Customer Reviews

Optimum Nutrition 100% Whey Gold Standard Natural Whey, Vanilla, 5 Pound

5 star:		(235)
4 star:		(69)
3 star:		(18)
2 star:		(11)
1 star:		(14)

 

 

I try others, but keep coming back to this one. No chemicals, good taste (mild), easily digested, great results.

I have worked in a nutrition store and have tried dozens if not hundreds of different proteins. This one has been the best and doesn't have any of the artificial sweetners and other ingredients which can cause digestion problems. It mixes easily and has a very versatile and enjoyable taste. It is probably best as a postworkout or early morning protein source due to its rapid digestion. I will often take along with some fish oils or flax oil to lower the glycemic index and resulting insulin response. Amazon, especially with free shipping and 15% subscription discount, has by far the best price!

I'm a woman and not a body builder, but I love this protein powder for a super quick breakfast or an evening snack. It gives you clean burning energy, so to speak, without the blood sugar crash of candy bars or other less than optimal snack products. It dissolves well with some vigorous shaking in any sealed container--I just use an ordinary bowl-shaped tupperware container.

It contains no fructose, and is barely sweetened with stevia extract. That's fine because I can add my own sources of sweetness in the form of organic soy milk that I buy in bulk from Costco. I had my family try it and they couldn't tell this apart from ordinary ovaltine or chocolate soy milk. Even if you're using water or milk, unless you're hyper vigilant about sugar intake, adding a bit of your own sweetener (I hate artificial sweeteners, I'd rather add raw, real sugar) would still bring your sugar intake far below most of those other "protein shake" products out in the market while still delivering a dose of high quality protein (whey is superior to all other sources of popularly available protein powders according to the sources I've researched).

I love this Whey Protein! It really tastes great, I usually mix it with vanilla soy milk or 2% milk and it tastes great either way. I have been using this for a few weeks and have noticed my muscles getting harder and bigger (with light workouts) and am very happy with the results so far. I have been drinking between 1 and 2 shakes a day, usually 1. The great thing about this shake is I have it before bed sometimes (I work out a little before bed) and it fills that sweet craving a lot of people have before bed. Great thing too is that it has very low calorie and carb content compared to some shakes. As others have said, it does change the way your bowel movements smell (gives them a distinct smell) not a terrible one but a distinct one. I know this is kind of gross but I thought I would let people know. Another issue (that isn't that big of a deal) when I bought this it was ~50 bucks at GNC but now they are having a sale on these older flavors (I think rich double chocolate etc are the new ones, I bought Chocolate) for about the same price ~30$, I think it's some sale but its still a great price on amazon. I would highly recommend buying this and a shaker.

After spending hours comparing nutritional information labels on a dozen diffrent brands of powders, I decided on this one for obvious reasons. It replaces alot of ingredients with natural ones, and costs only about 46 cents per serving, yet has an impressive 24 grams of protein per serving. That's really the bottom line why you should choose this product.

I got the chocolate. Threw it in a glass of water, and was VERY surprised that after stirring for about 30 seconds with just a spoon, it had almost completely disolved. You dont even need a shaker for this. As far as the taste well, theres no sweetener, and almost no sugar or fat. So of course it doesnt taste like a freakin milkshake. It's really good for you. Im sure in milk (which adds fat and sugar) it will taste great but i wont be doing that personally.

I wrote this review half a year ago, and the price has gone way up since then. It is still a great product, but not the huge value it was back when i got it $10 cheaper.

So - you've been researching the 7000 options for Protein Powder and you've landed on Optimum Nutrition's Gold Standard. Good choice. The quality of the product, the price and the reputation are all great. Now you need to decide on a flavor. After all - if it doesn't taste good - it doesn't matter how much it costs. You're a chocolate guy/girl and think that's the safest bet. If you're getting 5 pounds of something, you need to minimize your risk! But do you go with Chocolate or Double Chocolate? I had the same question, so a co-worker and I each got one and did a taste test. Here is what we found:

Chocolate: very tasty! When mixed with skim milk it was pretty close in taste to chocolate milk. No aftertaste and generally one the better powders I've tried.

Double Chocolate: also very tasty! Smells way more chocolately in the jar and after mixing with skim milk. This one tasted more like a liquid brownie than chocolate milk. There definitely was a "Double" chocolate kick. No aftertaste and perhaps my favorite powder to date.

The "winner"? Both really. My co-worker was very happy with her choice of Chocolate because it wasn't overwhelming and I was very happy with the Double because it was more of a "treat" with a bigger chocolate flavor.

So decide which one sounds like you - and buy with confidence. At 120 calories for 24g of protein, you'll be getting what you need with a great taste.

After using the optimum nutrition double rich chocolate whey for a while, I decided to try this all natural chocolate flavor. Overall it tastes very similar except I noticed several key differences with this natural chocolate version compared to the regular double rich chocolate.

#1 - It seems to have a bitter aftertaste. I assume this is because they used stevia as a natural sweetener which also tends to have a bitter aftertaste.

#2 - It mixes ok in a shaker cup with milk, but not quite as well as the regular double rich chocolate. With this natural chocolate flavor, I noticed that there's always a couple small tiny chunks in my cup which isn't that big of a deal, but also I notice that it creates really thick bubbles at the top after shaking it, which makes it difficult to drink without swallowing a bunch of air unless I let it sit for a couple minutes.

#3 - I can't cook as well with this natural chocolate flavor. I tried making pancakes with it, and also putting it in my oats (both of which are usually delicious with regular double rich chocolate flavor) and it did not turn out well at all. I will still experiment more with using natural chocolate flavor for cooking though.

Although I have the minor gripes as stated above, i still give this product 4 stars because overall it's an excellent protein powder and it does the job very well. It still tastes great compared to other protein powders i've tried.

This stuff mixes easily and tastes good. It has a slight after taste, probably from the chocolate without sugar. I think the vanilla ice cream version of this tastes better. I'm going to try adding frozen banana but it is very drinkable on its own.

Update: This is no longer available in the natural version so the taste has changed a bit. Looking for a replacement.

Both my wife and I had decided fairly recently to start using protein powder after our workouts. We started with some unnamed protein powder, but my wife started getting migraine headaches. After looking at the ingredients, we decided it was possible that they were due to the artificial sweeteners. I looked around online, and had a heck of a time trying to find a whey protein which did not use artificial sweeteners. Which is where this protein came in.

We have now tried all 3 flavors of Natural, the Vanilla, Chocolate, and Strawberry. My wife's headaches have gone away, which is always a good thing.

My wife and I both disliked the Vanilla. There was something about the flavor we didn't like. There are lots of good descriptive words for sight (bright, dim, yellow, flashing, etc), but nothing much for taste. Too bad. Anyway, we didn't like it.

I am a fan of the Strawberry. I sometimes drink it with water (it's just fine), but with soy milk (I'm a recent soy milk convert) it tastes very close to strawberry milk. I don't mind gulping protein powder just to get it over with, but the strawberry with soy milk was basically at the point that I would enjoy the drink. Excellent!

My wife is a fan of the chocolate. She said it's very similar to normal chocolate powder, which is a good thing, since I've had chocolate protein powders in the past which did not taste like normal chocolate :)

Texture wise, they mix pretty good. We have screw top bottles we use to mix the protein, we pour in the liquid, give it a few seconds of shaking, and then can drink. Usually I wait for the foamy liquid to settle, I don't like drinking foam. On a side note, if the bottle is wet when you put in the protein and the protein settles on the wet bottom, it can clump and need some pretty vigorous shaking. But normally there's no problem.

That's about it, not much else to say about protein powder. I'd strongly suggest the chocolate or strawberry, and stick with the natural stuff rather than the artificial sweeteners.

I've been using Optimum Nutrition's Whey Protein for several years, and I absolutely love it. I've used it on shakes, oatmeal, puddings, etc - anything that I can add a little extra protein and flavoring to. The good thing is it's low cal, has 1g fat per serving, and very low sugar.

The only downside is choosing the "right" flavor. I recently bought the regular "vanilla" flavor, but it isn't as delicious as the others I've purchased. My favorite flavors so far are Vanilla Ice Cream (!!!!), Banana Cream, and Chocolate Mint. My least favorite - Cookies and Cream. Tastes nothing like it, and it has a strong malt taste (which I don't like). You may want to consider getting small sample pouches at GNC or Vitamin Shoppe so you can determine which taste suits you the most.

Highly recommended product.