Progenex fails to meet label claims (lab test verified)
By Anthony Roberts from www.anthonyroberts.info
Despite heavy marketing claims to the contrary, Progenex is far from being a wonder protein. It has been determined in multiple laboratory tests to not meet label claims, and furthermore, to not meet marketing and advertisement claims. I’ve said many times before, it’s just whey protein, with nothing special added.
According to lab tests, it doesn’t contain growth factors nor enhanced levels of amino acids, nor anything more than a commodity whey protein, the likes of which you can anywhere. When tested against Glanbia Nutritionals Thermax whey protein, it was found to have the same peaks and valleys. In other words, there is nothing in the lab data to suggest that Progenex has been fortified with anything extra, in terms of the label claims of having additional BCAA content (leucine, isoleucine, and valine).
Furthermore, laboratory testing has confirmed that, despite Progenex’s claims to the contrary, there is no basis for their claim that the product contains: ”…rare and elusive whey protein fractions found today…which are not available in any other product…”
Examining the financial evidence found in Progenex’s internal reports, an objective observer would need to question how a company with a research and development budget of $25k, would gain exclusive access to whey fractions that couldn’t be found in products manufactured by multi-billion dollar companies (for example, Glanbia Nutritionals, the dairy company whos own Optimum Nutrition and many other companies).
As you can see in the following lab test provided by San Rafael Chemical Services (Progenex, sample # 1101017 is the first graph, Glanbia Thermax, sample # 1101018 is the second), the peaks and valleys match:
What we see in both lab tests is a fairly steady climb, a major peak in the middle surrounded by lesser peaks, followed by a decline in peaks. The peaks in the retention windows are minimal and indicate sample constituents other than free amino acids – if an ergogenic or beneficial dose of BCAA were added, the retention window would look much different (as it would if there were “fractions” unavailable in any other product).
In other words, if Progenex contained something unavailable in other products, or extremely high levels of one or more BCAAs (leucine, isoleucine, or valine), we’d see a huge spike in the first chart that would be absent on the second. As that is clearly not the case, we can safely conclude that Progenex does not contain a noteworthy amount of additional amino acids, BCAA or otherwise, above and beyond commodity whey hydrolysate.
And, as you can see from the following lab test, done by Ray-Biotech of Norcross, VA, it doesn’t contain any additional growth factors, either:
Quite frankly, although I’m willing to concede that Glanbia happens to produce a high quality whey hydrolysate, I’m also obligated to say that you can find this stuff in Optimum Nutrition’s HydroWhey, and you can get over ten pounds of the stuff for (120 servings) for less than a month’s supply of Progenex. Oh…and HydroWhey actually DOES contain added BCAAs, unlike Progenex.
Progenex is not a wonder supplement. It’s not worth the money. And it fails to meet label claims as well as the claims made on the website and by company representitives. While some people might want to give Progenex the benefit of the doubt, and speculate that their supplier(s) or manufacturer could be at fault, my intuition is that since the CEO (Darren Meade) has been sued successfully for over a million dollars in fraud, as has Adam Zuckerman (who plead guilty to criminal fraud of $20 million dollars), there is a much more obvious reason that the product fails to meet label claims.
