Product Review - Active Naturals Pea Protein Powder

Yummmm.....

**this is not a sponsored post**

I actually do have a policy for products that I promote on Fit to Blog and it is this:

If I feature a product on Fit to Blog, it means two things:

a) I use and genuinely like the product and

b) I personally know the person that manufactures and sells the product, and believe them to be a top bloke, or bloke-ess. 

And, when I say 'personally know', I mean, in person. As in, if I saw them on the street, we would hug, catch up about our actual lives and talk smack about people we don't like.

So.. a week or so ago I was out doing some nutritiony stuff at Scorpion supplements, and picked up some of their Active Naturals Pea Protein, which is 'Vanilla Chai' Flavoured.

I've been enjoying the dairy free life, but as mentioned in my previous post, want to increase my protein intake. I have experimented with plant proteins (mostly rice protein) and found them gritty, but as I had heard about the blood, sweat and tears that went into this particular product, I gave it a go and was really impressed.

The protein content is about the same as Whey Protein Concentrate (WPC), and they've used the novel sweetener thaumatin, which is a rising star in the world of natural sweeteners. It does not have the aftertaste issues of stevia.

The flavour is, in my opinion, more vanilla than chai, and it's not gritty! There is just a nice hint of cinnamon, but it's not intensely spicy. I found that it worked well with anything else I threw in there: berries, greens, maca, cacao... you know, 'smoothie stuff'. 

The amino acid breakdown is in the table below. The WPC values are there as a comparison and you'll see that it's pretty good in terms of what you'd look for in a protein. I'd say it's the best profile that I've seen in a plant protein. The only thing that I like less in the pea protein than the whey is the arginine/lysine ratio.  This can be a problem if you have a latent herpes situation, particularly the coldsore virus. There's a good discussion about that here, and some science here.

It's not a problem for me, but if you are prone to coldsores and get an outbreak when using plant proteins, you may need to increase your lysine intake.

And then I had to do a photo shoot....

I don't know if it's noticeable, but I've been upskilling my photog skills lately. I've even stopped using the 'auto' mode of my camera, which was exactly like stepping off a cliff into an uncertain void. I'm slowly getting there, shutter speed, aperture, exposure, different lenses.

Negative space, rule of thirds, 45 degree, straight up and down. The one below was supposed to from directly above, and I didn't notice until the editing phase that I was off-centre.

Gah!

Depth of field, props.

And sometimes, less really is more.

Here's a link to the Active Naturals Vege Protein

and, of course, if you want regular whey protein, you can find it here.

I'll be back next weekend with ... something.  I'm also looking for some instagram accounts to follow that are about food and/or photography. Can you recommend any?

:D