Posted on 01/13/2026 2:29:21 PM PST by nickcarraway
Finally, some good news for people who love protein powder.
Key Points:
-Consumer Reports released new findings after testing five reader-requested chocolate protein powders for lead and other heavy metals.
-The nonprofit organization previously revealed in late 2025 that it had found surprisingly high levels of lead in the majority of 23 protein powders that it tested.
-This time, Consumer Reports revealed that the protein powders it analyzed most recently contained acceptable levels of lead per serving, pointing to inconsistency across the industry.
Consumer Reports made major waves in October when it revealed the results of its investigation into 23 protein powders, sharing that some of the most popular options on the market contained a concerning amount of lead — and not by a small margin.
The nonprofit organization found that about 70% of the protein powders and shakes it reviewed contained more lead in a single serving than food safety experts deemed safe to consume in a day, with some even containing more than 10 times the recommended limit.
Now, Consumer Reports has released the results of further testing of even more protein products, and this time it’s got good news.
In an email shared with Food & Wine, Consumer Reports explained that it conducted a fresh round of heavy metal testing targeting five of the most popular reader-requested chocolate protein powders. All five were revealed to be safe for daily or near-daily consumption, with overall lower average levels of lead and arsenic than its previous tests had found in protein powders.
"I was surprised by our findings because they seemed to contradict a claim we heard again and again from some parts of the industry after our last investigation: that it was nigh on impossible to make chocolate-flavored or plant-based protein powders with very low levels of lead. These results show that's not the case," Paris Martineau, an investigative journalist on Consumer Reports’ special projects team, shared with Food & Wine.
Scientists Are Rethinking Protein — and Their New Approach Could Change Everything For this round of follow-up testing, Consumer Reports collected five reader-requested protein powder brands: Premier Protein, Equate, Truvani, Clean Simple Eats, and Ritual. To limit the variables that could skew results, the organization focused on chocolate-flavored protein powders only — with any vegan protein powders featuring pea protein as a primary ingredient, similar to its previous testing — and analyzed multiple samples of each powder from distinct product lots.
The team tested each sample for the heavy metals arsenic, cadmium, lead, and mercury, which it noted were "the four elements of concern identified in our 2025 investigation." It found that for all five powders the levels of heavy metals were "generally consistent across product lots," and four of the five powders tested below its level of concern for lead, which rings in at 0.5 micrograms per daily serving.
Clean Simple Eats’ whey-based protein powder yielded especially great numbers with only 0.21 micrograms of lead per serving, followed closely by another whey-based powder from Walmart’s brand Equate, which had 0.27 micrograms of lead per serving. Next up was Premier Protein’s dairy-based protein powder, with 0.38 micrograms, then Truvani’s plant-based protein powder — made using pea protein — which contained 0.46 micrograms.
We Tasted 26 Protein Bars — and the Top 7 Are Filling, Nutritious, and Actually Delicious One of the plant-based powders, Ritual’s Essential Protein Daily Shake — also made with pea protein — contained 0.53 micrograms of lead per serving, putting it just above the level of concern. However, Consumer Reports outlined that the amount of lead found in this product is low enough that its experts say it’s okay to have up to 6.5 servings of it per week.
The organization emphasizes that consumers should be concerned about lead because it has the ability to "linger" in the body, and repeated exposure, even in small amounts, can accumulate over time and contribute to health risks.
“Consumers shouldn’t have to guess whether their protein powder poses a risk for lead,” Tunde Akinleye, the Consumer Reports food safety researcher who led both testing projects, added in the published findings. “These results show manufacturers can keep contamination low, but we know from prior investigations that lead levels in protein powders are not consistent across the industry.”
The Protein of the Future Might Be Made Out of Air The team also noted in its statement that it believes a "lack of regulation" may be why so many protein powders have higher levels of lead. Oversight of the protein powder industry falls to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA); however, as Consumer Reports details, the FDA does not usually review, approve, or test dietary supplements before they’re sold. Additionally, there are no federal limits that dictate how much lead or heavy metals are allowed in protein powders.
The findings come as little surprise to people like Pieter Cohen, MD, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and a Cambridge Health Alliance physician, who added in Consumer Reports' statement that these findings are “very consistent with how the supplement industry is,” explaining that “there are companies that are working hard to try to do the right thing, despite the fact that it’s not required by the law, and there are other companies that are cutting corners.”
Cohen underscores that until the FDA provides clear guidance and ensures its requirements are fulfilled, "I doubt there will be any standardization in terms of lead levels in protein powders.”
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That’ll put lead in your pencil.
so, stick with vanilla, just to be safe?
And what about the new RFK Jr. an Dr. Oz food advice about having fish such as salmon twice a week?
There is more mercury in albacore tuna, salmon, cod and other large fish than in the McDonald’s Filet O’ Fish.
Self help author Anthony Robbins once nearly died from mercury poisoning. He “health consciously” avoided all red meat and he ate a lot of fish for his high protein meals. Then the mercury started to cause him severe health problems and he went into the hospital.
More lead in the soil, more lead in the chocolate.
So maybe yeah, but if it is natural vanilla flavoring then it comes from those same areas so maybe not?
I use Natural Factors unflavored unsweetened grass fed Whey Protein with digestive enzymes. I think it’s excellent
Hell, I’m 93 and began using huge amounts of protein powder as soon as Joe Weider figured out how to produce it...
Continued until I was 80...
Thats about 55-years of ingesting all that lead in support of 55 years of bodybuilding...
Salmon is usually not a problem because they do not live all that long. Cod is only has slightly more mercury.
Bigeye tuna and swordfish are the worse as far as I know but I could be wrong.
What you think isn’t the same as laboratory testing. I’d look to see if it was one of the ones that tested poorly in Consumer Reports.
Don’t buy supplements made in China or India!
Look for made in America supplements.
Thank you very much.
I was quite wrong about salmon. Now looked it up and 3 servings a week are safe and more can be tolerate without problems.
I was misinformed. Thank goodness for FR and you.
I hate chocolate (except white chocolate from AMZ,) and my allegedly organic vanilla protein powder tases like it has salt in it. I’ve always hated milk too. Since I was maybe three months old. Unless it’s in coffee or poured over yum Panda Puffs cereal, the only cereal I can shove down my throat without gagging.
BTW, I’m 89, weigh 114 and my doc says I’m very VERY healthy. I think it pays to be extremely bitchy from the time you can walk and talk, protect yourself from well-meaning parents, teachers, etc who don’t and really cannot understand that your needs that oppose their opinions are extremely important. A healthy human and healthy animal, for that matter, has a built-in system of preferences for foods that are good for you. Unless it’s screwed up by stupid parents and friends who buy you boxes of candy, etc.
We are crazy, not suicidal.
Depends where the salmon lives and is caught. I eat a lot of wild caught Alaskan salmon, which is great. When visiting Scandanavia, I ate a lot of wild caught fish too with no worries. My butcher at nearby Safeway tells me where stuff comes from. We went round and round about catfish, which I only discovered this year when we went to New Orleans.
Farmed fish is the kiss of death.
.
How about catfish? I recently came upon in in New Orleans. Yum but the heck with it it if it has poisonous stuff in it.
Reading a medical book about the metal poisoning of factory workers, 1970’s actress Allison Hayes recognized the symptoms described as being similar to her own.
Hayes began to question the ingredients of a calcium supplement made from bone meal she had been taking for a long time. When she employed a toxicologist to test a sample of the product, he determined that it had an extremely high content of lead and concluded that Hayes was most likely suffering from lead poisoning. Hayes mounted a campaign to have the FDA ban the import or sale of the food supplement.
An invalid, Hayes moved to San Clemente, California, and her health continued to deteriorate. In 1976, she was diagnosed with leukemia and was treated regularly in La Jolla, California. While at the hospital receiving a blood transfusion, her condition unexpectedly and rapidly deteriorated as she experienced chills, flu-like symptoms and intense pain. She was transferred to the University of California Medical Center in San Diego, California on February 26, 1977, where she died the following day, at age 46.
In a letter that arrived after her death, the FDA advised her that amendments were being made to the laws governing the importation of nutritional supplements, largely as a result of her situation.
I think that all these findings of lead, mercury, etc in foods like fist is because the instrumentation used to detect these chemicals are a lot more sensitive than those used thirty/forty or more years ago.
12 ounces a week which is about 3 servings is safe.
The caveat always being where it is caught. The stuff you get in the supermarket is fine.
If you are getting wild caught catfish from North Carolina or Kentucky the mercury level is a lot less safe.
Sort of the difference between tilefish caught in the Atlantic (fine) and tilefish from the Gulf of America (I wouldn't personally).
You included the lead to another related article: “We Tasted 26 Protein Bars — and the Top 7 Are Filling, Nutritious, and Actually Delicious”
Those bars are usually very heavy on added sugars.
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