Last Updated on November 13, 2020 by James Matthews
In our busy world, we often struggle to find enough time to both workout and prepare healthy meals. To save time, many people use a green drink to jump start their day. This is a very quick and easy way to ensure that you are getting some green vegetables in your diet and starting your day off right.
The best green drinks offer a combination of antioxidants, vitamins, minerals, and digestive enzymes that will improve your overall health and power your workouts. Athletic Greens is by far the most well-known of these green beverages. They have been around for more than 10 years and are known for being the best quality option on the market.
When comparing Athletic Greens to the other choices out there it is more important to look at ingredients than nutrition facts. Nutrition facts only offer macro and micronutrient numbers. They do not show the whole picture. You can consume as much Vitamin B12 as you want, but if it’s not in a form that is easily absorbed by your body, it won’t do you any good.
Why do people drink greens?
Every person has their own reason for drinking their greens. Some are more valid than others. For those who are drinking their greens to slow aging, improve digestion, and improve their stress and mental clarity, Athletic Greens can be a great addition to their diet.
But those who use a green drink to replace eating their regular fruits and vegetables will be disappointed by the green drinks available. Even Athletic Greens should not replace a healthy and well-balanced diet.
Slow Aging
One of the best reasons to drink a green beverage every day is its ability to slow the aging process. As much as our bodies need oxygen to survive, that same oxygen damages our cells. This works similar to the way oxygen causes rust in metal, except in our cells it causes them to breakdown.
Antioxidants are substances that reduce this effect on our bodies. They limit the aging that we see in our organs and across our skin caused by free radicals. While antioxidants can be found in many whole foods like blueberries, it is often easier to get high dosages in a drink that focuses on antioxidants.
Antioxidants are one of the main benefits of all green drinks. Athletic Greens in particular has a fantastic mix of wheat grass, barley grass, and other antioxidant rich foods. Their list of antioxidant ingredients is more extensive than almost any other green drink.
Supplemental Fruits and Vegetables
If you try to use green drinks like Athletic Greens to replace eating fruits and vegetables, you’ll be sadly disappointed. These drinks do not offer the necessary vitamins and minerals to replace your daily five. Green drinks are best used to supplement your healthy diet.
Improve Digestion
Many people struggle with a wide range of digestive issues. Adding a green beverage to your morning can be a great way to get the prebiotics, probiotics, and digestive enzymes that you need to keep your gut healthy.
The quantity and quality of these ingredients can make a big difference on their impact. Many green drinks contain ingredients that will improve digestion, but not all of them include the appropriate combination and quantity to deliver on their promise. This is another area where Athletic Greens really shines.
What makes Athletic Greens the Best?
On the surface Athletic Greens may look like other green drink products on the market, but you’ll find a higher quality, premium product that goes far beyond anything else available. Athletic Greens includes high-quality natural ingredients, limits their allergens, and ensures that their ingredients are blended in a way that produces the best effect possible.
Vitamins & Minerals
While most green drink powders do not include much in the way of vitamins and minerals, Athletic Greens stands apart. Their vitamin content far exceeds any other product choices and includes appropriate amounts of Vitamin C and Zinc. The best part about their blend, though, is the balance that they achieve.
It can be easy to add vitamin B12 to an ingredient list. Cyanocobalamin is the form of B12 most often used in blends like this. The problem is that it is not very easily absorbed and used by our bodies. This means that much of the B12 consumed is passed through our bodies without serving any purpose. When our bodies can’t absorb the vitamins that we pay for, those dollars get flushed down the toilet.
Athletic Greens uses natural methyl cobalamin for their B12. This ensures that your body benefits from every dollar that you spend and you can actually receive the full energy benefits of B12. The same is true for the minerals in Athletic Greens. They specifically use the most absorbable form of magnesium in their blend, so that you can reap the best rewards from your daily drink of greens.
Digestive Enzymes
Those who struggle with ulcerative colitis or any other in gastrointestinal tract or digestive issues understand the importance of consuming the appropriate digestive enzymes to keep their gut happy. This is another area where Athletic Greens really shows its true strength. Athletic Greens includes a range of enzymes that support your digestive health.
Have you ever noticed that your mouth gets a bit of a burning sensation when eating a lot of fresh pineapple? This is due to an enzyme called bromelain, and it’s actually a really good thing! Bromelain works to help your break down and absorb nutrients effectively. Think about how a meat tenderizer works to break down muscle tissue. This is what bromelain helps your body do to the food you eat.
Notice how this works with those easily absorbed vitamins and minerals? Athletic Greens is our number one green drink choice because of the way that it balances all of its ingredients to ensure that you reap the most reward for every sip. By including digestive enzymes, like bromelain, Athletic Greens makes it easy to reduce any damage that may be found in your gastrointestinal track while helping your body absorb as many vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants as possible.
Probiotics
Probiotics are relatively new to the health scene. There is a lot of current research beginning to show that having a diverse assortment of bacteria in your gut corresponds to better health outcomes. This means that many people are finding themselves striving to achieve good gut health. Probiotics are an easy way to help do achieve that goal.
Athletic Greens supports good gut health by including several different kinds of probiotics. Even all of these are specifically focused on two different groups. Much like vitamins and minerals, it is not enough to just consume probiotics. For these to really improve the health of your gut they need their own source of food.
This is where the inclusion of prebiotics can make a big difference. Athletic Greens carefully balances their inclusion of prebiotics with their assortment of diverse probiotics. This completes the chain necessary to improve your gut and digestive health.
Adaptogens
Adaptogens are the nutrients that can help improve your body’s response to stress. Not only will this improve your stress response under conditions like being stressed about work, it also improves your body’s stress response to things like a hard workout. Adaptogens are the nutrients that can improve recovery after your strength training and allow you to bounce back more quickly after a long cardio session.
Athletic Greens specifically includes a proprietary blend of adaptogens that include rhodiola rosea and reishi mushrooms. These are some of the best adaptogens available. While many green drinks may include a proprietary mushroom blend, few of them specifically focus on the mushrooms that offer the best adaptogen benefits.
Taste
Even among those who say they love their morning drink of greens many people will also admit to not loving the flavor. Most green drinks have a very earthy flavor reminiscent of grass. While this can be assumed to come with the territory–you are drinking greens after all–it doesn’t have to be the predominant flavor. Athletic Greens has cultivated a flavor that includes heavy elements of pineapple and vanilla.
This means that, unlike the plug-your-nose-and-chug method that is used with many green drinks, Athletic Greens is actually fairly enjoyable to sip. It is a green beverage that many people look forward to each day. Since Athletic Greens is designed to be enjoyed at any time of day, you can easily save it as a treat in the mid afternoon or perhaps an after-meal snack. It’s the only green drink we’ve found that lists flavor in the pro column and not the con category. It’s not like it has the greatest taste of any drink in the world, but when it comes to supplement beverages, it ranks toward the top of our list.
Ingredients
The most notable part of Athletic Greens’ ingredient list is what’s not included. Athletic Greens has taken pride in including the best, and only the best ingredients. This means that their ingredient list is allergen and whole food friendly. None of the following will be found in their powder:
- artificial flavors
- artificial sweeteners
- lactose
- sucrose
- dextrose
- gluten
- dairy
- egg
- corn
- peanuts
- animal by-products
By leaving out these ingredients, Athletic Greens has ensured that their product will not irritate any digestive sensitivity or allergies that you may struggle with.
What are the Common Concerns about Athletic Greens?
While we are convinced Athletic Greens is the premium green drink choice available on the market today, it does have a few common criticisms and concerns. These fall into two main categories:
Cost
The single most common concern that people have about purchasing Athletic Greens is its cost. This concern is certainly not unfounded. Many of the brands of green drinks available range in price from $1 per serving to $3 per serving. This is rather expensive but not beyond what most people are willing to pay.
Athletic greens will cost anywhere from $2 per serving to $4 per serving. The exact cost will vary depending on the packaging chosen and the amount purchased. Those who choose a monthly subscription can get Athletic Greens at the lower end of the price range. Those who make a one-time purchase of the individual packets will pay a bit more.
This is the point where many people begin to balk at the idea of purchasing Athletic Greens. The thing to keep in mind is that you ultimately get what you pay for. When the vitamins that you are consuming end up being flushed down the toilet because they’re not easy for your body to absorb, the money that you spent goes with them.
When you drink Athletic Greens, their blend ensures that your body can use all of the vitamins, probiotics, and prebiotics that you paid for. Therefore those who love Athletic Greens find that it’s worth the expense.
Quantity of Ingredients
The second concern often raised about Athletic Greens is found with all green drinks. Because these products can group ingredients together and list them as a “proprietary blend,” It can be difficult to determine the exact quantity of any ingredient included in the product.
From a business standpoint, this makes complete sense. As a consumer, some people find it frustrating, but since it is common across the entire industry, this is more of a general concern about lack of transparency rather than a concern about Athletic Greens specifically.
Conclusion
In our review of Athletic Greens, we’ve concluded it’s the premium option for those who are looking to add a boost to their overall health. Their blend of antioxidants, vitamins, minerals, and digestive enzymes is the most well-balanced blend on the market. The high quality of their natural ingredients and their avoidance of common allergens ensures that Athletic Greens will provide people with the best possible green beverage. Add in the palatable flavor, and you have a green drink that is worth its cost.
