What's the Best Whey Protein Filtration?
First and foremost: regarding filtration methods - you've seen all these, right?... and they're driving you nuts? Ultra-filtration, ion-exchange, micro-filtration, cross-flow filtration.... - both our lab tech and our research consultant agree that today it's all basically the same. Yakking about filtration methods is a bunch of hype which just confuses us all and makes no difference in the value of the whey protein in the jug. Go ahead and tune it out when you see it - it's not relative (and I wouldn't be surprised to find out that the label and ad designers don't even know it).
What DOES make a difference? Does is come from grass-fed cows? Grass-fed is good, and somewhat rare; you're going to pay a lot more for it, and you'll have to search farther than the generic brand at Costco, or even most of the better brands, including ours.
Is it hydrolyzed? While the suggestion on the label is that this is good, in fact, this is an acid process that destroys the bonus factors of the whey protein. Hydrolyzation is a "pre-digestion" process which makes the protein enter the muscles quicker, which is good (most likely, although this also depends on your purposes for eating the protein at that moment; if you're on a desert island and not likely to eat again soon, this would be bad), but the other major components of the whey protein, called sub-fractions, are damaged in the process. To our thinking, this is the main factor against most whey protein isolates, which are usually acid processed and is why we didn't use any in the Blend.
Why do most protein powders stick to the side of the glass? The main cause of this is that cheaper whey protein stops one step short of ours. The best whey protein concentrate is instantized, which is an additional step in the processing and costs more. Non-instantized proteins will stick to the side of the glass or blender.
There are other causes; in fact, our chocolate flavor is a little clumpy - takes a bit more work to stir it up; in our case, this is due to the cocoa powder which doesn't dissolve instantly. If you've made hot chocolate from real cocoa powder, you know what I mean. There are other reasons for clumpiness that are worse, again, here you're reading our opinion, based on our goals for the product. Thickening agents and the addition of some types of carbs can cause a powder to dissolve slowly or to not mix without a blender. If your favorite protein powder doesn't mix well, you'll have to read between the lines of the ingredient list to discover if that's a feature of the product, or a detriment.
Go back to the Whey Protein information page
What others think about our Bomber Blend protein
Or select a link to the right to discover our most popular pages that are sure to answer all your training questions.