Whey Protein

Whey is the fast-digesting protein fraction of milk, complete in all nine essential amino acids and naturally rich in leucine. It is the per-gram value benchmark the rest of the powder market gets measured against: widely available, well-studied, and usually the cheapest complete protein by the gram. The three forms — concentrate, isolate, hydrolysate — differ mostly in how much lactose and fat are filtered out and what that does to the price. When a review calls something "expensive for what it is," whey concentrate at a fair dollars-per-20g figure is often the thing it is being compared to.