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Elite Casein Reviews

Introduction

I am 37 years old, and hit the gym 5-6 days per week. I was looking for a good Casein Protein to round out my stack and for the obvious benefits of getting a slow digesting release of protein while I slept. I only use Casein when I need that extra Protein before bed, so it really depended on how my diet for the day went. As you will see with this review, this protein does its job, but is very underwhelming. Lets read on, shall we?

Ingredient Profile

First lets talk the Amino Acid Profile. This product claims to have 25g of Amino Acids: 5.4g BCAA. 5.9g Other EAAs, 5.1g Glutamine. 2.5 Other CEAAs, and 6.2g Non-EAAs. So we can use our investigating skills and only know the BCAA breakdown, since it states 2.3g Leucine on the label, that means that it has 1.55g of Isolecuine and Valine. I kept looking for a better breakdown, and wanted to know WHICH of the AAs are in this product, and in small writing it says Full Amino Acid Profile can be found at: Dymatize .com/EliteCasein. I was like sweet, i can do some interwebbing, and there we can actually see the breakdown. I included it in a picture. With this we can see my detective skills were wrong and its actually 2.324g Leucine, 1.335g Isoleucine, and 1.703 Valine.

So lets talk the other ingredients. The Calories, Total Fat, Cholesterol, Sodium, Potassium. and Carbs are all slightly higher when compared to the top brands on this site for Casein such as ON and Nutrabio. While Dymatize does beat out ON with Protein content by 1g, Nutrabio surpasses Dymatize by 6.65g. Sodium seems high to me as well, but I can see that even ON has higher sodium content. Its not so much that it ruins your daily allocation, but something to keep in mind, because this tends to push me over my daily recommended sodium intake at times. With other products on the playing field like Nutrabio Casein with 30mg of Sodium this seems unnecessary at this point.

Reading older reviews from years back, I saw one concerned with the ingredient Soy Lecithin. which is made up as part of the Sunflower Creamer in the fine print. After some research on the matter I see that there is a ton of debate on Soy Lecithin and Soy in general. Bottom Line is its not likely you will have 5% of Soy Lecithin in your diet, so it should not be a problem at all. Of course, we have no idea the dosage in this product, so you are still technically rolling the dice. I still completed 2.2lbs of this baby, I think I am still Good to go. ) If this bothers you then definitely steer clear of the product.

End of the day, I feel that having to go to a website to check out the AA breakdown, the seemingly poor quality of every ingredient, and a substance that causes great debate in this world, the ingredient profile is not good. I would rate this at 3 out of 10 alone!

Taste/Mixability/Dosing

Taste: Got the Cinnamon Bun flavor, and it was an amazing taste! This was like a treat that I looked forward too at night, it tasted like a nice guilty pleasure. There was a very very minor chalky aftertaste, but hardly noticeable.

Mixability: This always appears to mix easily at first, but always clumped at the bottom slightly. I tend to have to shake it up again before every sip, and still have this clumping problem. No matter which shaker I used (the one with the ball in it or the one with the vent on top) same issue. Not even hot water would get rid of this clump, I always had to get a sponge and wipe it out. This was irritating especially because I drank this with my ZMA before bed, and wanted to go upstairs to sleep and not mess around with jamming my hand which does not fit into the shaker, into the said shaker to wipe it out. Its just too thick! I know that this is common in Casein, but just something that bugged me.

Dosing: I took one scoop around 30-60 minutes before bed. The instructions call for basically whenever you want with 10-12 oz of water. I typically did around 12oz of water, i do that with most supplements. No issues with the doses.

Effectiveness

Gaging the effectiveness of any type of Protein is always a challenge. This is where the product did decently in my eyes, i am sure the rest of the paragraphs seem very doom and gloom. Bear in mind with my current diet, Casein is not an every night event for me, I plugged it in on the days I needed more Protein. Hence why 26 servings lasted me 45 days. The nights I did take this I would wake up not full, but not hungry either. The nights I did not take this I would wake up pretty hungry, almost even Hangry. The fact that I woke up slightly full proves to me that it is slow digesting. So end of the day it does its job.

I bought this in a stack from bodybuilding.com. If you have read my other reviews you will notice i say this about most of the products, because this is one of the last products left in that stack (Spoiler Alert: the other being Orange Triad. review Coming Soon to an SR Near you). I paid $26.25 for 2lbs of this which is about 26 servings. This comes out to $1.01 per serving. This is a bit steep in my opinion, especially for a Casein that appears very standard and almost sub par to me. EDIT: Thanks to advice from Smashley, I did do a review and price comparison of prices of Casein. This is around one of the cheapest deals you can find, so it is decent value. I still only give it a 7, when I start combining value with quality. I am a big quality over quantity guy. Thanks Smashley!

Side Effects

This does give me some funky smelling gas at night, which I am sure made my wife and dog very pleased. Well maybe my dog liked it, who knows, who am I to get in the head of a dog. This of course is dependent person to person, just one small issue for me, very minor also, so no big deal here.

Conclusion

Bottom Line is, yes this Casein does its job for a nice tasting, slow digesting Night Time Protein. The Ingredients leave a lot to be desired, and should be tweaked and made more efficient if this wants to be a competitor in this realm. Taste is phenomenal, mixability could use some work, and it appeared to be effective, from what I could surmise. The value is a bit steep, it seems your paying a lot for low quality. I am glad I did a lot of research, thanks to joining SR (its making me smarter), because originally I loved the taste and if this was consistent in my stack, then I would be on my second 2.2lb tub. I am moving to a cutting diet this summer and will incorporate Casein regularly in my diet, and this product will not be considered. I will never buy this again. Its not enough for me NOT to recommend it, but its enough for me to give it a Meh. If you get this at a cheap rate or Free, then rock it out, the Soy Lecithin won't hurt you (its in a ton of daily products), but when you have options that don't have a BS ingredients or fillers, then go that route!

I bought this from a GNC store, looking for another casein product to try for pre-bed shakes. I went with the "Rich Chocolate" flavor.

Taste/mixability= 7/10 I found this to be an OK tasting product, that was easy to drink down in 2% or skim milk. I did not try it in plain water. It was not overly thick, and being micellar casein. I find these tend to be "gritty" but I was expecting this from this product, so it was OK, but I wished it mixed better/smoother.

Effectiveness= 7/10 I hoped to use this before bed, to keep my body in a "anabolic state" and I cannot state 100% that this helped with that, but I did find it was easier to go to sleep without any hunger issues after I had a shake of this vs. nights when I had not used it. It also helped me reach my protein goals for the day, being 24g per serving.

Cost= 8/10 I cannot recall the exact price of this, but I KNOW I picked this out specifically because it was very reasonably priced in comparison to the other tubs of products at the same price/size.

I know this is a very short review, but just like the title says, this was just another Casein product for me to try.

I would recommend this and I would very likely buy this again.

Purchesed a 2lb tub of this Casein as my local supplement store ran out of the normal Optimum nutrition Caseuin that i usually buy. I was in a fix and needed Casein and wouldnt have much time in the near future to go back when they had re stocked. I was offered this product and after reading teh nutritional breakdown i thought it looked like a quality product.

After using for a week i can report that it isnt the greatest at mixing and i found some of the pwder stuck to the bottom of my shaker.

Taste was really good but i expected this as it was a casein product which generally do have a great taste.

HERE IS THE PROBLEM.

Last night i decided to run through the small print again ie nutritional breakdown and ingredients whilst i was drinking the shake before bed.

To my horror i noticed in the ingredients list it stated that the product includes genetically modified Soy Oil. A quick search online regarding GM soy oil brought up some shocking reviews and potential health issues surrounding this ingredient.

Other peoples reviews on this site regarding issues with Eczema whe nusing this product are interesting to say the least.

I threw the remainder of this tub away and will NEVER use Dymatize products again in future. If they dont take my health seriously by including dangerous ingredients then this is a compnay i refuse to support with my hard earned money.

CHECK ALL THE INGREDIENTS IN YOUR PROTEIN PRODUCTS FROM THIS COMPANY.