Hi my name is Alex Rogers from  proteinfactory.com and we are answering the question is whey protein powder vegan or is whey protein powder vegetarian?

No, Whey protein is not Vegan and it’s a dairy product. Whey protein comes from cheese which comes from milk which makes it not a dairy protein powder.

If you’re looking for vegan protein powders you have several choices to choose from. You have rice protein which comes from rice. And mainly it comes from China and the United States. So you have to be careful when you buy rice protein powder. Of course you want it coming from the United States. China I believe has all sorts of quality control issues. Even their organic rice protein powder I believe has quality control issues so you wanna buy your rice protein powder from American sources and one of those manufacturers is a company called California rice protein company. OK, they make their protein powder obviously from California, Great product! I’ve bought it numerous times. And that’s what you want to look for.

The next source of vegan protein powder is Pea Protein Isolate. Ok, pea protein isolate comes from peas. And again you could get it from the United States, Canada and China. You want to avoid China. There’s a great company that makes Pea protein called Norben. Norben I feel is probably the best manufacturer of pea protein powder. So when you buy your pea protein powder you can ask the company where you’re buying it from. Where do they get their protein powder from. And they hopefully can give you a company of Norben. You also have soy protein, soy protein is a very popular vegan protein. However, I do not recommend it.

Soy protein was big in the 1990s or early 90s and early 2000s until it was discovered to really mess with the body’s estrogen. Estrogen is a female hormone that can be potentially raised by the consumption of soy products and soy protein powder.

There’s a great book called, whole soy story, And this is a great book to read about the dangers of soy protein and why not to use it. So there’s absolutely no reason to use soy protein powder when you have much better protein sources out there.

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The next protein is hemp protein powder, hemp protein powder is made in Canada and China. But again I recommend buying from Canada. Now hemp protein powder looks great on paper it has all the amino acids but I feel the biological value is very low. So, I would use pea protein in a rice protein over hemp protein. After hemp protein comes a great protein source called lentil protein or duckweed protein powder, and this is probably the highest quality vegetarian protein powder out there. It’s not very well known because it was just kind of invented. And it ranks up there with whey protein and pea protein and rice protein. As far as biological value goes.

The last and probabaly the best source of vegan protein is duckweed protein powder.  This has the most nutrients and amino acids over rice, pea, and hemp protein powder.

So if you’re a vegetarian and you’re looking for vegan protein powders I would recommend combining your protein. So I would buy a container of pea protein. I would buy a container of rice protein, and I’d buy a container of duckweed protein powder. And I would add all these together and this will give you the best chance for muscle recovery.

In conclusion, to answer the question, “Is whey protein vegan?”, the answer is no.  Instead use the vegan protein powder options I gave you above, just make sure you do not buy a vbegan protein powder from China