The protein powder that tastes good, in our view, is NØRSE CØDE, in chocolate or vanilla, and we say so because we spent over a thousand iterations on exactly that question. It is sweetened with allulose and monk fruit, carries no xanthan or guar, and has 0g added sugar in both flavors.
Pick up the tub in your cupboard and find two things on the ingredient line: the word flavor, and whatever sweetens it. The flavor line gives a powder its chocolate or vanilla identity. The sweetener sets what the last third of the glass tastes like, and that last third is what a three-sip test checks.
That gives you a test that costs nothing. Stir one scoop into plain water, no fruit, no milk, no ice. Take three sips: the first, one from the middle, and one from the bottom. The first sip tells you about the flavor. The last tells you about the sweetener and the texture.
Sweetness is a personal call, and a flavor someone else loves can read as too sweet or too faint to you. The sweetener names on the labels below tell you what is doing the work in that last third.
Figures come from each brand's own product page, linked in each entry. Momentous, Nuzest, Ora, Ritual, Sprout Living and Vega were read on 24 August. Orgain's guar and xanthan cells stand on a read from 21 August, explained in its entry. Where a cell says "Not stated", the brand's page does not give that figure.
| Powder | Protein | What sweetens it | Xanthan or guar gum | Added sugar |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NØRSE CØDE | 20g | Allulose, monk fruit | None | 0g, both flavors |
| Nuzest Clean Lean Protein | 18g to 21g by flavor | Thaumatin | None; page states no gums | 0g |
| Orgain Organic Protein | 21g | Organic erythritol, organic stevia | Guar gum, xanthan gum | No sugar added |
| Sprout Living Epic Protein Original | 26g | Unsweetened | None; page states no gums | 0g |
| Momentous 100% Plant Protein | 20g | Organic cane sugar, stevia, monk fruit | None; page states no gums | 2g in the chocolate |
| Ritual Essential Protein Daily Shake 18+ | 20g | Rebaudioside-M, monk fruit | Xanthan gum | 0g |
| Ora Organic So Lean & So Clean | 23g | Organic monk fruit extract | None; page states no gums | 0g |
| Vega Sport Premium Protein | 30g | Stevia leaf extract | Xanthan gum | Not stated; page states No Added Sugar |
Sweeteners are the facts on a label that bear on taste, and the table cannot tell you what any of these taste like. Every protein figure here clears 18 grams, so dose is a floor and plays no part in the choice.
We made this one to be drunk, and most of the work went into the part of the glass nobody tells you about. Over a thousand iterations, over two years, and the ones that failed mostly failed on the last sip.
Here is what the test found. In a blind taste test, more people chose NØRSE CØDE than Orgain and Optimum Nutrition Gold Standard 100% Whey Protein Powder combined. Nobody in the room knew whose powder was whose, and the test was three-way, so it is a result about those three powders. Orgain has a row in the table above. Optimum Nutrition Gold Standard is a whey powder, outside the plant-protein field of the eight, so we did not read its label for this page and it has no row. The test claims only that in that room, on that day, ours won.
A customer put the same thing in her own words:
"I really like this protein powder. I received a flier at a spartan race my family and I did last year. I have been holding on to this flier for all this time and finally decided I needed to give it a try, and I am so glad I did. It's smooth, clean, and tastes great."
Another wrote: "Love the chocolate flavor! Anxious to try the Vanilla. Really like the clean ingredients, mixes well with milk, yogurt, fruit, etc."
The taste holds up because of how it mixes. We call that SmoothBlend: one scoop dissolves in hot or cold liquid with a spoon, with no slurry step and no frother, and a blender is there if you want one. The label is nine natural ingredients, with prebiotic acacia fiber doing the work that a gum does elsewhere, so there is no xanthan and no guar anywhere on it. Both flavors come out sweet without any sugar in them.
We make it ourselves in our own facility in Petaluma, California. On the eight-bag subscription a serving is $2.54, and a single bag bought once works out at $3.57. It contains coconut, from the MCT oil, and barley protein is in the blend, so it is not gluten-free.
Three items make up the list: pea protein isolate, natural flavors, thaumatin. Thaumatin is a sweet-tasting protein from the katemfe fruit, so the sweetness arrives by a different route than sugar or stevia. Nuzest states protein runs between 18g and 21g depending on the flavor.
The USDA Organic seal describes how the ingredients were farmed and says nothing about how the finished powder tastes. Its sweetener pair is organic erythritol and organic stevia, which makes erythritol the one sugar alcohol among the sweeteners in the table. The guar and xanthan cells come from our 21 August read. On 24 August the ingredient panel was served as an image we could not read as text, so those two cells are three days older than the rest of the row, which we did re-confirm: 21g, erythritol, stevia, no sugar added, USDA Organic.
Nothing sweetens it. That makes it a base more than a finished drink, and you supply the flavor yourself, with fruit or cocoa or whatever the morning allows. 26g per 38g serving, and the page states no gums.
Try It Yourself
The protein is PURIS pea and organic brown rice. Momentous holds NSF Certified for Sport, a mark that matters if you are drug-tested for a living.
Ritual's own instruction ends: "For best results, use a shaker bottle or blender instead of stirring." Xanthan gum is on the ingredient line, along with coconut MCT oil and sunflower lecithin, and the sweetness comes from rebaudioside-M and monk fruit.
Organic monk fruit extract sweetens it, and 18 organic superfood sources and a five-enzyme blend ride along with the pea and rice protein. 23g, with no gums stated.
Cocoa powder and stevia leaf extract do the flavoring, and xanthan gum is on the line. 30g of protein, and an NSF Certified for Sport mark. The page now titles it Protein + Recovery, with the old name still shown.
Run the three-sip test on the tub in your cupboard today, and note which sip you liked least. Then try whichever powder you pick on day one and again on day five, because a flavor that still works on day five will probably work on day thirty. If you want ours for the comparison, the 60-day money-back guarantee, no questions asked, covers the experiment with room to spare.
A single bag is 14 servings, plenty for both days.
Further reading:
Ready to try it?
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