Protein & Fitness Guides

Sports nutrition is the category where headline prices mislead most reliably. Tubs are sold by the pound, by the kilogram, by the gram and by the serving simultaneously, and scoop sizes differ between brands — so the price on the front of a five-pound tub tells you very little about what it costs to use.

The figure that makes two products comparable is cost per serving, and behind that, cost per gram of protein. A concentrate delivering 24 g of protein in a 33 g scoop is a different product from an isolate delivering 25 g in a 28 g scoop, and neither is described by the tub weight. The arithmetic takes about a minute and frequently reverses the ranking you would get from the shelf price.

The products themselves divide cleanly. Whey is sold as concentrate, isolate or hydrolysate, which differ in protein density per scoop. Plant proteins are usually blends, because combining pea with rice broadens the amino acid profile. Creatine is overwhelmingly monohydrate at a three to five gram serving, which makes it one of the few things here that compares straight across. Pre-workout formulas are blends, and caffeine per scoop is the figure most worth locating before anything else.

These guides cover the types, the dosing and the maths. To compare products, the protein and fitness comparison filters by brand, format, pack size and servings per container.