Garden of Life Vegan Protein Powder - Organic Plant-Based Meal Replacement Shake with Pea Protein, Greens & Probiotics - Vanilla Chai Flavor - Dairy Free, Gluten Free - 28 Servings for Women & Men - Perfect for Post-Workout Recovery, Weight Management & Healthy Lifestyle

First off, the short version: This is the worst tasting stuff I've ever actually put in my mouth, and I just ordered another tub.It's amazing what the human body can get used to. Seriously. The taste is bad. Like ground up elephant dung mixed with sand.A little about me: 38, used to be in shape, then got kinda fat and decided to do something about it which entailed T-25 and an improved diet. I also waited to write this review until after I had finished my first tub of Raw Meal and went to regular protein powder instead so that I could compare the results. Let it be known that I am not a raw foods, vegan, vegetarian, health or excersize nut or anything like that. Just a regular guy trying to correct years of eating and drinking whatever it occoured to me at the time to consume.Part of my diet is a breakfast smoothie, which is where this product came in. I read the reviews (just like you) and decided to give it a go because I had no intention of drinking it straight, but instead was planning to mix it as an ingredient in my smoothie. The other things I blend in my smoothie include ice, juice, almondmilk, frozen berries, ground flax, and chia seeds. The first day I added this to my smoothie, I thought someone must have mixed up at the Raw Meal factory and put ground up latex paint in a tub and sent it over. Awful. Really bad. Anyway, I got that choked down, and decided to try it again the next day...and the day after that...and so on. Every day it got slightly less bad and eventually became something I got used to like paying taxes, going to the dentist, or spending time with my in-laws.The problem started one day when I made my wife's smoothie too thick (Did I mention that I make a smoothie for both of us in the morning? The only difference between them is that she refuses to drink the Raw Meal and instead gets regular vanilla protein powder.) and had to drink it down a little to put more liquid in. OMG. It tasted like licking angel tears off a unicorn's horn. I couldn't believe it. So good. Then I mixed up my Raw Meal smoothie and cried.I finished my Raw Meal about 2 weeks ago, and went back to regular protein powder. There really is no compairison when it comes to taste. The only way they could make the Raw Meal taste worse would be if they somehow added durian fruit to it. New problem is that taste isn't the only thing to consider here. With the protein powder, I'm HUNGRY in an hour. With the Raw Meal, I wasn't hungry for lunch until early afternoon. Now whether this is because it keeps you from feeling hungry because it's so great, or because it makes you a little nauseous for several hours is up for debate. All I can say is that I'm eating a bunch more food now than I was when Raw Meal was part of my diet.Now lets do some Pros and Cons:Cons:Absolutely everything that has to do with sensory percetion of Raw Meal. Taste, smell, sight, texture, etc. They are all really bad. Have I made that clear? Only some vegan who'd given up on life would think this stuff tastes good.Pros:Everything else. Feel better. Full for longer. Eat less. Poop better. Etc.It's really a good product, it just tastes like the south end of a north bound rhino.A couple of things I've found to make it tollerable:Mix it with more liquid than it reccommends. This stuff is THICK and gets thicker the longer it sits. If you were to let it sit for an hour, you could probably lay bricks with it.Never mix a banana with it. Bananas make it WAY thicker than it already is. You'd have to eat it with a spoon.Drink it kinda quickly. No need to sit around and sip this stuff.I never even tried it without mixing it in a smoothie, and I never will. Do yourself the same favor, and at least put some juice or something with it.In conclusion, if taste is important to you, look elsewhere. If you can deal with putting this in your mouth and are more interested in the nutritional benefits, you can't beat this product. Understand that your body will get used to it if you force it to. You'll probably be glad you did.A few years ago, I tried ordering Shakeology, and actually loved the convenience of a healthy powder blend that I could use to whip up a healthy smoothie. The only problem? The price. It costs more than $130 for a 30 serving bag of the stuff! Also, I recently discovered that I have a sensitivity to dairy, so any products with whey protein are out. So, I stopped ordering it, and there weren't any comparable products on the market at that time for me to order.I recently wanted to find an alternative to Shakeology and found a couple of products that have the same idea in mind but at about a quarter of the price. I stuck with vegan products because I can't have whey protein. Also, I needed a product that was gluten free because of my gluten sensitivity. The two products are the Garden of Life RAW Organic meal replacement shake (in Slightly Sweet because I don't like stevia), and the Nutiva Organic Plant Protein Superfood 30 Shake (Vanilla). Here is my comprehensive review of the two.Price:Buying a jar of both of these powders will run you at about $40. The only difference is that the Nutiva shake has 18 servings per jar and GoL has 30 servings per jar. GoL also tends to be a little bit cheaper, depending on which flavor you get.Winner: GoL - 30 servings for less than $40 is a BARGAIN compared to Shakeology!Nutrient Macros:A scoop of either of these blends is going to be about 125 calories. The only difference is that the GoL has a little more fiber, and Nutiva has a little more healthy fat. Both brands have 20g of vegan protein, are still fairly high in fiber, and are low sugar.Winner: Tie.Ingredients:Here's where I am really impressed with the Garden of Life version. There are just dozens of health foods crammed into this powder that it is really reminiscent of Shakeology. Every ingredient comes from a pronounceable food, with the exception being the addition of digestive enzymes and probiotics (1.5 billion CFUs or colony forming units per scoop). I am a bit of a health nut, and seeing all of these healthy ingredients just makes me jazzed! In nearly every category here, GoL beats Nutiva. With two exceptions: flax seed meal and proteins from grains. I have to be really careful about what I eat because I have a mild form of crohn's disease that flares when I eat something I'm sensitive to. Something in the GoL powder causes me to react, and though I think it is the flax seed meal, it could also be the protein from rice, which can also cause celiac sufferers to flare. That being said, I am a rare case, and I am truly impressed with GoL here.Nutiva is also a great shake, with lots of grain free protein, digestive enzymes, and probiotics as well, though the ingredient list is about half as diverse as GoL.Winner: GoL by a landslide.Taste:Here is the kicker. I want to make this abundantly clear: these are HEALTH drinks, not a vanilla milkshake. Anything you make with these products is not going to taste like a milkshake. There are tons of reviews for both products about how bad it tastes. To be honest with you, I enjoy the taste of healthy things. And if you blend it up with some fruit for natural sweetness, they become downright delicious!Here's another thing: yes, I have been eating healthy for a long time, and I have a high tolerance for bitterness and grittiness when it comes to these powders. But as you put more healthy foods in your body, it begins to heal, and your brain will actually start to crave things that you used to hate. A perfect example for me is avocados. I couldn't stand avocados, but I ate them in whatever way I could stomach them because I knew they were good for you. In about a month, I got to the point where I craved them regularly! Sometimes you have to just push through the initial dislike before reaching nirvana. I think it is worth it!Okay, now that we have that aside, I'll compare the tastes one by one. I went with the Slightly Sweet flavor of RAW Meal, and I genuinely loved it! But I also blended it with other things! A typical smoothie for me consisted of unsweetened almond milk, RAW meal, some pumpkin seeds, some greens, and about a cup and a half of dark berries. This usually resulted in the perfect amount of sweetness for me, which is about the sweetness of 70% dark chocolate (slightly sweet but also bitter). Yum! The best part about blending it with other ingredients is that it also covers up the slight grittiness of the powder. Vegan proteins are never going to be as smooth as whey. The only downside to the RAW Meal powders is that you only have two options for sweetness: sweetened with stevia, and sweetened with sugar. There isn't a sweetener free option.The Nutiva shake powder smells better than the RAW meal powder - almost like a healthy cake batter. But Nutiva is sweetener free (except for a small amount of monk fruit extract, which you do NOT taste). This means that you can add in natural sugars, like from fruit, and have your smoothie sweetened that way. I actually like this option, because I prefer to sweeten my smoothies with bananas, which would make the RAW meal smoothie too sweet. Nutiva is also a little bit gritty, about the same level as RAW Meal. However, I did always notice that I enjoyed the RAW Meal smoothies more than the Nutiva ones.Winner: GoL - though if you want a sweetener free option, Nutiva still tastes pretty good!Drinkability:This category is similar to the 'Taste' category, but here is where I want to mention that both are a little gritty. Also, some other reviews mentioned that the powders congealed when left too long. I never had this problem, but I have a high power blender and always drank my smoothies fresh.Winner: Tie - with slight edge toward GoL.Final Thoughts:I really really wanted RAW Meal to be my new go to drink. It tastes better, has more flavors, is more cost effective, and has an incredible ingredient profile despite still being organic. However, I personally can't drink it. The flax meal in it causes my crohn's disease to flare up. I also know people who can't eat rice, and they would also react to RAW Meal (though Nutiva does have a little bit of 'rice extract' in it, the people I know don't react to the rice extract in Nutiva).Both are great alternatives to add a little extra dose of healthy to your morning shake, and, even though I can't drink the one I really like, I am grateful that Nutiva created a product that someone with my disease can drink!I used to buy this when it wasn’t stupidly priced and loved it. It’s been a while and I’ve been searching around for a replacement without much luck so decided to swallow the price hike and order it again. I am hugely disappointed. It seems that along with a price increase has also driven substandard ingredients to further drive profit margins because this is no way the same product I was buying before! It is totally disgusting and not even remotely the same.Do not purchase this!!It is overpriced, revolting and a rip off.My husband and I both love it. We were taking Shakeology but ran out so we ordered Raw Organic Meal Replacement in Chocolate. It's so good! It tastes amazing with frozen bananas and peanut-butter and some almond milk. That's my husband's favourite recipe. I like to add cold coffee and almond milk for my morning pick-me-up. I also ordered the Vanilla Protein and it's very versatile. I like both and will probably order again. Shipping was fast and the containers came sealed and listed all the ingredients on the back. The label looks nice too. I like the product very much.Yummy, and extremely easy to digest... The ingredients are incredible....HOWEVER, this used to be around £35 ! This is a £20 price increase. This coincides with the company's acquisition by Nestle, who are obviously on a mission to price healthy foods out of existence. Nestle is a terrible company and this is very sad.The high protein raw organic nutritional powder from Garden of Life is delivered in a 35.9oz (approximately 1kg) plastic tub with a large screw-lock lid and is available in different flavours.This is basically organic plant protein with essential & branched chain amino acids & probiotics, very low in carbohydrate. The formulation is designed to be mixed-in with water, dairy milk or more usually with vegan alternatives such as almond or soy milk, and acts as a meal substitute.Some people don’t like the taste but I find it fine, even flavoursome and appetising. Scepticism about the claim that it ‘burns fat’ is justified, but as it’s protein-based it does reduce hunger and will help build muscle mass if you exercise regularly when taking the substance.The one gripe is the price, as it’s made in the USA and needs to be imported. But generally you get what you pay for.I normally by the Cacao/Chocolate version of this but as Amazon had it listed for an extortionate price for a number of weeks, I opted for the Vanilla. Having tried both, with the same measurements, I would definitely recommend the cacao/chocolate over this. This doesn't taste bad (to me), perhaps as I am used to and fond of the chocolate. It certainly isn't revolting, it doesn't have a strong smell either. The flavour is much more subtle than the cacao - it has just a hint of vanilla to it.The texture remains grainy and bitty and clumps together so requires a thorough mix (I highly recommend the blender bottle for this as the ball provided mixes it well). It can become gloopy if left to sit, and so I advise drinking it straight away and if you do happen to leave it for a while just add some water to dilute it and mix well.I do recommend this as a healthy meal replacement, it is not a milkshake and if that's what you are after, you should probably look elsewhere. If you are used to the highly flavoured protein shakes then this will come as an unwelcome shock to your tastebuds, as it isn't particularly sweet or flavoursome.