Emerald Balance and Amazing Grass are both high in Vitamin C and they both contain plenty of spirulina, barley grass, green tea, rose hips, and probiotic bacteria.
But both green superfood drinks have a lot of differences too, not just in ingredients but in transparency, price, and effectiveness. Here’s our comparison.
Amazing Grass vs. Emerald Balance Taste
Amazing Grass
It’s bland, but in a good way. A lot of greens powders taste like grass (and its name doesn’t inspire much hope) but Amazing Grass is very mild and could probably hide easily in a shake. Don’t expect something delicious — I’d rather characterize it as inoffensive.
Note that I tried the Original flavor but that it also comes in chocolate, açai berry, pineapple lemongrass, and “holiday cookie” flavors.
[check out our full Amazing Grass review!]
Emerald Balance
It only comes in mint green tea flavor, which is precisely what it tastes like. I should point out that it’s a pretty strong flavor, so you won’t be able to sneak it into a juice or a shake without it changing the taste. That said, it’s delicious and a lot more enjoyable than Amazing Grass.
[check out our full Emerald Balance review!]
Winner: Emerald Balance
Price
Amazing Grass
This is one of the most popular green superfood drinks on the market and the most reviewed on Amazon, and that probably has a lot to do with the fact that it’s one of the cheapest you’ll find. You can buy sixty servings for 33 dollars on Amazon, which is 55 cents a serving. (If you stick to the cheaper 30-serving tub, it’s 66 cents a serving.)
See the list of our favorite greens powders!
Emerald Balance
At about $39 for 30 servings, or $1.30 per scoop, it’s pretty moderately priced for a greens drink, but clearly the more expensive of the two.
Winner: Amazing Grass
Ingredients
Amazing Grass
Amazing Grass is no frills, avoiding the fancy adaptogens and roots and herbs that you find in some competitors and sticking to the biggest hits: wheat grass, barley grass, alfalfa, spinach, spirulina, chlorella, and broccoli. Those comprise the bulk of the ingredients, over 70 percent of the product’s weight.
After that there’s an “antioxidant blend” of rose hips, acerola cherry, green tea, açai, beet, maca, and some fruit. Finally, there are digestive enzymes and a single strain of probiotic bacteria. We aren’t told how many probiotic bacteria it contains.
Everything is vegan, gluten-free, non-GMO, and mostly organic.
Emerald Balance
There are a lot more ingredients in the pricier Emerald Balance.
Like Amazing Grass, there is a greens blend of barley grass, spirulina, chlorella, beet, and vegetables, but it’s under a third of the product’s weight.
Then, again like Amazing Grass, there’s an antioxidant blend of rose hips, acerola cherry, green tea, and some fruits and berries.
But then there’s a “cellular support” blend of bamboo, horsetail, and a variety of roots; an “immune support blend” of ginger, royal jelly, astragalus, and dulse; and a probiotic blend of six kinds of probiotic bacteria.
Winner: Emerald Balance
Benefits and Effectiveness
Amazing Grass
Neither of these products are great at quantifying their benefits. Neither divulges how many probiotic bacteria they contain, neither provides the weight of their individual ingredients (so you don’t know if you’re getting an effective dose of), neither goes into much detail about its mineral content or B-vitamins.
Here’s what we do know about Amazing Grass: it has 57 percent of your daily Vitamin C, 88 percent of your daily Vitamin K, 25 percent of your daily Vitamin A, 8 percent of your calcium, and 5 percent of your iron.
We don’t know much else besides the ingredients. We know it’s probably high in antioxidants and chlorophyll owing to all the grasses and algae; and we know it contains digestive enzymes and some probiotic bacteria, but we don’t know how many. So it probably has some digestive benefit, but it’s hard to quantify it.
Emerald Balance
This one contains 100 percent of your daily Vitamin C, 250 percent of your daily Vitamin E, and… that’s about all we know from the nutrition panel. We don’t know about the Vitamin A or K content, let alone minerals like calcium and magnesium — minerals that are found in the leafy greens a lot of consumers want to replace with a greens powder.
So, as is the case with Amazing Grass, I only have the ingredients to go by. As you can see above, Emerald Balance contains practically everything Amazing Grass does, plus a cellular support blend, immune support blend, and several more kinds of probiotic bacteria.
While the weight of the grasses and algae is lower, the weight of the probiotic blend is higher in Emerald Balance so it provides more bacteria, plus it contains more Vitamin C and a wider variety of ingredients linked to a wider array of benefits.
Winner: Emerald Balance
Overall Winner: Emerald Balance
Neither of these products does a great job at quantifying their benefits, but it’s clear that Emerald Balance is worth the higher price: it has more ingredients, more benefits, and more probiotic bacteria. Amazing Grass is a great budget option, but if you can afford it, Emerald Balance is a better greens drink in our opinion.
