A couple things to keep in mind are that it takes 1-2 pounds of meat to equal 1 gram of creatine, and cooking meat can degrade creatine with some methods of cooking being more egregious than others, so it’s not a straight calculation anyways.
Creatine is a power booster. Explosive sprints, heavy singles and triples, speedwork…. it hasn’t remained popular due to bullshit propagation all these decades.
Probably best to try it out and see how it suits you as you’ll find a million opinions online. Shits cheap and easy to incorporate.
It’s the “healthy user bias” at work here. The things we’re told are beneficial to our health are also not great for getting bigger and stronger when we factor in the positive effects red meat and eggs have through a combination of creatine, saturated fats and dietary cholesterol.
I think it was overrated 20 years ago when I first started taking it and had to decipher what the truth was on it. I remember being asked “Isn’t that like steroids?” at school. The truth spinners may not have been voicing that in a positive light, but its reputation made it pretty exciting for me to try for the first time. I remember being 18 and thinking “I’m sure it’s fine but this is it…after this, I will be an athlete who has taken creatine and there’s no undoing that.” Ridiculous, haha.
Now, it’s not uncommon to see creatine added to mainstream energy drinks and I encounter more gen pop people who view creatine as a regular supplement and not some frightening mad scientist powder.
There are a lot of supplements that do nothing or cause harm. So who is doing the rating?
Whether something is rated well depends on what you expect creatine to do. If it improved your recovery by five or ten percent, or helped with cognition, or did what some studies show - is it worthwhile? I think the effects are pretty modest. But creatine seems to be very safe and most athletes use it for a reason. Maybe the elderly is the group that would benefit more?
Creatine is one of those supplements I don’t notice working until I stop taking it. Then it’s like “why is my performance so crappy…oh yeah…”
It’s kinda like religion: when things are going good, people tend to think “I’m the man!”, when things are going bad it’s “God, why have you forsaken me?”
I tried it in several different forms when I was younger. Honestly, never noticed a difference from it. I compared training logs on and off, no difference. For me anyway, I started to realize I was better off buying bulk ground beef and eggs instead of supplements. I’m 38 now and still holds for the moment.
Not to change the subject, but this was always my experience with Surge. I’d imagine quite a few supplements are this way, since you typically have to accumulate (whatever ingredient) in your system. Plus, for quite a few, the touted benefits are things like improving recovery that you don’t notice within a single session/ day.