Do you need protein powder?
Before we get into the review of protein powder a good question to ask is do you need protein powder?
The answer depends on your lifestyle, your nutrition needs, your physical activity etc.
It’s good to have if you’re doing a lot of workouts as it’s a quick and easy way to add extra protein to your diet. It’s also good as a meal replacement from time to time especially if you don’t have time to have a fully balanced meal.
Some people use it for weight loss by substituting a meal with a protein smoothie. A protein smoothie may help boost your metabolism and decrease your appetite – hence its advantage when losing weight is your goal. I wouldn’t recommend using it for weight loss long term because once you start eating solid food again you could start to put weight back on, but it can help you jumpstart a diet.
If packing lots of nutrition into your diet is your goal then a protein smoothie made from protein powder, spinach/kale, bananas, cucumber, avocado is a great way to do that.
Purition Protein Powder Review
Now down to the good stuff!
My go-to protein powder is Purition Protein Powder. I like the taste of it and there’s a vegan version available in a number of different flavours.
Normally I get the Macadamia & Vanilla vegan protein powder because I love the taste of vanilla and it’s great to mix with other foods because it doesn’t have a strong flavour. When you find something you like it’s easy to stick with it and not try anything different but I wondered what the other flavours tasted like so I decided to try a few out.
With Purition Protein Powder you can buy 1-serving individual sachets. If you buy between 6 – 20 sachets they are £2.16 each which isn’t bad for the price of the protein part of a meal!
I bought 6 sachets and tried 1 each day. Most of the time I added some banana to the smoothie and also some avocado as I find the addition of those 2 foods helps to stave off hunger for longer. I used rice milk as the base rather than dairy milk.
I tried a mixture of vegan and milk-based as there were flavours I liked in both (but not all flavours are available in both).
This is my review of the different flavours.
This has a nice taste of coconut, not too strong but definitely something you can taste. Very nice!
Strawberry – vegan (also available as dairy)
The ingredients in this version include freeze-dried strawberries. I didn’t notice a particularly strawberry taste. When you look at the packet it’s nice and pink and you might expect a nice strawberry taste but it just wasn’t there.
This was nice and I could definitely tell the difference in nut taste from the macadamia nuts. It makes a nice change from the vanilla and macadamia flour.
Chocolate orange – vegan (also available as dairy)
I was looking forward to this one because I love chocolate orange! But I was disappointed. Similar to the strawberry flavour, I didn’t notice any orange taste. The chocolate taste was OK but I don’t think I would want to drink this regularly.
This was slightly better than the strawberry one in that I could taste blackcurrant to a degree. It also has the tiny bits you often get with blackcurrant foods so it seems to be really naturally flavoured.
This was tasty and definitely had more of a chocolatey taste than the chocolate orange flavour.
Favourite protein powder flavour
So far my favourite is the coconut flavour followed by pistachio and then cocoa. It would probably be good to try the dairy version of the strawberry and chocolate as the vegan version tends to be quite nutty-tasting (which I actually like but it could be affecting the other flavours).
Try a taste test yourself by buying individual sachets
A perfect meal replacement
Purition Protein Powder is a perfect meal replacement for those times when you’re really busy and don’t have time to cook or if you just fancy a change from food. The protein powder is balanced with protein, carbohydrates and fat and if you make a smoothie with added goodies like spinach, avocado and ginger you are getting even more benefit.
I also use it to add to a meal like muesli or as a late-night snack when I really can’t sleep because I’m hungry (although I try not to eat after dinner in order to give my system at least a 12 hour fast). Just add some oats to a bowl; some seeds like sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, pumpkin seeds; chop up a small piece of apple; add 1 or 2 scoops of protein powder and top with your favourite milk or milk substitute.
You can also add it to porridge/oatmeal to give it a protein boost.
The perfect blender
I use a NutriBullet. I’ve had it for about 5 years and it still works well. You need to clean the rubber seal quite often to keep it in good condition. The Nutribullet I bought came with additional cups with lids which is handy if you want to make 2 servings and store one in the fridge or if you want to take some with you to work.
A Vita-mix is also a good blender and has some functions that a NutriBullet doesn’t have such as speed control and a pulse feature.
Protein Smoothie Recipes
You can try out a few different combinations yourself but if you’d like some recipes fill in the form below to download this smoothie recipes pack.
