The Best Green Superfood Powders to Boost Your Body
“Water water everywhere, but not a drop to drink.”
This famous line from the “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge could easily be taken out of the context of a lampooned sailor on the open seas and replaced into our modern-day society. Most of human history has been a battle for calories, with the human species spending their waking hours focused on subsistence, hunting, and foraging for enough food simply to survive.
Now that we as a species have finally come to a point where food is everywhere we look, we face an entirely new dilemma regarding the necessity: a very large portion of it, especially that which is most easily or cheaply available, is highly unhealthy.
From fast food drive-through windows that don’t even require us to stand or highly-processed, chemical & preservative laden frozen foods just waiting for us in the grocer’s freezer section, these foods have reduced our need to constantly hunt for food, to the need to hunt for healthy food.
Our ever-busy work and hectic life schedules have only compounded the problem, with even those of us who can afford or take the time to cook home-cooked meals often being resigned to “meal prep Sundays,” where we spend the better part of a day off preparing healthy, non-takeout box food for our upcoming week.
But there is a better way to ensure that you’re getting the vital nutrients and healthy food that you need without having to spend half of your day of rest behind a stove and oven, cramming meals into Tupperware and stacking them in your fridge.
Green superfood powders afford the same level of nutrition that could be found in several days’ worth of home-cooked fruit & vegetable servings, and they do so in a single glass that can be prepared & consumed in about two minutes.
What is a Green Superfood Powder?
We don’t know if it was the hectic schedules listed above or westerners’ newfound appreciation for their health that led to the emergence and rising popularity of green superfood powders - but to be honest, we don’t care.
People are finally taking advantage of these vegan-friendly, mostly organic, non-GMO, and uber-healthy daily supplements to begin reclaiming their health and reverse the obesity and diabetes epidemics that have been overtaking our society.
At their base level, green superfood powders take all of your necessary vitamins and minerals that, according to the USDA dietary guidelines, should be consumed every day. Some end their product offering there, while others go much, much further.
What Makes Green Superfood Powders Different From Each Other?
What really separates the best green superfood powders from the rest of the pack is what they put into their products on top of those vitamins and minerals derived from leafy green (cruciferous) vegetables. Some are purely greens-based, while others add in fruits, some go so far as to add superfruits and their lifesaving antioxidants, and others pack in superfoods like cereal grasses, spirulina, chlorophyll, chlorella, and even probiotics.
Many of these even provide the fiber that is nature’s way of allowing your body to digest and absorb the nutrients that your body needs to gain from the drink. If you didn’t know, non-pulp fruit juice is so unhealthy because the manufacturers include all of the fruit’s sugars (some even add more), but the pulp is where all of the natural fiber resides. It is that very fiber that is necessary to absorb the Vitamin C and other nutrients that the juice could provide.
Some green superfood powders even provide protein and depending on the calories included in the drink can serve as an excellent, healthy snack or meal replacement. These calories are important because, even if you are following a low-calorie diet, calories are nothing more than a scientific measure of stored energy within the food.
Some diet and health gurus have taught you that calories are evil, but every diet should be performed in tandem with an exercise routine, and your body needs to take in enough calories (the USDA recommends 2,000 per day for those who don’t undertake daily strenuous exercise) to keep your body active & moving.
To summarize, the good greens powders are all mostly organic, and non-GMO, and many are plant-based and vegan-friendly. The good ones will include all of the vitamins and minerals that your body needs to take in from greens-based vegetables on a daily basis. But the great ones provide many more health super powering ingredients that can truly take your health & wellness to the next level.
What Are the Best Green Superfood Powders?
There are a lot of different green superfood powders on the market today, and no matter what, we see that as a good thing. As outlined above, however, many of them are different for various reasons. They can vary wildly in price, and they all provide different amounts of ingredients and different types of ingredients that each provide something different for your body’s needs.
Our list below will highlight some of the best green superfood powders that are currently on the market. Use this list to find the best green superfood powder for your specific needs, to help take your health & wellness back into your own hands.
The list will go in descending order, with the top being our staff favorite, and the last still being good, but being our least favorite among the best.
Green Vibrance by Vibrant Health
Many lists that you will find of the best green superfood powders will include Green Vibrance by Vibrant Health, but it is at the very top of our list for many different reasons. We see Green Vibrance as the “gold standard” of green superfood powders, because of all of the excellent things that this product provides.
Firstly, the company Vibrant Health provides absolute transparency with the ingredients list on its products. This may not seem like a big deal to the casual health consumer, but as people who know a lot about the health studies regarding superfoods and various health-based ingredients, it means a lot to us. That Vibrant Health is one of the only green superfood supplement companies with the corporate morality to do so means even more.
Here’s the thing: there are various health and greens-based supplements and superfoods that have been scientifically proven to help fight certain symptoms or diseases, and provide very specific, life-changing benefits in some cases. When these studies prove what the ingredient can do, they prove another aspect of it: how much of it is required to do so.
Many of the green superfood powder companies will tout said benefits on their ingredients list, but then hide exactly how much of the ingredient is in their mixture behind a “proprietary blend.” This means that those of us “in the know” about the required dosages aren’t able to discern exactly how much is in the product - and most importantly, whether it’s enough to provide the touted benefits.
Green Vibrance (and all Vibrant Health products, for that matter), provide every single ingredient that is in their mixture, line by line, with the exact amount contained therein. That means that when you see the company tout the benefit of a particular ingredient, you can look up exactly how much of it is contained within a serving - and they are always enough with this company.
First on their ingredients list for Green Vibrance are cereal grasses, and this product contains two different formats (leaf powder and juice powder) for each of the top three (wheatgrass, barley grass, and oat grass). We can’t get into the many benefits of cereal grasses here, but just know that they are superfoods in and of themselves.
Green Vibrance also includes 11 different types of plant-based micronutrition, including spirulina (an ancient superfood that provides a wide variety of health benefits), beetroot juice powder, spinach, kale, and many others. This green superfood product then goes way beyond merely providing greens-based nutrition, with 14 different super fruit ingredients and the antioxidants they provide, such as goji berry, pomegranate, turmeric, acerola (which has more Vitamin C than oranges or lemons), Gingko Biloba, and many others.
On top of all of that, Green Vibrance then adds in several ingredients to provide your body with immune support, other adaptogens to help your body better respond to stress, ingredients to provide skeletal support, plenty of fiber (as mentioned above it’s needed for your body to digest & absorb those nutrients), liver support, digestive enzymes & tonics, and one more blend that goes way beyond.
As the last line item on its ingredient list, Green Vibrance also provides 25 billion CFUs of probiotics from 12 different strains. Probiotics are the “good” bacteria within your body, and different strains do different things. Some aid your healthy digestion, others assist your immune system by killing the “bad” bacteria, and still others have been shown to fight or ward off cancer by hunting down free radicals within your body.
Many of these green superfood powders include probiotics, but most only include one or two strains, in amounts that are far lower than Green Vibrance. This is just another example of why we love this product so much, which is why it's first on our list.
Maximum Vibrance by Vibrant Health
As mentioned above, the big difference between the green superfood powders often resides in what they pack into their product beyond merely greens-based nutrition. Again, we love Vibrant Health because they are one of the only main green superfood supplement companies that allow us to see exactly what is in their product, and in what amounts.
If you are looking for a green superfood powder that has all of the benefits of Green Vibrance listed above, but also packs in enough plant-based protein to make it a snack replacement or additional protein for your day, then Maximum Vibrance may be for you. Aside from a few minor differences, Maximum Vibrance is essentially Green Vibrance, available in more flavors, with an additional 22g of plant-based protein and more fiber in it.
Both are great products, but for different people with different health goals. And again, you know exactly what you're getting with Vibrant Health.
Athletic Greens (now AG1)
By far the most popular (and most expensive) green superfood supplement on the market, Athletic Greens packs a lot of greens-based nutrition into every bag. The company touts 12 servings worth of vegetables in every scoop, which is enough to ensure that you are getting your daily dose of veggies.
The company pulls from over 75 different ingredients to build their mixture, but unfortunately is one that hides the exact makeup behind their proprietary blends. Those blends include an Alkaline, Nutrient-Dense Raw Superfood Complex, a Nutrient-Dense Extracts, Herbs & Antioxidant blend, a Digestive Enzymes & Super Mushroom blend, and 7.2 billion CFUs from two different strains in its Dairy Free Probiotics blend.
We did some simple nutritional-based math based on the total amount of nutrients listed in the blends above, and by our count, several of the key ingredients do not have great enough quantities included in the Athletic Greens mixture to unlock their true potential and deliver the benefits that they can (Rhodiola, maca, mushrooms).
As the most expensive green superfood supplement on the market, that shouldn’t require any math or research - it should be right there on the label. Still, with 12 servings of vegetables in every scoop and a pleasant papaya, vanilla, and slightly spicey kick from the ginger root taste, the number of veggies included in Athletic Greens makes this a pretty great green superfood powder.
Amazing Grass
If you’re a price-conscious consumer who really only cares about getting the necessary greens-based nutrients into your daily diet with a few extra additions, Amazing Grass may be just the product for you. This product is very affordable (around $30 for a 30-day supply), includes 25 ingredients, and comes in 10 different flavors.
While it has a much smaller ingredient list than those listed above, it has all of the big ones. Wheat, barley, alfalfa grass, spinach, spirulina, chlorella, antioxidants, and a probiotic blend all come together in this product to ensure that you’re getting what you need on a daily basis. Its fiber blend only includes 1.1g of fiber, so if you choose this one just make sure that you’re getting enough fiber somewhere else in your diet.
Closing
Green superfood powders provide a fast, simple, and often affordable way to ensure that no matter what else is going on in your life, you can get enough of your greens-based nutrition on a daily basis. The good ones stop there, but the great ones go way beyond the greens and provide superfoods from numerous other sources.
If you are looking for a way to increase your health & wellness by adding green superfood powder to your daily routine, use the list above to select one of the best on the market today and take your health to the next level!