The Ultimate Greens Powder Comparison Guide

Greens powders are a huge deal now. With buzzy words and vibrant packaging, many brands are advertising newly formulated greens powders as the last word on comprehensive nutrition. It has literally become an arms race to see which greens powder can pack more into each scoop: more vegetables, more fruits, more mushrooms, more botanicals, more minerals, more vitamins, more probiotics, more fiber, blah, blah, blah.

So obviously more stuff means more healthy, right?

Wrong.

Sometimes more stuff is just more... stuff.

Thorne took notice of this arms race and determined that greens powders should – and could – be better. We would do better. All we needed to do was swap out some of that “stuff” for a healthy dose of science. And that’s what led us to develop Daily Greens Plus.

We are so confident that Daily Greens Plus is better that we conducted a head-to-head comparison with six other leading greens powder brands.

First, let us explain why Daily Greens Plus is not like other greens powders on the market.

With just 28 ingredients, Daily Greens Plus is not like other greens powders you might have tried. Each ingredient is specifically chosen for its scientifically studied wellness properties. We have explained the science behind the Daily Greens Plus ingredients before at Take 5 Daily, in our Meet the Greens series. You can read part 1 and part 2 here.

In short, we didn’t formulate Daily Greens Plus with more ingredients for the sake of more ingredients. We made sure each of the 28 ingredients in Daily Greens Plus plays a unique role in supporting a healthy mind and body.

Say “no” to mysterious blends

Beyond the ingredients themselves, we knew we could do better in ingredient transparency. Next time you’re thinking about taking a greens powder, look at the product label and what it’s telling you – or not telling you. Many greens powders tell you they contain “blends” and “complexes” of ingredients, but they fall short in explaining how much of each individual ingredient is in the blend or complex.

Take for instance the Supplement Facts on one of the leading greens powders, which shows each serving contains 7,388 mg of a “raw superfood complex” of 26 ingredients, including powdered spirulina, spinach, and kelp. Nowhere on the label does it state exactly how much spirulina, spinach, and kelp is in that 7,388 mg. Is it 1,000 mg? 100 mg? 1 mg? Your guess is as good as ours.

Another product we looked at had blends within blends! One superfood blend is marked as 10 grams per serving, and that blend is made up of five other blends with no ingredient amounts listed for the sub-blends. So while this particular brand has 10 different mushroom powders, including the same scientifically studied mushrooms found in Daily Greens Plus, there is no indication of how much of that 10 grams superfood blend is dedicated to the mushroom blend, let alone how much chaga or lion’s mane mushroom it provides.

Thorne’s Daily Greens Plus has eliminated the guesswork from your greens: Each one-scoop serving provides 1,000 mg of spirulina, 500 mg of kelp, and 100 mg of spinach leaf extract. For the mushrooms, there’re 250 mg of chaga and 300 mg of lion’s mane.

Check out the Daily Greens Plus label for yourself:

Who makes your greens powder?

Another feature of Thorne’s Daily Greens Plus that we are proud of – we manufacture our greens powder in our own facility in South Carolina. Of the six greens powders brands we looked at, five said on the label they were either “manufactured for” or “distributed by” the brand, with no information about who manufactured the greens powders for these brands.

Daily Greens Plus is formulated and manufactured by Thorne at its state-of-the-art manufacturing facility in Summerville, South Carolina. By manufacturing our own greens powder, we have total control over every step in the process. From the raw ingredient to the finished bottle, each Thorne supplement – including Daily Greens Plus – is fine-tuned to provide only the purest, most absorbable nutrients to promote your good health and wellness. We aren’t just distributing a greens powder – we are manufacturing our own formula in our own facility with the highest quality standards.

To meet these standards, we ensure our entire manufacturing operation is certified by outside organizations. We confirm compliance with every requirement at every level. Our manufacturing facility, warehouses, and shipping centers have an exemplary record of compliance with the Current Good Manufacturing Practices (cGMPs) implemented by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). What’s more, Thorne’s facility is audited and certified with an “A” rating – the highest – by NSF International.

Outside the United States, Thorne has the top rating from the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) of the Government of Australia. Australia’s TGA is equivalent to the FDA and is widely recognized as one of the most respected regulatory agencies in the world. Only a handful of U.S. companies have achieved full TGA certification, and Thorne was the first U.S. nutritional supplement company to be fully certified.

It’s not “more stuff” – it’s more science

The choice is yours: Is your greens powder full of stuff? Or full of science?

The takeaway is that more stuff in your greens powder doesn’t always mean more nutrients. Transparency is key, and Thorne’s Daily Greens Plus has a 100-percent transparent product label with ingredients and amounts clearly labeled for nutrient support.

When you choose Daily Greens Plus, you choose unparalleled quality and ingredients. All that adds up an empowering choice.

For more details on the different greens powders we looked at for this article, check out our side-by-side comparison. Most of the active ingredients vary widely among the six products so are not included in this chart.

The brands we compared