I recently saw an ad for a protein powder that claimed to be 6,000% better that whey protein for building muscle but after looking at the label it seems to be made up almost entirely of whey protein. How can that be? Am I missing something? There are a...

Great question, I’m really glad you brought this up! Your gut instincts are correct in questioning this claim. The short answer is it’s not 6,000% better than whey protein. It’s nothing short of an outright lie. If there were a protein supplement/source that was 6,000% better than whey protein for muscle growth the research would literally rock the scientific and supplement community and there would be a mad dash to produce and consume this product by literally everyone.

As usual, what you have stumbled upon and brought to our attention is complete fallacy fabricated by the marketing departments of (some very large) shady supplement brands. It’s a completely unethical misrepresentation of fact and for lack of better terms…utter bullshit.

The goal of companies that make the huge, outrageous & ridiculous claims is to wow unsuspecting customers (especially people new to supplementation) into buying their product. Bigger numbers are better, right? Well, not if they are made up and pulled out of thin air. There are many companies entirely built around fabricating lies and ripping people off. What you have brought to our attention is just one of their tricks where they apply an “ingredient claim” to a finished product which simply doesn’t translate into real world results. Ingredient claims are exactly what they sound like; they are the scientific claim that a specific ingredient causes a specific result. Many companies take ingredient claims and apply them to their finished goods product, which is extremely misleading since the ingredient with the specific claim may be included in such a tiny irrelevant amount or not even proven effective in humans at all. It’s unethical and a downright lie. Things like this are embarrassing to me because they give the entire industry a bad reputation.

What ever happened to companies making a good quality product that works, being straight forward and honest in their advertising and standing behind their products with excellent customer service? Times sure have changed.

The thing with companies that do things like this is that they only need you to buy their product once to make their business plan successful. They are not worried about whether you’re happy with the products or not or whether their products live up to their hefty “claim” because they only need you to fall for their trick once to win. This plan to rip off unsuspecting consumers is their entire plan from the get go.

Here’s how it works: For argument’s sake, let’s say there is a substance that is being studied that shows potential promise as a nutritional supplement. We’ll call this substance “Ingredient X” or “X” for short. Let’s say there has been a study done on “X” in rats that shows that the a rat gained 6,000% more muscle when given a dose of 1g of “X” over a rat that was given a dose of 1g of whey protein. Sounds promising right? So upon reading the results of this study and in an effort to appear to be innovative, a supplement company quickly rushes to market a product containing “X” in miniscule irrelevant amounts (pixie dusted) with the rest of the product being a blend of cheap, low quality whey protein.

They then proceed to market the product as “6,000% better than whey protein!” and build an entire marketing campaign around that claim. Then the average Joe reads that and thinks “Wow, 6,000% better than whey protein…this stuff must be awesome!” Of course, most people have no understanding of the supplement industry and claims like these are very convincing to someone who doesn’t know any better. So the product sells…and it sells very well! The thing is that just because something sells well, doesn’t mean that it’s a good product.

Lets take a closer look at the facts of our example:

• The study was done on rats, not humans.
• Many ingredients do not have the same effect in animals as they do on humans.
• There is no proof that the ingredient is even safe in humans.
• We have no idea by what mechanism “X” works in the body. For example it could be an anabolic hormone or growth factor and they are comparing it to a food source (whey). In other words they may not even be comparable ingredients.
• The effective dose of “X” was equal to the dose of whey protein in the lab animals.
• IF the studies did translate to human results, which there is no reason to believe they would, you would have to take an equivalent amount of the “X” instead of your whey protein in a one to one ratio. In other words it would have to be in a highly concentrated form so if you were taking 40g of whey you would need to take 40g of “X” instead. A much higher dose than was provided to you in the product.
• “X” is pixie dusted in the product in an irrelevant amount.

So what you have is a product that contains “X”:

1. An ingredient that has never been proven to do anything in terms of performance in humans.
2. An ingredient that is included in a relative dose of far less concentration than that of the rat study.
3. An unproven ingredient that is pixie dusted into a finished product.
4. A finished product that is making claims on the finished product based on the inclusion of “X” in the product.

If you’re upset right now because you feel like you’ve had the wool pulled over your eyes and been lied too, I don’t blame you one bit. This is usually what happens when you get a peak up the magicians sleeve…disappointment on how the tricks duped you! Using ingredient claims on finished products is 100% intended to do nothing more than to create the appearance of a competitive advantage in order to more efficiently separate you from your hard earned dollar.

Do companies really do this? You bet they do…all the time. You have to look at a lot of things when a company makes a claim on a product. 99% of the claims made in this industry are ingredient claims. They are not finished goods claims. That means that the test is done on only one small piece of the big pie that makes up that product. There is no proof that their mixture of ingredients is superior to anyone else’s mixture of ingredients. Many of the ingredient claims don’t even come from studies on humans!

The truth is the industry is tremendously lacking in research on finished goods. The reason for this is to obtain research on finished goods companies have to shell out hundreds of thousands of dollars to have the studies performed. Even with the monetary investment, there in no guarantee that the results will be favorable for your product. Basically, it’s a whole lot easier to apply claims based on ingredients and then twist them up to market them. Is this right? No. Is it fair? Not exactly. Can they do it? Yep, they sure can and they do it all the time.

1st Phorm is currently in the beginning stages of performing independent clinical trials on every single one of our finished good products. Not ingredient tests and trials… Finished products that are tested exactly the way you will take them. So you will have a clear picture of exactly what to expect when using our products. We believe in our products and we know you do too and we want to put our money where our mouth is, so to speak. All study results will be published right here on 1st Phorm as well as in numerous scientific journals once completed. As we get info from the research lab, we’ll post it live for you to see. No one else in the industry does that, but that seems to be our moniker: going the path the other guys don’t take. Fact of the matter is, that we’ve got no secrets when it comes to the integrity of our products.

One of the key people in helping us to facilitate this research is Dr. Chad Kerksick. Dr. Kerksick is currently an Assistant Professor of Exercise Physiology and is certified as an Athletic Trainer, Strength and Conditioning Specialist and Personal Trainer. He has been involved with an extensive number of research trials that have focused on the impact of exercise and nutritional interventions and their impact on recovery, performance and training adaptations. His current research investigates the impact of acute and chronic exercise and nutritional interventions on the physiological, biochemical, and molecular responses that impact muscle function, hypertrophy and atrophy in athletes, aging, and other clinical populations.

I am proud to announce Dr. Kerksick as 1st Phorm’s Chief Scientific Counsel. He will be helping us design and implement relevant studies on all of our finished goods. Dr. Kerksick will also be heavily involved in product innovation for new products and continued improvement of existing products whenever the technology presents itself. Dr. Kerksick will be authoring a blog on 1st Phorm.com so that you can ask him questions directly and get the straight scientific PROVEN truth. It’s very exciting to have him as part of our team moving forward! Look for Chad’s blog on 1st Phorm.com “The Professor” coming very soon.

The post I recently saw an ad for a protein powder that claimed to be 6,000% better that whey protein for building muscle but after looking at the label it seems to be made up almost entirely of whey protein. How can that be? Am I missing something? There are a few ingredients that I don’t recognize at the end of the ingredient list, but it looks to be mostly whey protein. appeared first on 1st Phorm.