Shakeology and Macro Greens occupy two very different spaces in the green superfood drink landscape. The first is a combination greens drink and protein shake from Beach Body, the same company behind workout programs like Tony Horton’s P90X and Shaun T’s Insanity.
Macro Greens, meanwhile, is more of a standard greens drink with a lot of grasses, algaes, probiotics, and adaptogens. It used to be known as Miracle Greens, and the company also sells a green cocoa powder and a reds powder made from fruits and berries. Macro Greens, however, is their flagship product.
They’re actually both really high quality products that deliver way more benefits than their average competitor. Picking between the two is going to be tough.
See our rankings of the best greens powders!
Taste
Macro Greens
Very tasty, this drink manages to completely avoid the earthy flavor of a lot of its competitors and produces a mild taste that’s equal parts creamy and fruity, a little like tangy berry yogurt.
[Check out our full Macro Greens review!]
Shakeology
There are a few different flavors of Shakeology — chocolate, strawberry, vanilla, coffee, and greenberry. I tried the chocolate flavor and it’s pretty decent, but I’d recommend mixing it with milk. When mixed with water, you can still taste a little of the seaweed.
[Check out our full Shakeology review!]
Winner: Macro Greens
Price
Macro Greens
You can get 90 servings for about 65 dollars, or 72 cents per serving. If you’d rather get a smaller 10-ounce tub of 30 servings, it’s 28 dollars, or $1.07 per serving.
That’s quite well-priced for a greens powder, particularly one with as many probiotics as Macro Greens.
Shakeology
Over at Beach Body, a 2.78-pound bag of Shakeology provides thirty servings for about $130, which is $4.33 per serving. Obviously, that’s considerably more money, and if you buy from the official website you’ll be paying almost 15 dollars for shipping, too.
If you sign up for a monthly shipment, they discount the shipping costs to $2 per delivery. In either case, that’s expensive.
Winner: Macro Greens
Ingredients
Macro Greens
There are almost forty ingredients that come from a wide variety of sources that tick just about all the greens powder essentials. It has spirulina, chlorella, barley grass, five kinds of probiotic bacteria, several kinds of fruit and berries, and a selection of adaptogenic herbs and roots that include astragalus and eleuthero root — there’s even perennial green superfood drink favorite milk thistle, which is linked to liver health.
There’s not much more you could want from a greens powder as far as the ingredients list goes, though I should point out that there aren’t any medicinal mushrooms like reishi or cordyceps, which some people like in their supplements.
(We tried 47 brands: check out our best green superfood powder picks!)
Shakeology
Surprisingly enough, Shakeology does contain the medicinal mushrooms cordyceps and reishi, and maitake too. It also has a lot more protein, as the first ingredients are a blend of whey, pea, chia, flax, and quinoa. (Note that this means it’s not vegan.)
For what’s marketed as a protein powder, it has a really impressive variety of ingredients that you might find in a greens powder, like chlorella, spirulina, astragalus, berries, digestive enzymes, and the aforementioned probiotics, enzymes, and mushrooms.
But it has fewer ingredients and less variety compared to Macro Greens. It doesn’t have any grasses and it only has one kind of probiotic bacteria (compared to five in Macro Greens).
And while macro greens doesn’t have mushrooms, it does contain a blend of adaptogens that are linked to somewhat similar effects, plus it has more probiotics and sources of greens. So as far as which product will appeal the most to a person who wants a greens powder, the answer is Macro Greens.
Winner: Macro Greens
Effectiveness
Macro Greens
As far as concrete, measurable benefits go, the best place to look is the nutrition panel. The most notable micronutrients in Macro Greens are 790 percent of your daily Vitamin C, 50 percent of your daily vitamin B12, and 8 percent of your daily iron. Of course, there’s also the 18 billion probiotics, which is the highest we’ve ever seen in a green superfood drink after Green Vibrance. There’s also the assorted adaptogens that are linked to improved stress response, but it’s hard to measure their effectiveness — and their weights aren’t listed, so we couldn’t look up the effective doses even if we tried.
Shakeology
This is a tough one. Shakeology has less of vitamins C and E and fewer probiotics, and it only has one strain of probiotics. So it’s less effective in those areas.
But it does have more of practically everything else. It has way more Vitamins A, D, K, B-vitamins, calcium, iron, magnesium, zinc, copper, and more, plus it doubles as a protein shake.
Like Macro Greens, it doesn’t provide the weight of its ingredients so you can’t really know how effective a lot of the ingredients (like mushrooms) are. But it has a lot more vitamins, minerals, and protein than Macro Greens, so unless you’re specifically looking for a digestive health supplement, Shakeology is simply more beneficial to the body.
Winner: Shakeology
Winner Overall: Shakeology
These are both excellent products and one is much, much more expensive than the other. Honestly, that’s probably going to be the main factor in your decision, but if money is no object, Shakeology has more nutrition, while Macro Greens has more greens.
If you want a powder that contains more plants and grasses and antioxidants, Macro Greens might be a better pick. But if you’re after micronutrients, Shakeology has more science on its side.
