Is Purition nutritionally complete?

No. Purition is not nutritionally complete, for all the right reasons. Nothing added. Nothing taken away. Just as nature intended.

Purition is better than complete because it’s made from real food. Minimally processed whole foods are key to an evidence-based healthy diet. We are fuelled by nature—and nature doesn’t make unhealthy ingredients.

Real food from nature isn’t ’nutritionally complete’, but it is healthy.

The term ‘nutritionally complete’ is used to suggest that fake food products are somehow better than real food, just because they contain added vitamins and minerals. The truth is, you can sprinkle vitamins and minerals on any food product, but that doesn’t automatically make it healthy.

The truth about nutritionally complete shakes

Complete nutrition shakes, protein supplements and diet shakes simply can’t compare to real food. Here’s why.

Made with low-quality ingredients

Nutritionally complete meal replacements are not cheap, but typically contain industrially processed, low-grade and inexpensive ingredients imported in bulk, often from China.

Most contain a couple of very inexpensive stock ingredients like oats, rice and pea protein, alongside a long list of unnatural gums, fillers and thickeners. Companies pretend their products are made from real food, but this is completely false and misleading. Despite their claims and photography, there are no peas, no rice, no coconuts and no sunflower seeds in their products—only highly refined, ultra-processed, powdered versions.

Where these ingredients actually come from is anyone’s guess. Origin is rarely disclosed but is likely to involve several thousand food miles and a load of shipping containers. Let’s not forget that importing also adds to a product’s carbon footprint, an uncomfortable thought if you’re environmentally aware. It’s good to wonder ‘Who made my food?’.

In contrast, Purition is committed to sourcing high-quality ingredients, responsibly. Around 70-75% come from the European Union (45% of which are from the UK). When we do travel further afield, it’s for ingredients like sulphate free Sri Lankan coconuts that give our range an extra edge over our powdered peers. We chop, mix, grind and pack everything ourselves in-house, in our Shropshire HQ, to strict SALSA Approved food production standards.

You need to feel comfortable about what’s going into your body, so we always recommend checking the label before investing in a product—and complete nutrition meal replacement shakes are no exception.

Synthetic vitamins and minerals

Processing ingredients on an industrial scale typically strips away some the ingredient’s natural nutrient profile. This is why most nutritionally complete meal shake brands have to add back synthetic vitamins and minerals. This speaks volumes about the quality of the product. Synthetic vitamins and minerals need to be added to make the products ‘complete’ because they’re so devoid of natural, real nutrition.

More importantly, there’s a catch. And it’s a big catch. Science says that synthetic vitamins and minerals are not easily absorbed by the human body. Take a look at this study, for example, which concluded that synthetic vitamin E is not as well absorbed by the body as natural vitamin E. Or this study, which proved that synthetic nutrients are not used the body in the same way as natural nutrients.

It’s all very well stating nutritional content on a label, but if these artificial extras pass through the body in the blink of an eye, is it really nutritionally complete?

Not so complete after all

Believe it or not, most nutritionally complete meal replacement shakes are not actually all that complete.

Clever marketing creates the illusion that the recommended dietary intake (RDI) is provided in a single serving. A whole day’s worth of recommended nutrients in one simple shake—fantastic, right? But on closer inspection, the reality is very different. Typically, a single portion only provides 20% of your daily vitamin and mineral requirements. You’d need 4 or 5 servings a day to meet your complete nutritional needs. What kind of nutritionist would honestly recommend that you drink four or five shakes a day and nothing else?

Purition doesn’t claim to be complete, because we don’t need to be. We’re fuelled by nature and use whole food ingredients that are packed with nourishing and slow-releasing vitamins and minerals. Enjoying Purition once or twice a day, combined with healthy, balanced home-cooked meals, will provide you with a variety of nutrients from a diverse range of real wholefood ingredients. And that’s all the nutrition you need for a healthy lifestyle!

See how we compare to other meal replacement shakes.

No one-size-fits-all

We’re all looking for stress-free short-cuts to make our hectic lives easier, but nutrition is personal.

Whilst Recommended Dietary Intake (RDI) provides a good indication to the basic levels of nutrition we should strive for on a daily basis, there’s not a single, ‘one size fits all’ solution. So many individual factors come into play—gender, muscle mass, lifestyle and general health to name a few. Following RDI down to a T could mean you’re getting too much or too little of the nutrients your body requires.

And anyway, just think about the food you eat on a daily basis and as part of a healthy lifestyle—is every meal ‘nutritionally complete?’ No, never! A bowl of porridge has never been nutritionally complete and that has been a breakfast staple for hundreds of years. It’s absurd to base any product or diet purely around nutritional completeness. Even the most super-fit individuals are unlikely to sit down to a single ‘complete’ plate of real food, yet still, they thrive and succeed.

Good nutrition is about getting a variety of whole foods over the course of a day and tailoring specific needs to you as an individual, rather than focusing too much on a fixed set of values on paper. 

Purition is the natural alternative

Be mindful of what you’re eating. Look past the marketing chatter and head straight for the ingredients list. Make sure you’re happy with what you’re putting into your body and know exactly where those ingredients have come from.

Purition isn’t nutritionally complete—and that’s something we’re rather proud of. We make real food health products to replace synthetic protein supplements, diet shakes and ‘complete meal’ shakes because whole foods are key to an evidence-based healthy diet. Purition’s real food ingredients were grown and harvested outdoors, rather than refined in factories in far off countries.

High in protein, fibre, natural fats, vitamins and minerals from whole food sources. A tasty, all-natural blend with heaps of nutritional worth.

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