Greens powders are appealing as a way of naturally ‘topping up’ on a plethora of trace vitamins and minerals using concentrated plant extracts, such as herbs, fruits and vegetables.
They’re often a convenient and easy way to sprinkle additional nutrient value into meals, juices and smoothies and thanks to their natural composition of a range of naturally occurring vitamins, minerals and phytochemicals, many people report feeling better for taking them.
Are Greens Supplements Necessary?
Sadly, the modern westernised diets of today are devoid of many nutrients. Thanks to agriculture practices, depleted soils, long storage conditions for fresh goods, and the many food miles travelled from farm to table, by the time so-called ‘fresh produce’ lands on your dinner plate, it’s often lost a considerable value of nutrition.
Herein is where concentrated greens can benefit our health. A loss of diversity of the nutrients we’re consuming through diet has likely led to deficiencies that have made us tired, sluggish and foggy. When we deliver a concentrated burst of a variety of plant-based nutrients as a greens drink, our body can start to replenish these lost resources and use them to optimise pathways that might have been slow or compromised.
What Do Greens Formulas Contain?
Many Greens formulas will contain a blend of fruits and vegetables ranging from a handful of ingredients to dozens of plant ingredients. Some of the most popular inclusions are leafy greens like spinach and kale, to superfoods like barley, wheatgrass, beetroot, acai, spirulina, kelp and other fruits, plants and herbs. In some cases, you can get the same or more nutritional goodness in a single teaspoon as you’d fit in a whole bowl filled with fresh ingredients.
Another benefit of powdered greens is that the raw materials are often dried at very low temperatures or freeze-dried immediately after harvest when the nutritional content of the plant is at its highest, retaining the maximum level of naturally occurring trace nutrients.
How To Identify A Quality Greens Formula?
At face value, some formulas sound too good to be true, with up to a hundred ingredients packed into a single jar. Some things to be minful of are:
- Some brands supply their ingredient listings as the value of the input material (ie. what’s in a whole jar) as opposed to what you can expect to receive per serve.
- Some brands will simply list what ingredients are included in a bulk list of the highest-containing inclusion, to the lowest-containing inclusion. However, this doesn't really tell you what proportion of the ingredients are in a blend. For example, there might be three ingredients - but the first listed ingredient could be 95% of the formula and the next two make up the final 5% of the blend. This is the problem with that kind of labelling, it's not truly transparent.
- Formulas may also sound fantastic because they contain ‘proprietary blends’ with catchy names, but they may not actually tell you the specifics of what is actually in that blend.
- Greens products might also contain undisclosed artificial sweeteners to make the bland or bitter plant materials more palatable. So be sure to check labels thoroughly.
The bottom line, when we want to source a quality Greens powder, these are the key things to look for:
- Are there certified organic ingredients included?
- Are there meaningful dosages of the individual ingredients?
- Are the ingredients itemised in a per-serve amount?
- Are the proprietary ingredients evidence-based?
- Is the formula transparent about the flavour excipients?
Greens can be a great way to add concentrated nutrition to your day. Checking labels and comparing brands can be challenging for consumers when they're not all itemising ingredients in the same way. myBrainCo is passionate about complete transparency of your per-serving ingredient levels and we go over and above to ensure it's very clear.