Comment · Thu, June 4, 2020
Greens Powders
Original post in this thread
TheOptimizzzer · 12 points
u/misteryouaresodumb I don’t think the possibility of a greens powder from ND/Natrium has ever been mentioned, but curious if this has been discussed at all? Have you used any of these products in the past? Would be interested to know how some of the leading brands test in terms of accuracy of ingredients given how many ingredients these often list. Thanks!
What they were answering
KennyFulgencio · 3 points
I'll give you an example of why I'm sometimes interested in a product like this: last summer for a couple of months I had an extremely low food budget and ended up fasting on and off for two months (like going three days w/o food then one small meal a day the next couple of days--not because of any health benefits, because I couldn't afford food temporarily). I used the little money I had to buy amazing greens, as it happens, hoping it would cover micronutrient needs. (If I felt I could have done it with whole food for the same cost, I would certainly have done that instead.)
Sadly, I got a thiamine deficiency, and belatedly discovered it doesn't have any (my lower body was tingling every time I stood up; it stopped within about a week of resuming a normal diet).
While I don't anticipate being in that situation again, I didn't anticipate it the first time, either. What would you do in a situation like that?
u/MisterYouAreSoDumb
I get why you like the promise that supplements like these give, but the reality is a much different situation. In fact, you found out exactly why. You assumed it had a balanced amount of nutrients, but it did not have the thiamine you needed. You were looking for a good multivitamin. The "greens" part is just marketing. I get why they do it. That sells right now. The market determines what companies target, and the markets are driven on hype. They are not driven on effectiveness or proper science, unfortunately.
I suppose what you wanted could be done. We could create a micronutrient blend. However, we would concentrate on the actual micronutrients, not fluff it up with a bunch of plants and extracts to label dress. The issue with micronutrients are they compete with each other for absorption a lot of the time, and the form they are in matters a LOT. So I would want to split them up into groups that did not compete with each other, and have those doses happen at different times of the day. It's possible to do, but will take time and effort. Then we might not sell much, since the hype is not there. It would be a lot easier to sell a premade greens mix like all these guys are doing it. I know how they are. They buy these premade nutrient mixes and do various combos of it. Big suppliers and contract manufacturers have these premade mixes you can choose from, and brands like Amazing Grass just randomly choose which ones to toss into the mix. There is no intelligent formulation there, though. If there was, they would not have fucking forgotten thiamine! LOL
So what you would have wanted in your situation was a good multivitamin. Then you could have bought bulk bags of beans and rice to make easy and cheap meals. Get a huge bag of long grain rice. Get a couple big bags of black beans, garbanzo beans, and kidney beans. Then get some of those big lemon and lime bottles, cumin, garlic powder, salt, pepper, and cayenne pepper. You can make a dinner that is nutritious and tastes good for less than $1 per serving if you buy the bags in bulk. Then a good multivitamin can pick up any slack.