There’s a very clear spectrum when it comes to greens powders. On one end, there are those that promise to improve your body in a lot of pseudoscientific ways without providing much evidence, and on the other end there are those that cover their bottles in science, studies, and exhaustive nutrition labels. Green Vibrance and ORAC-Energy Greens are part of the latter group, and we’re comparing them here.
They are determined to avoid looking like snake oil and appeal to more skeptical consumers. They encourage you to research their claims. We, they seem to promise, are the real deal.
They’re pretty solid products. But if you want to choose between the two of them, how should you decide?
Taste
ORAC-Energy Greens
This is nice and mild, and tastes a lot like celery juice. By that I mean it’s mild and crisp with a slightly peppery aftertaste.
Green Vibrance
While Green Vibrance doesn’t taste as much like dirt as some greens powders, it’s definitely the worse of the two. It’s relatively mild, but it’s grassy and has a slightly spicy aftertaste, probably because of the cayenne pepper. It might work well with juice, but when mixed with water, it was a lot less pleasant than ORAC-Energy Greens.
Winner: ORAC-Energy Greens
Price
ORAC-Energy Greens
The price fluctuates a little, but on Amazon you can usually get thirty servings for roughly thirty dollars, or if you want to invest in a large, 364-gram jar, it winds up at a little under 75 cents per serving.
Green Vibrance
This one costs $65 for 60 servings, or $1.08 per serving. You can choose to buy a larger tub of 82 servings, but the price stays about the same.
At an eight-cent difference, the price difference is almost negligible, but ORAC-Energy Greens is the cheaper buy — particularly if you want to save extra cash by buying in bulk.
Winner: ORAC-Energy Greens
Ingredients
ORAC-Energy Greens
What’s nice about both of these products is that their labels are very descriptive: you don’t just see what’s in it, you see how much of each ingredient it contains. There’s plenty of grasses like wheat grass and barley grass, and there are algae like spirulina and chlorella. There are also blends of vegetables, berries, five kinds of mushrooms, probiotic bacteria, a “liver support” blend of milk thistle and artichoke leaf, and an “energy formula” of açai berry and maca root.
There are two more unusual additions: a blend that’s focused on quercetin, an antioxidant that’s associated with heart health and a reduction in allergic reactions (which means there’s probably a link with immunity), and and a blend of adaptogens, compounds that are linked to stress management and improved recovery and sleep. This blend includes ashwagandha, astragalus, holy basil leaf, and suma root, which are very popular in green superfood drinks.
It lists the quantity of most of its ingredients as well — some of the blends are proprietary, but for the most part you know how much of each ingredient you’re consuming. This way, you know if you’re getting an effective dose. That said, I think you’d really want to know the exact weight of the ingredients in the adaptogen blend, and they aren’t included.
Green Vibrance
Green Vibrance contains dozens of different kinds of grasses, algae, roots, herbs, and more. It’s notable that Green Vibrance combines a wide variety of different ingredients with different purposes — it doesn’t specialize as much as some other greens powders, including ORAC-Energy Greens.
There are blends for liver health, skeletal health, immunity, antioxidants, adaptogens, and more. Unlike ORAC-Energy Greens, it lists the weight of every single ingredient, which is an excellent approach.
The most unusual quality in the ingredients list is the ingredients dedicated to digestive health: per serving, there are 25 billion probiotic bacteria from twelve different strains and six different digestive enzymes.
When compared to ORAC-Energy Greens, you can also tell that Green Vibrance has a larger serving size that contains more grasses, algae, probiotics, and most kinds of vegetables, though it doesn’t contain any mushrooms.
Winner: Green Vibrance
Benefits
ORAC-Energy Greens
The biggest selling point for ORAC-Energy Greens is that it uses the ORAC scale to measure its antioxidant content. That’s generally considered the best way to measure antioxidant potency, and with an ORAC scale of 40,000, one serving has three times the antioxidants found in a cup of blueberries. That’s truly impressive.
It also has a lot of adaptogens, including five kinds of different mushrooms. Mushroom supplements are becoming increasingly popular, and I haven’t seen many greens powders that have so many kinds of medicinal shrooms.
But ORAC-Energy Greens falls short when it comes to vitamins and minerals — there’s very little information regarding them. We’re only told that it contain has 75 percent of the RDI of Vitamin A, 58 percent of your Vitamin C, 7 percent of your iron and 2 percent of your calcium. None of those qualities are particularly impressive, but to be fair, it’s not marketed as a multivitamin; it’s an antioxidant supplement, and it’s got a ton of antioxidants.
Green Vibrance
These two have a lot in common, but a big difference is that Green Vibrance doesn’t measure its antioxidant properties. It contains a ton of ingredients that are high in antioxidants — it even has an “Antioxidant Life Preservers” blend of fruits and ginkgo biloba — but it’s not measured, so ORAC-Energy Greens comes out on top in that regard.
Green Vibrance also has a lot fewer adaptogens and no mushrooms, so if you’re looking for an antioxidant- or an stress-focused greens powder, ORAC-Energy Greens is a better pick.
However, Green Vibrance is a much, much more effective digestive health supplement. ORAC has 1.2 billion probiotics from five strains, while Green Vibrance has 25 billion from twelve strains and a lot more digestive enzymes.
And when it comes to micronutrients, Green Vibrance has more of everything: more vitamin C, more vitamin A, more iron, more calcium. Plus the label has a lot more information about other micronutrients – it’s got a lot of Vitamin D, E, K, B12, and 70 percent of your daily selenium as well, an antioxidant that’s linked to cognitive function.
The Winner: Green Vibrance
Overall Winner: Green Vibrance
These are both great green superfood drinks. The difference is that ORAC-Energy Greens specializes in antioxidants and adaptogens while Green Vibrance focuses more on digestive health and vitamins and minerals.
If you specifically want more adaptogens and antioxidants in your diet, ORAC-Energy Greens is a convenient source, but as far as which supplement will have a bigger impact on your overall health, the answer is definitely Green Vibrance.
