ELISSA NADWORNY, HOST:
Americans are obsessed with protein. What once was more of a niche interest has gone thoroughly mainstream. Just check your local grocery store - beef jerky, protein-boosted milk and yogurts, even soon protein Pop-Tarts and Doritos. And of course, there are tons of protein powders. They're commonly made from whey, which is derived from milk, or from pea protein. And according to a Consumer Reports analysis, they likely contain something else - toxic heavy metals, especially lead. Investigative reporter Paris Martineau joins us now to share what they've learned. Welcome.
PARIS MARTINEAU: Thanks so much for having me.
NADWORNY: OK, so, first of all, I have to confess that I am one of those Americans that is obsessed with protein. I actually had some protein powder in my smoothie this morning. So this is personal. Do I need to throw out my protein powder? Like, how alarmed should consumers be?
MARTINEAU: Yeah, there's no reason for anyone to panic. What we basically found is we tested 23 popular protein powders and shakes, and we found that for more than two-thirds of the products that we analyzed, a single serving of them contained more lead than what our food safety experts say is safe to consume in a day. Some of the products had more than 10 times the level that our experts say is safe.
NADWORNY: That sounds bad.
MARTINEAU: I mean, it's not good. I will say that. Given that, some of the products we tested are fine to have occasionally, and even the ones with the highest lead levels are far below the concentration needed to cause immediate harm. The real risk with lead is, even if you are exposed to kind of low levels consistently over time, that lead could kind of build up in the body and eventually cause problems farther down the line. So I'd say the advice is more scrutinize your protein shakes and take a look at what you're using to make an informed decision rather than immediately freak out.
NADWORNY: And maybe, it sounds, lay off. I mean in the sense of, like, not having it every day or not having it three times a day.
MARTINEAU: That's one of the things that surprised me personally, reporting out this story, is, like you and like many Americans, I was, like, really worried that I wasn't getting enough protein. I...
NADWORNY: Yeah.
MARTINEAU: ...Totally bought into the protein mania. But talking to nutrition experts and researchers in protein, the thing I heard again and again is, for the average person, you can very easily get all the protein you need from eating whole foods, and it's - it doesn't make much sense to turn towards protein supplements.
NADWORNY: So you said you tested 23 powders and premade shakes. How did you decide to test those products?
MARTINEAU: Yeah, so we worked with kind of a market research team within Consumer Reports to identify some of the best-selling protein powders and shakes available at a variety of different brands, from places like Amazon or Walmart. But also, kind of, we also bought some of the shakes in person at health food stores or supermarkets. And then we took those, made sure that we got a couple different samples of each product that represented at least two - I guess two to three different lots of the product, and then sent them off to the lab to be analyzed.
NADWORNY: So people can go and check your reporting to see if their products were tested, but broadly, are there certain types of protein products that are more likely to have lead and other toxic metals in them?
MARTINEAU: Yeah. So, generally speaking, plant-based protein products emerged as a point of concern. Like, nearly all of the plant-based products we had - we tested had elevated lead levels. The lead levels we found in plant-based protein products were, on average, nine times the amount found in those made of, like, dairy proteins like whey and twice as great as beef-based proteins. When it came to, I guess, the protein powders and shakes made with whey or dairy-based proteins, those generally had the lowest amounts of lead.
NADWORNY: OK.
MARTINEAU: But still, half the products we tested had high enough levels of contamination that our experts advise against taking them daily.
NADWORNY: Paris Martineau, investigative reporter for Consumer Reports, thank you so much.
MARTINEAU: Thanks so much. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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