Misinformation- heavy metals in plant based protein

Consumer Reports Article "Protein Powders and Shakes Contain High Levels of Lead" Spreads Misinformation.

On October 14, 2025, Consumer Reports published an article titled “Protein Powders and Shakes Contain High Levels of Lead.” Below is our initial response addressing the significant misinformation contained within that article, as well as reassurance that our products are safe for consumption.

For those of you who aren’t subscribed to our email list, we issued a communication on October 17, 2025, regarding the article, which is included below so that everyone has access to it. We are currently preparing a full analysis to address the numerous inaccuracies in the piece. In the meantime, we encourage you to read this communication.

Email communication issued on October 17, 2025

Hi everyone, we hope you have been keeping well!

As many of you may have recently seen in the news, there was a Consumer Reports article released regarding high levels of lead and other heavy metals found in many of the leading brands of protein powders. We wanted to reach out to reassure you that you are safe consuming our products, and to share some of the reasons why.

Summary:

This report is American and features almost exclusively American brands - Health Canada and Canadian brands are held to much stricter standards. 

Thrive Protein products are all third-party tested before release and are safe for daily consumption. Our proteins consistently contain significantly lower than Health Canada daily thresholds.

Health Canada is one of the strictest and most stringent health governing bodies in the world. For example, the daily lead threshold is set at 0.14 micrograms per kg of body mass per day. We use the most stringent threshold which is based on a 56kg person, which produces a daily led threshold for protein powder of 0.249 ppm, our plant-based protein consistently falls below 0.1 ppm, over 2.5 times lower than the daily threshold.

The consumer report article is based on gross misinformation — see the second part of this communication for details. We are currently outlining all the reasons why you should seriously question what you read in that report. For reference, you are likely exceeding the consumer reports ''daily lead limit'' everytime you eat a plate of vegetables. Again, we highly encourage you to read the second part of this communication.

Our commitment to transparency

Although several of the protein powders featured in the article were from the U.S., there were a couple that are sold in Canada — ours was not included in the report. We wanted to be transparent and clear with our community to let you know that our plant-based protein and whey protein, as well as all of our other products, do not contain high levels of heavy metals.

All of our products are third-party tested prior to their release from the manufacturer. We believe in the utmost quality of our ingredients and have specifically partnered with manufacturers who share our values and commitment to high standards — including Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) certification, Health Canada–licensed facilities, CFIA inspections, and third-party testing prior to release.

An independent third party, unrelated to both us and the manufacturer, takes a sample from every single lot of every single variant in our product line to test for various contaminants, including heavy metals. There are strict specifications for each potential contaminant that must be met to pass these third-party testing standards.

To be clear, none of our protein powders come remotely close to Health Canada’s thresholds when tested for heavy metals. Our most recent batch of plant-based protein contained 0.098 ppm — when converted into micrograms at the time of consumption, this is over 2.5 times below the daily limit.

We receive a Certificate of Analysis (COA) for each lot of every product, outlining any detected contaminants, even at microscopic levels (parts per million). We are currently working on making all of these results publicly accessible through our website for every batch; in the meantime, they are available upon request.

If any product does not pass rigorous testing, it is destroyed and will not be sold. Fortunately, this has never occurred due to the exceptional quality of our ingredients.

We wanted to reach out with confidence to assure you that the product you’re consuming is safe and does not contain high levels of any heavy metals. Our products were not featured in the Consumer Reports article, but if they had been, they would have tested significantly below the thresholds reported in that piece — comparable to or even lower than some of the so-called “safe” brands mentioned.

Gross Misinformation in the Consumer Report

We will soon be releasing an article explaining why readers should exercise extreme caution and think critically when reviewing the recent Consumer Reports piece on protein powders and heavy metals. The article contains several methodological flaws, biased assumptions, and a gross lack of scientific rigor, all of which we will be addressing in the weeks to come.

One of the key problems is that the article bases its claims on limits set by California’s Proposition 65 — rather than on any scientifically recognized health or safety standards established by governing bodies such as Health Canada, the U.S. FDA, the U.K. food standards authorities, or by toxicology research. Prop 65’s daily “limit” for lead is 0.5 micrograms per day — an extremely conservative advisory level designed to trigger a warning label, not to define a level of toxicity or risk. Simply put, the 0.5 micrograms used as the basis for the entire article’s analysis is not a daily safety limit — it’s part of labeling information specific to California.

To put that in perspective, a serving of vegetables grown in mineral-rich soil can naturally contain far more than this amount of lead. Even common foods like spinach, sweet potatoes, or cocoa would have you far exceeding the Prop 65 threshold — yet no one would consider them unsafe or “toxic.” In plain english, are you going to stop eating vegetables because it crosses the Prop 65 levels?

Furthermore, the article advises consumers to obtain all protein from foods; however, if you do so using plant-based sources, in many cases you would actually consume more lead per gram of protein than from our plant-based protein product. We mention this simply to provide some perspective. Unlike the opinion-based article from Consumer Reports, all scientific references supporting our statements will be published in our upcoming blog article.

By treating Prop 65’s warning level as a universal safe-exposure limit, the Consumer Reports article misleads readers and spreads gross misinformation about product safety.

We encourage readers to think critically when consuming this kind of media. Prop 65 is a California-specific labelling law — not a health standard — and its values are not supported by international toxicology data or blood-metal studies. For reliable guidance, consumers should refer instead to their national health authorities, which for us in Canada is Health Canada. If you're interested in digging further into this, access peer-reviewed toxicology research available through Google Scholar or government databases.

We must ask: why is plant-based protein under attack when many of the foods we eat contain even higher levels of naturally occurring heavy metals and are still considered safe? The article advises readers to switch to whey or yogurt and fails to disclose how the project was funded.

It’s upsetting and frustrating to us as a business that one of our main products, which provides numerous health benefits, is in jeopardy due to such gross misinformation. Remember, as a reader, just because something is posted on the internet and includes the word “expert” doesn’t mean it’s true.

We sincerely appreciate your ongoing support and remain committed to transparency and quality in everything we do.

Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions.

Joe Clark, Gillian House - Thrive Protein