Do you use protein powder regularly?
Did you see reports about lead and other heavy metals like cadmium and arsenic being found in your protein powder?
Are you now worried about what this means and wondering what you should do?
Let me clear up everything for you right now…
What’s all this stuff about lead in protein powder? What happened?
The people over at Consumer Reports tested 23 popular protein powders and shakes and found “high levels of lead” in most of them.
Here’s a direct quote…
For more than two-thirds of the products we analyzed, a single serving contained more lead than CR’s food safety experts say is safe to consume in a day—some by more than 10 times.
They also said…
About 70 percent of products we tested contained over 120 percent of CR’s level of concern for lead, which is 0.5 micrograms per day. Three products also exceeded our level of concern for cadmium and inorganic arsenic, toxic heavy metals that have been classified as a probable human carcinogen and known human carcinogen, respectively, by the Environmental Protection Agency.
What the shit?!? Should we panic???
Yes!!
Please stop whatever you’re doing right now and begin panicking!
All I’ve been doing since this report came out is eating, sleeping, panicking, and occasionally showering during the daily 5-minute breaks I schedule in between my panicking sessions.
Think I’m joking???
You know in movies when the cops are searching a house for drugs and the people inside are frantically trying to flush it all down the toilet before they find it?
That’s been me all week, but with protein powder.
I suggest you do the same.
Bro, come on. I’m concerned here. Can you not be sarcastic for like 12 seconds?
Alright, fine.
No, you shouldn’t panic over this report.
There are a lot of important things you need to know about it and also some steps you can take to reduce your exposure to lead and other contaminants that may be found in protein powder.
Allow me to explain…
Yes, a lot of protein powders contain lead.
Let me start by confirming that many protein powders do indeed contain some amount of lead (and other heavy metals as well).
This isn’t some “fake news” thing. It’s not a myth. It’s not a testing error.
The findings are most likely legit.
Of course, whether or not the amounts of lead found are truly “high,” “dangerous,” or “concerning” is another story. More about this in a minute.
This isn’t a new discovery. We already knew.
This may be the first time you’ve heard about metals like lead being found in protein powder, but this has already been known for a while.
Consumer Reports did a similar test of protein powders and came to similar conclusions way back in 2010.
In 2018, some group called the Clean Label Project tested 133 protein powders and found various heavy metals as well (source).
As recently as January 2025, the same Clean Label Project tested 165 protein powders and found varying levels of lead and other metals in most of them yet again.
So, if you were thinking this is some new scary secret that has just been revealed, that’s not the case at all.
It seems every few years some organization tests protein powders, finds metals, headlines show up all over the news about it, everyone freaks out, we lose interest a week later, and then we do it all over again at some point down the road.
I’m looking forward to doing it again next time.
I may even decorate my house and make it a fun tradition.
Happy Metals-In-Protein-Powder Day to all who celebrate!
Most people aren’t reading (or understanding) the actual report.
I’ve had about 25 people email me about this report and only two of them linked to the actual Consumer Reports’ page that contains all of the info.
Everyone else sent me links to mainstream news sources providing second-hand information with clickbait headlines and a clear focus on the scariest parts while leaving out important details, nuance, and context that make things much less scary.
I know… what a shocking thing for the media to do.
But this matters because details, nuance, and context are important.
Let’s start with the biggest example of this, and probably the most important thing you should take away from this article…
The “level of concern” Consumer Reports used for lead was extremely strict.
For this testing, Consumer Reports set the acceptable limit for lead per serving of protein powder based on California’s Prop 65 maximum allowable dose level for lead.
That’s 0.5 micrograms per day.
Why does this matter?
Because this is, by far, the strictest limit for lead I could find anywhere on the planet.
Let me put this “0.5 micrograms” number into perspective for you…
Comparing to the FDA’s Interim Reference Level for lead.
The FDA’s Interim Reference Level for lead is 2.2 micrograms per day for children and 8.8 micrograms per day for women who may become pregnant (source).
And, in the FDA’s own words, this “includes a 10x safety factor,” meaning those numbers are already 10 times lower than the amount of lead intake from food that would be required to reach the blood reference level at which the CDC recommends clinical monitoring of lead exposure in children.
So, the FDA’s 2.2 micrograms per day (for children) and 8.8 micrograms per day (for women who may become pregnant) guidelines are 10 times below that threshold.
But yet, Consumer Reports went with 0.5 micrograms per day.
This is very, very, very, very, very, very strict.
The consensus I get from experts who know a lot more about metal toxicity than I do is that this limit is some combination of overly cautious, wildly unrealistic, and just plain ridiculous.
Comparing to USP and NSF limits for lead.
Let me give you even more perspective on this number.
USP and NSF, which are two of the main independent third-party certifiers for supplements, use lead limits of 5 micrograms per day (USP <2232>) and 10 micrograms per day (NSF/ANSI 173), respectively.
Once again, Consumer Reports used 0.5 micrograms per day.
This is why context and details matter, and you can’t just read headlines.
Most people are only going to see the scary headlines and maybe skim those articles looking for mentions of the specific protein powder they use.
This is a bad idea.
You’d never know that the “high,” “concerning,” and “dangerous” levels of lead that were found were only considered “high,” “concerning,” and “dangerous” based on a threshold that is considered ultra strict by every other lead guideline in existence.
In the actual Consumer Reports report, they even mention this…
This level is based on the California Prop 65 maximum allowable dose level (MADL) for lead—0.5 micrograms per day—which has a wide safety margin built in.
I bolded the last part because it’s important.
How wide is this safety margin?
If you were wondering just how wide of a safety margin we’re talking about here, don’t worry. I looked into it for you.
First, they identified the level of lead exposure that was shown to not cause any harm to humans or lab animals. This is called the “no observable effect level.” Then, instead of setting that level as the limit, they further divided it by 1,000 in order to provide a massive margin of extra safety. [source]
And thus, 0.5 micrograms per day became the limit.
Consumer Reports then decided to use that limit in their report, and all of the scary headlines you’re seeing are based on that.
Just something to keep in mind before you vow to never have protein powder again.
But wait, there’s more!
Lead is definitely dangerous, but it’s also everywhere.
To be clear, there is no known safe daily allowance for lead. It’s a thing that would probably be best to avoid consuming at all if we could.
However, we can’t.
It’s virtually impossible.
Lead is in soil, water, dust, and air.
It’s naturally occurring in the environment.
It’s also found in many normal healthy foods we already eat on a daily basis (especially stuff that grows in the ground), just like there’s arsenic in your rice, mercury in your fish, and cadmium in your chocolate.
Consumer Reports could have put out a similar report about lead being found in various fruits and vegetables and that would be the thing the mainstream media decided to scare the shit out of you about this week.
For whatever reason, they happened to go with protein powder.
Still, it’s important to know that it’s not just protein powder. It’s everywhere, including in your body/blood right now regardless of whether you’ve ever used protein powder before in your life.
I point this out only because it won’t be mentioned in most of the stuff that comes out about this report.
People are going to come away scared to death of protein powder and assume it’s the only source of lead in their life (it’s not even close) and that eliminating it means zero exposure (it definitely doesn’t).
Now let’s get back to the report…
Vegan and plant-based protein powders are significantly higher in lead.
The scariest numbers you see in this report are going to be from the vegan and plant-based powders.
That’s because they contained the highest amounts of lead.
This is consistent with what previous protein powder tests have shown over the years, so, yet again, it’s not some new secret being revealed.
Vegan and plant-based protein powders tend to contain the highest amounts of lead (and other metals) while dairy proteins like whey and casein tend to contain the lowest amounts.
How significant is the difference? Here’s a quote from the report…
The lead levels in plant-based products were, on average, nine times the amount found in those made with dairy proteins like whey, and twice as great as beef-based ones. Dairy-based protein powders and shakes generally had the lowest amounts of lead.
Why is this?
Mainly because plant-based protein (e.g. pea protein) is made from plants, plants grow in soil, and soil contains heavy metals that are absorbed by those plants.
Of course, the exact amounts can vary based on flavor (more about that later) as well as the crop, region, and other farming related things I won’t even pretend to know anything about.
So while my previously mentioned point about the extremely strict “level of concern” threshold still applies to the vegan/plant-based powders just the same, and the higher levels of lead they contain become a lot less concerning in that context, it is still worth noting that plant-based protein powders do contain significantly more lead and other metals than dairy protein like whey.
Just a fact to keep in mind.
Results are skewed a bit by weird testing choices.
Here’s a head-scratcher.
Consumer Reports did their testing based on a single serving of each product they tested.
Okay.
But… what are we considering “a single serving?”
With any protein powder I’ve ever used, a serving is always 1 scoop.
But apparently with some of the products tested in this report, 1 serving is sometimes as much as 6 scoops!
WTF?
If that sounds insane, it’s because this 6-scoop protein powder wasn’t actually a protein powder. It was a vegan mass gainer supplement.
Why did they decide to include mass gainer supplements in a report on protein powder?
I couldn’t tell you.
Mass gainers do contain protein powder, but they also contain other ingredients that could bring more lead/metals into it than the protein powder would have by itself.
But whatever.
In the end, this meant there’s a product tested with 6 scoops of powder as a single serving alongside other products where only 1 scoop was tested as a single serving.
You’ll never guess what happened next!
That 6-scoop product ended up being the one with the highest amounts of lead, by far.
Wow, what a surprise!
That was also the product and test result I saw getting the most attention in mainstream coverage of this report, because that’s obviously the scariest part of it and the part that would bring in the most clicks.
Wow, what a surprise!
Consumer Reports doesn’t seem to like protein powder (or protein).
Reading through this report, Consumer Reports came across to me as being anti-protein powder and maybe a bit anti-protein in general.
I mean, there are multiple points in the report where they throw in a comment about how we don’t need as much protein as we think, we already get enough, no one actually needs protein powder in the first place, etc. etc. etc.
Here’s one quote:
That said, because most people don’t actually need protein supplements—nutrition experts say the average American already gets plenty—it makes sense to ask whether these products are worth the added exposure.
As someone who has worked with thousands of “average Americans” (and non-Americans) over the years, I can tell you without a doubt that this statement is horseshit.
Most people are definitely not already getting “plenty” of protein. In fact, most people are struggling to do so and tend to benefit greatly from using a supplement to help them hit their daily protein target.
As I kept reading, I found the source of our disagreement…
The average healthy adult needs roughly 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight (0.36 grams per pound), according to federal nutrition guidelines.
Ah, there it is!
Consumer Reports apparently recommends the outdated RDA for protein, which is essentially the minimum needed to not die from a protein deficiency rather than the ideal amount for fat loss, muscle growth, strength and performance, maintaining muscle while losing fat, preventing age-related muscle loss, controlling hunger, and optimizing health.
It’s a number that all modern research on protein has shown to be significantly lower than ideal. It’s universally regarded as too low by every actual nutrition expert I know of.
Now sure, this doesn’t really have anything to do with lead in protein powder.
It’s just an annoyingly misinformed point of view that Consumer Reports felt they needed to mention throughout their report, so I felt the need to mention it, too.
Speaking of which, I also caught this line…
Some supplements and fortified foods today contain more protein per serving than research has shown your body can use, which is about 25 to 30 grams per meal.
Nope. This is a myth. [source]
And then there’s this line…
Better yet, make your own shakes by swapping out the powders for high-protein foods like peanut butter or Greek yogurt.
Greek yogurt? Sure, that’s a good source of protein.
But peanut butter? A high protein food??? Lol. That’s a “tell me you don’t know anything about protein without telling me you don’t know anything about protein” moment.
This is because the protein per calorie ratio is horrible. For example, to get 25g of protein from whey protein powder, it would be about 120 calories. To get 25g of protein from peanut butter, it would be about 600 calories!
This makes whey protein powder a good example of a high protein food, and peanut butter a good example of a high fat food that happens to contain a little bit of protein.
Again, none of this has anything to do with lead or protein powder or the testing they did.
But even still… when there’s this much bad information about protein in a report that’s relevant to protein, it’s worth pointing out.
The best part of the whole report.
As mentioned a minute ago, Consumer Reports really goes out of their way to shit on the idea of there being any need or benefit to using protein powder.
Instead, they imply, if you want to limit your exposure to such high and dangerous levels of lead and other heavy metals, throw out your unnecessary protein powder and have peanut butter and Greek yogurt instead.
Uh huh.
Interesting.
I do wonder though…
Before making this recommendation…
Did they consider the lead levels of peanut butter and Greek yogurt?
Probably not.
Good news though… I did.
Please allow me to show you what I found.
Let’s assume we want a 25g serving of protein.
- With peanut butter, there would be about 0.60 micrograms of lead in a serving that provided 25g of protein. [source]
- With Greek yogurt, this was harder to find data for, so I’m estimating based on yogurt-specific baby food data. And based on that, there would probably be about 0.25–0.5 micrograms of lead in a serving that provided 25g of protein. [source]
- With Optimum Nutrition Gold Standard 100% Whey, probably the most popular protein powder Consumer Reports tested in this report, there would be about 0.28 micrograms of lead in a serving that provided 25g of protein.
So…
Just to put this whole report into context for you…
Consumer Reports apparently suggests avoiding protein powder because of lead exposure, in favor of eating high protein foods that likely contain similar or higher levels of lead per serving, which may also exceed the same “level of concern” for lead (0.5 micrograms per day) this whole report was based on.
Got it.
That makes perfect sense.
3 ways to lower your exposure to contaminants in protein powder.
Okay, let’s get to some recommendations.
Let’s say you don’t care about anything I mentioned in this article and you just want the peace of mind of knowing you’ve done everything you can to lower your exposure to lead and other heavy metals in your protein powder.
Cool.
So what can you do for that purpose? There are mainly 3 things:
1. Use dairy-based protein powder (like whey) instead of plant-based protein powder (like pea).
Obviously this option doesn’t work for vegans or people with dairy allergies, so feel free to skip to #2 if that describes you.
But if you are able to choose any protein powder you want, dairy-based sources like whey and casein would be the best options for this specific purpose.
2. Choose another flavor besides chocolate.
Chocolate-flavored protein powders usually contain cocoa. Since the cacao plants it comes from are known to take up cadmium from soil, chocolate flavors tend to have higher levels of cadmium (and sometimes lead) compared to other flavors.
Going with non-chocolate flavors (e.g. vanilla, strawberry, etc.) or unflavored would help reduce this exposure.
3. Only use protein powders that have legit third-party certifications or third-party test results available.
Every supplement on the planet will tell you it’s “third-party tested” to be perfect and wonderful.
Many will even have a generic “third-party tested” seal on its label.
You should ignore all of this, because none of that means a damn thing.
What you want is something more legitimate.
In terms of certifications, that means NSF Contents Certified or NSF Certified for Sport.
(USP certification is great as well, but it’s much less common.)
When you see one of these certifications on your supplement label (and be sure to look closely, there are other NSF certifications for stuff like being gluten-free which is NOT the same thing), it means they are tested on an ongoing basis by NSF and verified for the following:
- That what’s on the label is actually in the product. This means the ingredients that are supposed to be there (e.g. protein) are there in the amounts they’re supposed to be in (e.g. the claimed amount of protein per serving).
- The product contains no unsafe levels of contaminants such as heavy metals, pesticides, and herbicides. For example, this means the product doesn’t exceed the threshold NSF has set for lead and other metals.
- The product doesn’t contain any banned substances (NSF Certified for Sport only). This means it’s free from the kind of illegal substances that athletes are drug-tested for (e.g. steroids).
Now what if you can’t find a protein powder you like that has one of these NSF certifications?
You still have some options.
One is to find a supplement brand that makes their full third-party lab test results or Certificate of Analysis (COA) publicly available.
Some brands have this available on their website and make it easy for you to look up your specific lot number of your specific supplement and view the results for that specific batch.
Other brands will provide this only if you email them and request it.
And some brands won’t provide this no matter what you do.
Then we have one final option, which is finding an independent third-party that regularly tests supplements and provides those results. ConsumerLab.com is the only legitimate one I know of, but keep in mind that it requires a paid subscription to view their test results.
What about me? What am I personally doing about all this?
Honestly? Nothing different from what I was already doing before this report came out.
That means…
- I’ll continue using protein powder as often as I always have, which is typically 1-2 scoops a day, because it’s a convenient source of high quality protein that makes it easier for me to hit my daily protein target.
- I’ll continue using the same whey protein powder I already use.
- I’ll continue using the same non-chocolate flavor I was already using (this has been my taste preference for like 20 years).
- I’ll continue making sure it meets the third-party testing standards and certifications I was already making sure it met, just like I do with the few other supplements I take.
- I’ll continue to always get the full details and context the next time a report like this comes out instead of freaking out about scary headlines.
- I’ll continue putting out content like this to help you do the same.
That’s all I got.
Have a lovely day.
