Our nutritionalist Kate Harrison examines two heavyweight greens powders as we put Athletic Greens Vs Organifi in a head to head comparison. Find out which one comes out on top below…
I really like a lot of greens supplements. They represent a fantastic way to plug any deficits in your daily diet. We all have the them, those gaps – this vitamin, that mineral, this probiotic… we could all do with a good baseline that covers everything.
However, greens do more than this. Otherwise, they would be on a par with any dollar store multivitamin. To call them a baseline doesn’t do them justice.
Rather, they represent the best way to fully optimize your diet – they can give you more energy, make it easier to maintain a healthy body composition, improve your cognitive health, your gut health, your digestive health… they can significantly reduce your risk of suffering from a wide range of chronic diseases.
They are super (quite literally, actually, as most of them contain liberal amounts of various superfoods).
Today, I’d like to take a look at two pillars of the greens community. I want to compare one of my favorite supplements of all time, Athletic Greens, or AG1, with Organifi, a relative newcomer to the market.
Is Organifi a pretender to the throne, or is it a genuine candidate to take AG1’s seat at the head of the table? We are going to find out as we pitted Athletic Greens Vs Organifi.
Athletic Greens or Organifi?
On one side, we have Athletic Greens. As I mentioned above, it’s one of my favorite supplements. It is filled with vitamin and mineral rich ingredients, gives you a great load of antioxidant-rich greens along with mushrooms, probiotics, and plenty more. In fact, it has over seventy ingredients in total, making it one of the most well-rounded, most fully complete food supplements money can buy.
Then there is Organifi, a newcomer that has blown up on social media in recent years. With millions of fans, it is no small contender. Though its ingredients list is a lot shorter than AG1’s (it would have to be – I can’t think of any supplements with more!), it still packs a punch. It is full of goodness. You get healthy doses of popular greens ingredients like chlorella and wheatgrass.
Both brands are remarkable for the stringent advocacy of their fan bases.
Athletic Greens
Athletic Greens was founded by Chris Ashenden in 2009. In the years since, it has acquired a reputation for being amongst the most recognizable, highest quality greens powders on the market. Ashenden saw a gap in the supplement worlds (and, most vitally, the many gaps left in most people’s diets). He therefore launched AG1, thinking it up as a bit of a personal passion project.
It is nowadays one of the most popular greens powders going. I would go so far as to say that all, or at least most, other greens powders are measured against it. I know I tend to measure similar products up to it, most often finding them wanting.
It contains a laundry list of 75 top tier ingredients, including probiotics, to really allow you to make the most of your health. It is suitable for vegans and anyone else following a plant-based diet, it mixes well and tastes lovely, either in water, smoothies, or protein shakes, and represents a great addition to any athlete’s dietary regime (though it is more than appropriate for anyone.)
There are a couple of niggles with it, of course. Being one of the most well rounded supplements available, it is expensive. They also hide a lot behind the veil of ‘proprietary blends’. This means that, although they tell you everything that goes into it, they don’t tell you the exact quantities of individual ingredients. There is no way of knowing how much of each ingredient each serving contains.
These are relatively minor concerns. I don’t like products being overpriced. However, this isn’t. The cost is a little eye-watering, but it’s fully in line with its competition and befits its profile. And I can vouch for its efficacy. Even if we can’t tell how effective the dosage of each ingredient might be, there is no question that the formula as a whole works incredibly well.
Organifi
Organifi has its roots in social media. It began on YouTube as a juicing regime thought up by Drew Canole, who at the time was something of a health advocate. This social media presence worked very much in their favor, of course, giving Canole a fantastic vehicle for rapid growth.
They offer a few different products, including their red juice, gold tea, protein, and of course the Organifi Green Juice Go packs. You can get them individually or as bundles.
Either way, you will get premium ingredients mixed perfectly to give you some serious health benefits. Of course, I’m more focused on their greens, here – they are the only product in their range comparable to Athletic Greens. I’ve got to say that I’m impressed, which is rare when comparing something to a product like AG1.
Organifi’s greens deliver 12 separate superfoods, all designed to optimize health and wellbeing. They are USDA certified organic, which is a plus for many (though it comes at a premium). It doesn’t taste as nice as Athletic Greens, but then I’ve yet to come across a greens supplement that does. Everything is hidden behind a proprietary blend here, too, which is a shame.
And, as above, it comes at a premium. There are far cheaper greens supplements out there.
The Ingredients
The difference in any greens supplement will largely come down to the ingredients they use, particularly the active ingredients. For example, most of AG1’s hitting power comes from that extensive list of 75 ingredients. Organifi can, however, pack its own punch.
Each formula is packed with goodness. You get a good selection of vitamins, minerals, and added perks, alongside some truly potent adaptogens and probiotics – everything you need to optimize your health, in short.
Athletic Greens
First of all, I really want to underline the scope of Athletic Greens’ formula. With seventy separate ingredients in its list, it is one of the widest ranging, most comprehensive supplements I have ever come across. That cannot be sniffed at – it cannot be taken for granted.
These seventy five ingredients aren’t just arbitrarily thrown in – far from it. They are incredibly well thought out, split across four separate blends.
The first is their raw superfood complex. It is nutrient dense and fully alkaline, with plenty of greens, including the likes of wheatgrass juice, chlorella, powdered spirulina, spinach, and barley leaf. You also get some fruits and other vegetables, such as goji berry, blueberry, and beetroot. It gives you some antioxidant rich ingredients, too, like green tea leaf and cocoa bean polyphenol extracts.
Then there is the full antioxidant blend, with a great emphasis on adaptogens – herbs like ginseng, rhodiola rosea, ashwagandha, and milk thistle seed all make their presence known.
Third, we have a super mushroom complex, rich in digestive enzymes. It contains astragalus root extract, burdock root powder, bromelain, shiitake mushroom powder, and reishi mushroom powder.
Finally, you get a big probiotic punch from it. This is from the inclusion of lactobacillus acidophilus and Bifidobacterium bifidum, two of the best, gut health ingredients going. Combined, you get 7.2 billion probiotic bacteria, which will keep your microbiome in the best of health.
Each serving delivers forty calories, split across 4.8 grams of carbs, of which 1.9 grams are fiber, and 4 grams of protein.
This isn’t the end of it, of course. I don’t have the space to go through all of the ingredients – these are simply some of the heavier hitters. There is also a great volume and variety of vitamins and minerals on offer.
You get 35 percent of your daily selenium, 20 percent of your daily chromium and manganese, and 100 percent of your daily zinc in one serving, alongside at least 100 percent of your recommended daily intake of vitamin C (actually, seven times your RDA, here), B-vitamins, K2, and vitamin E, with eighty percent of your vitamin A.
It’s fantastically impressive.
Organifi
As above, Organifi is no slouch. Though it struggles to keep pace with AG1 (what supplement doesn’t?), it still gives you a lot.
Again, we see a few different blends at work, here. They are intelligently put together, well thought out, and all designed to complement one another.
Firstly, you get an alkaline greens blend. It includes chlorella, wheatgrass, moringa oleifera (or horseradish tree leaf), spirulina, and matcha green tea. This all weighs in at 5.1 grams, though, as it’s a proprietary blend, there is no way of knowing the ratios and proportions.
Secondly, there is the super food blend. This includes ashwagandha root extract, coconut water powder, beet root, and turmeric.
You also get a good dose of prebiotic fiber, alongside orange, lemon, and mint flavoring.
One of the things I really admire in Organifi is their iron content. It gives you 11 percent of your RDA where Athletic Greens gives you none. It may therefore be a good shout for anybody struggling with anemia (iron deficiency). This is about it for micronutrients, however – you get basically trace amounts of sodium and calcium, with no added vitamins at all.
I would recommend you take it in conjunction with a cheap multivitamin to make up for this shortfall.
A single serving gives you 30 calories, split between 2 grams of protein, just over 4 grams of carbs, of which 4 grams are fiber.
Athletic Greens vs Organifi: Which is better to live with?
Athletic Greens is without a doubt the best tasting greens powder I’ve ever come across. It’s all too common for greens powders to taste like they were scooped out the back of an industrial lawnmower – grassy with a little chemical residue, or something like it anyway. Even better tasting ones layer nice flavors over the grassiness, partially masking but not getting rid of it.
That isn’t the case with AG1. Far from it, in fact. It tastes lovely, like a proper milkshake or juice.
It also blends nicely. You will often see a bit of a scuzzy head on a greens drink. It will be frothy and a little bit bubbly. This is largely gas. It is a little unappetizing and can feel funny going down your throat. It will also deliver a whole load of gas right into your stomach, leading to bloating and flatulence.
Again, this isn’t so with AG1. It is smooth and relatively ungassy – this alone would make it my favorite greens powder. It is far easier to live with than most.
This being said, Organifi isn’t too bad. It’s certainly better than a great many similar products. It is far grassier than AG1 – you can really taste the wheatgrass that sort of underpins the whole formula. However, it comes with a nice array of flavors, as above – you can get it in organic orange, lemon, mint, or monk fruit. I would personally recommend the mint. The others try to hide the grassiness. The mint plays into it nicely, giving you a fresh earthiness that is a lot nicer than it might sound, especially when ground up with ice.
It’s actually not that far off mint tea, which nobody can really complain about. It’s not quite as nice as AG1, but it’s certainly pleasant to drink.
It doesn’t blend up as nicely as AG1, either. You do get a bit of bubbliness on top. This will mean a little gas in your belly. However, though it isn’t as good as AG1, it’s still far better than a lot of greens powders I’ve tried.
How Do They Compare On Price?
This is where Organifi pulls ahead slightly. Neither are cheap, however.
Let’s start with Athletic Greens. A bag will give you thirty servings. Depending on multi-buy discounts and clever deals, you can pay anything from around $90 – $100 per bag. That sets you a minimum of around three dollars per scoop.
That’s very expensive for a daily supplement.
However, if you get it on monthly subscription, you can get it for more like $2.50 per serving. It’s still steep, and you’re tied into it, but it’s at least a little cheaper.
Organifi also comes with thirty servings as standard per purchase, this time in a tub. Each will usually set you back around $70-$80. This means a little over two dollars per serving. Again, you can sometimes find multi-buy discounts and subscription offers.
It is far more affordable, if still on the pricier side of things.
However, you get what you pay for, as the adage goes. You pay a dollar or so less per serving of Organifi because you’re getting at least a dollar less quality.
Verdict
The exhaustive ingredients list that underpins AG1 is phenomenal. The vitamins and minerals are excellent. Organifi simply can’t compete with it.
You will be getting far greater health and wellness benefits from AG1 for the sake of an extra dollar per day.
It isn’t all about quality of product, either. Perhaps it should be but it isn’t. You have to take this day in, day out, no matter how you’re feeling. It needs to be easy to live with. It needs to be pleasant and free from bloat, flatulence, or any other gas based side effects.
You will have a nicer time of it with AG1 than with Organifi. It’s also got a better nutrient profile. The extra money is worth paying.
So if the price isn’t a factor for you then opt for AG-1, however, if you are on a slightly tighter budget then Organifi has plenty to offer.
Written by Kate Harrison
Kate is one of our nutrition experts at PathMed and is also one of our in-house writers. There is little that gets past Kate when it comes to nutrition and she has a wealth of experience when it comes to fat loss and supplementation around losing weight. She is thorough in her research and is a real advocate for living a healthy lifestyle.