Trader Joe’s Green Protein

Gloopy, Green & Glucose-Rich

Pleasantly surprising. Looking at the murky green glop in this bottle, you have to wonder why they didn’t opt for an opaque container instead. Just look at it: too drab to be fecund, to green to pass itself off as good tasting. It has the exact same look as pond scum, and the cut rate labeling on the bottle only enhances the feeling that this product comes from far back corner of the Trader Joes factory, where light bulbs flicker and the machines are slowly breaking down.

What’s the surprise? It’s sweet. Really sweet – like thick apple juice cut with banana and mango, which is, basically, what it is. Underneath, the bitter tones of the wheatgrass juice and other healthy stuff occasionally poked through, but never becoming unpleasant.

This overall sweetness is what turned me off. I live in America, man, finding sweetened fluids is no chore. I basically spend all day sipping on, purchasing, or watching advertisements for a broad spectrum of sweetened fluids. When I pick up a cheap looking bottle of wet green stuff, it’s because I’m ready to teach my tongue a lesson for leading me down those candied alleys. When I pick up something healthy, I mentally prepare myself for a certain degree of nasty taste. If it didn’t taste at least a little bad, how would I know it was good for me?

I feel like this is a product that doesn’t know what it wants. The look of it makes me imagine it lining the microfridges of hard-core vegans, but the taste is hamburger-joe friendly. It advertises itself as protein, but only delivers 10g of the stuff while its flashier competitors, sitting right next to it, offer 16g and 20g of protein. It feels like a product that was focused grouped into no-man’s land, or a hold out from a more primitive age.

Would I recommend it? No.

Would I buy it again? No.

Final Synopsis: A protein-ish drink that tastes good, to its own detriment.