Analysis of the 100% Whey Hydro Isolate supplement from Xcore Nutrition

[box type=”info” align=”aligncenter” ]Note. This review refers to the original version of Xcore Nutrition's Whey Hydro Isolate, not the new version, called Sport Series. You can find the analysis of the new version here.

This is Xcore Nutrition's introduction on its official website to the 100% Whey Hydro Isolate supplement, supposedly the best protein supplement money can buy.

?If you can't settle for anything other than the best, if the protein supplement you're looking for must be above any other protein supplement on the market, if you want the best whey supplement money can buy, here it is: 100% Whey Hydro Isolate!?*

?No other protein supplement can give you the same results in terms of muscle growth and recovery. In fact, the main competitors don't even come close!?*

After these two excerpts, it is clear that Xcore Nutrition wants to position 100% Whey Hydro Isolate as a top supplement.

Is it really a top protein?

Let's start the analysis, forgetting about marketing for a bit and analyzing the facts, because those are what matter.

100% Whey Hydro Isolate is available in two sizes – 907g and 2000g.
In addition to sizes, we have 5 flavors available: Strawberry, chocolate, vanilla, biscuit/cream and banana.

Ingredients

The list of ingredients in this supplement is as follows:

Confused. This list of ingredients is undoubtedly confusing.

Let's translate this list of ingredients into human language.

Each scoop of this supplement is 28g. Of these 28g, 27g are “iXPB Peptides Fusion”. The rest refers to other ingredients (flavorings, colorings, etc.)

And what is this ?iXPB Peptides Fusion??

Basically, it is a mixture of isolated, concentrated and hydrolyzed whey protein with an addition of BCAA's, L-Glycine and L-Glutamine.

Nutritional value

	28g	100g
Proteins	23g	82.14g
Carbohydrates	1.1g	3.93g
Fats	0.9g	3.21g

 

These are the nutritional values of this supplement in the strawberry version.

In the first column we have the reference values for a dose/scoop and then the numbers for each 100g of product.

100% Whey Hydro Isolate contains a protein content of 82.14%.

?…the main competitors don't even come close!?

ON Whey contains 81,63% of protein content.

Prozis 100% Whey Concentrate contains 82%.

Both the ON's Gold Standard, such as Prozis Whey Concentrate, have a difference of less than 1% compared to 100% Whey Hydro Isolate.

It seems that the competitors are even close, as the protein content is practically the same.

Regarding the levels of carbohydrates and fats, we can say that they are good compared to the average, but it is not enough to stand out.

If the analysis stopped here, this would undoubtedly be a good supplement, but the rest is missing.

Aminogram

We have already seen that the protein content of this supplement is good, now we need to know, Is this protein content of quality?

The Xcore supplement claims to be a hydrolyzed/isolated whey, so you would expect the aminogram to be at least slightly higher compared to a purely concentrated whey.

When we looked at the aminogram of 100% Whey Hydro Isolate, we noticed that something strange was going on, and as such, we put it side by side with the Impact Whey from Myprotein, it is also in the strawberry version.

What's weird?

Despite having a higher protein content (82,21% vs 78,63%) compared to Strawberry Impact Whey, 100% Whey Hydro Isolate only has a higher concentration of amino acids in just two of them, and none of the two are even essential.

This supplement, although it has BCAA's added to those already present in whey protein, contains less BCAA's than exclusively concentrated whey, without the addition of extra BCAA's.

Whey Hydro Isolate – Total BCAA's/100g = 17.48g

Impact Whey Strawberry? Total BCAA's/100g = 18.01g

Why does this happen?

How does 100% Whey Hydro Isolate, with a higher protein content, lose practically all amino acids to Impact Whey?

Glycine.

Glycine is a non-essential amino acid, used by supplement brands to increase the protein content of their products cheaply, thus allowing the use of less whey protein (more expensive) but keeping protein numbers high (and costs lower).

If we look at the brand's advertising on its official website, we see that it highlights the addition of BCAA's and Glutamine in its formula, however, we do not find any reference to the addition of Glycine in its advertising.

I wonder why?

If Xcore Nutrition did not add L-Glycine to this supplement, it would likely have a protein content of around 70%**. In other words, it would be composed of only around 70%** of protein.

Another interesting fact, if we do the math on the amount of L-Glycine that was added to this product, the value reaches almost 250g of extra glycine for every 2000g of product!**

?If you want the best whey supplement money can buy, here it is: 100% Whey Hydro Isolate!?

Oops…

Price

Finally, here is an analysis of the average price of 100% Whey Hydro Isolate.

	907g	2000g
Doses	32	71
Cost per dose	0.93?	0.73?
Cost 100g/protein*	4.02?	3.16?
Total cost	29.99?	51.99?

*The cost per 100g of protein refers to the cost per 100g of real protein, while the cost per serving refers to the cost per scoop which in this case is 28g and brings 23g of protein, the cost per 100g of protein is the cost per 100g of pure protein.

Each shake costs 0.93? in small format (907g) and 0.73? in the largest (2000g).

In other words, it has a similar price to Optimum Nutrition's Gold Standard and a much higher value than Myprotein's Impact Whey, both superior to the Xcore Nutrition product.

Is expensive? It's cheap?

It depends.

If we compare to Iron Whey by MusclePharm it's cheap.

If we compare it to some of the good protein supplements we have already reviewed here, such as Prozis 100% Whey Concentrate, The Impact Whey from Myprotein or even the Optimum Nutrition 100% Gold Standard It's expensive for what it offers.

Where to buy?

You can find this supplement available here and you can still use the code GVIRTUAL to get you 10% discount.

Conclusion

When we read a brand declaring that its product is the best on the market, and that the competition is not even close, we expect quality.

This is not the case with 100% Whey Hydro Isolate.

This supplement with “ISOLATE” in giant letters on its packaging is not even superior to a concentrated protein supplement.

As positive points we can highlight the low levels of carbohydrates and fats, and the addition of BCAA's ends up preventing this supplement from becoming a Whey Prime.

It is a mediocre whey protein supplement, which it tries to sell through marketing and not its quality, not being the worst in the category, but also being very far from the top spots.

*translation from official website

**A whey supplement has an average of 1-1.5g of Glycine, so if this product had 1.14 Glycine, the protein value would be 70.21g.

***Values rounded.