Product Review: Sci-Mx Nutrition

This time we're reviewing a UK based company, called Sci-Mx Sports Nutrition.
They offer a wide range of products to suit various goals: muscle building, advanced protein & weight management.

HARDCORE™ - The HARDCORE™ series is formulated for muscle mass, size and strength
LEANCORE™ - The LEANCORE™ series is formulated for lean muscle, size and definition
RIPPEDCORE™ - The RIPPEDCORE™ series is formulated for ultra-lean muscle definition

We got 3 samples to try out:

- 1 Pro2Go cookie, Double Choc Chip 
- 1 Pro2Go cookie, Strawberry & White Choc Chip
- 1 jar of X-Plode from the RIPPEDCORE™ series

Pro2Go Cookies

The first thing we liked about these cookies is that they are gluten free. You don't need to have celiacs disease to experience trouble with gluten, this can cause bloatiness, painful joints, foggy mind, mood swings, etc.

Packing 23 grams of protein, these cookies are up to par with a protein shake.
The rest of the nutritional profile is very promising:

Low in sugars, 2 grams of fibre and close to 10 grams of fat.
These are macros a regular cookie cannot compete against.

But what about taste? From experience with other protein cookies, taste can be a challenging area to score well in.

The Double Choc Chip holds up to its name, it's dark, the chips are clearly visible and the cookie feels dense.

After the first few bites, we were VERY pleased. The chocolate flavor is rich, the cookie is nice and chewy and there is no after-taste from the sweetener.
This is simply a delicious cookie you can eat guilt-free while adding more protein into you daily diet.

When trying the Strawberry & White Choc Chip, upon opening the wrapper the strawberry smell was clearly present, not too strong and smelled like real strawberries. Even though we're not big fans of fruity flavors, this cookie also did not disappoint.

Score: 5 out of 5



X-Plode - RIPPEDCORE™ series

It's called an Ultra-lean pre workout energy & pump amplifier and is meant to take before your work out, to improve energy, pump and reduce fatigue.
Like most pre workouts, it contains beta-alanine (more on that here) caffeine & amino acids amongst other ingredients.

The label is informative, a plus is that their blends are actually all written out, none of that vague stuff where you'll never know how much is really in a serving.

Interestingly enough, the label on the website also mentioned that a serving contains around 6 grams of protein, which is not mentioned on the jar itself.

It comes in 1 flavor, orange, and actually tastes really nice. Not extremely sweet, a nice pleasant orange taste.









We tried it a few times during a workout, experienced the typical tingles from the beta-alanine and had a nice focus the entire time.
Not jittery at all and no crash, this is a nice pre workout to add a nice kick to your work outs.

To conclude

We highly recommend Sci-Mx to anyone that wants to try a wide range of high quality products with a transparent label and good taste, something that is hard to find these days.

Use code NEW30 on your first order for a generous 30% off!

The Protein Bakery: a Review

If you haven't heard of The Protein Bakery yet, you will thank us after reading this article. You're welcome.
We discovered this company a short while ago and now all we can ask ourselves is: why not sooner??

The Protein Bakery has been around since 1999, and has been baking protein-rich cookies, brownies & blondies ever since. A while ago, The Protein Bakery UK started up, so that even more people could enjoy these protein rich goods, and we were able to order some as well!

Currently, The Protein Bakery doesn't ship internationally (yet) so we got our order via Cardiff Sports Nutrition. Also Predator Nutrition ships European-wide.

We got 5 different cookies/brownies:

- Black & White Blondie
- Chocolate Chip Brownie
- Walnut Brownie
- Oatmeal Ginger Raisin Cookie
- Chocolate Chip Cookie
(in bold are pictured)

Unfortunately, not all the products were "photo pretty", but in all honesty, does that really matter? We can describe our findings for each product separately, but that would become quite a repetitive post.
In short: All of them were amazing.

The ingredients & macros

Let's have a look at the ingredients and nutrition facts.
The first thing we notice, is the serving size.
For example, the Black & White Blondie contains 2 servings, but is actually packaged as 1 blondie. And we all know nobody eats half a blondie.

So to clear things up: 1 blondie is 380 calories, 20 grams of fat, 40 grams of carbs (34 grams of sugar) & 12 grams of protein.

At a first glance, the ingredients don't differ very much from regular brownies and cookies. However, they don't contain wheat or any GMO's, and don't contain ingredients you can't pronounce.
The dairy comes from the butter and whey protein, so people that are lactose intolerant might want to be careful.

To conclude

The baked goods by The Protein Bakery are all amazing, and if you have a real serving, all also provide a decent amount of protein, averaging between 8-12 grams.
However, just because they are marketed as high protein, that doesn't take away that they are still cookies & brownies, containing a fair bit of sugar and fat.

Are they delicious? Yes! Eat with caution? Yes, especially when you are trying to cut down on the calories.

Healthy Recipe Database

It's time to ditch the idea that healthy food should only induce a sigh and be tasteless. Let the Bodybuilding.com Healthy Recipe Database open your mind and stomach to more lip-smacking and muscle-fueling foods, while still helping you lose fat or gain muscle.

Whether you're looking for something to spice up a boring dish, new protein-infused breakfast ideas, a variety of delicious protein smoothies, or just want to look at delicious food pictures, our database has what you need for inspiring a healthy menu or new meal ideas. The best part is that you don't have to be a world-class chef to make your taste buds throw a wild party in celebration. And yes, they will fit your macros.

Continue reading at Bodybuilding.com

Reviewed & Approved: Pumped Up Pancakes

We love pancakes (who doesn't?) and we love protein, so when these 2 meet, something good must be happening. A while ago, we discovered Pumped Up Pancakes, a company based in California that makes a protein buttermilk pancake mix.

Their mix is gluten free, high protein and only needs water to make delicious, fluffy pancakes in a few
minutes. We got ourselves a bag and got into the kitchen.
One serving of 55 grams (1/2 a cup) makes about 4 pancakes and is 20 grams of protein.

They came out super nice and fluffy, and taste great even plain, but of course you can add toppings like Nutella (what we did) P28 Peanut butter for even more protein or Nuts 'n More.

A bag of Pumped Up Pancakes is $10.95, making about 12 pancakes total, but you can also use the mix for making waffles, shakes, breads or even muffins. Check out their recipe page for more inspiration.

We give Pumped Up Pancakes a big 5 out of 5!
To order: www.pumpeduppancakes.com

Sweet Potato Protein Brownies

A nice chocolate fix can do a world of good, and if you can combine that with a decent amount of protein & potassium, you know you struck gold.

This recipe was created a bit on the fly, and came out surprisingly good.

Ingredients:

It's not pretty, but tastes good!

200 grams sweet potato, cooked
100 grams banana
175 grams liquid egg whites
50 grams of chocolate protein powder (we used Carnivor)
50 grams of coconut flour
12 grams of cocoa powder (that was all we had left)
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp xanthan gum
1 tbsp xylitol

Ok, now there are 2 ways to go about this. The fist way is to be all professional and mix the wet together first, then mix in the dry ingredients, or, you can throw it all in a bowl, grab a hand mixer and mix it all into a batter. You choose, but in the end the batter should come out pretty thick.


Scoop it into a loaf pan, and bake on 170C for about 50 minutes. The "cake" puffed up quite a bit, but after taking it out of the oven, it sank in again to a brownie loaf.

<-- Top with your favorite topping for more calories & protein!

Macros for this recipe.

White Rice vs. White Potato

A staple in many bodybuilder's diet is white rice, since it's an easy way to add in carbs. Other reasons why it's used more often are that it's easy to cook, has a long shelf life and it's cheap.
However, there is another player in the field that doesn't get enough credit in our opnion: the white potato.

Let's organize a face-off between these two and see who comes out a winner shall we?

First off, both white rice and white potato have similar macros. A 100 grams for both comes out to about 95 calories, 20 grams of carbs, 2 grams of protein and 0 fat.





White rice
The vitamin & mineral content in white rice is virtually zero. You don't have to be a genius to see that rice simply serves as a supply of carbohydrates and nothing else. The stats below point that out quite clearly (per 100g)

Rice

White potato

Potato

The spud is a different story, next being a good source of vitamin C, B6 & manganese, it's also an excellent source of potassium. Potassium is your friend. The daily recommended dose is around 4700 mg, so a 200 gram serving of potato will take a chunk of that easily. To the right, the nutrients in white potato (per 100g)

To conclude

The white potato beats white rice by miles in terms of nutrients, the issue is that potato has a shorter shelf life, and can be a bit more work to prepare. But wait, is it really that hard? No. One of the easiest and quickest ways to cook a(ny) potato, is cut in half, poke a few holes in it and lay it with the skin up in a shallow plate with water. Zap in the microwave for 6 minutes and you're done.

Protein Chips? Yes please!

You might have heard about the latest sensation in protein land; Quest Nutrition recently launched their line of protein chips. These chips will satisfy the savory tooth, and adding in some extra protein at the same time.

Unfortunately, we haven't been able to get our hands on them yet, however we did did find some similar alternatives we'd like to share with you.

MyProtein - Protein Bites

These will give you just the right crunch you need, available in 3 flavors:
- Sour Cream & Spring Onion
- Spicy Paprika (nice kick!)
- Chargrilled Chicken

Our favorite is the Spicy Paprika, each bag contains quite an amount of chips, so it will last you for some time.

The macros are excellent, each serving of 30 grams comes out to about 110 calories, 2 grams of fat, 8 grams of carbs & 15 grams of protein.

Protein Snackers

The Protein Works - Protein Snackers

Available in 2 flavors:
- BBQ (favorite!!)
- Sour Cream & Onion
- the 3rd option is a mixed option

The macros on these crispies are quite similar, running 119 calories, 4 grams of fat, 4,7 grams of carbs & 13,5 grams of protein.




Conclusion

Are they the same as regular potato chips? No. But are these great, tasty alternatives with awesome macros? Hell yes!

Cellucor Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Whey Review

This review was long overdue, since the new flavor by Cellucor, Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough has
already been available for a while, but we still wanted to give our 2 cents on this flavor from our favorite supplement company.

The powder itself looks a lot like vanilla, but if you look closer, you can distinguish the chocolate chips in the powder. The taste resembles indeed the cookie dough flavor, although it's always hard to match the exact taste with protein powder. But if you would melt a pint of Ben & Jerry's Cookie Dough ice-cream and blend it up, this comes pretty close!

As usual, it mixes fantastic and tastes excellent with both water and (almond) milk.

The macros are the same as the other flavors, with 25 grams of protein per (35 gram) scoop.

This flavor is sold exclusively via GNC, or on the Cellucor website.

Once again, Cellucor manages to deliver a fantastic flavor, who knows what's next??

High Protein Bread Rolls

This is a great recipe if you're looking to add in some extra protein and want to avoid gluten. From a personal experience, gluten cause puffiness, bloating and often painful joints.

The coconut flour used in this recipe is also high in fiber and low carb, giving these bread rolls amazing macros.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup of coconut flour
5 tbsp of psyllium husk
This ingredient is important, it makes the rolls fluffy and gives it the bread-texture
1 tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder
8 egg-whites (240 ml) *
1 cup of boiling water

Heat the oven to 180C and lay out a cookie sheet or a sheet of baking paper on the oven rack.
Mix all the dry ingredients together first. In a separate bowl, mix the egg-whites with a hand mixer until a bit fluffy. Add the egg-whites to the dry mix and stir well. The dough should be a bit crumbly.
At the very last, add in the cup of boiling water, stirring it in quickly!

The result is a bit of a puffy dough, that you can make into 4 balls. Place on the baking sheet and bake in the oven for about 40 minutes, or until browned on the outside.

Top these rolls with Nuts 'n More almond butter for example, and you've got yourself a high protein snack!

* Liquid egg-whites are not as commonly available in Europe, but you can order them through Bulkpowders, they ship internationally and their products are high quality!