The Lowdown on Meal Replacement Shakes

Meal replacement shakes are convenient, popular, and have marketing about as transparent as the Swamps of Sadness in The Neverending Story. I’ll admit that I’ve found some promotional material created by other coaches for the shakes I represent that’s made me cringe.

I believe in full transparency. Products should be able to speak for themselves. Unfortunately, consumers don’t always agree with that, so marketing is necessary. To help combat some of the misinformation floating around, I’ve updated this spreadsheet created by another coach. I’ve added other products and cleaned it up a bit to make it easier to read and understand.

Click here for a printable version of the supplemental information.

Just Eat Real Food crowd: I know. It’s better to just eat real food. In a perfect world, we’d all do that. Some of us however run around after kids all day, and shakes ensure we get at least one easy, healthy meal in. Some people just don’t want to cook. Others live in areas where fresh food is sparse. Don’t be a judgy asshat.

Fellow coaches: This is not meant to be used as a tool to sway potential customers. Don’t get trapped in the comparison game if at all possible. Use your own personal experiences with the products you represent, and be honest about the ingredients.

Prospective and existing customers: Navigating the information you find online and are given by coaches or other reps can be hard! There is nothing wrong with looking at the information for yourself and making an educated decision. Listen to personal experiences, evaluate the information, and chose what works best for you.

A Closer Look at Nutrition Labels

Nutrition labels include valuable information beyond the grams or milligrams of vitamins and nutrients. Something can be low cal, low carb, low fat, and contain some very sketchy ingredients that you should avoid. Make sure you’re reading the entire label!

Additional Supplements

Another important factor to consider is what other supplements are you being asked to use in conjunction with the meal replacement shake? I don’t mean the standards like pre-workout, BCAAs, or protein powders. I mean things that should already be in the meal replacement shake like probiotics, antioxidants, digestive enzymes, etc. If you need those in addition to the shake, the cost both on your body and paycheck is much higher than the nutrition label indicates.

Serving Size

We often neglect to note the serving size when comparing products. Twenty grams of a product will of course have less grams of fat and carbohydrates than forty grams of a different product. Most of the products on this spreadsheet have similar serving sizes. 310 and Xyngular surprised me by how low their serving sizes are. I was pretty impressed with their information until I looked closer. Now I’m getting a feed full of advertisements for products I’ve completely lost respect for.

Irony thrives on Facebook!

Conclusion

In looking at the data, I’m still 100% behind the product I represent. The amount of sugar and carbs are a bit higher than some of the other products, but remain within an acceptable range. The real value is in the vitamins and nutrients.

But…you need to decide for yourself. What works for me may not work for you. At the end of the day, you have to be comfortable with what you put in your body. Hopefully this gives you a better idea of exactly what that might be.