Grow! Review

Diet and Nutrition
1

I won the Beat Our Caption! Contest last week, and wanted to rub it in your guys’ face one last time. Actually this post is about Grow!

The contest was for Red Bands, but I traded my 1 bottle of Red Bands for 2 bottles of Low Carb Chocolate Grow! and an autographed pair of Shugart’s panties. (Hey, we had to make up the $3 difference somewhere.) True to his word, Chris mailed me the stuff. When I picked up a white package on my doorstep that smelled like Milk-Chocolate and Testes, it was like Christmas all over again.

Anyway, I had never used Grow! before last week. Quite frankly, I was skeptical. I’ve been reading T-Nation for a while and I?ve determined that either Biotest is hands-down the most honest and accommodating supplement company in the world, or they are ten times sneakier than anyone else.

How did you test Grow!

I used it in place of my “Ex” protein powder. 2 scoops w/ oatmeal in the Morning, and 2 scoops with water alongside 1 cup cottage cheese as a middle-of-night meal, 3-4 hours after I go to bed. I also did rear delt raises with the Grow! tubs, but a 10 or 25 lb tub would have been much more effective (Hint, hint.).

Pros:

  1. Nutrient Breakdown: Grow! contains Whey Protein Isolate, Calcium Caseinate, and Milk Protein Isolate. My other protein contained Whey Protein Isolate and Whey Protein Concentrate. The Grow! clearly is a better mixture from a nutritional standpoint. (Plus it contains a bunch of things I can’t pronounce like pyridoxine and cyanocobalamin, which I’m pretty sure are steroids that will make me hyooooge.) Kidding.

  2. Mixability: Grow! mixes very easily with water, even a small quantity of water. When I have my middle-of-night shake, I definitely don’t mix with anywhere near 16 oz of water, and it still tastes good and mixes well. With other proteins I have tried that contain sunflower oil, they clumped and took a good bit of finagling to mix completely. Definitely a plus at 3 AM.

Cons:

  1. Price:

Grow = ~32 servings @ $23.00 = ~$0.72 per scoop.
Other protein = ~ 85 servings @ $33.00 = ~$0.39 per scoop.

General comments:

Taste: I didn’t want to list this as a Con, because it really isn’t. Grow! tastes good, and given that they are working with more difficult (and better) proteins, the flavor is just dandy. But, it isn’t the best tasting Chocolate protein I’ve had. But quite frankly, I care about taste in a protein like a blind man cares about the color of his socks. I would eat a plateful of dirt if I thought it would be beneficial to my training or physique.

Bottom line:

At almost twice as expensive as my former protein, I don’t know if I will buy Grow! with my own money. It’s simply a matter of price vs. benefit. I’ve successfully put on about 50lbs of LBM in a little over 3 years without Grow!. If I had unlimited funds (or even “slightly more” funds) I would definitely buy Grow!. The fact of the matter is that I would like to drive a nice Porsche, but due to financial restrictions I am stuck with a dark purple Plymouth Voyager minivan. (Not kidding.)

Biotest might convince me to purchase Grow! by offering it at a lower per-scoop cost in larger containers. Other supplement companies offer 10 lb and even 25 lb containers at great cost reduction. I know that Biotest is operating closer to its break even point on supplements, but I’m sure they could pass on much better savings on 25 lbs of the product. What?s with the holdup? You made a gigantic bottle of Mag-10, now make with the gigantic tubs of Grow! and sell them exclusively on T-Nation.

RIT Jared

2

RIT Jared,

Grrrrrrr.

You got some 'splaining to do, Lucy!

You’re saying Grow! is too expensive compared to your ordinary CostCo whey protein? You’re saying 23 bucks is too expensive for the best protein powder manufactured?

Christ almighty.

We put the best proteins in the world in Grow!, stuff that comes from virgin cows in New Zealand. Okay, I don’t know if they’re virgins, but you get the idea.

We perfected the glycemic index so it’s ideal. We added vitamins and nutrients to help you digest and assimilate the protein better. We added the precise amount of fiber gums to make it mix right while giving it a pleasant mouth feel.

We use the most expensive flavorings possible.

We give you a blend of fast-digesting and slow-digesting proteins.

We’re also on the cusp of improving the biologic value so it’s light years of anything available any where at any cost (more about that later), and you’re bitching about the price? Comparing it to some low-grade crap from the store?

How about if we put dirt in a bucket and sell it for 5 cents a serving? Now that’s value!

Whew, I feel better now!

3

haha…some funny stuff

[quote]Atomic Dog wrote:
How about if we put dirt in a bucket and sell it for 5 cents a serving? Now that’s value!
[/quote]

No-Carb THROW! up. sounds like a plan

4

Whoa! Spanked by “the man” himself. My cyber-behind is rosy let me tell you!

It’s strangely like comparing the 3.6 Liter, 477 horsepower, 472 foot-pounds of torque producing Porsche GT2 engine to the piece of crap 3-and-a-half cylinder hampster-driven special in my minivan.

With greater cost comes greater quality.

If Porsche gave me a brand new Carrera to use for 2-weeks and then asked me if I wanted to continue using it for the next year for $175 a week, I’d have to tell them that although their car was probably the nicest I will ever drive, I would have to go back to driving my Minivan.

I definitely am not doubting the quality of the ingredients that go into Grow!, nor am I saying that I won’t buy it. I am simply saying that the only negative thing about it as far as I am concerned is the price, and I’d have to consider that before ordering more.

Not everybody is a starving college student over $10,000 in debt, but I am. Those are the cards I was dealt, and I have to work with them the best I can.

RIT Jared

5

Comparing Grow!!! to other protein powders is like comparing a Ford Pinto to a Ferrarri Murcielago. Both are cars but what a difference in performance.

6

[quote]RIT Jared wrote:
But, it isn’t the best tasting Chocolate protein I’ve had.[/quote]

I definitely disagree with this. GROW! is without a doubt better tasting than any MRP or protein powder I’ve had, and I’ve tried most of them.

I can actually blend it with a few ice cubes for friends who don’t use supplements and they really like it a lot. This alone is a huge indication of how good it tastes.

7

I agree, Grow! does an excellent job with taste given the high quality proteins in it. I buy Grow! often, for nighttime, or mixing, and the bulk “throw up” whey buckets for morning or mixing with berries in my post-workout carb binge(I figure the whey would be more benificial then anyhow)
-chet

8

I also think Grow! is the best I’ve had, and I’ve been swilling protein concoctions since the late 80s – lemme tell you, they were NASTY back then.

Low-Carb Grow! isn’t quite as tasty as Grow!, but what do you expect?

Another plus for Grow! versus the cheap sh*t is that Grow! won’t give you the explosive nutritional downloads that accompany the cheap stuff – not pretty.

9

On another note, I am sold on Surge, and buy it regularly. I tried gatorade and cheap whey… fruit and whey, dextrose and whey, etc, etc, etc…

And after dicking around with that for a few months decided that Surge is the way to go.

I supplement only with protein, so I guess it probably makes sense to have the best possible proteins available. Ah well. Maybe the spanking taught me a lesson.

Make the big bucket though. Of Surge and Grow!. You make anything 5lbs or over Surge and Grow! and I promise I’ll buy both to go in the back of my Porsche. I mean van.

10

[quote]Atomic Dog wrote:

We perfected the glycemic index so it’s ideal.[/quote]

I just have a question about the glycemic index of Grow! The major source of carbohydrates (CHO) in Grow! comes from maltodextrin, which has a glycemic index over 100. That means it spikes insulin and blood sugar levels more so than glucose itself. This glucose polymer is often used in sports drinks to quickly replenish glycogen stores because of its high glycemic index. You have stated that Grow!'s glycemic index has been perfected, but how so if you are using a high glycemic carb source? For an everyday MRP to be perfect it would have two of the following qualities:

1)be as low glycemic as possible
2)contain a CHO source that is low glycemic (e.g. barley, oats, lentils, etc)

I imagine that your response will be the macronutrient profile of Grow! slows the digestion process of the CHO, but for some reason I don’t buy that. The amount of fat it contains is too minimal to lower it. I know calcium caseinate is a slow digestive protein, but whey protein spikes your insulin levels. Therefore, I feel it would probably counteract the slow digesting properties of the calcium caseinate.

Are the amounts of fat and calcium caseinate contained in Grow! enough to drastically change its glycemic index so it is on the lower end of the scale? If so, what is the glycemic index of Grow? Also, why don’t you geniuses at Biotest just create a MRP that uses barley, oats, or lentils as its primary CHO source and have it contain only high quality proteins? I have been waiting years now for a company to do this. I’ve found only one company that has, but it contains soy protein. Needless to say I don’t use this product.

By the way, if you do design a product with low glycemic CHO don’t use lentils. They taste like absolute shizzle.

11

shinebox, I don’t know the GI of Grow!, so for that part of your question we’ll have to defer to the individual(s) that actually formulated the product. However, from what I hear you asking, your needs might better be met by the low-carb version of Grow!. Low-Carb Grow! is the product of choice for anyone cutting/dieting, anyone who might be hypoglycemic or diabetic or who just in general prefers to take in lower GI carbs and/or not spike insulin.

The classic version of Grow!, on the other hand, is for those guys who really do want to GROW and put on muscle! Anyone who is bulking needs to be taking in carbs and spiking insulin in a controlled manner. Insulin, as you know, is quite the anabolic hormone. Of course insulin stores carbs in the muscles as glycogen, but it also shuttles amino acids to/into the muscles as well.

Maltodextrin is an ideal carb source for anyone bulking. I’m sure you’re wondering why. Have you ever tried to take in 2 to 3 grams of carbs times LBM on a bulking cycle? Doing so would be absolutely impossible if you were trying to hit those numbers by eating a green veggie carb source like broccoli (2 pounds roughly equals 25g net carbs). White rice because of its lack of fiber (among other things), in comparison, would allow you to hit your numbers with a lot less gastric distress. (grin)

Maltodextrin is a lot tastier than rice, of course, and a bit more efficient at refilling muscle glycogen. Yes, it does spike insulin, but I’ll take TC’s word for it that the GI was optimized to ideally support the building of muscle. Hopefully he’ll stop by and shed a little more light on the subject.

Good questions, shinebox! (grin)

12

Shinebox,

You’re forgetting about the fiber-gums that are used to thicken Classc Grow! and give it what’s known as “mouth feel.”

These slow digestion considerably. Keep in mind, too, that a good percentage of potential carbohydrate has been replaced witih Sucralose.

If you feel like it, buy yourself a glucometer from the drug store. Fast for a few hours, and then take a baseline blood sugar reading. If you’re normal, it’ll read about 70.

Drink a serving of Grow!

Test your blood at 15 minutes, 30 minutes, and one hour later.

Typically, blood sugar will top out at about 110 and then gracefully land back at 70 after an hour, which is what you want.

Granted, blood sugar isn’t the end-all and be-all as far as glycemic indices and insulin response, but it’s a fair indicator.

As far as using grains as a carbohydrate source, it usually isn’t done as it creates sludge. You might be able to do it with soy since it’s so “watery,” but casein presents challenges.

I can tell you, however, that are we tweaking Grow! a little bit, but it has to do mainly with some new advances in protein.

13

GROW! is great, the low carb version is much thinner, though. If those food scientists could get it to whip up like the carb version, that would be cool.

And if your fasting blood glucose is 70, that’s damn low.

14

Listening to TC defend Grow! like it was his favorite kitten has made me a believer. I’m giving it a shot.

I’ve had great success with Mag10, M, Surge, and Hot-Rox…Biotest hasn’t let me down yet and there’s no reason to believe Grow! isn’t as good as they say.