@f0x @lain @cjd

> local foods

Ridiculously expensive. You can pay like 10 EUR for a 200-gram piece of chicken breast or something. The factory mass-produced meat is several times cheaper. Similar with cheese. I would buy entirely local if it weren't for these prices.

> a cheap powder that claims to help with bulking

"Claims to help with bulking"??

Bro do you know anything about nutrition? Protein powder is simply that, protein. Like 80% to 90% depending on type; the rest being primarily sugars (up to ~5%), fats (up to ~5%), and moisture i.e. water (yes even if it's a powder).

Protein is made up of amino acids (AAs), some of which are essential (human body cannot synthesize) and some of which the body can synthesize from other AAs. The AA composition of a protein determines its quality for humans. Whey, casein, and soy are among the highest quality, as well as various meat (including fish) and egg proteins. Plant proteins other than soy tend to be of various lower qualities, though pea protein is fairly good as well if I remember correctly.

And protein is what your body needs to build muscle. The amount it needs varies wildly, but to make absolutely sure that your body never skips out on muscle building potential due to a lack of protein, taking up to 2g per kg of bodyweight is a good idea, so e.g. around 140g per day if you're 70kg. It's possible that your body's needs will be saturated at much lower levels (like even half that) but we're just trying to cover our bases and make sure.

It is said that about half of this can come from lower quality protein sources; it's fine so long as about 50% of it consists of high quality proteins like the ones mentioned before.

Check the macronutrient profile of your food stuffs and tell me whether you easily reach this protein goal every day without either meticulously planning your meals, or over-eating such that you can't stay lean.

Chances are, your regular meals will only provide you with around 50-100g of protein some days. That may be enough, or it may be slightly sub-optimal. Adding some high-quality protein to that, like 30g of whey or soy, especially if you notice you haven't eaten many animal products or a bunch of soy that day, is a good idea to optimize muscle-building potential if you're regularly training heavy.

By the way, even if you consumed 50g of protein powder every day, and it contained a whole 5% sugar, that would be a measly 2.5g of additional sugar per day. Worrying about that is not smart.