OWYN Only What You Need Vegan Protein Powder, 20g, Chocolate

I meant to write this review sooner so Owyn, please forgive me 🙂 I found out about Owyn through one of their influencer partnerships (Serena Kerrigan what’s good) advertising their on the go protein shakes. I’m not a huge fan, I like making my own at home. What I did love is that it was free of the top 8 allergens, one being NUTS! I have a moderate nut allergy and the amount of protein bars and shakes that have nuts/nut butters etc is probably 95% of them. I started buying their delicious protein bars without being scared of getting an allergic reaction or not reading the label correctly. I love what the brand is doing and I will continue to support them!

Onto the powder, I loved the protein bars so much and the protein powder had very similar ingredients. The powder is very smooth, easy to dissolve and blend with and I have a few pointers on getting the perfect protein shake. One thing, I don’t love monk fruit extract (used to sweeten) and notice it just has a VERY strong taste and one that I personally think is a bit strong. My recipe combats that so it isn’t overpowering. The ingredients are clean and I feel confident using their brand. The vanilla flavor is very versatile: bake, shakes, oatmeal etc.

I like my shakes not too sweet and they need be a color I can stand looking at (no more weird brown or gray shakes for me… I find that it’s hard for me to want to drink them lol!)

Berry shake (Go-to, doesn’t taste overly sweet and isn’t overly “milky” if you will, I prefer to use majority water to cut the excess calories)
2 scoops protein powder
1- 1 1/2 cup of water (more or less depending on how much shake you want)
1/4 cup milk (I use oat)
1 1/2 cups of frozen raspberries
1/2 a banana (if you need the added calories/vitamins/fullness)
4-5 ice cubes

Green smoothie (fancy, easy way to get your greens in. I do feel like the powder overpowers this one so the vanilla/monk fruit taste is much stronger than the berry one)
2 scoops protein powder
1 – 1 1/2 cups water
1/4 cup of milk
1 cup of frozen mango
1 cup of spinach
1/2 banana (if you want)
3-5 ice cubes

Blend and enjoy and keep supporting Owyn! I do try to buy from the website or from local retailers vs Amazon and whole foods when I can.

This protein powder tastes pretty good, though it is a bit grainy, but the container! It is huge and the powder didn’t even come quite to the halfway mark, which is wasteful. It is going to be difficult to find a spot to store this. Also, as others have stated, the scoop is at the very bottom and I had to put my hand, quite far past my wrist, way down into the thing just to get the scoop out.

I have gone through a lot of protein shakes but most of them are sweetened with horrible sugar replacements or are packed with natural sugar. This product is packed with protein, was sealed perfectly, and works with my keto lifestyle with 3 net carbs per serving. It is not overly sweet which is great because you can add sweetness but you can’t take it away and still get the full nutrition.
I live at 10k feet elevation and the seal did not break. I use glass jars with a lid to mix it and there were no clumps after about 20 seconds of shaking. Quick and easy!

I intended this as a simple question, not as a review. But my question did not seem to fit within the the character limit permitted for Q&A. So I have expanded it for greater clarity (after wasting time to try and make it “short enough” as a question in the Q&A)…

Few seem to be aware that there are 2 versions of this product on this web page – “CHOCOLATE” and “DARK CHOCOLATE.” Those who have noticed and asked? They don’t get a good enough answer – they don’t cover what I wanted to know, anyway.

To see what I mean, please scroll up and click on the 2 sizes for this product (1.1 Pound and 2.4 Pound). You’ll get two different “labels”…

The 1.1 Pound is “DARK CHOCOLATE”) while the 2.4 is “CHOCOLATE.” That may sound like a small thing to many, but “dark chocolate” is different from “regular” chocolate. Also, clicking on the 1.1 Pound size causes the description to change – it uses the word “dark” several more times.

So there IS a deliberate difference, at least for as long as the company chooses to communicate the merits of these 2 sizes differently, looking like 2 different products. Up to now, I did not care because the taste was always great – a rich, real “dark chocolate.”

Recently, though, I received my latest (7th) shipment from Amazon. I noticed something different. The next part is from memory because I don’t have the previous contained to compare wording…

The word “dark chocolate” does not appear anywhere on the new packaging – not even “chocolate.” It may have appeared on the wrapping that I tore away from the cap, I don’t know (threw it out, too). But it does not appear anywhere else.

Also, when I read the rest of the package, the language seems more clinical in places, although that may just be my bias wondering what happened to the proud use of the world “dark chocolate.”

Anyway, all this only REALLY mattered when I tasted the latest shipment. GONE is that rich dark chocolate taste that I loved so much.

That taste was so wonderfuil that it helped me understand how some pro athletes say, “I can’t believe they pay me to play this game.” Well, I couldn’t believe that this rich chocolate taste was actually good for me!

What about this new taste?

😖😫🥲

And those are the kinder emojis. It was bitter, metallic, chemical. I was thrown all the way back to the competitors that I had tried previously.

If I’m getting this taste because this how the “chocolate” version is supposed to taste (i.e., it is not the “dark chocolate”), well, they need to communicate that more clearly.

On the other hand, if they have changed the formulation, we have a bigger problem.

Am I alone in this? I can see that a few others have noticed the difference (between the 1.1 and 2.4 Pound sizes). It has never been well explained, so if anyone can add to this, I’m sure many would appreciate it.

But now there may be a bigger issue – what happened to my rich dark chocolate taste? Am I alone in that, too? Just a bad batch?

I have to give this 1* for now because this “review” (for lack of being able to ask a question) comes from the bad taste, which is present for whatever “version” I received.

Tastes absolutely disgusting – buy if you want to feel like u r drinking powdered plastic