Product Review...

I'd first heard about the Greens+ supplement by listening to the Fitcast podcast by Kevin Larrabee. Eventually they had noted nutrition expert, Dr. John Berardi Ph.D. as a guest. Dr. Berardi has influenced my opionion on nutrition in many areas, especially when it comes to supplementation. Basically he says that most people need to focus on three areas of supplemntation; fish oil, protien and a greens supplement. (notice the lack of a multi-vitamin)

As you can probably guess (last time I listened to him) Greens+ was his greens supplement of choice. One of the impressive factors to consider about Greens+ is that it has at least some clinical trials that show it's efficacy as a nutritional supplement.

Another interesting claim by Dr. Berardi / the Greens+ folks is the ability of their product to help the body maintain an appropriate acid/base balance. In case your not up to speed on the issue I'll try to sum up; the average ph of human blood ranges from 7.4 in the arteries, to 7.35 in the veins, which is not a huge range. (different areas of the body have different average ph ratings, the stomach obviously would have a much more acidic ph).

The crux of the issue is that bacteria/disease/cancer all seem to thrive in the presence of acidic environments, therefore, if you can maintain a slightly basic (the opposite of acidic) ph in the body, you have a much better chance of keeping disease at bay. (I've even heard of some experiemental cancer treatments involving washing tumors with solutions of baking soda and water)

So how does Greens+ improve the acid/base balance in the body? Well, plants are natrually quite basic in ph, so you could get the same effect by eating a head of lettuce or a fist full of beets. Of course, few of us eat enough servings of produce to make a significant difference, so supplementation becomes nessessary.

Critics contend that the range of ph in the body is so narrow that it has no effect on health, or conversley that our diets have little impact in the ph of the body. Personally I'm inclined to agree with Dr. Berardi.

Now, on the the product itself.

I was impressed with the fairly high amount of protein in each bar (16g, which isn't too shabby for a bar). What's more is they use a decent whey isolate and not some crappy soy or whey concentrate.

I was expecting a very powdery bar that needed at least a liter of water to choke down, but I was very pleasantly surprised. The bar was fairly moist and had a pleasant mouth feel, and had a peanut butter taste intially but had a berry after taste, which was not at all unpleasant.

The biggest "minus" of the bar is the retail price. At $3.50 a peice, the price is a bit steep when you consider that a guy my size would need at least 3 to get enough calories to make a "meal", which is certainly not in my budget.

Price considerations aside, it seems to be a fairly good product, and I'd be interested in adding Greens+ to my short list of supplements.