**The Truth About Women-Specific Protein Powders**
These women-specific protein powders available in the market are just a marketing gimmick designed to attract new customers. In reality, there is no such thing as gender-specific protein powder. So, without relying on these claims, when purchasing protein powder, just keep these 3 things in mind:
1. First, ensure that the protein powder contains at least 75 percent protein, meaning there should be at least 75 grams of protein per 100 grams of the product. Also, make sure that leucine is roughly 10% of this. All this can be found on the nutrition label.
2. Second, if you’re opting for whey protein, the first ingredient should be whey concentrate or isolate and if you choose a plant-based protein, instead of one plant, look for a blend of two plant sources, such as pea and brown rice. This will offer a better and complete amino acid profile as compared to a single plant source.
3. Lastly, when making a purchase, buy the product from the brand’s official website or an authorized seller.
However, whether you actually need a protein powder is something that depends on your current protein intake. Let me make this easier with help of an example.
Let’s say you weigh 60 kg and workout regularly. Now, an important thing to remember here is protein must always be consumed as per body weight and activity level. So, if you are sedentary, you need around 1 gram, and if you are active, you need 1.2 to 2 grams per kilogram of body weight.
This means at 60 kilos and current activity level, you would need between 72 and 120 g of protein per day.
Now assuming that from foods alone, you’re consuming about 50g of protein daily, which means you roughly need 30-40 g protein more to be in that active protein range. This can be completed either by adding a protein powder (gender doesn’t matter here) or adding some more lean protein sources like soy chunks, chicken breast, fish, tofu, tempeh, whole & egg whites to your meals.
The bottomline is gender specific protein powders are just a marketing gimmick, and whether you actually need a protein powders depends on how much is your current intake and anything remaining can be completed by including a protein powder.
Hope it helps.