I've been doing a meal prep and weight loss routine that includes a lot of exercise, and since I'm taking it seriously I've not only saved loads of money on eating out (a minimum of around $400 a month on average), I've lost a significant amount of weight as well.
Now, since I'm also lifting weights (temporarily on hold thanks to quarantines and gym shutdowns) I've been taking a protein supplement For obvious and well known reasons, for extra gains for those who don't know.
The problem is that protein supplements can be a bit pricey. I figured I go cheap and buy a 2lb bottle at my local Aldi but one day it occurred to me that these protein companies play games with the labels and take advantage of the fact that they are allowed to have a plastic scoop in the container, and using this they change the prices, serving sizes, and number of servings so they can raise the price on you.
Thanks to the fact that they do this, it takes a bit more attention to detail to figure out what the price you're actually paying is.
I figured the easiest way to compare was to get the price per gram of protein. This required a few bits of information from each brand, the price, the number of servings per container, and the grams of protein per serving.
So this is not rocket science, its super easy math, but it takes effort, which I'm guessing they know 99% of people won't take the time to do.
The formula is basic as all heck:
(price of the entire unit)/(Grams of Protein per serving* Number of servings per container)
Like I said, not rocket science, just very tedious. I only did about ~15 examples, and will do more if anyone is interested in this sample analysis I did. just so you know, the price per gram of protein differed significantly, although the labels and unit prices wouldn't make it so obvious.
This sub doesn't allow Links to the websites since they're commercial sites so I won't post them, but here are the results
I jokingly added in the "Bulk apothecary" example because they sell 800kg of pure whey for a little north of $11,000.
It was nice to see my Aldi Brand actually did ok in terms of price, but still wasn't the best.
TLDR:The prices per gram of protein ranged from 27 cents per gram on the high end to 1.3 cents on the low end.
I don't know about you, but I'd rather not pay 20 times as much for the same thing. Or put another way, the same amount of money will have your protein lasting ~20 times longer when comparing the cheapest vs the most expensive on my list, all else equal.
Keep in mind that thanks to the gym shutdowns there are a lot of sales of supplements right now, some of which seem fake (one website had a fake "sale will end" timer that refreshed with the browser to start anew). Assuming things get back to normal prices might go back up and this analysis will be obsolete.
Anyways, hope this was informative.
June 27, 2020 at 10:18PM
