I purchased something called 100% whey protein (by a company named kaizen active lifestyles)
-Low fat and lactose
-Aspartame free

calories 122
fat 2%
saturated/trans fat 3%
cholesterol 3%
Sodium 2%
potassium 6%
carb 1%
Protein 24 G

Does this look alright? i paid 37 dollars for this at costo :rolleyes:
Are there different kinds of proteins to look for? can anybody give me some good information on protein? thanks! :tucool:

Does this look alright?

It looks fine to me. There are opinions about whey/casein/blend proteins that I don't know enough about to get into.

How much did you get for that price? :confused:

Not to deliberately shill for a site sponsor, but I use AtLarge Nutrition's Nitrean and love it. It's supposed to be a top-quality protein supplement, mixes well, and tastes great. It's also about the same price as what you got from Costco even with shipping.

It looks fine to me. There are opinions about whey/casein/blend proteins that I don't know enough about to get into.

How much did you get for that price? :confused:

Not to deliberately shill for a site sponsor, but I use AtLarge Nutrition's Nitrean and love it. It's supposed to be a top-quality protein supplement, mixes well, and tastes great. It's also about the same price as what you got from Costco even with shipping.

alright ill look into that for sure, thanks for the help

Quick rundown of protein info:

Most protein powders are either whey, casein, egg, or soy. Soy protein obviously comes from soybeans, and is one of the only plant-based proteins that is "complete," meaning that it contains all of the Essential Amino Acids. While a good protein, it is less bioavailable than whey or casein, and there are some people who are concerned that it may have some other side effects, specifically in relation to how it interacts with female hormones (estrogens).

Whey and casein are both milk proteins. Any milk from any mammal is going to contain these, although the proportions vary immensely. Commercial whey or casein protein powders are made from cow's milk, and the process bears some resemblance to how cheese is made (whey was originally the liquid by-product of cheesemaking).

Both whey and casein are highly bioavailable proteins (very easily absorbed and metabolized by the body). They differ in terms of absorption rates. Whey digests very quickly, making it ideal for use post-workout or any other time you want to get amino acids into your blood stream fairly rapidly. Casein breaks down very slowly, giving you a slow release of amino acids into your system. This makes it ideal for preventing muscle loss (catabolism), particularly while sleeping, which is why many people use this before going to bed.

Egg protein is generally made from egg whites (since the yolks contain fat). Egg protein is highly bioavailable and has a digestion rate somewhere in between whey and casein. You don't find egg protein sold by itself very often, but it's sometimes found blended with another type of protein, which brings us to the subject of protein blends.

By going with a "combination protein," something like Nitrean from At Large Nutrition, you get proteins that break down at different speeds and thus end up with a higher degree of net protein retention than if you went with a single type of protein. I've personally responded very well since I shifted primarily over to a blend. Most commercial blends are a mixture of simply whey and casein, others add egg protein or another type of protein in as well. Nitrean is roughly 60% whey, 20% egg protein, and 20% casein.

As for things like "isolate," "concentrate" and other nifty words like that, they refer to how processed the protein is. Take whey, for example. A chemical separating agent is added to the milk, resulting in a separation between the liquid whey and the solid curds, which contain casein (remember the Little Miss Muffet rhyme?). The whey liquid is then filtered through one of several possible mechanisms to remove the water as well as most of the milk fat and sugar (lactose). The result is a powder called Whey Protein Concentrate.

Whey Protein Isolate is what you get when you use a more complete filtration system to further eliminate as much of the extra fat and sugar as is humanly possible, resulting in a higher amount of protein per serving. WPC will normally have about 20g of protein per serving (serving sizes for protein, aka 1 scoop, is usually 28-30g, be wary of any brand that uses a larger scoop size since they might be trying to simply make their label look better). WPI will have more, frequently in the 24g area.

You will also see some protein, usually whey, labeled as "hydrolyzed." This is where they've used an enzyme to partially break down the protein, essentially pre-digesting part of it. The result is a whey that will digest even faster and get amino acids into your bloodstream extremely rapidly. This is to my knowledge used almost exclusively post-workout by those that do use it, but because it is more expensive and tends to taste fairly crappy compared to regular whey (hydrolyzing the protein creates bitterness as a result of the chemical change) it is not super common to use. It is sometimes included in some protein blends, as it is with Nitrean, which actually contains WPC, WPI, as well as Hydrolyzed whey (don't worry, Nitrean tastes amazing).

Hope some of this helps.

Very nice post Glaive.

Just wanted to add a couple things.

A chemical separating agent is added to the milk, resulting in a separation between the liquid whey and the solid curds, which contain casein (remember the Little Miss Muffet rhyme?).
The curd ends up as cheese, if you eat cottage cheese you know what whey and curd looks like with a bit of when remaining.
Nothing to do with protein, just wanted to add that.

Just wanted to add "isolate" has a BV of like ~150 and concentrate is just over 100 IIRC. BV (Biological Value) (http://bodybuilding.about.com/od/glossary/g/BV.htm)


Chris.

I've used Kaizen before. It's readily available up here.

The one I used was straight whey protein isolate sweetened with Stevia.

Comes in Vanilla which I like.

I like it.

Doesn't have the casein matrix. But on the other hand it isn't loaded up with a bunch of dubious artificial sweeteners and other obscure ingredients.