With its mandala-like logo, flowery italics, and the fact that it claims to help regulate your chi energy, Pure Synergy is a greens powder with a strong New Age vibe. Produced by the family-owned, Utah-based The Synergy Company, this product is mostly organic and promises to not just nourish you, but “enhance your life experience.”
So, what’s in it?
Ingredients
Pure Synergy has an extensive ingredients list of some 60 vegan foods, and while I’ve reviewed a lot of greens powders, there were many I hadn’t seen. For example, the “Synergized Algae” section contained not only the usual spirulina and chlorella, but also klamath crystals, dunaliella, and laver, all little-known kinds of algae.
The “Synergized Phytonutrients & Enzymes” portion contains the normal broccoli and raspberry, but there’s also “enzymatically-active sprouts of millet.”
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The “Synergized Tonic Herbal Extracts and Asian Mushrooms” component has the goji berry and shiitake mushroom that I’m used to seeing, but there are also four other kinds of mushrooms, eleuthero root, schizandra berry, codonopsis root, and more.
It’s an impressively unusual product list, and while many of them are linked to health benefits, the ingredients are also designed with the principles of Ayurvedic medicine, traditional Chinese medicine, and Native American herbal medicine. Indeed, the site claims their products are inspired by everything from “mysterious energy patterns” to parapsychology, the study of concepts like extrasensory perception. To that end, it’s hard to know which ingredients are included because of scientifically-proven effectiveness and which are there because they’ve traditionally been of importance to certain cultures.
Taste
I was surprised to find that this drink tastes a lot like pesto. The ingredients list contains parsley, sage, cloves, and rosemary, but there’s definitely a nutty kind of flavor as well, the origin of which I’m not sure. Perhaps it’s the umami from all the mushrooms, but in any case the taste is in fact very pleasant.
It’s not sweet, but it’s palatable and nowhere near as bitter and soil-like as many of its competitors. If you’re a fan of savory, this could be up your alley.
Effectiveness
It’s a little difficult to understand exactly what Pure Synergy is intended to do. The label claims that it’s nutrient-rich, has “perfect nutritional potency,” and helps “restore, protect and sustain your vitality, mental clarity, and core foundation of wellness.”
It’s not that I found the marketing to be sinister or deceptive, it’s more that I found it to be lacking. What exactly is this product meant to do? If you consult the website, you get more specifics: the ingredients have an “extraordinary collection of proteins, trace minerals, chlorophyll, fatty acids, and antioxidants.”
OK, that would be good for you. So what does the nutrition label say?
One serving contains 100 percent of your recommended daily intake of Vitamin A, twenty percent of your daily iron, five percent of your daily calcium, and two percent of your daily RDI of Vitamin C.
That’s not incredibly impressive for a product that says it has an extraordinary amount of minerals and perfect nutritional potency. It’s a pretty decent amount of iron, but if it’s claiming to be a great source of minerals, what else is it offering? Does it have magnesium, potassium, sodium, zinc? It has zero percent fat — where are the fatty acids? What kind of fatty acids are they?
Even the “additional information” part of the product’s website emphasizes that it provides 12,000 milligrams of true superfoods and 1000+ phytonutrients. Which ones? It says 600 tests are performed to ensure quality. It says the ingredients are well-researched. Well-researched to do what?
It also claims it boosts stamina for athletes, fosters mental clarity and focus, improves tolerance to stress, supports a healthy immune response… but there’s not much evidence provided as to why it’s making those claims. Even if I give it the benefit of the doubt and assume it’s making most of its claims based off the antioxidant content, how many antioxidants does it contain compared to a serving of leafy greens?
Price
At $55 for 30 servings ($1.83 per serving), it’s a little expensive. It does contain a broader variety of ingredients than many greens powders, but given how little it provides in the way of vitamins and minerals and how vague some of its claims seem, I think it’s on the expensive side.
Compare that with Athletic Greens ($4.23/serving), Onnit’s Earth Grown Nutrients ($2.30/serving), Patriot Power Greens ($1.96/serving) AI Sports Nutrition Red & Greens XT ($1.33/serving), Green Vibrance ($1.08/serving), PharmaFreak Greens Freak ($1/serving), Sun Warrior’s Supergreens ($0.55/serving), and Amazing Grass’s Green Superfood ($0.52/serving).
The Takeaway
Pure Synergy has a lot of ingredients that are probably healthy in many respects, but the product didn’t do much to convince me why it uses the ingredients it uses and why it has the effects they say it does. In particular, if The Synergy Company wants to claim the product has a lot of minerals and fatty acids, I’d like them to tell the consumer which ones.
While it was hard not to be impressed by the sheer variety of ingredients, I was pretty unimpressed by the finished product.
Pure Synergy
$1.83 Per Serving
Pros
- Very high in iron
- Contains several kinds of digestive enzymes
Cons
- Marketing claims appear to be exaggerated
- Little information about mineral content
