The Truth About Proprietary Blends & Protein Powders

I have to set the record straight because it is starting to get out of control.  It seems the words “proprietary blend” is getting hot lately in the dietary supplement industry, particularly in the protein powder sector.   Many companies use this term as a marketing tool proclaiming that their supplements NEVER use proprietary blends.  And businesses that do use proprietary blends have something to hide.  They also claim, “The best way to buy protein powders or supplements is to buy them without proprietary blends.”   They claim that this is cutting edge.  That NOBODY has ever done this before.  I can tell you right now that this is complete bullshit because about 20 years ago I began the anti-proprietary protein blend marketing campaign.  So don’t let any of the current supplement companies that brag about not using proprietary blends try to convince you that they are the only ones, they invented it, or they are cutting edge.  They are not, in fact, they are about 20 years late to the party.

I was the first company to lay the hammer down on proprietary blends.  I was the first company to let people know that the best way to buy protein powder was to avoid proprietary blends and I did this decades ago.

In 1998 I invented protein customization.  In my garage at the Jersey Shore, I had bags of protein.  Proteins such as whey isolate, whey concentrate, casein, milk protein isolate, and casein.  My goal was simply to give people exactly what they want.  Let them know exactly how much protein they were getting, even if it was a blend.  I did this by letting my customers choose the percentages of the proteins they wanted in their protein powders.  For example, a custom would call up and email me and say, “Alex, I would like a blend of 50% whey isolate, 25% casein, and 25% egg white.”  After that, I would go back into my garage and mix it for them and charge them accordingly.  Pretty awesome stuff.  I was the first protein company to let people know exactly what they were getting.  No longer did people have to deal with proprietary blends of protein powders.

Unfortunately proprietary blended protein powders still exist today.  The people that are buying proprietary blended protein powders are doing so simply because they have no clue what they are doing when it comes to buying protein powder.  Protein companies rely on these people to buy their proprietary blend of protein powder.  Here is one such company.  Notice on the front of the label how it says, “whey isolate as the primary source”  Really?  Why can’t it be the only source?

Let’s get the facts straight.  A whey isolate is 90% protein.  A whey concentrate is 80% protein.  There is no logical reason to BLEND the two together to increase the quality.  None!  By blending in whey concentrate you are simply adding lactose and dropping the overall protein content and amino acid content.  However, the protein company increased their profit margin because a whey isolate costs almost double what a whey concentrate does.  Now if I were “forced” to buy a proprietary blend of whey isolate and concentrate, I would want to know what percentage of each protein was in the blend.   There NO reason why this cannot be known.  It’s not like their is a magical formula that magically increased muscle growth when a certain amount of whey isolate is blended with whey concentrate. The protein company simply does not want you to know because most likely; they are using 99% whey concentrate and 1% whey isolate.  And that is a bunch of bullshit.

The proper way to buy a protein powder is to look at the supplement facts panel.  The supplement facts panel will have the protein powers and the amount of grams used in the serving size.  Take a look at the example below.  See how the grams of whey and the grams of casein are listed out in the supplement facts panel?  This is the proper and quite frankly LEGAL way to sell protein powder that is made up of a proprietary blend.

proprietary blends

Now take a look at a protein powder that is not labeled correctly.

proprietary blend

See how you cannot tell how many grams of each protein is used?  And believe it or not, this company is claiming that they do not use proprietary blend of protein powder.  What a crock!

In conclusion, it is fairly simply to buy a multi-source protein powder.  A)  look for one that is not a proprietary blend.  and B)  Look for one that lists the protein powders on the back of the supplement facts panel like the picture above.

If you don’t want to buy a blend you can take a look at the fine selections I have here.

https://proteinfactory.com/product-category/protein-blends/