Equip Foods Response: Consumer Reports Protein Powder Testing

On October 14, Consumer Reports published an article testing 23 protein powders for heavy metals. They noted that our Prime Protein Chocolate was “safe to consume occasionally.” We take this topic very seriously, heavy metals in food are a real, industry-wide issue and we hold ourselves to standards that exceed both FDA and Prop 65 requirements.

What the article missed:

They only tested our Chocolate flavor, which contains real cocoa - a crop that naturally absorbs trace minerals like lead and cadmium from soil (just like spinach, beets, or carrots). Meanwhile, other brands in the article were tested on unflavored or vanilla versions. That’s an apples-to-oranges comparison that ignores the well-documented differences between cocoa and other ingredients.
They tested 2024 lots, not our current production. Since then, we’ve continued to optimize our sourcing and run comprehensive third-party testing on every lot through Light Labs, an ISO-accredited facility.
Our most recent results tell a different story:

Current Chocolate lot (Sept 2025): 11.15 ppb lead - less than half of what Consumer Reports reported (27 ppb).
Current Unflavored lot: <1.96PPB - the lowest amount that testing can detect. This helps illustrate the delta between cocoa-based products and other SKUs.
For reference, all products tested under 19 ppb in the consumer reports study were deemed safe to consume daily.

Here are the Certificate of Analyses referenced above:

Prime Chocolate:

Unflavored Prime:

Why chocolate will almost always test higher:

All of the trace metals come from the cocoa, not the protein itself. Cocoa, like many whole foods, naturally contains small amounts of minerals from the earth. For context, organic carrots often test around 20 ppb lead (source) and sweet potatoes above 30 ppb (source), roughly double what’s found in our latest chocolate protein. These trace levels are comparable to what’s found in a nutrient-dense, real-food diet.

About Prop 65 and safety standards:

The Consumer Reports testing used California Prop 65 limits — one of the most conservative standards in the world. It identifies the first exposure level with no harm and divides it by 1,000. This standard does not reflect scientific consensus in the US, EU, or global regulatory agencies. Even under that extreme margin of safety, current Equip lots test comfortably below Prop 65 limits and are well within FDA and international safety thresholds.

Our commitment to transparency:

We test our products for:

Heavy metals (lead, arsenic, cadmium, mercury) - every lot!
Glyphosate and pesticides
Herbicides and other contaminants

All tests are performed by Light Labs, and every Certificate of Analysis is available on our website or by request.

The bottom line:

Equip Foods still delivers some of the cleanest, most transparent, real-food protein on the market. We’ll continue testing every lot, sharing every result, and setting the bar higher for our industry, because you deserve to know exactly what’s in your product.