10/30/2025
You may have seen the headlines in the past few weeks about a Consumer Reports article that found "high" levels of lead in a variety of protein powders. Is this a problem? Should we all ditch our protein powders? The summary:
-Consumer Reports (CR) used a threshold of 0.5 mcg/day as the limit of safe exposure, this is based on the California Prop 65 threshold for the safe exposure of inhaled lead. (Inhaled lead is more dangerous so the safe level is lower)
-the FDA uses the threshold of 2.2 (children)-8.8 (women of childbearing age) mcg/day for orally ingested lead, which contains a built in 10 fold safety factor.
-CR did 2-3 samples of a particular protein powder purchased within 2 months in New York state, so their sample sizes were definitely limited.
-The worse offenders they tested had between 6-7 mcg of lead per serving. Most of the products tested had less then this. These are all below the FDA limit.
-Companies that do independent testing of their products usually test every single lot several times, and tend to have much lower levels of lead than the CR article.
-the worst offenders were mostly plant-based proteins, which makes sense, as plants take up lead from the soil
So, what should you do?
-evaluate your own risks. Are you a small child, or planning to become pregnant soon? You might want to be extra cautious with your food intake
-know your sources. If protein powders are an important source of nutrition for you, be sure to buy from a company that does third party testing on it's products and releases that information to consumers, so you can ensure that the lead is below a limit you are comfortable with.
-keep your systems running smoothly. Focus on whole foods, fruits, vegetables, fibre, adequate protein, clean water. Get enough sleep and exercise. All of these things ensure that our bodies have more resilience to deal with any chemicals that they do encounter.
Every batch of our Just Clean Protein is third party tested, and contains less than 0.01 ppm (WELL below Health Canada's specification of