Carbs!! Ahhh the most hated word in the supplement industry. Carb equal fat gains right? Eat Low carb and you’ll lose weight right? Anyone old enough to remember the low-carb craze of the early 90’s!! Huge business was made off of low-carb food products and supplements. Gosh forbid you consumed any carbs, you’d get fat. Atkins!!! Hahaha!
Carbs are good, very good. You need them to live and most importantly you need them to grow muscle. If you don’t want to eat them you can supplement with them. You can buy carb powder supplements or carb powder foods (remember if it’s labeled with a supplement facts panel it’s a dietary supplement if it’s labeled with a nutrition facts powder then it’s a food product. HINT you want to buy dietary supplements).
Here is a list of my favorite carb powders to buy and some ones that plain suck, obviously that you shouldn’t buy.
1)Waxy Maize. My all time favorite supplement scam. Do not buy this product! It is CORN STARCH. It cost literally 50 cents a pound and supplement companies selling it make a huge product. It’s not special, it’s not better than dextrose or maltodextrin. Its garbage!
2) Oats. Great carbs and my Oatmuscle is the best. But look out for companies selling OatFlour. Here is Optimum Nutrition’s attempt at selling Oats as a carb (ie trying their best to rip me off).
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A few things here, #1 it’s a food. I told you remember buy only supplements with supplement facts. Next before they added oat products they put in honey and sugar! WTF!! Thirdly they use oat flour and oat fiber…not good. My Oatmuscle is 100% oat product, it’s not flour , nor fiber. And it’s naturally sweet.
3) Sweet potato powder. Again I sell this and it’s awesome! I don’t have to tell you that. If you don’t know sweet potatoes are good for you then you need to research them more!
4) Dextrose. This is a corn product but very sweet. It is what is used mostly in sports drinks. Use it for quick energy, but it will get you fat if you use it often.
5) Maltodextrin. Same thing as dextrose, but bland to the taste.
6)Highly Branched Cyclic Dextrin. Now this is good stuff IF and ONLY IF you buy the real stuff. It’s patented! You must make sure you buy it with the name CLUSTER DEXTRIN. That is the patented versions name. If not then you’ve been scammed. I’ve seen some companies selling this bulk and they just call it highly branched cyclic dextrin. This carb does not spike your insulin like malto and dextrose, therefore your body can still burn bodyfat. Because of maltodextrin and dextrose huge impact on insulin, your body may stop burning fat fat upon consuming these carbs.
7) Mod6. This is a GRAIN carb made up of several ingredients.
Ok so the bottom line is.
If you want to gain muscle ALWAYS combine carbs with protein. Me personally, I’ll shoot for spinach in a blender and then spoon in my protein and drink. If I’m at work I use the sweet potato powder or Oatmuscle & toss in the Bio Serum and Peptopro. Makes for a really high quality protein shake. Unless you’re a genetic freak add the carbs. Now the carbs you DON’T want to add all the time are dextrose and maltodextrin. Be very careful with these ingredients. A lot of supplement companies disguise these ingredients with fancy names. This is a scam. They are just trying to sell you because the profit margin for dextrose and maltodextrin are huge. The prices for the good powders carbs I mentioned above are 10X to 20X the cost of maltodextrin and dextrose. And I’m not exaggerating.
Avoid the scams: waxy maize &highly branched cyclic dextrin that isn’t sold as Cluster Dextrin. If you want to gain muscle you need to tell your body you’re giving it energy (carbs) and that it’s time to build muscle (protein). If you take protein only the body will use that for energy, which is what you don’t want.
On top of that use some of my creapure post workout with the protein and carbs to give yourself the best muscle building chance you can!
Alex Rogers is a supplement manufacturing expert. He has been formulating, consulting, & manufacturing dietary supplements since 1998. Alex invented protein customization in 1998 & was the first company to allow consumers to create their own protein blends. He helped create the first supplement to contain natural follistatin, invented whey protein with egg lecithin, & recently imported the world’s first 100% hydrolyzed whey.
