Clean Paleo Island Mango and Light Chocolate protein powder review

I still have a protein shake every day for breakfast. This is what fits my lifestyle being a busy working mum and it helps me with a good hit of protein for my first meal of the day. To keep it interesting I tend to change my protein powder flavour and brand every couple of months and since I had only tried the Native Vanilla and Mochaccino flavours from Clean Paleo I decided to give their Island Mango and Light Chocolate flavours a whirl too!

There are many different kinds of protein powder depending on where the protein is sourced from. Egg white protein powder is my favourite because it’s one of the more natural sources of protein, in most cases it’s literally just dried egg white, and I find it the least offensive as far as that funny protein taste you can have in other kinds of protein powder. Egg white protein powder not highly processed and unlike whey protein I can identify every single ingredient on the list. This is important to me because if I’m putting it in my body every day I don’t want that load of processed stuff going in everyday for my liver to have to deal with.

I got two flavours I’ve not tried before and I’ll start with the Island Mango flavour. The first tip I’m going to give you today is NEVER I repeat NEVER smell the protein powder. No matter how good it looks and how yum you think it’s going to taste they always smell a bit funky and this might influence what you think of the taste. I gave this one a big sniff before I used it for the first time and it took me a couple of days to lose the association of the smell and flavour. The Island Mango flavour looks really cool on its own before it’s mixed, it’s a bit yellow and it’s sparkly! Maybe if I consume enough of it I’ll turn into a unicorn? You never know I guess and it’s worth a shot right?

Anyway back to the protein powder. The Island Mango flavour is really nice. It’s not a smack you in the face kind of mango flavour it’s a bit more of a subtle flavour but it’s really nice. I get a bit sick of hyper flavoured and sweet protein powders and this is a really nice change. I got a small tub (six servings) size pack of this protein powder and when I ran out I wanted more so I’m definitely going to purchase a full size pack. I went to the Clean Paleo website to get some and it wasn’t available, sob!

Then I moved onto the Light Chocolate flavour. I can be a bit funny with chocolate protein powders and it all stems back to the great hate of chocolate Optifast I developed after having it for months on end. The thought of chocolate Optifast makes me want to vomit so I tend to stay away from chocolate flavours. This Light Chocolate flavour is one I have enjoyed and would be happy to have for a couple of months. The chocolate flavour is more of a slightly bitter dark chocolate flavour and even mixed with yogurt is not too sweet. The chocolate flavour in this protein powder is from raw, organic cacao powder so the best kind of chocolate flavouring you could hope for.

The nutritional panels and ingredient lists. From left to right it’s Native Vanilla, Island Mango and Light Chocolate. They do vary in protein content quite a bit!

I make these two protein powders into a shake by getting a 150g Symbio vanilla yogurt, 100mls of Calcitrim milk and a full 30g serving of the chosen protein powder. I put it all in a glass jug and mix it with my stick blender until the powder is properly mixed into the liquid. Because there’s a mix of milk and yogurt the shake ends up being a little bit thick and it’s nice because I think it helps to trick you that it’s more of a meal that just a straight smooth un-textured shake if you know what I mean.

The only downside to egg white protein is that it tends to be more expensive compared to other protein sources but Clean Paleo’s egg white protein powders are not ridiculously priced and are quite reasonable compared to some others on the market in New Zealand. I ordered directly from Clean Paleo’s website and their delivery was really fast. Another great thing about Clean Paleo is a limited range of their products are available from some Countdown supermarkets so if you shop there anyway it’s super easy to get your hands on!