Some protein powders and shakes tested by Consumer Reports contained levels of lead, a heavy metal, that experts say could raise the risk of long-term health problems.
Scientists hired by Consumer Reports, an independent non-profit based out of the U.S., tested 23 popular protein products, and found lead levels ranging from zero to 7.7 micrograms per serving — above the stringent limits set by the state of California, but below U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) standard for females of childbearing age.
There is no safe level of lead for human consumption, though it finds its way into many foods because lead is present in the environment.
Sooooo thats how they got it sweeter without sugar. Not the alternative I would have choose.
While it does vaguely link to the Consumer Reports link, most sites just auto-link to the home page or some redirect.
Media should just show the list, and first, always.
I say vaguely because on mobile one has to hold their finger on the link and in some cases copy-paste it elsewhere to see what the contents is. That’s just malicious publishing.
Looking at the usual clientele for that stuff, it cannot do serious damage anymore.
Thanks for posting that.
Removed by mod
Edit4: 0.02 mg? 3 mg? I hate numbers. Don’t listen to me, I know nothing.
Edit3: so as far as I can tell for now (and I’m not good with numbers), it’s 0.02 mcg of lead per kg for food in powder form in the EU. Which does mean that 6.3 mcg per 90 g serving of Huel exceeds that by far.
So why can they sell this in the EU? I am distressed.
Edit: wait. What? Am I seeing this correctly that EU laws set the upper limit at2520 mcg per kgof body weight per week? Because that is WAY more than the upper limit set by CR. (Or is it?)Edit2: I am now very unsure about all these numbers and I can’t find any clear information. Goddammit.
One serving of Huel’s Black Edition powder contained 6.3 micrograms of lead, or about 1,290 percent of CR’s daily lead limit.
_**FUCK.**_One serving of Huel’s Black Edition plant-based protein powder contained 9.2 micrograms of cadmium, more than double the level that public health authorities and CR’s experts say may be harmful to have daily, which is 4.1 micrograms.
**_FUCK._**It’s worth noting that the safe levels of lead are determined by when it causes organ damage. A much higher limit than the point at which lead causes neurological damage. Which is 0. There is no neurologically safe level of lead.
Someone please tell me this is a US thing and the product is better regulated in the EU. I need this shit to not starve because I am incapable of planning and making regular meals that don’t consist of noodles with ketchup or cheese on bread because my brain is useless (probably even more useless now after I’ve eaten all that lead yay).
Huel is a company founded in the EU (now brexited), but as a meal replacement, my guess is the formula is the same everywhere.
It sounds like the ingredients come from all over the world, so it’s probably a roll of the dice whether whatever lot you end up with contains material grown in soil with too high of a lead content.
I’ve been trying to find EU regulation and it seems like EU limits are WAY above what CR set. So now I’m confused.
Edit: or maybe not? I’m unclear on what I’m seeing.
It looks like the EU’s limit for supplements is 3 mg/kg.
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2023/915/oj/eng
Consumer reports “level of concern” is ug/day. They tested Huel at 6.3 ug per 90 g serving, or 70 ug/kg (.07 mg/kg).
Basically Huel only hits 2.3% of the EU limits. It looks like the EU regulates “supplements” assuming they are like pills or something where you’d only consume a few grams a day. Compare it to salt, with a limit of 1 mg/kg. Something that you’d actually be expected to eat a lot of, like grain, has a limit of 0.2 mg/kg. Basically, it’s still below the limit there, but getting close.
The US limit for grain is .02 mg/kg, so 10x more strict than the EU. I’m not sure about supplements, though.
Hilariously I stopped reading like 5 lines above that and misunderstood everything, goddammit. Thank you.
I do (possibly foolishly) have a lot of faith in EU regulation in general so now I’m very cautiously optimistic I won’t have to starve. I’ll have to find out more about these limits on supplements and where they come from and who set them based on what and if they even apply to Huel.
Please do not just get your food from a venture backed corporation.
Please.
Alternative is to eat junk that takes two steps at most to make or not eat at all most days.
Rice. Beans. Seasoning.
Throw in a crock pot and forget about it for half the day. Prepare in bulk and refrigerate leftovers to eat throughout the week.
Cheap, filling, not terrible for you, takes like 5 minutes of effort.
What about some rolls and some cold cuts and sliced cheese with some romaine? Takes only a few minutes to make a sandwich. Probably less than you would need to microwave most prepared meals.
Slow cookers can be found at estate sales for very little, usually under $10 equivalent. You can throw your preferred meat, canned beans, canned tomatoes, canned whatever you like in and let it cook overnight and usually end up with something you can freeze, reheat and eat without a big loss in taste quality. That slow cooker does all the work for you while you sleep, you just have to package it however you like.
Know anyone at work or through any other connection who likes to cook? Maybe worth thinking about if you have a skill to trade they lack. Maybe you could work out something where you provide ingredients and they meal prep for you while you provide them with a skill you have that you enjoy.
Don’t eat the lead. Best of luck!
Your suggestions already require a level of planning I’m incapable of on most days. My situation is difficult (and I have only myself to blame) but thank you for trying to help.
I use a strat where I play past me off against future me as present me and through spiteful actions can achieve these things. Maybe a similar strategy can work for you. Let me give an example:
Your disgust with past you motivates you to go to the grocery store. Your pettiness toward future you means you buy ingredients instead of prepped. The future anger this engenders in a present you forced to prepare a sandwich can be fed back into the system to motivate a trip to the grocery… etc.
Never underestimate spite.
Edit: if you find yourself cackling in the produce aisle holding some weirdo hard to prepare growth you have gone too far and should dial it back.
There’s no way MY plant-based protein powder is on here…
Fuck.
The producers: Working as designed, you wanted to increase your mass.
This is unfortunate news for all the protein bros who never understood excess protein simply gets excreted by the kidneys (and can even stress them if taken to extremes, as some protein bros do).
I was heartened to see this explained in a very mainstream text - The Bowflex Body Plan. IIRC, the author actually went to school and was a body builder while in school. He had a professor (of nutrition?) tell him to measure it. He was shocked to learn that he was literally pissing away huge amounts of money.
This book was published over 20 years ago, and I think the protein myth has only gotten worse since then. It’s not just the gym rats doing “bro science”, it seems even soccer moms and people that probably don’t even do mild exercise all have this perverse idea that they are going to die without supplementing large amounts of protein.
Yup. A context-free factoid goes viral, and then someone figures out how to profit off the suckers.
I will say while these numbers sound alarming they are using California’s regulations which are a thousand times more rigorous than the FDA’s federal guidelines.
Now I understand the FDA is not the source it once was but these rules come from before the recent, let’s say restructuring.
It is good to be mindful of your intake of heavy metals however these are well within the safe limits and it is important to know that anytime you’re dealing with organic material you have a higher risk of lead and cadmium as they occur naturally occur in soil
Let’s also not forget that it’s been California’s stringent regulations on lots of things that have dragged the rest of the country forward against the will of corporations.
Oh boy. I wonder what true nutrition’s custom powders are like; or rather from where they’re sourcing their stuff…
This is not really a big deal.
https://news.immunologic.org/p/consumer-reports-latest-panic-toxic
The MADL for lead outlined by Proposition 65 is 0.5 µg of lead per day. This value was set, arbitrarily in 1989, even though scientific evidence continues to show that it’s wildly unrealistic and not remotely near an exposure that would be a health concern. It remains unchanged because Prop 65 is a political tool, not a scientific one. Consumer Reports decides to ignore FDA interim reference levels for lead in their assessment. These levels are 8.8 µg per day for reproductive age females and 12.5 µg for general adults, 17.6-times and 25-times higher daily exposure levels compared to the Prop 65 levels, respectively, and are already extremely conservative (more on how those are calculated in a moment).
Not saying you shouldn’t take it into consideration, but it’s not as big of a deal as CR is making it out to be.
There is no “safe” amount of lead. It doesn’t get passed out of the body through biological functions, it accumulates (in bone, IIRC)
It accumulates in bone, yes, but not all of it does. It also collects in blood and organs where it is passes fairly quickly. The FDA sets their guidelines based on safe blood levels of lead and their recommendation is I think 1/10 the actual value to build in a pretty big safety buffer.
We’re already exposed to lead constantly through the environment, etc. It’s not just present in foods and other man made things. It’s definitely in many of the foods we eat, not just protein powder. Root vegetables, grain crops, etc. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0963996920303951
I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad idea to try your best, but I also don’t think it’s worth stressing over with these protein powders compared to other stuff you may already be ingesting.
Where does all the lead come from? Sadly when I think of lead in products I usually think of China, various Chinese manufacturers love using lead as a filler or for whitening.
Lots of plants will ingest lead, cadmium, and other heavy metals from the soil. Apple seeds are high in arsenic, for example.
Wow, what a great quote. Just perfect:
We’ve created this health halo around protein. It gives us an excuse to eat a lot of things we shouldn’t be eating."
I’m a vegetarian, so maybe as a result I’m prone to notice it more (because, even in 2025, I get people asking me “but how do you get your protein?!”), but calling the protein phenomenon when it comes to culture a “health halo” is just one of the best ways I’ve seen it described.
Probably one of the best examples was the creation of the “protein bar”. And now we see the protein amounts listed prominently even on some restaurant menus. We have people thinking protein is some kind of health food.
I suggest reading The Protein Myth - great book.
We’ve created this health halo around protein. It gives us an excuse to eat a lot of things we shouldn’t be eating."
Eating high protein isn’t about health it’s for body building. I don’t know anyone that uses protein supplements that isn’t on some kind of strength training plan. Listing protein on products is useful to those that need more than the recommended minimum to recover and build muscle as it can be difficult to get a sufficient amount in that scenario, especially if your options are limited to fast food crap.
I was talking about this kind of thing (see link). People have lost their minds over this macronutrient, LOL. The marketing about protein has always been rather silly, IMHO, but in the recent 10-15 years, it’s been getting more and more absurd and the “bro science” is creeping into everything…almost no one is telling people to actually measure their input and their output (like the Bowflex author’s professor told him to do), they are just being marketed to that they need more protein, and to even supplement with it…and now it’s being marketed in Doritos, LOL.
Protein is everywhere now: Doritos, ice cream, cereal, air. Lewis Black takes a look at the new health craze tricking Americans into thinking they can have their protein-filled cake and eat it too, and asks what could happen if you consume too much protein (hint: it involves s**tting your pants). #DailyShow #LewisBlack #Protein
Lewis Black is joking about the protein enema, but honestly, I think there just might be some real money in this. Tell people all that over-consumption of protein they are already doing is not “bioavailable” and they need to get it via an enema, then charge about 100x the markup…
Do you actually read anything about nutrition? It takes minimal effort to find things that tell you how much you should have. There is a ton of stuff out there telling you how to monitor/calculate your nutrient intake. There are apps that make it easy. Protein intake is a very well studied subject with plenty of material on it and more coming out all the time (if anything the recommended protein amount is higher than the generally suggested amount of .8g/kg of bodyweight for sedentary individuals). These products are intended for those who want a snack with protein while keeping their calories in check. If you overeat, of course you can expect to have problems. I personally don’t consume any of these high protein chips or icecream products because I’m a small dude and I don’t have a lot of spare calories to play with for snacks, if I need a snack I usually go for jerky, but for other people these can be a good option. If you pay attention to what you are eating it can actually be difficult to get the recommended amount of protein with pre-packaged foods while keeping your calories in check, most products and fast food options are very high calorie for what you’re getting out of them. If you want to bitch about too much of something in our food you should be focusing on carbs, sugar, and fat. Protein can stand to be dialed up a bit.
Lewis Black is a very funny man but not someone I’m going to take nutritional advice from.
Here is a source for the recommended numbers: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5872778/#sec2-nutrients-10-00360
Heh. Given that I’ve been a vegetarian for ~20 years, yeah, I would say I’ve looked into nutrition, with particular focus on the commonly held myths around protein, a fair bit. 😆
We vegetarians are asked about this apparently scarce macronutrient so often that we laugh and repeat the “but where do you get your protein?!” phrase when we are with each other. That’s because we’ve all heard it countless times when someone learns we are vegetarian. I cannot tell you how many people in my life that are still convinced that I’ll waste away, I will be weak, I will lose muscle mass, have anemia, fatigue, etc…despite all the years of empirical evidence I have by living it and by the literature I could point them at. That’s how predominant the myths about protein are. I don’t ever offer up that I’m vegetarian IRL for a whole host of reasons, but not walking people through the protein thing is definitely one of those reasons.
If people feel the need to supplement, they now have multiple ways to do it without eating any whole foods, including ice cream, chips and drinks from Starbucks. If people want to believe marketers over the science, it’s understandable since the marketing is everywhere, while the science is something you usually have to seek out. The science says that most people, including athletes, do not need to supplement. In the cases of actual extreme athletes or people age 65+, etc., some probably actually do measure and get empirical evidence of needing to up their intake or not, because it’s probably good to know if they are just literally pissing away money and/or causing unwanted issues. I bet most people never measure, though.
Lastly, I don’t think anyone was suggesting getting nutritional advice from Black. He’s just skewering the people taking nutritional advice from marketers such as those at Frito-Lay and from influencers.
Whether or not someone needs to supplement depends entirely on their diet and what food options are available to them. My target is 70-80g/day on ~1800 calories, if I go much below that it adds days to my recovery from working out. If I’m restricted to fast food meals and pre-packaged shit that I can take with me on the go that day it can be hard to get there, I have to supplement it 2-3 times a week, especially if I’m cutting and need to keep my calories extra low as well. Obviously if I could meal plan properly and eat only whole foods this would be easier but due to my living situation my choices are limited. It’s not about marketing.
Amazon reviews say the book doesn’t debunk our need for protein. The bigger you are in terms of muscle mass, the more protein you need in your diet. That doesn’t change if you’re vegan.
Vegan strongman Patrik Baboumian eats 410 grams of plant-based protein per day, a lot of which is made up of vegan protein powders. These are exactly what this report about lead is warning against.
Plants are ultra-concentrators of metals in soil, including heavy metals like lead and cadmium. Protein powder is an ultra-concentrated product, further increasing the risks of high lead levels. Anyone like Baboumian who wants to build a lot of muscle while maintaining a vegan diet needs to be very careful about where they source their protein powder.
Amazon reviews say the book doesn’t debunk our need for protein.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone make that claim. I sure hope no one is out there making that claim. I surely am not. I’m talking about the way it gets treated in society as if it’s somehow “healthy” to be eating massive amounts of protein, especially animal protein. Just pay attention to how it’s marketed for everyday foods, including at restaurants.
And yes, in some cases, there are people that may need more protein if they are trying to build/maintain muscle mass. I’ve seen the documentary w/ Patrik in it. This is hardly typical kinds of intake, though, and I’d wager a lot of people that are eating lots of protein are just overworking their kidneys and pissing most of it out a few hours later. Even athletes.
If I had the ability, I’d actually be curious to measure my own intake vs. waste, much like the author of that Bowflex book I mentioned. This guy was also a body builder…
Most people these days are terribly out of shape, overweight/obese, and have way too much body fat and way too little muscle mass. People eat way too much fat and carbs and way too little protein. They also don’t move nearly enough, of course, so eating protein without doing the work is not going to help.
Since I’ve started lifting weights and trying to build muscle and lose weight, I’ve begun to realize how difficult it is to get enough protein to do that without spending a lot of money on meat or eating a bunch of legumes (and feeling awful all day the next day).
Forget 410 grams per day. It’s hard enough to get 100 grams per day without supplementing.
Eh, YMMV. I went vegetarian many, many years ago and stuck with it because I feel fantastic on it. It was like night and day, and just prior I had already cut red meat and pork to nearly zero, but was still eating things like seafood and poultry. I still felt very low-energy as an omnivore even when trying to really watch everything I ate.
I was also working on losing weight/keeping lean with strength training and cardio at the time. I still am. I’ve never worried about getting enough protein in that process. But I’m not trying to bulk up or anything, either. I’m shooting more for health goals, not aesthetic ones.
The over-the-top marketing of the protein myth has gotten so bad that even Lewis Black just commented on this ridiculous trend last night:
Protein is everywhere now: Doritos, ice cream, cereal, air. Lewis Black takes a look at the new health craze tricking Americans into thinking they can have their protein-filled cake and eat it too, and asks what could happen if you consume too much protein (hint: it involves s**tting your pants). #DailyShow #LewisBlack #Protein
Personally I havent seen the protein craze in real time but I remember a Frontline episode from 3 to 5 years back that called out how unregulated the supliment industry is. None of this is surprising
Ha, Daily Show and Lewis Black to the rescue…it’s so weird that this thread happened just a few days before this.
I think it’s just marketing to people that are sort of half-tuned in, but know that protein is something your body does need. And they aren’t wrong. But unless you are eating a very bizarre or restricted diet, it’s not likely you have to count grams of protein. One of the ways you see this kind of thing slip into menus is to have someone select “a protein” as an option to be added to your meal. Typically, it’s a protein from a dead animal, thus reinforcing the false notion that “protein” = meat. It’s extra amusing when the portion already includes egg and/or cheese…and the “protein” is actually a “fat”.
The author of The Protein Myth has a funny anecdote where he has to dig deeper into people’s proclaimed dietary habits. He asks them what they eat for breakfast, and they’ll say something like “a protein”. He digs deeper and finds out it sausage or the like. It’d be more accurate to describe that as “a fat”, if we are only thinking of foods as what macronutrient they have the most of…
If you pay attention, you’ll notice the marketing in any case - I’m pretty sure I’ve seen it on fast casual dining boards.
Look, I have zero problems with the notion of giving a good breakdown of what’s in your food, including protein. But it’s weird to see it as some kind of marketing gimmick, if you ask me. It’s not as if nutrition and health works like that - take one value, dial it way up, and we’re good, LOL. I bet most Americans have little to no idea how much sodium (or even sugar) they consume in a given day, but I am quite sure a few of the “bro science” types could definitely tell you how many grams of protein they ingest…
I hate this type of article because they use the numbers from the singular worst finding and then refuse to name names.
source @ cr:
https://www.consumerreports.org/lead/protein-powders-and-shakes-contain-high-levels-of-lead-a4206364640/the page doesn’t appear to be locked behind their membership paywall like reviews and ratings are.
Nice, thanks!
Did… did you read the article? It even has pictures of the offending products.
I feel like we aren’t seeing the same thing. On mobile, the CBC.CA page does not show any pictures of the 23 brands. At the very end they have quotes for 2 brands by name but not associated with the actual levels found in the study and those two brands quoted are the only direct name mentions. Top comment even implies I’m right by linking “the actual information”.
These are completely within normal levels for other foods and it’s mostly pea protein, which is bioaccumulating from the soil. This isn’t like the cinnamon lead scandal or something (which was caused by contamination from gas fumes in shipping because we destroyed Nigeria’s government to lower costs)
