Got Gains? A Critical Review of Vega Essentials Protein Powder

From November 8, 2018

Got Gains? Save yourself the pain and avoid Vega Essentials Shake protein powder this bulking season

With a faint smell reminiscent of chocolatey Nesquik cereal and bland cardboard, the Vega Essentials Chocolate Shake is a protein powder you immediately want to like. Once put into action, however, the powder fails to measure up to the high standards set by its nostalgia-invoking smell and ambitions of sweetness. 

The core duty of the Vega protein powder is to “give you the nutritional building blocks to help start your day strong,” which is essentially a pretty way to describe this jam-packed concoction of protein, vegetable extracts, vitamins and minerals, fibre, and omega-3 polyunsaturates. 

The powder is made with real plant-based ingredients, is gluten-free, GMO-free, and certified vegan. It can be used as a meal substitute, a post-workout shake, or even baked into your favourite sweets—for whatever reason you might want to ruin a decent cookie for. Its chocolate flavouring is intended to add depth of flavour to an otherwise bland product, yet it unsurprisingly falls short of its goal in mimicking the popular sweet—likely because chocolate is more than just cocoa powder and the addition of milk powder would contradict Vega’s claim to veganism. 

When mixed with water to create a basic protein drink, Vega’s Essentials Shake fails to impress. Even the most low-effort workout doesn’t deserve such an unsatisfying conclusion. The powder is a faint light brown colour with a greenish tinge—an immediately concerning but not disqualifying factor for its upcoming ingestion. Its gritty texture finds a way into every crevice of your teeth with the most unsatisfying, sandy crunch. Upon initial swig, I was greeted by the dull taste of lake water with a hint of vanilla masquerading as chocolate. Not the water at the bottom of the lake, nor at the top, but in the lukewarm middle where particles of sand, fish poop, and wayward algae float in constant suspension until ending up in the next protein-junkie’s blender bottle. 

After managing to swallow a gulp of watery protein chunks, I was awarded with a mouth coated in pure chalk. The wannabe-chocolate-but-is-really-vanilla taste was gone, and I was left with what can only be described as the Sahara desert-meets-dirt from the floor of The Bulk Barn. Feeling confused, with my mouth in a weird state of limbo as if after a dental cleaning, I walked away feeling betrayed as to how such an innocent, sugary smelling powder could taste so badly. 

In effort to give the Vega Essentials Shake a second chance to win over my tastebuds, I combined it with banana, milk, and peanut butter to create protein powder’s second-most popular iteration: a smoothie. In this case I have to give credit to the peanut butter which effectively commandeered the “chocolate” taste. Yet the all-too-familiar grittiness fought its way through the drink to make me feel like I was consuming a peanut butter and banana smoothie in the middle of a sandstorm. 

Healthy and nutritional it might be, but I recommend looking elsewhere for your next post-workout protein fix.