247
people found this helpful, as of 2023
ranked #116,407 most helpful
out of 571,544,897 reviews
★☆☆☆☆
Too good to be true? That certainly might be the case.
So I don't really review things on amazon, but I feel that this product merits some time in writing in actual review apart from what others have written.
To begin with, this is without a doubt a great tasting protein; i'm quite surprised for the fact that as a plain plant based protein, it does not taste like crap. Financially speaking, this is a cheap product when one accounts for the cost/lb and the amount of protein that you get per serving along with it being an "organic" product, and when you spread that across many other kinds of protein strands available on Amazon you'll see that this is a good deal to be had especially when one sees that the market is more or less homogeneous for protein in general.
I went ahead and bought this product from Naked along with their chocpb and casein which I felt were a great deal and I was pretty hyped to get my hands on this based on all the stellar reviews that were here on amazon.
Shortly after, I out of my own curiosity went ahead and did a bit of research on plant based protein and was somewhat alarmed by some reviews and some sources stating that contaminates that could possibly be prevalent in plant based proteins just like this one. Though then again, there isn't much research out their to warrant this being the case (along with everyone's opinion on the matter which is quite open-ended), however what really caught my attention was in which this product is being marketed as an organic product.
The reason that this alarmed me is because when I went on the USDA's organic integrity database, I tried to search up this company where their name didn't pop up anywhere in their database. I then went to CCOF's website (the agency Naked claims to have been certified organic from) and searched their registry for this company and nothing popped up.
It is at this point in which I was dumbfounded as to how something like this could have happened. I then emailed Naked and asked them who they were doing business as to verify that this product truly is organic in which they told me that they are labeling their product as organic based upon their co-packer, meaning that this product (from whoever the third party manufacture is) supposedly has registration with CCOF as being certified organic. Private labeling isn't a problem, and heck, if that means that I can get protein much cheaper i'm all for it. The only problem is that Naked told me that they don't provide the name of who their supposed co-packer might be which to me sounds highly suspicious and concerns my own well-being as to if I should be taking this in the first place. I mean I can understand if you as a company don't want to provide the name of your third party manufacture so that your competition finds out in regards to your strategy (which is pretty reasonable when one looks at how fragmented the market is), but not being transparent to that point gives benefit of the doubt to many things they are claiming.
Surely it was my own sheer ignorance that I did not do my due diligence before buying their products, but I think that those who are going to go ahead and purchase their products ought to think twice: They label their product as organic when their name doesn't pop-up in any data base (in which they claim that their product being organic is a fraudulent claim in itself), they state that their product is "HEAVY METALS AND MELAMINE TESTED: Our Naked Organic Sprouted Brown Rice Protein is independently tested by third-parties for heavy metals and is melamine free" (which is pretty much contradictory since they are privately labeling a product that clearly isn't manufactured by them, so what claim back's this up?), lastly, on their 5lb product they use seals to label that this product is organic but why not on their 1/lb product?
I had a lot of hopes for this company and this product as the exact value proposition of what this product claims to be when its not what it is.
"Naked Rice: Premium Organic Brown Rice With Nothing To Hide" ought to be more like "Naked Rice: Premium Organic Brown Rice With Many Things To Hide"
Caveat Emptor......
February 2018 · Health and Household · verified purchase