Greens powders are fast establishing themselves as one of the most popular types of dietary supplement on the market. Designed to replace leafy greens in your diet, they claim to provide all the nutrients and health benefits of greens, so their popularity should come as no surprise. As a result, countless supplement companies have begun producing their own greens powder products of all different kinds. One such company is Amazing Grass, who make a range of greens powder products on a family farm under the Amazing Grass Greens Blend banner.The question is, are their products any good?
Well, that is just what we hope to find out in our Amazing Grass review, as we analyse each product in the Amazing Grass Greens Blend range and see how they stack up against the top greens powder supplements.
The Amazing Grass Green Superfood is the flagship product of the Amazing Grass brand. The popular blend thoughtfully combines a Green Food Blend, Antioxidant Blend, EFA Fiber Blend, and a Digestive Enzyme & Active Culture Pre/Probiotic Blend.
The Green Food Blend has organic wheatgrass, organic barley grass, organic alfalfa grass, organic spinach, organic spirulina, organic chlorella, and organic broccoli (1).
The Antioxidant Blend features organic beet root, organic rose hips, organic pineapple, organic carrot, acerola cherry extract, organic acai berry, green tea leaf extract, raspberry, and organic maca root, while the EFA Fiber Blend boasts organic flax seed and apple pectin.
Finally, the Digestive Enzyme & Active Culture Pre/Probiotic Blend contains lactobacillus acidophilus, and the digestive enzymes FOS, amylase, protease, lipase, lactase, and cellulase.
The diverse range of ingredients in the Amazing Grass Green blend allows it to offer a range of benefits, including boosting digestive health and functions, preventing illness, and keeping you fit and healthy.Unfortunately, while this list of ingredients is good, everything being lumped together in proprietary blends masks the dosage of each ingredient. Now, while this doesn't necessarily mean there is anything wrong with the formula, it is a bit of a red flag.
This means you can't see the dose of each ingredient, so won't know exactly what benefits to expect, where each ingredient weight is clearly stated. Some companies will also use these blends to cover up an ineffective product.
That said, Amazing grass green superfood does list it's grasses as it's largest dosed products, and whilst alfalfa and barley grass and wheat grass are good ingredients for their nutritional benefits and being rich in antioxidants, spirulina is generally the king of greens blend ingredients, and we prefer to see it dosed at at least 2 grams. It is more likely that with it being the 5th largest ingredient in the amazing grass green blend (which totals 5.7grams), that it's probably more around 1 gram at best. With the cheaper grasses still being good, alfalfa is the better of the 3 main ingredients, having been shown to aid with blood sugar management and even menopausal symptoms beyond the standard nutrients and aforementioned antioxidants. So they are good ingredients if you're not already getting enough greens in your diet, but if we compare the benefits of these 3 to spirulina which boasts all of the above benefits, plus immune support, digestive health benefits and more nutritional value it's no contest.
The one area that the quantities are clearly listed on (because they have to be) is the vitamins and minerals. And it's a pretty poor showing here as well, coming in well below the main competitors AG1 and SuperGreen Tonik, which both cover off 100% of a dozen vitamins, whereas amazing grass manages very little, only 58% vitamin K and 18% of your vitamin C requirements with everything else coming in below 10%. As a result Amazing Grass fails at one of the main uses for a greens powder, covering your nutritional bases. It tries to get away with this by being cheaper than the competition at $50 a tub, but it isn't that much cheaper. When you could get better coverage half doses of products only $10 more we can't really recommend Amazing Grass for it's nutritional value.
Amazing Grass in a choice of original, berry, and chocolate flavours, although there have been complaints about both the taste and texture of all three options we geenrally think the berry is alright, there are much better tasting greens powders available though.
Customer reviews of amazing grass are generally not bad, as we've mentioned there are a few complaints about the flavor, but generally they're 4* and up. The thing with greens powders is though, that they're kind of hard to do terribly. So, for most people if it's your first time trying one you're going to see some nutritional benefit. Amazing Grass is quite often the first product that people try (usually this or AG1) meaning this number could be a little inflated.
The EFA Fiber Blend used in Green Blend Antioxidant is slightly different. It still features organic flax seed powder, but now boasts organic gum acacia and is slightly larger in weight.
The big difference though, is in the greatly expanded Amazing Grass Antioxidant Blend. It still features everything seen in Green Superfood but now has an additional blend called Spectra (2).
Specta contains a range of antioxidant superfoods which includes green coffee extract, green tea extract, broccoli sprout, onion extract, apple extract, tomato, broccoli, camu camu, garlic, turmeric, basil, oregano, cinnamon, elderberry, mangosteen, blackcurrant extract, blueberry extract, sweet cherry, spinach, chokeberry, kale, blackberry, bilberry extract, Brussel sprout, and extra acai berry, carrot, raspberry, and acerola cherry extract.
While this range of antioxidants is extensive, there are a few things to be aware of. For starters, a proprietary blend within a proprietary blend poses serious questions about how much or, rather, how little of each ingredient is actually present.
Then there is the fact that many of these ingredients are still not clinically proven to be that effective.
Considering the Green Blend Antioxidant claims to have only one serving of fruit and veg, instead of the 2 in the Green Superfood, you are sacrificing a lot for antioxidants you don't know will work.
Again priced at $49 per 30 serving tub, it still ranks as an affordable green powder if antioxidants are your priority. However, with only one flavour option, Sweet Berry, and no proof it will do what you hope, it won't be the right product for everyone. Although we will say it's one of the best tasting amazing grass flavors.
The Immunity Blend contains an Organic Proprietary Mushroom Blend of Reishi, Turkey Tail, Himematsutake, Shiitake, and Maitake, as well as more organic acerola cherries. It also has organic olive leaf, organic elderberry, organic ginger root, and organic astragalus root extract.
Unfortunately, mushrooms may be proven to have great benefits for the immune system, but they don't all work the same (3).
This means, with the exact quantities not known and all the research on some of them not being conclusive, it is impossible to know how useful this blend is. Although, with the entire blend weighing just 1 gram, it will be nowhere near as strong as a dedicated immune booster.
The inconsistency in the flavors across amazing grass is a little annoying with immunity using elderberry and tangerine flavors. We should note that the elderberry is our favorite flavor across all the amazing grass products and we'd have liked to see it in the others.
Greens Blend Energy does, however, contain an additional blend, known as the Energy Blend. This Energy Blend contains organic yerba mate leaf extract and matcha green tea leaf, and is designed exclusively to boost your energy levels.
Notably absent from the Energy Blend though is caffeine, which is clearly listed as included on the front of the pot. This is because both ingredients in the Energy Blend contain a natural source of caffeine.
The problem is that these are nowhere near as effective at boosting energy levels as caffeine is (4).
This makes it appear as though Amazing Grass have used clever marketing to sell a product to people who don't know much about food nutrition that will be less effective than they expect.
If you are specifically looking for an affordable product that combines a green powder with a pre workout or energy booster and don't want to buy multiple supplements, Amazing Grass Energy looks like a good way to go.
That said, people looking for the best performance in both areas would be wise to consider combining two separate, dedicated products, such as Supergreen Tonik and either PowHer for women or BlackWolf for men, or to be quite frank a cup of coffee.
This blend contains a number of ingredients proven to detoxify the body, remove antioxidants, and prevent and repair damage done by free radicals. Unfortunately, it also contains ingredients with only hyperbolic evidence to support their use as well.
This means, while it will have some benefit to detoxification, without knowing the exact quantities of each ingredient, there is no way of knowing just how beneficial it will be.
The Digestive Blend may be the most eyebrow raising blend in the whole Amazing Grass range.
It is made up of F.O.S (Fructooligosaccharides), organic flax seed, organic pineapple, Actazin kiwi, papaya fruit, liquorice root, organic quinoa, chia seed, cardamom seed, organic lemongrass, organic peppermint leaf, and bacillus subtillis.
Notably absent is the broad range of digestive enzymes which are present in the rest of the Amazing Grass range. Many of the ingredients can help to promote a healthy gut but they are not all proven, and omitting digestive enzymes seems a very strange and counterproductive move (5).
Of all the organic greens products that Amazing Grass make, this is likely the most divisive.
While its overall benefits to your health are second behind the original Amazing Grass Green Superfood, the lack of digestive enzymes in a product designed to aid digestive health is a misguided move, as it relies far too heavily on dietary fiber.
This means you would be far better pairing a top greens supplement like Supergreen Tonik with a dedicated digestive enzyme supplement. That is without even mentioning that it only comes in a single flavour choice, Clean Green.
1 - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15217524/
2 - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4256589/
3 - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4684115/
4 - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK519490/
5 - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4923703/