OPTIMUM NUTRITION | 100% WHEY GOLD STANDARD PROTEIN REVIEW

Video Transcription:

John:
Welcome everybody, this is John and Glenn with bestpricennutrition.com. Today we're going to be reviewing the Optimum Nutrition Serious Mass. Specifically, this is a weight gainer, so if you're somebody who's trying to get lean, this would not be the product to take.

Glenn:
No, no, definitely not.

John:
Go ahead.

Glenn:
Yeah. Weight gainers are used because people who either can't get enough food in, or they have a very high metabolism and they're not carrying much mass to them, they would take a weight gainer to help with getting extra calories.

John:
Yeah. If you're really active and you need to maintain weight, you feel like you're losing weight, that's where weight gainers help, I mean, just an easy way to get more calories in your diet, like Glenn said. And in order to gain weight, you simply have to eat more calories than you burn, I mean, that's what it comes down to. If you do the opposite, then that's how you lose weight. With this particular product, you're looking at a serving size of 334 grams, when you look at the label. That's a pretty big serving. In fact, you probably couldn't mix that in anything but a, or you'd probably need a, I don't know, 80-ounce container, industrial-sized blender to do that, right?

Glenn:
Yeah. I've never used this myself, but I don't know how well this would mix in a conventional shaper cup.

John:
It wouldn't.

Glenn:
Probably wouldn't.

John:
You couldn't because there wouldn't be enough room in there. It's just too much powder. That's if you do the serving size that's the 254 grams of carbohydrates, which is sugar, and 50 grams of protein. And the sugar, it's a little misleading, because maltodextrin is one of the main carbohydrates in here, which is, it's basically sugar.

Glenn:
Sugar.

John:
It's a disaccharide, but it's not listed as a sugar because it's not a monosaccharide, but it's got the same really high-glycemic index. In other words, it absorbs really, really fast, which is fine if you're trying to gain weight. That's okay. Some people want to gain weight more clean, so they'll just eat more slow burning carbohydrates like oatmeal and things like that. But that's up to you. Why don't we run through some of the ingredients before we get-

Glenn:
Yeah. The very first ingredient is maltodextrin. We've covered that. And then the protein blend, whey protein concentrate, calcium caseinate, egg albumin and sweet dairy whey.

John:
I don't know what sweet dairy whey is. I don't know if that's just another way of saying Whey.

Glenn:
It is something different and it's I'm kind of lost for words. I don't remember. It is different than just general whey, but I do know though that sweet dairy whey has a lot of lactose. So if you-

John:
Ah, that explains it. Okay. That makes sense.

Glenn:
If you are someone who has a problem with lactose, this would not be the product for you because you-

John:
So basically, it's whey protein where they didn't filter out all the lactose.

Glenn:
Yeah. I believe that's what it is.

John:
Okay.

Glenn:
It still contains a lot of the lactose, which is milk sugar.

John:
If you've taken this and you notice you get gas, it's going to be one of two things, the lactose, if you're not used to it, or the fact that there's a lot of calories all at once for your body, which can tend to give you gas. And that's pretty much just a little bit of a vitamin blend.

Glenn:
Yeah. They add a vitamin blend to it.

John:
Sweetened with sucralose. So, more or less, we looking at here is the ratio. When you're looking at weight gainers, we always tell people, look at the ratio of carbohydrates to protein. This one is 5:1, so for every five grams of carbohydrates, you get one gram of protein. That makes the product cheaper for the manufacturer to make because there's no cost involved for maltodextrin. It's quite cheap when compared to protein. So really you're paying for the carbs, and the big part of this, when you see this 12-pound container. Well, in this 12-pound container, there's 16 serving, 16 times 50. So you're looking at, there's 800 grams of protein in here. So if you plan on getting 100 grams of protein a day, or let's just say 50, 50 for somebody, that's about a little more than two weeks' worth.

Glenn:
Yeah. You don't have to use the full serving size and the two scoops-

John:
And you can't use, I mean, you just, you're not going to be able mix it all at once.

Glenn:
Yeah. [crosstalk 00:03:43] recommended you cut in half, do one scoop at a time in. In water, they're saying the two scoops is 1,250 calories, so you're looking at like 620, excuse me 625 calories in one scoop. And then obviously, if you want to have some more calories to that, you can mix it up milk.

John:
It's about 125 grams of carbs, 25 grams of protein. So, it's okay. I mean, you might want something with a little more protein. It depends. If you're a really hard gainer, then this is the way to go because there's so many carbohydrates in there and you could always add a little bit of a whey protein or something to that to get a little bit more protein. With 25, is okay. But again, the ratio is what's important. You can go to one that's like a 2:1 ratio, where you get 80 grams of carbohydrates and 40 grams of protein. If you just want to gain a little bit of weight, I mean, that's the way to do it.

John:
With this one, you can't scale it quite as much because let's just say 25 grams was what we consider a significant amount of protein. Again, that's going to vary based on your body weight. Well, in order to get that 25 grams of protein, you have to ingest 125 grams of carbs with this. You may not want to take in that many carbs. So you may want to, again, go with something where, hey, I can get 25 grams of protein in 50 grams of carbs, and that's like a 2:1 ratio. So that's really what to look at. Now, sometimes when you see that one next to this one, that particular weight gainer, let's just say whatever it is that has a 2:1 ratio, well, you're going to pay more for a smaller amount because there's going to be more protein.

Glenn:
More protein.

John:
And that's where the cost is. So you'll be like, "Wow, this is a great deal, 12 pounds for, just off the top of my head, $40, let's just say, versus this other one, which is eight pounds for 60 bucks. But the eight pound one has a lot more protein in it-

Glenn:
A lot more protein, that's what costs.

John:
... even in an eight-pound container. So that's something to consider.

Glenn:
Yeah. There is actually some other ingredients that they don't get include in their ingredient list at the bottom. There is creatine monohydrate, there's one gram of that. There's 500 milligrams of L-glutamine, 500 milligrams of glutamine peptides and then there's some choline, inositol and PABA at the end.

John:
Some B vitamins.

Glenn:
Some B vitamins. So you've got one gram of creatine, which-

John:
And that's on the two scoop serving, which again [crosstalk 00:05:45] you're not going to be able to do. So that's more window dressing than anything. You'd have to take your creatine separately to get it all.

Glenn:
Yeah, plus with all of the calories that you're getting outside of that, all the protein and all the carbs, the benefits probably not going to be there from that creatine. And then the glutamine is at a very low dosage.

John:
You're going to get naturally occurring glutamine from a whey protein, so that's not really concern. And the glutamine peptides, well, if you're somebody with celiacs, you should avoid it because the source on glutamine peptide almost always is going to be wheat gluten.

Glenn:
Yeah. Hydrolyzed wheat gluten.

John:
Yeah. So you're going to want to avoid that. It's okay. It's just somebody, if you have some digestive sensitivity, this is not going to be the product for you, if you have any lactose intolerance or you have celiacs where you can't handle wheat gluten. And the other creatine, about give five grams for most people. Again, it varies a little bit with body weight on creatine monohydrate of what you're going to want. You only get one, and if you do-

Glenn:
The two scoops.

John:
... the two scoops. So that's you're just probably going to get half a gram is really what it breaks down to. Again, if you're a super hard gainer, this is the way to go. I mean, it's fine, it's certainly all right. Other things people do is they'll just buy protein powders and they'll throw bananas and some oatmeal or things like that in there, if they want a little healthier source of carbohydrates. May not gain weight as well with that though because those carbs tend to burn a little slower, whereas you're not getting the big insulin spikes and stuff, so [crosstalk 00:06:57].

Glenn:
And another thing to remember too is that this is intended to be in addition to the calories you're already intaking.

John:
Yeah. This is not used to replace your-

Glenn:
Yeah. A lot of times people will drink this and they become full off of it and they don't eat for multiple hours, and then this just replaced their dinner or this replaced their breakfast. You don't want to do that. This needs to be taken in addition to everything else you're taking; otherwise, you're just replacing calories for calories.

John:
Yeah. Some people, what they'll do is if they're really hard gainers, they'll eat all day, do their protein shakes, eat a fair amount of calories. And if they have trouble, they'll do is eat at night, and then before bed take something like this and then sleep because you're at rest. That's another option too. Hopefully, answered all your questions on this product. If you have any other ones, please feel free to post them in the comments section of the video or in the blog. Also, you can find us at facebook.com/bestpricenutrition. Thank you.

Glenn:
Thank you.