Rich Piana’s 5% Nutrition recently renamed and reformulated one of its most known supplements, the real food formula simply named Real Food. It is now called Real Carbs and compared to the previous version it has a lot more sweet potato, slightly more oats, and just a gram of yams instead of the original’s 10g.
5% Nutrition has now released an explanation for why it made all the changes that it did, including the switch from Real Food to Real Carbs. The name change is because someone else actually has the trademark for Real Food, and 5% was not aware. The owner of the mark kindly let the brand sell through its inventory leading to the recent renaming.
As for the change in formula, 5% Nutrition has been extremely honest and said it come down to quality and cost. Its previous supplier was apparently not able to produce yams that passed the brand’s strict testing. It then decided to move to ‘wild yams’ which also has a great nutrition profile and taste, and passed 5% Nutrition’s testing.
The difference, however, with wild yams compared to the yams from the original Real Food, is that they’re more expensive. Because 5% Nutrition wanted to keep the price point the same for its reformulated Real Carbs, it rebalanced the ingredients. As mentioned, that led to a lot less yams and more oats and sweet potato to make up the difference.
We can’t help but applaud 5% Nutrition on its reformulation explanation, as it isn’t something we usually see supplement companies do. The brand showed even more character by being very honest about the situation and laying everything out so consumers can understand why it did what it did.
