Greens powder supplements have gained a lot of popularity over the past few years as people start to take their health a little more seriously, and want to ensure they’re getting enough of the right nutrients to do so.
This has been a focus not only of women, but of men. We’re seeing more men buy multivitamins and greens powders than ever before.
Men want more energy, so they can perform better at work and enjoy their time with their family more.
Men are also taking their hormonal health more seriously.
Health and hormonal health go hand-in-hand. Healthy hormones, namely optimal testosterone levels, estrogen levels that are healthy but not too high, and cortisol levels that aren’t constantly elevated, mean a healthy and high-performing body.
With all of that said, which greens powder supplement is best for men?
Best Greens for Men’s Health
When you’re trying to figure out which greens powder is best for you, it helps to know which greens powder is actually good overall, and which greens powders don’t deliver any value, and doing that can be pretty simple.
Proprietary Blends
The first thing you want to look for is proprietary blends. It’s a sneaky industry secret or tactic that supplement companies use to hide their doses. That is, because they use a ‘blend’, they don’t have to tell you how much an ingredient is in each serving, they just have to tell you the overall amount in the blend.
So they can sneak a great ingredient into a blend, one that may be expensive on their end, include it in a tiny dose that doesn’t really do anything, but still have it on their label.
So, to the un-trained eye, their supplement looks great, but it isn’t.
Proprietary blends are a tell-tail sign that the supplement won’t deliver as promised. If a product you’re looking at – even if it’s not a greens powder – has a blend of any kind on the label, move on. It’s not worth your money.
Clinically Effective Doses
Companies will use blends to hide the fact that they’re not including clinically effective doses for an ingredient.
What’s a clinically effective dose?
It’s the dose of an ingredient that’s required to have an effect.
It’s typically the dose used in human trials to get the benefits they’re testing for.
Ashwagandha, for example, is optimally dosed at 600 mg if it’s the in the potent, organic form called ashwagandha KSM-66. If you see ashwagandha, but not KSM-66 on the label, then they’re using a cheaper form of the ingredient, and to be effective they’ll need a much higher dose.
Spirulina is another ingredient commonly found in greens. You want spirulina to be organic, as non-organic spirulina can have metals and lack purity. If it’s not organic, don’t buy it. If it is organic, you need 5 GRAMS (yes, five full grams) of spirulina to be effective.
And when it’s in that dose it’s great. It helps with energy, immunity, overall health. But almost no supplements use that full dose of spirulina.
So, check the label on the supplement to make sure that it’s using the full, clinically effective dose. If they’re not, don’t buy it. It’s a waste of money. Better to spend a little more and get something that works than to buy a supplement that doesn’t have full doses, because it’s useless.
Too Many Ingredients
This is an interesting sign that your greens supplement isn’t good, that it has too many ingredients.
Because of the clinically effective dose required for each ingredient, you can only fit 10 or 12 ingredients maximum into a greens supplement and use a normal sized scoop. Anything above that typically means they’re not using clinically effective doses.
Check the back of the label, if you see a blend of any kind, move on. If you see a massive list of ingredients, move on.
Companies correctly think that we see more ingredients and we think higher value, but as you can see, that’s not the case.
Which Greens Powders Full Doses?
Athletic Greens
Sadly, Athletic Greens uses blends. They don’t disclose their full doses so you don’t know how much of each ingredient they’re using. They also include less than effective doses of ingredients like spirulina.
Athletic Greens has great marketing and a massive following, but just judging by the size of the serving, the amounts of ingredients in the supplement, and the fact that they use blends, it isn’t possible that they’re fully effective.
Organifi
Organifi is another company with great marketing, but maybe not the same quality of branding and perceived value as Athletic Greens, that uses blends.
Simply because it uses blends we can’t be sure that it is effective, and judging by the serving size, mathematically it’s impossible that every ingredient they use is in a fully effective dose.
1st Phorm Greens
1st Phorm is a great company with great leadership. They’re maybe the biggest supplement company around right now, which is why I was a little sad to see them using blends as well. Just like Organifi and AG, they use blends to hide their doses and judging by the serving size, the amount of ingredients used, they can’t be including fully effective doses in their supplement.
So, sadly, 1st Phorm is a no go.
Man Greens
Man Greens is actually great. It has 9 fully dosed ingredients. No proprietary blends. And it’s formulated for men and male hormones, which we don’t see in the other greens powders.
Why is this important for men?
Male testosterone levels have been on the decline for decades, which has led to a massive rise in testosterone replacement therapy, and a decline in overall quality of life in men and male performance issues.
There are viable natural solutions to low testosterone, specifically losing body fat, getting stronger, reducing stress, but there are supplements that can help as well – just not many of them.
Most of the supplements purported to increase testosterone, don’t. Many of them only use rat studies to back their findings. Of the supplements claimed to increase testosterone, Man Greens contains the viable ones.
Like tongkat ali, which was shown to increase testosterone in men in this study.
It’s believed that tongkat ali increases testosterone by stimulating the luteinizing hormone, which kicks off the testosterone creating process in the body, and by blocking the conversion of testosterone to estrogen.
Man Greens also contains ashwagandha KSM-66 in its full dose, which has been shown to lower cortisol – your stress hormones – (this study), and boost testosterone (this study), and forskolin, which has been shown to increase androgen receptors in the body (this study), and maca, which doesn’t boost testosterone but has been shown to increase libido (this study).
So Man Greens doesn’t just have fully effective doses of healthy ingredients like spirulina, moringa, spinach, beet root, and others. It has full doses of ingredients that help men hormonally, with energy, health, vitality, and to boost immunity and testosterone.
Conclusion
So, of all of the greens powders being sold right now, there actually aren’t many that can even be considered ‘good’ because they use proprietary blends and fail to use full clinically effective doses of the right ingredients.
Man Greens does all of the above, and it also includes ingredients shown to help support male libido and hormonal health.
So, what’s the best greens supplement for men?
The clear winner is Man Greens, made by MITA Nutra.
You can learn more about Man Greens here (not an affiliate link), and check out this video by the founder about why he created Man Greens when he couldn’t find a good option on the market: