Good News: Your Protein Powder Has Acceptable Levels of Lead

So, there’s lead in your protein powder. And even if it’s the first time you’re hearing that, you probably already guessed as much. From baby food to ground cinnamon, it feels like there’s lead in just about everything we consume these days. Uh-oh, am I starting this off too negatively? Here, let me restart. 

There’s definitely lead in your protein powder—but it might be at an acceptable level! That’s a glass-half-full approach to this, right? 

First, a little about me: 

I’ve mentioned this a few times in the past, but I’m the resident health OCD girlie at Sporked. (Yes, that’s an official diagnosis, and yes, I’m doing much better than I was from the onset of that mental health journey; thank you so much for asking!) Regardless: I am definitely concerned, perhaps too concerned, about what’s in our food. I’ve stopped regularly buying certain brands of yogurt because of the microplastics. I’m a self-proclaimed “fibermaxxer,” which is just an embarrassing way to say I try (and often fail) to reach the daily recommended amount of fiber with my meals. Sometimes in strange ways…like adding sesame seeds to my breakfast every morning. 

Wow, thanks for sharing. This is definitely the weirdest first date I’ve ever been on. Can you go back to the “protein powder has lead in it” thing, please? 

Yeah, yeah. Jeez. Back in October 2025, Consumer Reports released a major investigation of 23 popular protein powders and ready-to-drink shakes. Their lab found that more than two-thirds of the products had more lead per serving than their food safety experts consider safe for daily consumption, with some samples exceeding those levels by ten times. 

Oh! That’s bad. 

It’s not great! But the silver lining is that Consumer Reports did another round of testing recently, which they published in January 2026. They specifically tested five of the most reader-requested chocolate protein powders and found much lower levels of lead and arsenic in all of them. 

The new brands they tested were Clean Simple Eats, Premier Protein, Ritual, Truvani, and Equate. Ritual’s Essential Protein Daily Shake was the only product that exceeded Consumer Reports’ level of concern, and only by a small margin. 

Do you think it’s strange that Consumer Reports published widely different results in a few months? 

Oh boy, you bet I do! But I’m a conspiracy theorist at heart. I mean, the extent of my conspiracy is that protein powder companies probably got wind of this bad press and maybe put in a little extra effort to reduce heavy metal levels in their product, but still. 

How much should we trust Consumer Reports? 

I know I just said I’m a conspiracy theorist, but I do trust Consumer Reports. If you read their January report, you can see they weren’t walking back their initial findings by any means. This was just a new sample set with different results. They conduct their testing in a lab certified to standards set by the International Organization for Standardization. They also claim that all of the products were anonymously purchased, and that multiple samples of each product were tested so that their final results could be based on an average. 

The villain here, in my mind, are the companies that get away with selling these products and the industry’s complete lack of regulation around them. Be careful what you eat, guys. We can’t escape heavy metals in our food, but we can be somewhat conscious about which products have no real regulation around them. Anyways, I’ll hop off my soapbox now.