Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Should You Take a Greens Supplement? Here Are the Facts

Episode Date: August 9, 2021

In this podcast, I’m going to talk about greens supplements, which are more popular now than ever before. There’s no shortage of supplement companies out there promoting their greens powders with all sorts of marketing claims. It’s a winning formula, too. Your average greens supplement is just a bunch of dirt-cheap, fruit and vegetable powders, with pixie-dusted amounts of mushrooms or other extracts that sound nice. But how big of a difference do they really make? Greens supplements are often sold as a direct replacement for food, but can you really just take a greens supplement instead of eating fruit and vegetables every day? Should you consider taking a greens supplement if you already eat healthily? In this podcast, I’m going to answer those questions, as well as share my favorite greens supplements ingredients, and the worst ones. All of this should help you make better decisions when purchasing a greens supplement. Timestamps: 4:14 - What ingredients are commonly found in greens supplements? 5:16 - What are superfoods? 7:53 - How are greens supplements sold? 11:57 - How many servings of fruit and vegetables should you eat? 16:22 - Should you drink fruit and vegetable powders? 21:03 - The best greens supplements ingredients. 24:57 - What are the benefits of cruciferous vegetables? 27:28 - The worst greens supplements. Mentioned on the Show: Books by Mike Matthews: https://legionathletics.com/products/books/ Genesis Greens Supplement: https://legionathletics.com/products/supplements/genesis-superfood-supplement/

Hello and welcome to Muscle for Life. I'm Mike Matthews, your host. Thank you for joining me today. And real quickly before we get started, if you like what I'm doing on the show and you want to help me do better, and if you also want to never miss a new episode, make sure to subscribe to the show in whatever app you are listening on. It also helps boost the rankings of the podcast so more people can find it more easily. All right. So in this episode, I'm going to be talking about greens supplements, which are more popular now than ever before. There are quite a few big supplement companies out there that sell only greens supplements or that heavily promote their greens supplements use them as tops of funnel type products so to speak

you know loss leaders or even gain leaders if the costs are low and the costs are usually pretty low with these supplements because your average greens supplement is really just a bunch of fruit and vegetable powders which are dirt cheap and then maybe a bunch of fruit and vegetable powders, which are dirt cheap. And then maybe a couple of fancy sounding mushrooms thrown in there. Don't look at the amounts. Often they're hidden anyway behind proprietary blends, but even if they're not, usually very small amounts of plant extracts, mushrooms, and other things that sound nice, but how big of a difference do they really make? And can you just take a greens supplement instead of eating your fruits and vegetables like you should? And that's often how these supplements are sold. They're often sold as a direct replacement

for food. They're often sold as something that can reduce bloating. That's a big one that is promoted to women in particular who I guess generally want to have as flat of a stomach as possible. I suppose the same goes for us fitness guys. Nobody likes to feel bloated, but when I've looked at the marketing of greens supplements, a lot of it seems to target women, and this is one of the big points to beat bloat. So I'm going to be talking about those things in this episode. I'm going to be talking about whether you should even consider taking a greens supplement if you do eat your fruits and vegetables every day, or at least most days of the week, like you should. And I'm also going to be sharing a few of my favorite ingredients for greens

supplements, as well as a few of the worst ingredients for greens supplements, which should help you make better decisions when considering purchasing a greens supplement. Also, if you like what I'm doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, definitely check out my health and fitness books, including the number one bestselling weightlifting books for men and women in the world, Bigger Leaner Stronger and Thinner Leaner Stronger, as well as the leading flexible dieting cookbook, The Shredded Chef. Now, these books have sold well over 1 million copies and have helped thousands of people build their best body ever. And you can find them on all

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All right, let's get started. So I mentioned in the intro that your average greens supplement is some fruit powder, some vegetable powder, maybe some algae, maybe some chlorella, spirulina. Not often and not often in large amounts because spirulina in particular is actually kind of expensive, but sometimes you'll see those in a greens supplement. Sometimes they have mushrooms like reishi or turkey tail, again, often severely underdosed. Probiotics are popular simply because many people believe that taking probiotics of any kind is good, and that is not the case. Some probiotic strains have been shown to benefit people with healthy guts. In most cases, from what I'm aware of, the evidence is limited but promising. Many strains, though,

do not. They can benefit people who are having problems, digestive problems, gastrointestinal problems, but not people who don't have any of those problems. And green supplements often have other quote-unquote superfoods, which is a term I don't like and is generally a red flag. If a company sells a product as a superfood product or sells a product as containing quote-unquote superfoods, you should be skeptical because there are no superfoods. There are no miracle, quick fix, magic bullet foods that can help you beat bloat or lose weight or dramatically increase your health or decrease your risk of disease and dysfunction. That said, there are foods that are more nutritious than others, that are more uniquely

nutritious than others, meaning they contain unique molecules that you don't find in many other nutritious foods that have significant benefits. For example, the anthocyanins, which are responsible for pigmentation, for coloring in certain fruits, they're most abundant in berries. So elderberries, blueberries, strawberries, but you'll also find them in cherries, eggplants, black plums, and other fruits and other plant foods. And the beta-glucans, which are a type of soluble fiber in oatmeal and others. And I have spoken and written about these uniquely beneficial foods. If you want to call them superfoods, that's okay, but they have to be understood as just, again, foods that are generally nutritious and have

very specific molecules that are not present in many other types of nutritious foods that can have significant benefits when eaten at normal amounts. So I've written and spoken about those foods in my book, Beyond Bigger, Leaner, Stronger, for example, in the diet section. And because that book is intended for intermediate and advanced weightlifters, I'm assuming, and I make it clear in the book that I'm going to assume that the person reading has read Bigger, Leaner, Stronger, or at least understands the principles taught in Bigger, Leaner, Stronger, understands energy balance, macronutrient balance, understands the fundamentals of good dieting, because in Beyond Bigger, Leaner, Stronger, now we're going

to get into more fine-tuning your diet, more fine-grained optimizations that are not necessary, but that can help you get a bit more out of the dietary regimen that you're following. Like if you're already doing a good job eating a bunch of nutritious foods, why not consider being a little bit more specific with those foods to get even more benefits, right? So anyway, coming back to greens supplements, most of these products are sold by just connecting the dots between the general awareness that we should be eating a few servings of vegetables every day, a couple servings of fruit every day. And many people don't do that. Even many people who work out regularly and eat fairly well. And so the supplement marketer, the green supplement

marketer would say, you could just drink a glass of this every day instead. It's delicious. And it has these other things. Don't really look into it, but it has some probiotics and, you know, probiotics, obviously. Some mushrooms. Haven't you heard Tim Ferriss talk about the power of mushrooms? Yeah, yeah. Mushrooms, mushrooms. There's this other green stuff in here, chlorella, super powerful antioxidant, and it's green. So, I mean, duh, green. Unfortunately, though, it is not scientifically sound to draw a correlation between the research that shows that people who eat more fruits and vegetables on average than people who eat less live longer, right? There's good evidence for that. And the research that shows more mechanistically

all the good things that happen in our bodies when we eat fruits and vegetables and whole grains and seeds and legumes and even lean protein, right? All of these nutritious foods, they cause very specific reactions in the body that are beneficial. And scientists have isolated a lot of these processes and know specifically why, for example, we should eat a serving or two of dark leafy greens every day.

That's an example of optimizing vegetable intake because vegetable intake could be like my kids who they will eat peas, they will eat broccoli, they will eat cauliflower sometimes, they will eat cooked spinach sometimes, and they'll eat corn, which is a grain, I know, but I mix it with the peas. Mostly, I can get them to eat broccoli and peas and corn mixed up. And that's better than not eating any vegetables at all. I have no problem with that. And I have no reason to try to force them to eat a wide variety of vegetables. But for those of us who are a little bit more mature and have a little bit more executive function to bring to bear on our diet, it is smart to eat a variety of vegetables,

eat the rainbow as our mothers probably told us, as well as a variety of fruits. Eating a variety of whole grains is probably less important. My go-to for example is oatmeal. I'll have a half a cup to a cup dry and then I'll cook it as my final meal, usually around 9 or 9.30. I'll put some walnuts in there for my last dose of healthy fat. And I will mix in a scoop of protein powder Legion way, of course. And these days it's cinnamon cereal, but I'll try different flavors. I just kind of rotate through every month or so pick another one. And I've tried our plant protein plant plus in oatmeal as well. But I like the whey the most. I haven't tried casein yet, but anyway, that's my final meal of the day. That is my serving or two servings,

a half a cup dry is a serving of whole grains. So if I have a full cup, that's two servings of whole grains. And I don't see any reason to, at least from a health or wellness or performance or any sort of beneficial context, I don't see a reason to mix that up in the same way that, or to combine, like to have some oatmeal with maybe some barley or quinoa or something else like that. Again, I don't know of any health-based reason to do that. Oatmeal gets the job done, gets me my whole grains in, and has some unique properties that you don't find in other grains. Now, vegetables, on the other hand, there is a benefit to eating a variety of vegetables. Now, I mentioned that high intake of fruits and vegetables, So let's say three to five plus servings of vegetables per day

and probably one to three plus servings of fruit per day. As general advice, I would say shoot for around four to five servings of vegetables per day, a serving being a fist of cooked or raw. It doesn't really matter in most cases. It's about the same in terms of volume. So a fist's worth of vegetables is a serving, about a fist's worth of fruit is a serving. Of course, it changes a little bit in the case of like a banana, one medium-sized banana is a serving. And so good general rule is two, maybe three servings of fruit per day, four, five or so servings of vegetables per day. And if you do that, research shows that over time, your risk of disease and dysfunction will go down. Now, of course, the rest of your lifestyle matters. You can't sleep poorly, drink a bunch of alcohol, smoke cigarettes, be overweight, be sedentary, and offset all of that with just eating your fruits and vegetables.

But it is a major contributive factor to longevity, as is regular exercise, sleeping well, not drinking too much alcohol, not smoking cigarettes, maintaining a healthy body weight and body composition. Now, what is not established in the scientific literature is a correlation between greens supplements, powdered fruits and vegetables, and longevity. Many supplement marketers offer that research as proof of why you are going to live longer if you just drink their greens slop every day. But that is, again, that is not scientifically sound. Those things do not necessarily follow because, for example, when you're drinking a greens supplement, you're not getting the fiber that you would normally get in the vegetables. And we know that fiber is a very important nutrient, especially soluble fiber. We know that that is food for our

gut, for our microbiome. The beneficial bacteria that live in our gut, they feed off of that soluble fiber. And then when they gobble it up, they produce, they poop out, they produce these short chain fatty acids that bring down inflammation levels in the body and cause other positive things to happen. And so if you're drinking dehydrated vegetables and fruits, you're not getting that soluble fiber. And it's unknown how much the soluble fiber is contributing to the overall effect of the fruits and vegetables that we're eating, the positive benefits that have been seen in research. The soluble fiber may be a major component of that. It may be just as important as the vitamins and minerals and other nutrients. And to that point, there are other nutritional

changes that occur when fruits and vegetables are processed into powders and put into these greens supplements. For example, scientists know that when you eat a whole piece of fruit, you're getting, let's take oranges, right? You're getting the natural vitamin C, but you're also getting what are called cofactors, other nutrients that help your body better use the vitamin C and have other effects in the body. And if you take a vitamin C pill, even a natural vitamin C pill, not ascorbic acid, which is the synthetic version, you are not necessarily going to get all of those cofactors. And therefore you are not necessarily going to see the same benefits as if you just ate an orange. Now that isn't to say that you

shouldn't take vitamin C pills or that ascorbic acid in particular is bad or doesn't work. No, not at all. If we're just looking at the vitamin C molecule, research shows that ascorbic acid causes really the same reactions at a cellular level in the body. So it is effective for what it is. But again, if you eat the orange, you are getting additional nutritional components that scientists are not quite sure as to the importance or overall effects of. And so, generally speaking, we want to eat nutritious foods, not supplement them. And so then that is my primary criticism of many greens supplements and how they're sold. If people are eating well, they just don't need to drink fruit and vegetable powders and they are not going to get any significant benefits from tiny pixie dusted

amounts of probiotics or probiotic strains that really have no place in a supplement for people with healthy guts. And then the same logic applies or the same rationale applies to mushrooms and herbs and other plant extracts, which actually may be good ingredients if they're included at clinically effective doses, which they're often not because that gets really expensive with the more scientifically validated ingredients. Now, that said, I'm not just anti-greens supplement in the way that I am just anti-testosterone booster, for example. There just are no natural substances that make a meaningful difference over the long-term period. If that changes one day, I will change my position.

I am anti-BCAAs because for those of us who eat enough protein, there is no reason to take them. I am anti-collagen protein because it's just trash to your protein. And if you're taking it to try to look prettier, hair, skin, nails, and if you're actually seeing benefits, it's probably because of the glycine content in collagen protein. That's an amino acid that is cheap. You can buy it in bulk. It is naturally sweet. You can just mix it with water, do three to five grams at night. It may also help your sleep and skip the collagen protein.

You'll save a lot of money that way. So I am currently just against those supplement categories. Those are supplements that I will never sell for any reason until maybe things change in terms of peer-reviewed scientific research that would support meaningful claims that could be used to actually persuade people to buy them. But the greens supplement is not in the same bucket for me because it can be done differently. You don't have to just create a cheap and relatively useless blend of fruit and vegetable powders. You could just take a multivitamin instead of drinking one

of those supplements. Instead, what you can do is you can collect up cool stuff that you want to put in your body and it can look green because of something like chlorella or spirulina. And I'm going to talk about those ingredients. And those are ingredients that you're not going to get through food alone. You're not going to be eating spirulina or chlorella. They don't taste good at all in anything. They really just need to be supplemented. So you could have a base of a green supplement, a green substance like spirulina, and then you can add other stuff in there that may or may not be green actually, but can have similar beneficial effects

where there's a theme of the benefits of such a supplement. It would be heavily weighted toward health, improving health, reducing risk of disease and dysfunction. But if it's well-formulated, there could be some performance stuff in there as well, physical and mental and cognitive performance enhancement. And that could be a supplement worth taking. It would not be essential. It would not be as important as a good multivitamin, for example. And that's not essential, but it is highly recommended even if you eat well, because it's hard to get enough of certain key nutrients,

even when you eat well, look at vitamin D and vitamin K, for example, look at zinc and B12. If you don't eat much meat, it's hard to do. It's very easy to do with a good supplement and a good multivitamin supplement that is, and a good multivitamin supplement can just act as a, as a bit of an insurance policy, right? It can help plug these little small nutritional holes that actually may have a disproportionately large negative effect in how you feel and how you perform. Look at what happens when you are deficient in or just insufficient in vitamin K and vitamin D. So again, a greens supplement, I would rank it below a multivitamin, but a good greens supplement would be worth taking for the same reason that a good

multivitamin is worth taking, but it would be even more optional. It would be for people who just want to get a bit more out of their supplementation regimen. So with that context, let's talk about a few of my favorite greens supplement ingredients. The first one is spirulina, and this is a blue-green algae that has a long history of safe use. And that's a bit odd because blue-green algae normally would, it would kill you actually in a painful way. There are toxins in many blue-green allergies called microcystins that are just not in spirulina and therefore we can take it and it can benefit our health and our performance in many different ways. One of the very cool things about spirulina, studies show that supplementing

with it can improve our cholesterol profile. It can increase muscle endurance. It can increase strength. It can alleviate or even eliminate nasal symptoms caused by allergies. I've noticed that because I'm in Florida, back in Florida, and there are a lot of oak trees around. And I've always had, when I was younger, I had a pretty annoying allergic reaction to oak pollen. My eyes would itch all day and I would sneeze and it would last like a week or two and go away. And I didn't discover antihistamines until later. I don't know why. So I just kind of suffered through it every year as a teenager. Now it's not that bad. I'll get some itchiness in my eyes and maybe some sneezing here and there. And so what I'll notice is when I take spirulina every day, which I do because I take my own greens supplement, I take Legion's Genesis

every day and it has spirulina in it, I get less of an allergic reaction to the oak pollen. It doesn't get rid of it altogether. and usually when the oak pollen is peaking i'll take an antihistamine and that gets rid of the symptoms altogether of course and it lasts longer than 24 hours for me which is cool i take one every couple of days for a week or so again when the oak pollen is at its worst and that's the end of it so anyway coming, coming back to spirulina, studies show that it can reduce muscle damage caused by exercise. It can help the body eliminate heavy metals. It can lower blood pressure. It can help protect liver health. It can reduce systemic inflammation. It can improve insulin sensitivity, and it can help improve immunity. And what's even more surprising

than all of the benefits that I just laid out is scientists are finding new ones. I mentioned spirulina can boost strength. That's based on research that was published last year in 2020. So as research on spirulina continues, I will not be surprised to be adding to the rather long list of the cool things that it can do for you. Okay, let's move on to the next ingredient that is a green flag in greens supplements, and that is chlorella, which is a green algae that, similar to spirulina, has quite a few nutrients. And because of its high chlorophyll content, there's evidence that can help remove some toxins from the body like dioxins and HCAs. But unlike spirulina, there doesn't appear to be

anything particularly unique about chlorella. It just is high in nutrients, including magnesium. It's generally high in chlorophyll and it has a high protein content compared to other vegetable powders. But unlike spirulina, it doesn't have a known unique bioactive component, but that's not a reason to not take it or not include it in a greens supplement. If you are a formulator, there definitely are times where you are going after plants that have very unique properties. And then there are times that you just want to plop something in because it is a good source of certain vitamins or minerals or other nutrients. And chlorella is in the latter camp.

Okay, next on my list of ingredients that I like to see in greens supplements, cruciferous vegetables. Now, of course, this means powdered cruciferous vegetables. And so this comes with the caveat that I'm not saying that you don't need to eat the cruciferous vegetables if you just drink the powdered version of them. But powdered cruciferous vegetables, I do think, have a place in a well-formulated greens supplement. Now, what are cruciferous vegetables? Well, they are simply a group of plants that include broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, kale, bok choy, arugula, brussel sprouts, collards, watercress, radishes. Those are the most common dietary forms of cruciferous vegetables,

the stuff that we actually eat. Most people think of the entire group as just broccoli and yes, broccoli is healthy, but you can eat other cruciferous vegetables as well. I like to rotate between broccoli, cauliflower, and Brussels sprouts. And then I have some arugula in a salad every day at lunch, but at dinner, I'm either eating, I mean, I'm eating a variety, a medley of vegetables, but there's always something cruciferous in there. Now, as for why I like to see powdered cruciferous vegetables in greens supplements, it's not for the healthy stuff like magnesium and vitamin C.

Also, cruciferous vegetables are a good source of soluble fiber, but of course you're not getting that soluble fiber if it's just a powder. We're going after specific compounds too, sulforaphane and isothiocyanates. And these substances positively interact with our body's natural antioxidant defenses and detoxification processes. So by putting these things in our body, and detoxification processes. So by putting these things in our body, those systems just work better. And what that means then is our body is just better at eliminating toxins and other foreign compounds, and that can reduce the risk of disease and dysfunction over time. For example, there appears to be a link between high sulforaphane intake and lower risk of cancer. Okay, so those are three of my favorite greens supplement themed ingredients. Ingredients that

you will sometimes see in a higher quality greens supplement. Sometimes not all three, because that may or may not make sense given the exact formulation. But one I always like to see, for example, is spirulina. But anyway, let's talk about a few ingredients that you'll often find in greens supplements that I am not so hot on. The first one is hemp and anything that is remotely related to marijuana is popular these days. And so hemp is now a protein supplement. It is sold as a food replacement. It is sold as a nutritional powerhouse. And yeah, it does have nutrients. It does have protein, but there are no cannabinoids. So if you're looking for the additional benefits that may be associated with cannabinoids, the ones that don't make you high, you're not going to get those in hemp. And there's nothing particularly special about hemp's nutritional profile.

It is usually 30 to 50% protein by weight. So it's not a great protein supplement. It'd be more like a meal replacement supplement and it's cheap. So if you're looking for a cheap meal replacement, a little bit of protein, some carbs and fat and some, some nutrients, I guess it's okay. But I think there are better options for that. I would rather just have you eat food, honestly. for that. I would rather just have you eat food, honestly. Okay, so next on the no-no list, non-dark leafy greens. So lettuce, right? Have you ever heard somebody say, lettuce is just crunchy water? It's kind of true if you look at the nutrition label. When it comes to micronutrition, a lot of the lighter colored leafies, they just don't have much to offer.

They don't have much in the way of nutrients. So for example, lettuce, just plain old lettuce, Swiss chard, endive, basil. Yeah, these things have some nitrates and that's good for circulation, but the amount of nitrates in them can vary from food to food. And even with one type of food, it can vary based on how it was grown and how it was processed and nitrates are in every single vegetable. So you don't need to add the lettuce to get the nitrates. If you are also eating other vegetables. Um, and these types of non-dark leafy greens are usually just fillers. They provide very little in the way of nutrition and they have nothing unique. They don't have the isothiocyanates. They don't have the sulforaphane. They really have no place in a good greens supplement. If a greens supplement that you are taking or considering

buying has lettuce in it, I would say anywhere, but certainly if it's one of the major players, if it's high up in the ingredients list or in the ingredients list of a proprietary blend, I would say if it has a proprietary blend, just don't buy it at all. But if lettuce is prominently in there, just pick something else. And the last common ingredient in greens supplements that is just completely underwhelming is carrot. Yes, it is a great source of pro vitamin A or beta carotene, and it's delicious in stews. It's versatile. I eat carrots every day. I put it in my vegetable slop, as I call it, that I make for dinner, which has onion and garlic and a cruciferous vegetable and carrot. And what else do I put

in there? It's a whole pile of things, green beans, and usually some cauliflower, some rice cauliflower, in addition to the cruciferous veggie that I'm going to cut up like a Brussels sprout or a broccoli. I could go frozen on the broccoli and Brussels sprout, but I prefer fresh for those. I put in some peppers, all kinds of things, right? And carrot goes in there. But again, beyond the pro vitamin A and adding a bit of bulk and some taste, it doesn't really have anything special to offer. There is a bit of scientific research on carrots, which yes, as they are just not that interesting. And I'm guessing that they're included in a lot of greens supplement because sometimes people think of them as a superfood. So there's a bit of marketing puffery there. And they're also very, very cheap. They add a bit of bulk.

And if they're processed correctly, they can add a good taste. They can add a bit of sweetness. add a good taste. They can add a bit of sweetness. And that's it, really. So when you see carrot or carrot extract or carrot juice as an ingredient, of course, it'd be a powder in a greens supplement. Your spidey sense should start tingling. Well, I hope you liked this episode. I hope you found it helpful. And if you did, subscribe to the show because it makes sure that you don't miss new episodes. And it also helps me because it increases the rankings of the show a little bit, which of course then makes it a little bit more easily found by other people

who may like it just as much as you. And if you didn't like something about this episode or about the show in general, or if you have ideas or suggestions or just feedback to share, shoot me an email, mike at muscleforlife.com, muscleforlife.com, and let me know what I could do better or just what your thoughts are about maybe what you'd like to see me do in the future. I read everything myself. I'm always looking for new ideas and constructive feedback.

So thanks again for listening to this episode, and I hope to hear from you soon.