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The world of protein supplements can be a very confusing one. The most common types of protein supplements out there are whey and casein. These proteins are very popular due to the fact that it offers tremendous benefits for people who work out and it hasn’t shown any proven side effects. In this post I want to help explain the key differences between whey and casein.

First things first, the reason why protein is such an important supplement when you work out is because it assists in building strength, lean muscle, muscle mass, and decreasing recovery time. That makes it an essential supplement for athletes, bodybuilders, and anyone who works out.

Whey and casein proteins are both products of milk. Whey protein is a byproduct when milk turns into cheese and casein is filtered from milk. In conjunction with one another both proteins, you can develop a great supplementation program for optimum muscle building.

Whey Protein
Whey protein is the premiere protein for building lean muscle and shorter recovery times due to the promotion of protein synthesis. This means whey protein supplementation can speed up your progress to become bigger, leaner, or stronger depending on your goals.

Whey protein is the fastest digesting protein that absorbs quickly to the muscles that need it. This makes whey protein the perfect post workout meal to promote muscle recovery and muscle building. I’ve also heard of benefits of having a pre-workout meal of whey protein so that your muscles can recover during your workout.

Whey protein comes in two types; whey concentrate and whey isolate. The main difference between the two is the amount of pure protein in it. Whey protein concentrate is low in fat and lactose, containing an estimated 75% pure protein. Whey protein isolate is the purest whey protein containing more than 90% pure protein with less fat and lactose than whey concentrate. Comparably between the whey protein options, it is understandably that whey protein isolate is more expensive for its higher concentration of pure protein.

Casein Protein
Even though whey protein is the higher quality protein for building lean muscle and muscle recovery, casein has its role. Casein is a slow digesting protein that is digested at a slower pace serving a steady flow of protein for several hours. This makes casein the perfect evening supplement, helping prevent muscle catabolism in time periods longer than 3 hours without nourishment.

Casein’s anti-catabolic characteristics help prevent the break down of protein to prevent muscle loss. Casein doesn’t promote protein synthesis to the extent that whey does but its ability to counteract protein breakdown or muscle loss makes it important part of protein supplementation.

Simply Whey Protein and Casein Protein is as follows:

In conclusion, whey is a fast absorbing protein that excels in protein synthesis and casein is a slow absorbing protein that prevents muscle breakdown or catabolism. Personally I think you shouldn’t be using one over the other, but use both at the appropriate times to take advantage of their benefits to get the best results. I hope this information helps you better understand the two popular types of protein supplements and it helps reach your goals.

One of the simplest and most obvious - yet widely unpracticed - ways to eat healthier is to always look at the ingredients on the label.  Forget about if the front says “reduced fat” or “low sugar”, and (to an extent) forget about how many calories and how much fat is on the back label.

By now you know what you should be eating to have a healthy, balanced diet:  fruits, vegetables, lean meat, whole grains, etc.  Some of those foods are naturally high in calories and/or fat, but that doesn’t diminish their healthy impact on your body.  I have one super simple rule when checking the back of any label:  if one of the primary ingredients is something I haven’t heard of or I know isn’t healthy, I don’t eat it.  

Consider the following example.  You’re standing at the peanut butter section in your local grocery store.  You’ve read about how healthy peanut butter can be (great source of monounsaturated fat, protein, vitamin E, and more) assuming that it’s not loaded with sugar and preservatives, and that the primary ingredient is actually peanuts.  You immediately rule out regular “Jif” because you know it’s high in sugar.  Your next choices are “Reduced Fat Jif” and “Simply Jif - Reduced Sugar and Sodium”.  Which one do you chose?  I bet most people would reach for the reduced fat version:

However, take a look at each label.

The Reduced Fat:

Simply Jif:

Now, in a perfect world everyone would eat all-natural peanut butter with only one ingredient:  peanuts.  In the real world, many of us can’t afford or don’t have access to a natural foods store so we try to do the best we can with what’s on the shelf at our grocery store.

In this case, I’m looking at any ingredient before the “contains 2% or less of:” statement to make sure that at least 98% of my peanut butter is healthy.  The “Reduced Fat Jif” is loaded with corn syrup and sugar (common substitutes in ‘low fat’ items), whereas the “Simply Jif” contains only roasted peanuts and nothing else.  “Simply Jif” is the obvious -yet not so obvious - choice.

In every grocery store in the country, for every item you’re looking for, there is a healthy alternative…you just usually have to look at the back of the label to figure out what it is.

When I was growing up I always looked at the long line of cars in front of Dunkin Donuts every morning and thought “suckers, I’ll never get hooked on coffee (or ‘legal crack’ as I saw it)”. Well, as the times have changed so has my opinion. What was once thought of as an addictive upper is now becoming classified as an extremely useful health supplement for fitness, disease prevention, mental awareness, and overall health.

A recent article in Men’s Health Magazine entitled The Health Benefits of Caffeine delves deeper into some of the ways you can use caffeine to your advantage:

• Refill your cup three times a day. Harvard researchers have determined that men who drink 4 cups of caffeinated coffee a day are half as likely to develop Parkinson’s disease as those who skip the java–presumably because caffeine keeps dopamine molecules active.
• Down a cup of joe just before your next meeting — it’ll boost your mind power for about 45 minutes, according to a recent Austrian study that directly measured the impact of 100 milligrams (mg) of caffeine on brain activity.
• Jumpstart your workout: Studies show that consuming 140 to 400 mg of caffeine 30 to 60 minutes prior to exercise can improve both speed and endurance and make your workout seem easier. But to achieve those effects, researchers have used either caffeine pills or caffeinated soda. The reason: “Many other chemical compounds in coffee appear to counteract caffeine’s ability to impact your exercise session,” Graham says. Now you know why energy drinks were created. Looking for a boost? Try Celsius, which is sugar-free and contains about 200 mg of caffeine per 12-ounce can. To determine if it’s enhancing your performance, be sure to monitor how it impacts your exercise session both mentally (”My workout seemed easier” or “I felt like I was dragging”) and physically (”I completed more repetitions” or “I didn’t improve”).

An article posted Wednesday on the BBC (found via Ken Hoyt’s blog) discussed the results of a University of North Dakota study in which researchers found that coffee can actually lead to a reduced risk of Alzheimer’s Disease:

Caffeine is a safe and readily available drug and its ability to stabilise the blood brain barrier means it could have an important part to play in therapies against neurological disorders

Dr Jonathan Geiger
University of North Dakota

Whether you choose to consume caffeine via energy drinks, green tea (my favorite), coffee, or caffeine capsules it’s looking more and more like it’s stupid not to consume caffeine in one fashion or another.  I never thought I’d say this, but the health benefits seem to be overwhelmingly positive for any healthy adult.

Ever since I started playing football back in high school I’ve been infatuated with health and fitness. Not only has working out been a part of my daily routine for the past ten years, but I’ve also constantly been soaking up as much knowledge about health and fitness as I could get my hands on. Of course - as anyone who becomes serious about lifting realizes - exercise is only a small portion of a successful workout: what you eat and when you eat plays at least as important of a factor in your results.

As I began to take my diet more seriously in college, I started supplementing it with whey protein powder. To get the protein your muscle needs, it’s nice to have options other than chicken, turkey, fish, and beef. For those who don’t know: whey protein is a by-product of milk and in many cases is vegan approved because it is manufactured without animals using a derivative enzyme*. I am mildly lactose intolerant and I’ve never once had an issue with protein digesting any differently than a glass of skim milk.

In my five years or so of taking whey protein I’ve primarily used two brands: EAS and All the Whey (ATW). I’ve settled in now on using ATW Whey Protein Isolate (I prefer to pay a little extra for a refined isolate), but for many years bounced back and forth between EAS 100% Whey Protein and ATW Whey Protein Blend.

I was first turned on to All the Whey brand several years ago by George - one of my partners here at Tastefully Driven. When we launched the site we decided to exclusively carry ATW products because they are by far the best of anything either of us has ever used. For the purposes of this comparison, I’m going to break down a 5lb. EAS 100% Whey Protein vs. a 5 lb. ATW Whey Protein Blend. In both instances I chose chocolate because 99% of the time I’ve purchased protein it has been chocolate flavored.

First the objective facts:

**Cost: EAS: $53.99 vs. ATW: $51.78

Servings/package: EAS: 75 vs. ATW: 80

Serving size: EAS: 30 g vs. ATW: 28.4 g

Calories/serving: EAS: 120 vs. ATW: 108

Total Carbohydrates: EAS: 3 g vs. ATW: 1 g

Cholesterol: EAS: 65 mg vs. ATW: 22 mg

Protein: EAS: 23 g vs. ATW: 22 g

It’s certainly close, and you can’t go wrong either way, but I prefer All the Whey. Smaller serving sizes (more servings per container), less calories, a lot less cholesterol, a little less carbs, and only 1 g fewer protein. Obviously if the serving size was the same, a lot of this would even out - with the exception of the cholesterol. If you have 2 scoops a day of the EAS you’re consuming almost 50% of the recommended daily value of cholesterol! That alone breaks the tie for me.

The one subjective element in selecting a protein powder is taste. Let’s be honest: no matter how beneficial something is you aren’t going to mix it into your milk, yogurt, shakes, etc if it tastes like crap. Taste is where hands down I give ATW the edge. EAS doesn’t taste bad, but you can still taste the protein. All the Whey has a much richer chocolate flavor…almost like the difference between hot chocolate made with powder and hot chocolate made by melting a Hershey’s bar. If you mix a shake of each with just milk and protein and look at it, ATW will be noticeably darker.

If you’re reading this there’s a good chance that you’ve been using EAS Whey Protein or were thinking about picking some up. If you’re a regular EAS user, give All the Whey a shot and let us know what you think: I’m guessing you won’t be disappointed. If you’re a newbie and are unsure of what brand to buy, give both a try to see which one you personally prefer.

*Taken from the All the Whey Manufacturing process

**prices taken from Drugstore.com for EAS product. All the Whey product is listed at MSRP. Many times on our site and on other sites, you can find each of these products cheaper than this, but this is a good baseline to work from.