SupplementsBrand ReviewAug 2026

Labrada Reviewed: Range, Label Accuracy, and Who It Is For

Labrada is an American protein brand that has been selling since 1995, and its Lean Body shakes are what most people here have seen on a shelf. Almost everything written about it online is written by somebody selling it. This is not that: what is actually in the range, what an independent lab measured against the label, what the FDA record contains, and how to check a tub before you pay for it.

1995

Founded, Houston TX

35 g

Protein claimed, 70 g serving

34 g

Measured, independent lab test

The measured figure comes from a Labdoor test page that shows no test date and carries a 2019 copyright notice. It is compared against the current manufacturer label for the same 70 g serving, so it is a historical snapshot next to a present day claim, not a same batch verification. The full caveats are in the label accuracy section below.

What Labrada Is

Labrada Nutrition is an American sports nutrition company. The company page states that Labrada Nutrition was founded in 1995, and the founder is Lee Labrada, a competitive bodybuilder who won the Mr. Universe title in 1985, placed in the top four at Mr. Olympia for seven consecutive years, and was inducted into the IFBB Hall of Fame in 2004. The corporate address recorded on the US FDA enforcement file is 333 Northpark Central Drive, Houston, Texas.

Two quality claims sit on the brand, and only one of them is something a buyer can independently check. Keeping them apart is most of the work of an honest review of a supplement brand.

Claim one: the in-house guarantee

The company states that its products are routinely assayed by a third-party testing lab to ensure they meet label claim, summarised on the packaging as a promise that if it is on the label, it is in the product. Labrada does not publish those assay reports. It is a statement of internal practice, not a document you can read. Treat it as an intention, not as evidence.

Claim two: Informed Choice, and its exact scope

The company page states that Lean Body shakes are certified by Informed Choice to be free of banned substances. Check that against the Informed Choice list itself rather than against the logo, because the two do not line up the way the sentence implies. The certified products list headed August 2026 carries exactly three Labrada Nutrition entries: Lean Body Plant Based RTD Shake, PRO SERIES HYDRO and Lean Body RTD Shake. PRO SERIES HYDRO is not a Lean Body product, so the certification reaches outside that line, and the Lean Body All-in-One powder that this review looks at in most detail is not on the list at all. The list is public, so this is one quality claim a buyer can check in a minute.

It is also worth knowing what Informed Choice does and does not test. As the company describes the programme, certified finished products are skip tested at least monthly, certified raw materials are batch tested before market, and certified sites have their facility control procedures audited, all against a list of substances banned in sport. That is a doping control programme built for athletes who face drug testing. It is not an audit of how much protein is in the tub, and it is not a heavy metals audit. A product can hold a valid Informed Choice certification and still be an ordinary product nutritionally.

None of this is FDA approval, for Labrada or anyone else. Under the US Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act, the FDA does not have the authority to approve dietary supplements before they are marketed, and the agency describes itself as generally limited to enforcement after a product is already on sale. Any brand, in any country, describing itself as FDA approved for a supplement is describing something that does not exist.

What Labrada Actually Sells

The catalogue splits into a consumer facing shake line under the Lean Body name and a more traditional sports nutrition range under the Labrada name. Figures below are the manufacturer label claims taken from the product pages, not from a retailer listing.

Line	Format	Stated on the label
Lean Body RTD	Tetra Pak carton, 17 oz and 8.45 oz	40 g protein, zero sugar, 24 vitamins and minerals (17 oz listing)
Lean Body Plant Based RTD	Tetra Pak carton, 17 oz	30 g protein, plant protein base
Lean Body All-in-One	Powder, jug and single packets	35 g protein per 70 g scoop serving, 40 g per 79 g packet
Lean Body CarbWatchers	Powder packets	40 g protein, 1 to 3 g sugar
Premium Whey	Powder	Whey protein category on the Labrada storefront
Muscle Mass Gainer	Powder	High calorie mass gainer category
ElastiJoint	Powder	Joint care category
Charge!	Ready to drink	Pre-workout category

The full Labrada storefront could not be enumerated for this review, because the collection pages did not return a readable listing. The categories above are the ones named on the manufacturer navigation and product pages, so treat the table as the confirmed core of the range rather than a complete catalogue. For the gainer question specifically, the format comparison lives in the mass gainer versus whey guide, and the concentrate versus isolate question is covered in the whey isolate versus concentrate guide.

The Lean Body Line

One naming point first, because it sends a lot of people to the wrong page. Lean Body is a product name. It is not a measurement of your body composition. If you arrived looking for what lean body mass means as a number about your own body, that is a separate subject and this page will not answer it.

The important thing about the Lean Body powders is that they are not plain whey. They are fortified meal style formulas, which changes both who they suit and how you should price them. Here is what the manufacturer label states for the two powder formats.

Per serving	All-in-One jug, 2 scoops (70 g)	All-in-One packet (79 g)
Calories	290	325 to 330 by flavour
Protein	35 g	40 g
Total carbohydrate	19 g	21 g
Total sugars	3 g, 0 g added	6 g
Dietary fibre	7 g	7 to 9 g
Total fat	8 g	9 to 10 g
Vitamins and minerals	22	22
Protein sources	Whey protein concentrate, milk protein isolate	Whey protein concentrate, milk protein isolate
Allergens declared	Milk, soy on most flavours. Salted caramel also declares wheat, chocolate peanut butter also declares peanuts	Milk, soy (lecithin)

Notice the allergen row. Flavours inside the same product line do not carry identical allergen statements. On the manufacturer product page for the jug, six of the eight flavours declare milk and soy, salted caramel declares milk, wheat and soy, and chocolate peanut butter declares milk, peanuts and soy. The same page also carries gluten free marketing copy for the product, which sits badly next to a wheat declaration on one of its own flavours, so anyone avoiding gluten should read the statement for the exact flavour and ask the seller rather than trust the banner. Reading the specific flavour rather than the line is the habit that matters here.

Does the meal replacement idea hold up? A 2025 systematic review and meta-analysis of 70 randomised controlled trials, looking at total and partial meal replacements in people with obesity, found reductions against control of roughly 2.42 to 4.28 kg in body weight, 0.72 to 1.51 kg/m2 in BMI, 1.6 to 3.59 kg in fat mass and 2.12 to 3.51 cm in waist circumference, all as 95 percent confidence intervals. Two qualifiers travel with that result and both matter. No significant effect was seen on leptin. And the subgroup analysis reported that total meal replacement had a greater impact on those measures than partial meal replacement, which is the pattern most people actually use when they swap one meal for a shake.

The population caveat: those trials studied people with obesity, usually inside a structured programme. They are not evidence about a healthy gym-goer replacing lunch with a shake for convenience. The finding describes what happened in weight management trials, and it stops there.

Label Accuracy: Claim Against Measurement

A brand promising that what is on the label is in the tub is easy to say. Searching for published independent testing of a Labrada product, the one result that could be opened for this review was the Labdoor test page for Labrada Lean Body, which reports a tested serving of 2 scoops (70 g) in vanilla. That is the same serving size the current manufacturer label uses, which makes a side by side possible. Other testing may exist that this search did not surface.

Per 2 scoops (70 g)	Current label claim	Labdoor measured
Protein	35 g	34 g
Calories	290	289 kcal
Total fat	8 g	8.2 g
Dietary fibre	7 g	7 g
Heavy metal screening	Not a label item	Pass

Those numbers are close, and closeness is a good sign. Now the caveats, which are large enough that the result should not be treated as verification of anything currently on a shelf. The Labdoor page does not display a test date and the page carries a 2019 copyright notice, so this is a historical snapshot placed next to a present day label rather than a same batch comparison. Labdoor also states on the same page that the product has not been certified by Labdoor, and gives it an overall score of 76.7 out of 100. Formulas change between production runs, and one flavour is not every flavour.

For market context, two recent independent testing programmes are worth knowing about, with their populations named because neither one covers Vietnam and neither one is about Labrada.

India, 2025: 34 whey powders, split by category

A crowd-funded analysis compared 18 medical or pharmaceutical whey powders against 16 nutraceutical, meaning sports nutrition, whey powders sold in India. The sports nutrition group averaged 75.6 g protein per 100 g and showed tight agreement with label claims, with 94 percent meeting a 60 g per 100 g threshold. The pharmaceutical group averaged 29.1 g per 100 g, and 83 percent of them were mislabelled by more than plus or minus 5 percent. The category, not the shelf, was doing the predicting. But the sports nutrition group was not spotless either: taurine-based nitrogen spiking was detected in 12.5 percent of them, against 89 percent of the pharmaceutical powders. No product in the study had detectable pesticides or mercury.

Hungary, 2025: 22 powders, 16 elements

Researchers bought 22 whey, vegan and beef based protein powders online in Hungary and screened them for 16 elements using laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy and ICP-MS. Neither method detected heavy metal content above the limits set in the regulations. The authors were careful not to let that stand alone, titling the paper a reassuring snapshot but not a reassuring quality guarantee, and concluding that heavy metals testing should be a routine and mandatory part of quality control for these products. A clean sample of 22 products in one country is not a statement about the category.

Neither study names the brands in each group, so it cannot be said whether any Labrada product was in either sample. What both are useful for is calibration: sports nutrition powders as a category tested better than the medical category in the Indian sample, and heavy metals were not the problem in the Hungarian sample, while nitrogen spiking still showed up in a minority of sports products. That is the realistic backdrop against which a single brand claim should be read.

The 2018 Recall, and the Line About Vietnam

A search of the openFDA food enforcement database, filtered on the recalling firm field for Labrada, returns three records. All three carry the same event identifier and describe a single recall in 2018. The openFDA drug enforcement endpoint returns no matches for the same firm name. That database covers recalls reported in FDA enforcement reports in the United States, so it says nothing about other regulators.

What happened, from the company announcement FDA published: on 24 April 2018, Labrada Nutrition of Houston recalled specific lots of Lean Pro 8 protein powder because they may contain undeclared egg protein. The announcement states that people with an allergy to egg protein "run the risk of serious or life-threatening allergic reaction" if they consume the products, and that no illnesses had been reported in connection with the problem. On cause, it states that the recall was initiated after a state inspection found that the egg containing product had been distributed in packaging that did not reveal the presence of egg, and that subsequent investigation indicated an incorrect version of the formula had been used during production. Production was suspended pending correction.

Recalled product	UPC	Units
Lean Pro 8 Vanilla, 2,268 g tub	710779112834	3,517
Lean Pro 8 Chocolate, 2,268 g and 1,000 g tubs	710779112841, 710779113411	2,976
Lean Pro 8 Cookies & Cream, 1,000 g tub	710779113435	132

FDA classified the event Class I, the agency category used where there is a reasonable probability that use of the product will cause serious adverse health consequences or death. Undeclared allergens are routinely classified that way. The recall was voluntary and firm initiated, and FDA terminated it on 19 October 2018.

Two FDA documents, two different distribution stories. The company announcement hosted on the FDA site says the recalled Lean Pro 8 "was distributed nationwide in retail stores and through mail orders". The enforcement report in the FDA database records the distribution pattern for the same lots as nationwide throughout the US plus a list of export destinations, and Vietnam appears on that list. That field describes the distribution pattern for those lots; it does not confirm that any recalled unit reached a Vietnamese shelf. But a reader who saw only the press release would not know Vietnam was in the picture at all, which is a useful reminder that the summary document and the database record are not interchangeable.

Read fairly, this is one closed event from 2018 with no reported illnesses, in one country regulatory database, and it is not evidence about a product bought in 2026. What it is still useful for is the allergen habit. Lean Pro 8 was a multi source blend, and the published ingredient list for the recalled chocolate barcode includes agglomerated egg albumin alongside whey concentrate, whey isolate, hydrolysed whey isolate, micellar casein, calcium caseinate and milk proteins, with a contains milk, egg and soy statement. Egg was a designed ingredient in that formula, not a contaminant. Anyone who assumes a protein blend means dairy only is making an assumption the label does not support.

Lean Pro 8 does not appear among the product lines listed on the Lean Body site today, and one large international retailer lists it as a discontinued item. Its current status could not be confirmed from the Labrada catalogue directly, so that is reported as an observation rather than as a fact about the product line.

What the Evidence Actually Supports

For protein powder as a category, the reference point is a 2018 systematic review, meta-analysis and meta-regression in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, pooling 49 studies and 1,863 participants. Every trial in it was in healthy adults doing at least six weeks of resistance training, so that is the population the result belongs to.

Protein supplementation increased one-repetition-maximum strength by 2.49 kg, with a 95 percent confidence interval of 0.64 to 4.33 kg.
It increased fat-free mass by 0.30 kg, with a 95 percent confidence interval of 0.09 to 0.52 kg.
The effect on fat-free mass got smaller as participant age increased, and was larger in people who were already resistance trained.
Beyond a total protein intake of about 1.62 g per kg of body weight per day, supplementing further produced no additional fat-free mass gain from training.

Two honest footnotes on that paper. The gains are real but modest, which is the opposite of how protein is usually marketed. And the senior author discloses grant support, travel expenses and honoraria from the US National Dairy Council, an agency that supported trials included in the analysis. That does not invalidate a meta-analysis of 49 studies, but it belongs in view. The practical intake question is covered in the protein guide.

None of that is evidence about Labrada. PubMed was searched for the company name and for the brand combined with meal replacement terms. What came back were papers by unrelated authors who share the surname, on unrelated subjects. No published clinical trial testing a Labrada product against a comparator could be found. That is entirely normal for a supplement brand and is not a criticism of this one specifically, but it does mean that any claim this brand outperforms another brand is a marketing position rather than a tested result. The protein does what protein does; the label is what distinguishes the brands.

Telling Genuine From Fake in Vietnam

Four checks. None of them is conclusive alone, and it is worth being clear about what each one can and cannot prove, because authentication advice that overpromises is worse than none.

1The barcode company prefix. Every Labrada barcode that could be verified for this review begins 7 10779: the four UPCs printed in the 2018 FDA recall notice, plus all seven Labrada branded products in the Open Food Facts database when filtered on the brands field. One barcode appears in both sources, so that is ten distinct numbers from two independent places, all sharing one company prefix. A tub whose barcode starts with a different prefix is not carrying the Labrada GS1 number. Two limits, though. A GS1 prefix identifies the member organisation that issued the number, not the country where the product was made, so it tells you nothing about manufacturing origin. And a counterfeit can copy a real barcode, which scans identically. A wrong prefix is a genuine red flag; a right one is not a clearance.
2The lot code on the base. The FDA recall notice describes the affected lot numbers as marked on the bottom of the tubs, which tells you where the code belongs. A genuine tub carries a lot code and an expiry. A blank base, a sticker pasted over the base, or a code that rubs off is worth asking about before paying.
3The Vietnamese supplementary label. Decree 43/2017/ND-CP requires mandatory label information in Vietnamese for goods circulated and imported in Vietnam, and where the original foreign label does not carry it, a supplementary Vietnamese label is required and must not obscure the original. Mandatory content includes the name of the goods, the name and address of the organisation or individual responsible for the goods, and the origin. Decree 111/2021/ND-CP sets the timing the other way round to what is often assumed: at the customs clearance stage the original foreign label has to show the name of the goods, the origin and the manufacturer or the party responsible for them, and then, after clearance is completed and the goods are moved to a warehouse, the importer adds the Vietnamese label before selling them on the Vietnamese market. A tub on a Vietnamese shelf with no Vietnamese sub label and no named importer has not come through the formal import route. That is not automatic proof of a counterfeit, but it does mean nobody local is accountable for it.
4The certification register, not the logo. Informed Choice publishes a public, searchable register of certified products by brand, and that register is where a banned substance claim can actually be checked. Search the exact product name rather than the brand, because the scope is per product. On the list headed August 2026, the Labrada Nutrition entries are Lean Body Plant Based RTD Shake, PRO SERIES HYDRO and Lean Body RTD Shake, and the Lean Body All-in-One powder is not among them. That list opened on an ordinary request for this review, so it is a check you can repeat yourself in a minute rather than trusting the logo on the carton.

What none of those four checks catch is a genuine tub that has been opened and refilled, or one whose expiry has been altered. A sealed foil liner under the lid, an unbroken shrink band and a legible printed expiry are the physical checks that go with the paperwork ones. The single most protective habit is buying from a seller with a named importer on the label and a receipt you can return with, because that is the only one of these that gives you somewhere to go if the tub is wrong.

Who It Is For, and Who It Is Not

A reasonable fit

Someone who wants a high protein, low sugar drink that needs no refrigeration. The Lean Body ready-to-drink carton is engineered for exactly that, and its shelf stability is the practical advantage in a hot climate.
Someone who competes in a drug tested sport and wants a product covered by a banned substance programme, as long as they pick a product that is actually listed. On the Informed Choice list headed August 2026 that means Lean Body RTD Shake, Lean Body Plant Based RTD Shake and PRO SERIES HYDRO. The Lean Body All-in-One powder is not on that list, so it should not be treated as covered, and the exact product name should be confirmed in the register before it is relied on.
Someone replacing a rushed meal rather than adding a shake on top of meals. The All-in-One formula is built for the meal slot, with fat, fibre and 22 micronutrients alongside the protein.

A poor fit

Anyone whose only goal is the cheapest gram of protein. In a fortified meal formula you are paying for fats, fibre and micronutrients as well, and if you already eat well those are things you are buying twice.
Anyone with a milk, soy, egg, wheat or peanut allergy, or coeliac disease, who has not read the specific flavour. Allergen statements differ between flavours inside the same line, one Lean Body powder flavour declares wheat on a page that also advertises the product as gluten free, and the 2018 recall is a concrete illustration of what a mislabelled allergen looks like in practice.
Anyone expecting the powder to do the work. In the resistance training meta-analysis, supplementing past a total intake of roughly 1.62 g per kg per day added nothing further to fat-free mass gains, so beyond that point the tub is expensive food.

On whether the price is justified, the useful comparison is not the price of the tub. Divide the pack price by the number of servings multiplied by the grams of protein per serving, and you get a price per gram of protein that is comparable across brands and pack sizes. Then decide separately whether the fibre, fats and micronutrients in a meal formula are things you want to pay for, because that is where the difference between a meal shake and a plain whey tub actually sits. The same arithmetic works on Rule 1, Ostrovit and every other brand on the shelf.

The Short Version

Labrada Nutrition is an American brand founded in 1995 by Lee Labrada, based in Houston, Texas, selling a consumer shake line under the Lean Body name alongside a conventional sports nutrition range.
The banned substance certification is real but narrower than the company sentence suggests. The Informed Choice list headed August 2026 carries three Labrada Nutrition entries, Lean Body Plant Based RTD Shake, PRO SERIES HYDRO and Lean Body RTD Shake, and the Lean Body All-in-One powder is not among them. It also tests for doping substances rather than auditing protein content or heavy metals.
The in-house promise that what is on the label is in the product is not backed by published assay reports, so it is a statement of practice rather than evidence.
An independent lab test measured 34 g protein and 289 kcal in a 70 g serving of Lean Body vanilla, against a current label claim of 35 g and 290 for that serving, with a pass on heavy metals. The test page shows no date and carries a 2019 copyright, so treat it as encouraging history, not verification.
The FDA record contains one recall: Lean Pro 8, 2018, undeclared egg, Class I, voluntary, no illnesses reported, terminated in October 2018. The FDA database record lists Vietnam among the export destinations for those lots; the press release mentions only US distribution.
Protein powder as a category has solid evidence in healthy adults doing resistance training, with modest effect sizes and no further benefit past about 1.62 g per kg per day of total protein.
No published clinical trial tests a Labrada product against a comparator, so brand-versus-brand superiority claims are marketing.
To check a tub in Vietnam: barcode prefix 7 10779, a lot code on the base, a Vietnamese supplementary label naming the importer, and the Informed Choice register rather than the logo.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Labrada a good protein brand?+

It is an established American brand, founded in 1995, and the independent lab result that could be opened for this review measured 34 g of protein in a 70 g serving of Lean Body vanilla against a current label claim of 35 g for the same serving, with a pass on that lab heavy metal screening. That is an encouraging number, but the test page shows no test date and carries a 2019 copyright, so it is a historical snapshot rather than proof about a tub bought today. No published clinical trial has compared a Labrada product against another brand, so any claim that it beats a rival is marketing rather than a tested result.

Is Labrada Informed Choice certified?+

The company states that Lean Body shakes are certified by Informed Choice to be free of banned substances, but the certified products list is narrower than that sentence and does not simply follow the line. The Informed Choice list headed August 2026 carries three Labrada Nutrition entries: Lean Body Plant Based RTD Shake, PRO SERIES HYDRO and Lean Body RTD Shake. PRO SERIES HYDRO is not a Lean Body product, and the Lean Body All-in-One powder is not on the list, so being in the Lean Body line does not mean a product is certified. Informed Choice is a banned substance programme, with skip testing of certified finished products at least monthly plus a manufacturing audit. It is not an audit of protein content and it is not a heavy metals audit. Check the exact product name in the public register, which opens on an ordinary request.

Has Labrada ever been recalled?+

Yes, once in the FDA record. A search of the openFDA food enforcement database filtered on the recalling firm field returns three records, all belonging to a single 2018 event: specific lots of Lean Pro 8 protein powder recalled for undeclared egg. FDA classified it Class I, the recall was voluntary and firm initiated, no illnesses were reported in connection with the problem, and FDA terminated the recall on 19 October 2018. The openFDA drug enforcement endpoint returns no matches for the same firm name.

Is Lean Body a protein powder or a meal replacement?+

The Lean Body All-in-One powder is a fortified meal style formula, not a plain whey powder. The manufacturer label for a 70 g serving lists 290 calories, 35 g protein, 19 g carbohydrate, 7 g fibre, 8 g fat and 22 vitamins and minerals, with protein from whey protein concentrate and milk protein isolate. That matters for price comparison: you are paying for the fats, fibre and micronutrients as well as the protein, so a cost per gram of protein comparison against a plain whey tub is not comparing like with like.

How do I check that Labrada sold in Vietnam is genuine?+

Four checks, none of them conclusive on its own. Every Labrada barcode that could be verified for this review begins 7 10779, so a different company prefix is a red flag, although a copied barcode scans identically so a matching prefix proves nothing. Genuine tubs carry a lot code, which the FDA recall notice describes as marked on the bottom of the tub. Under Vietnamese labelling law an imported product must carry a supplementary Vietnamese label naming the organisation responsible for the goods, so a tub with no Vietnamese sub label and no named importer has not come through the formal import route. And a banned substance claim can be checked in the Informed Choice public register rather than trusted from the logo on the carton.

Sources & References

Peer reviewed literature. The country and the population each study covers is stated in the text above rather than generalised.

A systematic review, meta-analysis and meta-regression of the effect of protein supplementation on resistance training-induced gains in muscle mass and strength in healthy adults · Morton RW, Murphy KT, McKellar SR, et al. · British Journal of Sports Medicine (2018) PMID:28698222
The effect of total and partial meal replacements on obesity: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials · Yan M, Hu Y, Yin W, Zhu J, Lai X. · Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition (2025) PMID:40020707
The Citizens Protein Project 2: exhaustive analysis of popular whey protein supplements in India · Philips CA, Theruvath AH, Sreemohan A, et al. · Medicine (Baltimore) (2025) PMID:41239695
Citizens protein project: a self-funded, transparent, and concerning report on analysis of popular protein supplements sold in the Indian market · Philips CA, Theruvath AH, Ravindran R, Chopra P. · Medicine (Baltimore) (2024) PMID:38579036
Analysis of heavy metal content in protein powders available on the Hungarian market: a reassuring snapshot, but not a reassuring quality guarantee · Horvath IL, Kajner G, Galbacs G, Csupor D. · Journal of Nutritional Science (2025) PMID:40703701

Primary documents, labels and regulations, read on 5 August 2026 except where a later date is given on the entry. The Informed Choice certified products list and the Decree 111/2021/ND-CP text were read on 8 August 2026:

Not verified for this review: the complete Labrada product catalogue, because the storefront collection pages did not return a readable listing; the date of the Labdoor test; retail prices in Vietnam; whether Lean Pro 8 remains in production; whether any recalled unit reached a Vietnamese shelf; and whether any Labrada product appeared in the Indian or Hungarian test samples. Where a fact could not be tied to a document that was actually read, it has been left out rather than estimated.