People fail to appreciate the importance of scoop size when purchasing supplements. Unless you are a science whizz, checking out the supplements scoop size is a very easy way to judge the quality and ingredients of products.
While some other articles have helped educate you on supplement quality and dosing, this article will teach you everything you need to know about scoop size.
Scoop Size Basics
The science of scoop size can be explained with some basic maths. By understanding the core ingredients that should be included in certain blends, you can quickly tell if the supplement company is under dosing.
Pre-workout is always the best example of this, with several important supplements being a key part of a good pre-workout. If these aren't included at the right dose you can quickly tell if the blend is under dosed and so virtually useless.
Here are the key ingredients, proven by science. Make sure you pay attention to the minimum required dose, as, when combined, you can quickly see the minimum total serving size required for a well formulated pre-workout that actually works!
• Caffeine - minimum dose required: 200mg
• Creatine HCI or Monohydrate - minimum dose required: 2g for HCI or 5g Mono
• BCAA - minimum dose required: 5g to 10g
• Citrulline - minimum dose required: 6g
• Beta-Alanine - minimum dose required: 2.5 - 3g
• Betaine - minimum dose required: 2 - 3g
• Flavours, Sweeteners and Binders etc - minimum dose required: 2 - 3g
While there may be some other ingredients in good pre-workouts such as PRE-KAGED which actually makes it 32 grams, the ones listed above are the most commonly used, and also they keep it simple for this article.
Now, let’s add up these minimum doses to work out the absolute bare minimum any pre-workout scoop size must be…
= 24 GRAMS MINIMUM
As mentioned, they have 6.4 grams, you can quite clearly see none of the ingredients are going to work; they aren’t even CLOSE to the right dose. In fact, they are about 70% under dosed!
This is more common than you would think; take a look at some pre-workouts over on bodybuilding.com and compare the serving size and per product ingredients to the list above.
Base Your Next Purchase on Scoop Size
Supplement companies will often try to trick you, promoting the price per serving. This is a common marketing trick, with many people basing their purchase on the price per serving.
As you now know, this can be extremely deceiving, as the smaller the scoop size normally matches with the price per serving. So while you may get a cheap deal, you are basically paying for a product that is guaranteed to have missing ingredients or be severely under dosed. Either way, you are wasting your money, not saving it.
Ask yourself, is it best to pay 30 - 50 cents per serving for a product that does not work, or, pay $1 per serving for a product that actually has a scoop size 3 - 4 times bigger and is proven by research to work?
As you can see, scoop size is vital and also an easy and practical method for everyone to assess a supplement’s quality.
The answer is 100% clear, scoop size matters.
