Shakeology

Shakeology Meal Replacement Shake

Shakeology is well-known and popular choice for a meal replacement shake. It’s brought to you by Beachbody, the creators of popular in-home fitness workouts P90X and Insanity. Based on the reputation of these workout programs alone, without doing any research on the shake itself, one could initially assume that this is an effective, high quality meal replacement shake. These workouts definitely aren’t for everyone and are insanely intense and difficult, but they also produce impressive results when you stick with them. This is a review website though, and we’re not crazy about assumptions. Naturally, we have to dig deeper.

Price

This well-known product may be popular, but it is expensive. At $130 for a monthly supply, the numbers add up fast. Theoretically you could stop buying the shakes once you reached your goal, but depending on how much you want to lose, that could end up costing many, many hundreds of dollars! For many people, this shake simply isn’t affordable.

Let’s take a look at their top seller, Vanilla formula. With over 70 high quality and unique ingredients, it’s a powerhouse. All of these ingredients aid increasing energy, and improving digestion and regularity, while simultaneously providing you the necessary nutrients, vitamins and minerals that you need in your daily diet. To the manufacturer’s credit, there are no “evil” nutrients here, only powdered vestiges of healthy fruits and plants in minuscule and insignificant quantities.

Sounds like a recipe for weight loss. Additionally, each serving of Shakeology Vanilla contains 16 grams of protein and 130 calories. This is a reasonable amount of protein and calories. There are shakes out there with less, but considering that this shake is replacing an entire meal, 130 calories is a good number. This meal replacement shake includes a mix of super-fruit and antioxidant ingredients like camu-camu, acai, goji berry, and green tea. Their website states that these sort of ingredients “promote a healthy heart and optimal blood pressure.” The shake also contains pre- and probiotic ingredients such as yacon root and amylase, to promote healthy digestion and regularity.

What is Fructose and why is it in Shakeology?

Unfortunately there is a significant factor that, in our opinion, lowers our overall opinion of this shake.  At the very bottom of the ingredients list on the Vanilla shake, we see that fructose is listed. Fructose (a form of sugar) has become controversial as of late.

1. Fructose rapidly causes leptin resistance. Leptin is a hormone that controls appetite and metabolism to maintain a normal weight. Leptin resistant people tend to gain fat and become obese really easily.

So much so that the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition has conducted studies that suggest similar findings of weight gain. That being said, it’s not clear what the effect fructose has in this meal replacement shake. Regardless, in our opinion, the sugar level is a bit high at 7 grams per serving for a meal replacement shake, particularly in comparison to the 1 or 2 grams in some other meal replacement shakes.

Bottom line: Save your money as there are less expensive low sugar, high quality shakes out there. At $130 a month, you can purchase a plethora of fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds. You’ll get the nutrients you need from real food, and still have cash left over to spend on a less expensive shake.