Athletic Greens Vs. Macro Greens — Is Cheaper Better?

Athletic Greens and Macro Greens are both among the most nutritious green superfood drinks on the market. They don’t just have impressive amounts of vitamins and minerals, they’re also excellent sources of probiotic bacteria and even cognitive benefits.

Comparing the two is a difficult task, but we think we have a good idea as to who comes out on top.

Taste

Athletic Greens

This stuff is absolutely delicious. It’s vaguely tropical, with notes of papaya, vanilla, and carrot. There’s also a hint of ginger, which helps to balance out the barely noticeable bitterness of the greens themselves.

Macro Greens

Macro Greens tastes quite similar to Athletic Greens — they’re both smooth and slightly tropical, but Macro Greens is a little creamier, lighter on the ginger, and has a hint of mixed berry flavor.

They both taste great, but I found I enjoyed savoring the complex taste of Athletic Greens just a little more.

Winner: Athletic Greens

Price

Athletic Greens

At 97 dollars for 30 servings, it amounts to $3.23 per scoop. If you like it enough to sign up for a monthly subscription of the stuff, the price drops to $77 per bag, or $2.56 per serving.

Macro Greens

At 65 dollars for 90 servings, or 72 cents per serving, it’s extremely well-priced, particularly since most other green superfood powders don’t have anywhere near the same level of nutrition. Note that 65 dollars is the price on Amazon — the same tub costs $99.95 on their official site.

Winner: Macro Greens

Ingredients

Athletic Greens

With seventy-five ingredients, Athletic Greens contains a very wide variety of fruits, vegetables, roots, and herbs.

It includes the regular green superfood ingredients wheat grass, chlorella, and spirulina, but there are also ingredients with more unusual properties like rhodiola rosea (which may support cognitive function and lower stress), milk thistle (which is linked to liver health), and more than seven billion probiotic bacteria, which is more than many dedicated gut health supplements.

Finally, there’s a blend of adaptogenic mushrooms that are intended to improve stress response and digestive enzymes to improve nutrient absorption.

Macro Greens

There are thirty-eight ingredients (roughly half as many as Athletic Greens) and there are a lot of similarities between the two products. They both have the spirulina and chlorella, various grasses, adaptogens, milk thistle, probiotics, and digestive enzymes.

There are some key differences, however: Macro Greens has more than twice as many probiotic bacteria from more than twice as many strains. However, while Macro Greens does contain some ingredients linked to cognitive performance, Athletic Greens outperforms it in this regard with its rhodiola rosea, astragalus, and ashwagandha.

Winner: Athletic Greens

Benefits and Effectiveness

Athletic Greens

So what are the real benefits? One serving of Athletic Greens contains as many antioxidants as can be found in twelve serves of vegetables and provides 700 percent of your daily Vitamin C, 100 percent or more of most B-vitamins (including B12), K2, and zinc; at least twenty percent of your RDI of selenium, manganese, and chromium; and even eleven percent of your daily calcium.

For many green superfood drinks, the antioxidants and probiotics are the main source of benefits. Athletic Greens has plenty of those, but it can also double as a vitamin supplement, in addition to being a pretty solid cognitive booster as well.

One issue is that Athletic Greens makes a couple of outlandish claims, like “you’ll never need to take another supplement again.” That’s not true. But it is one of the most effective green superfood powders on the market.

Macro Greens

One serving contains 790 percent of your recommended intake of Vitamin C, 330 percent of your Vitamin E, 50 percent of your Vitamin B12, 8 percent of your daily iron, and 8 percent of your Vitamin A. There’s a small amount of magnesium (1 percent), calcium (2 percent), and sodium (2 percent).

This is more nutritious than most of its competitors, but significantly less so than Athletic Greens. Macro Greens has far more more probiotic bacteria and digestive enzymes, so if you’re taking a greens powder for the digestive benefits, Macro Greens is a better choice. But Athletic Greens has more micronutrients, cognitive benefits, and antioxidants, plus at 7.2 billion, it still delivers a very high amount of probiotics.

Winner: Athletic Greens

Overall Winner: Athletic Greens

When compared to Athletic Greens, Macro Greens has more digestive benefits and a little more vitamin C, but it’s not as potent in regards to vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and cognitive benefits. Macro Greens is still an outstanding product and significantly cheaper, but if we were to pick one supplement we’d take every day, it would be Athletic Greens.

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