Business Spotlight

Athletic Greens Review 2022: Is Athletic Greens Worth It? 

Drinking athletic greens does come with a multitude of health benefits. There's a couple of quick ones to get out of the way, it covers off the vast majority of your vitamin and mineral needs for the day, with the notable exclusion of calcium.

Advertisement

Athletic Greens Review
info_icon

Ag1 Athletic Greens is the most well known supplement in the greens space, but is it the best? Well, unfortunately no it isn't. It's by no means the worst, but there are far better greens powders on the market than Athletic Greens. 

The main issue and the biggest negative in our athletic greens review is that it uses proprietary blends. Typically this is common in the supplements space when it comes to new products, but it's only ever used to hide under dosing of core ingredients. This allows companies like athletic greens to claim that they have multiple effective ingredients, but there's simply not enough of them. Allowing them to stuff in cheaper ingredients that aren't as good for you in their AG1 formula which saves them money, but isn't great for the customer.

Advertisement

We know this to be true because the minimum required volumes are higher than a portion of the supplement. When we compare this to a product like Super Green Tonik, which lists every ingredient and has said ingredients in their effective dosage to actually get all of the health benefits, then Athletic Greens starts to look like less of great option. 

That's not to say that athletic greens is a bad product, in fact in a lot of ways our athletic greens review is going to be quite positive. Athletic Greens taste good as greens powders go (again this is beaten out by Super Green Tonik, but not dramatically), there's a plethora of positive customer athletic greens reviews and far more than negative reviews of athletic greens and the basic nutritional content of vitamins and minerals is pretty solid so there is a lot of good here. It's just not the best. 

Advertisement

We'd recommend that you check out Super Green Tonik Instead.

Health Benefits of Athletic Greens

Drinking athletic greens does come with a multitude of health benefits. There's a couple of quick ones to get out of the way, it covers off the vast majority of your vitamin and mineral needs for the day, with the notable exclusion of calcium. But, considering that almost 80% of Americans suffer from at least one vitamin deficiency this is a good start as far as health benefits go. It typically outstrips your average multivitamin by quite a large margin and as a rule of thumb most people would benefit from drinking athletic greens or a similar product. Generally speaking, they have the advantage of being more bioavailable than a pill as well, with your stomach being more easily able to digest and absorb nutrient dense greens powders than a pill. 

The other health benefits of athletic greens come from the specific herbs used in the various AG1 blends. 

Customers Reviews Of Athletic Greens

Athletic Greens does have some of the best customer reviews of any greens powders, there's a couple of reasons for that (beyond the fact that it is a decent product). It's quite often the first greens powder supplement that people take, and the reality is that most American diets are quite bad and pretty much any nutrient dense green powders would be an improvement for most people. This is true of a lot of the more well known green powders and Athletic greens is no exception, even if it isn't the best greens powder.

Advertisement

When it comes to finding a negative Athletic greens review, there's usually 2 or 3 major complaints. Cost, which leads to people to whether or not athletic greens is worth it, taste, which is of course subjective, but we'd say it's good for a greens powder, just not the best. And that it didn't really do anything. And for most people if they already have a good diet, athletic greens isn't going to add as much value as other greens powders which contain more in the way beneficial herbal extracts. There are some people who would say it's not a good idea to take athletic greens on an empty stomach, however this seems to be the minority of people who've had this issue with athletic green powder. 

Advertisement

All in all they generally sit at 4 out of 5 when it comes to verified athletic greens reviews and this is a pretty good indicator that the product isn't half bad. It's just not one of the best greens powders. As for other industry AG1 reviews , they tend to agree with us for the most part, that Athletic Greens is good, it just could be better. 

Athletic Greens Ingredients 

Athletic Greens can be broken down into several proprietary blends that makeup AG1. The blends are their Alkaline, Nutrient-Dense, Raw Superfood Complex (7388mg), Nutrient-Dense Natural Extracts, Herbs, and Antioxidants (2732mg) and Digestive Enzyme & Super Mushroom Complex (154mg). 

Advertisement

Starting with the most part that would sound like a negative athletic greens review the Digestive Enzyme & Super Mushroom Complex (154mg).

Everything in this blend is underdosed, most of the mushrooms athletic greens need to be taken in complete grams, not milligrams, so athletic greens simply doesn't have enough of these to be close to effective. A quick example of this is the reishi mushroom powder, which is recommended to be dosed as 2000mg, so even the full 154mg in athletic greens wouldn't be nearly enough for the green powder to begetting this one right. 

Bromelain could theoretically be in the right amount at 100mg, if it took up the majority of this blend. It's a digestive enzyme with an anti inflammatory effect and is particularly good for joint and gut health. But, it seems unlikely that even this ingredient is correctly dosed considering it's one of six ingredients in this 154mg blend. 

Advertisement

The next issue we have with athletic greens powders is their second largest proprietary blend Nutrient-Dense Natural Extracts, Herbs, and Antioxidants (2732mg). Once again, it's not possible for all of the ingredients to be in their effective doses. 

This is where athletic greens falls down, and where competitors like Super Green Tonik really win out. Containing pea protein (an odd choice), citrus bioflavonoids as the main ingredients provides relatively minimal benefits, with artichoke and citric acid being no better. Citric acid is really only a flavoring. Next up on the athletic greens ingredients list is Rhodolia Rosea ingredients like Rhodolia being good for immune health and mood, likely being dosed too low to be effective. (It's normal for the labels to list the largest ingredients first, and required in some countries) this means that by the time we get to ingredient 5 in this section they're almost certainly below effective dosages.

Advertisement

This is particularly disappointing of Ashwagandha which is particularly beneficial for brain health, your immune system, sleep and more, but the dosage needs to be at least 400mg and it's below 10th in this list. Athletic Greens just doesn't cut it here in the herbal extract section and doesn't really give us any reason to recommend you buy athletic greens over any of it's competitors. Oddly they chose to include dandelion root which doesn't really serve much purpose in the athletic greens ingredients list, seeing as it's largely only effective as a diuretic. Not a huge plus to our athletic greens review.

Advertisement

Now we have the bulk of Athletic Greens AG1 the Alkaline, Nutrient-Dense, Raw Superfood Complex (7388mg). 
This is actually pretty good, this is where the majority of Athletic Greens health benefits come from, there's a hefty dose green vegetables with the blue green algae spirulina, organic apple powder, inulin, organic wheatgrass juice powder, organic alfalfa powder, organic chlorella powder, organic barley leaf powder, acerola fruit juice powder extract, broccoli flower powder, spinach and a few others. 

The spirulina is the big winner as it's not something that we'd get in our normal diet, but has a massive list of health benefits, with everything from bolstering your immune health through to joints. Chlorella is the other more unusual ingredient that you may not be used to seeing outside of athletic greens powders, it acts as an antioxidant, has been shown to lower cholesterol and is packed with nutrients which is only an positive for athletic greens customers. 
It also contains some digestive enzymes, there's nothing really special here and you'd get more from a dedicated probiotic, but it will help support gut health although on a minimal level. 

Advertisement

AG1 Athletic Greens Review Conclusion

Athletic Greens is a good product, it's just not the best, if it's the first greens powder that you've tried there's definitely nothing wrong with that. There are just much better value propositions on the market. When AG1 first came out it was actually the best greens powder out there, it's just long since been replaced by Super Green Tonik. This isn't really a huge surprise as this often happens in the nutrition space, that another supplement is released that fixes the issues of the market leader. If we're asking the question is athletic greens worth it? Then the answer is yes. But, you could get something better for the same price. 

Advertisement

Athletic Greens gets a 3.5/5 from us, it's fine, it's got a good amount of vitamins and minerals it will definitely support a healthy immune system, and it's a solid green powder. We just can't find a reason to recommend it as a go to. 

Disclaimer : The above is a sponsored post, the views expressed are those of the sponsor/author and do not represent the stand and views of Outlook editorial.
 

Advertisement