Our team consists of personal trainers, nutrition coaches, and athletes who love to eat. While we understand the convenience of supplements, we believe prioritizing whole, nutrient-dense foods is the way to go.
With that said, we know life can get in the way, making it hard to hit your daily micro and macronutrient goals. And in those cases, we, too, like to open up the supplement cabinet.
Here’s a little bit more about our approach to supplements, how we choose our products, and what factors we prioritize.
Our Priorities
At BarBend, we value journalistic integrity and keep this front-of-mind when we test exercise equipment or write about supplements. When it comes to our nutrition content, these are the factors we prioritize:
- Expert Verification: We lean on registered dietitians and other experts to help us analyze different formulas, dose sizes, and potential side effects. This helps us ensure we’re promoting safe, effective products.
- Personal Testing: Our team has personally tried nearly every product on our supplement pages.
- Nutritious Supplementation: We know some products don’t always portray the best intentions. For that reason, we do not recommend or promote any products tied to disordered eating. Please read all of the dosage recommendations for our products.
- Safe Ingredients: We don’t recommend any products that are known to have dangerous ingredients. That being said, not every supplement is ideal for every athlete, so please read our articles in entirety and speak to a registered physician to ensure safe consumption.
Our Process
To create our round-up lists, we use the following process:
- Our team creates a list of every product in a certain category (like protein powder), doing as much research as possible.
- We look through ingredients lists to toss any products we consider low-quality or that contain banned ingredients.
- Our team speaks with a registered dietitian or nutritionist to analyze the product’s nutrition label and dosage size.
- We test the product as intended before, after, or during a workout, keeping an eye on taste, solubility, side effects, convenience, and more.
- With the help of our experts’ guidance, we compare all our products to develop the best-in-class list.
Factors We Consider for Supplement Reviews
When we write our supplement reviews, there are a few priorities we consider. In order to accurately compare one product to another, we also rate each of these factors on a scale of 1 to 5.
Formulation
When assessing a formula, we take a close look at the ingredients list. Our team searches for research-backed ingredients that have actually been shown to work. We also look at the quality of these ingredients (for instance, standard whey isolate vs. grass-fed whey).
We also prioritize clinically-effective doses. Just because an ingredient may work, that doesn’t necessarily mean that one serving contains enough of that ingredient. We work with dietitians and use peer-reviewed research to assess whether a supplement contains sufficient dosage sizes.
Transparency and Third-Party Testing
The FDA doesn’t closely regulate what ingredients are in a supplement. So, we put a premium on brands that present plenty of transparency with their ingredients. The most reputable supplement brands also like to turn to third-party testing to show that their products are safe and effective. We try our best to prioritize products that are third-party tested with no artificial additives.
Personal Experience
There are many aspects our testers prioritize while trying a product and they may vary depending on the supplement category. This can include:
- Taste
- Solubility
- Texture
- Side Effects
- Price
- Convenience
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