Gainful Protein is a personalized protein and supplement brand. The company claims that users can "customize...products, flavors and ingredients to ensure your products work for you."

But what does "personalized protein" mean? Does it yield better results? Does Gainful protein contain any unhealthy ingredients? And is Gainful better or worse than popular protein powder brands like Ryse?

In this article we'll answer all of these questions and more, as we share our thoughts on whether or not Gainful is likely to be more effective (or safe) than regular protein powder.

We'll also analyze the ingredients in Gainful Protein to give our take on whether or not it's healthy, share our concerns about the "personalized" protein claims, and compare Gainful to other popular protein powder brands to pick our winners (and losers).

Key takeaways:

• Green tea extract may support weight loss
• We can't find evidence that "personalized" protein is science-backed
• We do not currently recommend Gainful

Gainful Protein Ingredient Analysis

The ingredients in Gainful Lean Whey Protein are shown below:

image source: https://www.gainful.com/

Green tea extract is the only ingredient in Gainful's weight loss protein powder that we can find research backing for in regard to weight loss.

High dose green tea extract (856.8 milligrams per day) was shown to cause 2.43 pounds of weight loss after 12 weeks in a clinical trial published in the Clinical Nutrition journal.

But while green tea extract appears to be effective for weight loss, it comes with some potential safety concerns.

As we documented in our review of another supplement brand called Arbonne, green tea extract has been shown to cause liver injury in some consumers.

The protein content in this protein powder is effectively-dosed for muscle building at 20 grams (g), but we don't currently recommend this product due to our concerns about green tea extract.

Is "Personalized" Protein More Effective?

We consider "personalized" protein powder to be more of a marketing play than a scientific consideration.

Consider that the weight loss and the weight gain formulations sold by Gainful have the exact same amount of calories.

We would expect the weight gain formulation to have more calories, since gaining weight is a simple, thermodynamic process that involves consuming more calories than are expended. 

Another thing we find to be confusing about Gainful's "personalized" formulations is that the "Build Muscle" protein powder has a lower protein dose than the weight gain or the weight loss formulations.

Given that higher levels of dietary protein intake are clinically shown to enhance muscle building in athletes, we would expect the "Build Muscle" formulation to have the highest protein dose of the three formulations.

We can't find any clinical evidence, published by Gainful or elsewhere, suggesting that their unique formulation approach is more effective than regular protein powder for muscle building or recovery.

But is Gainful overpriced compared to the competition? We'll provide a cost comparison in the next section of this article.

Is Gainful Overpriced?

Protein is sold at a wide range of per-serving doses and total serving sizes, so as a value to consumers, we'll provide a price comparison between Gainful and other popular protein brands per-20-grams-protein below:

Orgain: $2.71

Gainful: $2.14

Optimum Nutrition: $1.44

Body Fortress: $1.23

We consider Gainful to be overpriced, because as shown above, it's nearly twice the per-gram protein price compared to other popular protein powder brands, and we can't identify any evidence that Gainful is more effective.

Gainful vs. Popular Proteins

Here's how Gainful compares to other popular protein powder brands in terms of formulation quality, in our opinion:

Ryse

Contains an artificial sweetener which is clinically shown to damage insulin function.

However, we still consider Ryse Protein's formulation to be safer than Gainful, because it's free of green tea extract.

Winner: Ryse

Gold Standard Whey

Gold Standard Whey Protein, sold by Optimum Nutrition, is arguably the most popular whey protein supplement in the US.

This protein powder contains inactive ingredients we consider to be unhealthy, as documented in the above-linked review.

However, it has no ingredients we consider potentially dangerous like green tea extract, so we give Gold Standard the advantage from a safety perspective.

Winner: Gold Standard Whey

Truvani

This vegan protein powder is one of the healthiest that we've reviewed to date on Illuminate Health.

It is free of any ingredients we consider to be unhealthy, and it's composed entirely of whole foods and spices.

Winner: Truvani

Our Clean Protein Picks

MBG Whey Protein Isolate+ is our top overall protein powder.

Whey protein is a "complete" protein, meaning it contains all nine essential amino acids.

Anthony's Organic Hemp Protein is our top vegan protein pick.

It's extremely nutrient-dense, providing 25% of the Daily Value (DV) of iron and 8% of the DV of potassium.

Both of the products recommended in this section are free of ingredients that we consider to be unhealthy.

Gainful Protein Pros and Cons

Pros:

• Effective protein dose
• Options based on dietary restrictions
• Options based on flavor
  

Cons:

• Weight loss formulation contains green tea extract
• Green tea extract dose is not published in ingredients list
• Very expensive per-gram-protein
• Less healthy than competitors
• We can't find evidence that "personalized" protein is better than regular
• Weight loss and weight gain formulations contain same calories

Conclusion

Gainful is one of a number of personalized health brands that have exploded in popularity recently.

While there are some benefits to personalized nutrition such as convenience of avoiding specific allergens, we're unconvinced that personalized protein powder is more likely to be effective than traditional protein powder for muscle building.

We're also confused that the weight loss and the weight gain base formulations contain the same calorie count, given that calories are arguably the most important criteria for weight loss or weight gain.

Gainful costs significantly more per-gram-protein than some other popular protein powders that we reviewed in this article.

Gainful's weight loss formulation contains green tea extract which is clinically shown to cause weight loss, but which we consider to be a questionable ingredient from a safety perspective, given that it can cause liver injury at high doses in rare cases.

We consider Ryse, Gold Standard Whey and Truvani to be healthier protein powder options.