True Nutrition Vegan Lean Formula Review

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true nutrition vegan lean summary

Flavors: Unflavored, Chocolate, Vanilla, Mocha, Cinnamon Bun, Cookies N Cream

I bought this protein powder to test and review while trying to find the best vegan protein powder.

True Nutrition sells vegan protein powder both in the United States and Canada. The pricing is much better in the U.S. due to shipping details that I’ll go over later.

There are a ton of different flavors, and you get full control over the flavor and intensity that goes into your protein powder.

You can even create your own custom vegan protein powder blends.

About True Nutrition

Creating your own blends is one of the most unique offers I’ve seen. You can pick which vegan protein sources to use (pea, rice, etc.), and also pick the flavoring.

Alternatively, you can just pick a pre-made formula.

That’s what I did. I picked the 2 most popular pre-made vegan protein powders on True Nutrition and ordered them.

This review is for the Vegan Lean protein powder, but I’ve also reviewed the True Nutrition Vegan Protein Optimizer mix as well.

This one (Vegan Lean) is my favorite of the 2, for reasons I’ll explain throughout this review.

Protein Content in True Nutrition’s Vegan Lean Powder

Considering the main reason that most people drink protein shakes is to get protein, my nutrition score is all about protein content.

To calculate the score for each protein that I review, I plug in the calories from protein, and overall calories per serving into this formula:

protein powder nutrition score test

You can read about how I derived this formula and the other ones in my testing methodology.

All you need to know is that it takes those numbers, and spits out a number from 0 to 25, where 25 means that a protein powder has about as much protein as possible.

We can get those numbers to plug in from the nutritional facts for the Vegan Lean Formula:

true nutrition vegan lean nutrition facts

After doing the math, it spits out an almost perfect nutrition score of 24.

This protein powder has a protein calories to overall calories ratio of about 87%.

Ingredients

The ingredients list is super simple:

  • Pea Protein Isolate, Rice Protein Concentrate, Flavoring (optional)

You can opt to add a flavor or not, it’s completely customizable and up to you, which is awesome.

I found it really easy to digest, so this could a good option for any vegan with stomach problems.

Cost of Vegan Lean vs Other Protein Powders

This is where it gets a bit complicated, so let me break it down in pieces.

Because True Nutrition lets you customize your product, there’s no fancy packaging.

Everything comes in 1 lb bags (454 g), unless you order 5 lbs or more of a particular protein, then you can get 5 lb bags as well.

So there’s no predetermined sizes, just increments in 1 lb.

Size Base Cost (USD) Cost per 100 gram
454 g / 1 lb ~12 ~2.67

The Vegan Lean formula is cheapest for unflavored. If you’re looking to save as much money as possible, go with that.

But there’s additional factors that affect the price.

Factor #1 – Flavor

You also have the option of picking a flavor, which costs extra.

You also pick the “intensity” of the flavor. You can choose from:

  • Light (x1/2)
  • Normal (x1)
  • Heavy (x2)

If you add a “light” flavor, it costs $0.30 extra. A “normal” flavor costs $0.60 extra, and so on.

Factor #2 – Shipping

As with pretty much every store, it’s not quite as convenient as Amazon, and free shipping isn’t available.

Shipping costs:

  • $3.99 flat rate in the U.S.
  • About $30 to Canada (ouch)

That’s a great price for anyone in the U.S., but clearly not great for Canadians like me.

Factor #3 – Coupons and Bulk Discounts

If you order over 16 lbs (7.26 kg) of protein, you get 5% off.

If you don’t drink many protein shakes of your own, you could think about doing a group buy if price is an issue.

Also, you can get 5% off, no matter your order size, if you use the coupon code “VPLAB”.

When you go to checkout, there’s a section for coupon codes, type it in there and click “ADD”.

true nutrition coupon

Your order page should update and the 5% off coupon should be applied.

Now putting all of that aside, I still need to come up with a “pricing score” to compare this protein to other protein powders.

The way I do that is pick the size closest to 2.2 lbs (1 kg), and plug the price per 100 grams into this formula:

pricing score formula

I’m assuming that most people are like me and will add flavoring. This price is for U.S. residents, includes shipping, and also a “normal” flavor added.

This results in a price score of 18.8, out of 25.

That’s definitely a very good score, it’s just not the absolute cheapest option if you’re only ordering a few pounds.

If you factor in the coupon, and potentially a bulk discount, it becomes competitive with the cheapest vegan protein powders out there.

Mixability of Vegan Lean

To test the mixability of a protein powder, I follow a relatively simple and consistent procedure:

  1. Add 450 mL of unsweetened almond milk to a shaker bottle
  2. Add 35 g of protein powder
  3. Shake for 45 seconds
  4. Pour through a strainer and weight the wet remnants (the “clumps”)

Then I put the weight of the wet remains through this formula:

vegan protein powder mixing test

In this case, the powder mixed very well.

There were some small clumps, but you’d barely taste them in reality.

There was 1 gram of remnants, leading to a mixability score of 21.88.

That’s a very good score (25 is max).

Unless you really hate clumps, you shouldn’t have many issues with this protein powder.

Taste Test Results

Finally, this is really the only subjective part of the review.

As I briefly mentioned before, there are several flavors you can choose from:

true nutrition flavor options

For my order, I went with the “cinnamon bun”, at “normal” flavor intensity.

I try to rate the taste of protein powders according to this table, but also relative to each other:

Taste Score Meaning
25 Amazing, would drink for enjoyment alone.
20 Very good.
15 Drinkable, not really good or bad.
10 A bit of a struggle to get down
5 Quite bad

I can’t speak for all flavors here of course, but I really liked the cinnamon bun flavor.

  • It’s very frothy (airy), which I personally like.
  • The flavor itself was very good.
  • There was a bit of a chalky taste, and a bit of aftertaste. Nowhere near as bad as many other vegan protein powders, but definitely there.

So while I liked the shake overall, I couldn’t give it a perfect score due to those reasons.

I also thought it was better than others that I’ve ranked 20 in the past, so I decided to split the difference and give Vegan Lean a taste score of 22.

Summary and Overall Review Impressions

Putting aside all the unique features that True Nutrition offers, this specific powder, the Vegan Lean formula, is a solid vegan protein powder.

The protein content is among the best that you will get in a vegan protein powder.

The pricing is relatively cheap (if you’re in the U.S.), and you can get 5% off with our coupon code (“VPLAB”), and potentially get a bulk discount as well.

However, there are better alternatives for most people, unless buying in bulk is really important for you.

Alternatives to Vegan Lean

Here are a few other plant-based protein powders that I rate higher:

  • Future Kind – Has an even higher protein content. It tastes amazing and mixes great as well. It’s slightly more expensive, but worth it if you can afford it (as long as you’re not drinking many shakes a day). Here’s my full Future Kind vegan protein powder review if you’d like to learn more about it.
  • PlantFusion – A really solid overall protein powder in the 4 categories that I test. It also has added BCAAs, and a blend of 5 plant protein sources. See my PlantFusion complete protein review to see why it’s one of my favorites.

About the author

Dale Cudmore

Your friendly neighborhood vegan from Toronto. I've spent over 6 years as a freelance nutrition writer and researcher. During this time, I've tested over 50 vegan protein powders, and over 100 other types of vegan supplements.