USDA organic and has a blend of brown rice, yellow pea, flaxseed, pumpkin seed, and sunflower seed protein. It also has a prebiotic blend.

• NAKED nutrition - their NAKED pea protein powder has one ingredient: yellow pea protein (grown on U.S. and Canadian soil). It has no additives and is non-GMO, soy-free, and gluten-free. It is also independently third-party tested for heavy metals.

Conclusion

When you’re choosing a vegan protein powder, you need to find one that is high-quality, pharmaceutical-grade, third-party tested, properly sourced and manufactured, and adheres to your dietary restrictions. Nourify® PLUS is available in both vanilla and chocolate, boasts 10-20+ grams of protein per serving (depending on whether you use one or two scoops), and has over one billion probiotics with digestive enzymes with a fullserving—this helps with your overall digestion and gut health. Our goal is to come alongside you as you experience optimal health. Grab a canister of Nourify® PLUS to experience a delicious, plant-based protein powder that packs a nutritional punch!