Nutrition6 min read
The supplements worth buying, and the ones that are not
The supplement aisle is built to make you feel like you are missing something. This is written for healthy adults aged 18 and over without a medical condition, and the list of products with solid evidence behind them is short enough to remember, none of them urgent.
The short answer
Only a handful of supplements have solid evidence for building muscle: creatine monohydrate, protein powder as a convenient way to hit your target, and vitamin D through the darker UK months. Caffeine can help training performance. Everything else is weakly supported at best, and none of it matters until training and food are consistent.
- Creatine monohydrate is the only muscle-building supplement with strong evidence
- Protein powder is food in a tub, not a special product
- Vitamin D is a UK winter issue rather than a muscle one
- Nothing on the shelf replaces training and eating enough
The short list worth considering
These are the products with enough evidence behind them to be worth the money for a beginner, in the order most people would benefit from adding them.
| Supplement | What it does | Typical amount |
|---|---|---|
| Creatine monohydrate | Small but reliable gains in strength and training volume | 3-5g a day, any time |
| Protein powder | Convenience: helps hit a protein target you are missing | 20-25g per scoop, as needed |
| Vitamin D | Covers low UK sunlight from October to March | 10 micrograms a day |
| Caffeine | Better focus and effort in a session | 1-3mg per kg, an hour before |
The ones you can skip
Most of the shelf falls into this group. Some of these do something measurable in a laboratory, but not enough to change what happens to a beginner training three times a week.
| Supplement | Why it is usually skippable |
|---|---|
| BCAAs | Pointless if you are already eating enough protein |
| Testosterone boosters | No meaningful effect shown in healthy young men |
| Mass gainers | Mostly sugar you could get more cheaply from food |
| Glutamine | Well studied, and it does not build muscle |
| Fat burners | Mostly caffeine, sold with a large markup |
| Pre-workout blends | Caffeine plus a long ingredient list you are paying extra for |
If you are going to buy something, buy it in this order
Step 1
Nothing, for the first month
Get to the gym consistently and get your protein up first. That is where the results come from.
Step 2
Creatine monohydrate
Cheap, well studied and the only one with a direct effect on muscle and strength. Plain monohydrate is fine; the fancier forms are not better.
Step 3
Protein powder, only if you are short
If you are consistently 30 or 40 grams under your target, a tub is easier than forcing another meal in.
Step 4
Vitamin D in winter
UK public health advice suggests 10 micrograms a day from October to March for most adults.
Buying safely
Supplements are regulated as food rather than medicine, so what is on the label is not always what is in the tub. Sticking to plain, single-ingredient products from established retailers avoids most of the risk.
- Prefer single ingredients over proprietary blends
- Look for batch-tested products if you are drug tested for sport
- Be wary of anything promising results that sound like medication
- Check with a pharmacist if you take prescribed medicines
How to judge a supplement claim yourself
You will meet new products faster than anyone can review them, so the useful skill is reading a claim rather than memorising a list. Four questions filter out almost everything on the shelf.
Step 1
Was it tested in people, doing the thing you want to do?
Cells in a dish and rats on a treadmill are where research starts, not where it finishes. A finding in trained or untrained adults lifting weights is what matters here.
Step 2
How large was the effect, in plain terms?
"Statistically significant" does not mean noticeable. Ask what it produced: an extra kilogram on a lift, or a difference nobody could feel.
Step 3
Does the tub contain the dose that was studied?
Proprietary blends often list an impressive ingredient at a fraction of the researched amount, which makes the label true and the product useless.
Step 4
Who paid for the study?
Manufacturer funding does not make research wrong, but independent replication is what turns a promising result into a reliable one.
The creatine worries that come up most
Creatine attracts more myths than the rest of the shelf combined, mostly because it has been around long enough to collect them. Here is what the position guidance actually says, and where the honest limits of that evidence sit.
| Concern | What the evidence shows |
|---|---|
| It causes weight gain | Some early weight gain is water held inside muscle, typically around 1kg. It is not fat. |
| It damages the kidneys | Long-term studies in healthy adults have not shown kidney harm at normal doses. If you have kidney disease, ask your doctor before taking it. |
| It causes hair loss | This rests on one small study that has not been replicated, so it is not something the evidence currently supports. |
| You need to load | A loading phase only fills muscle stores faster. 3 to 5g a day gets to the same place in three to four weeks. |
| It only works for men | Benefits have been shown in both men and women; the mechanism is not sex-specific. |
Common questions
- Do I need supplements to build muscle as a beginner?
- No. Muscle is built by training that gets progressively harder and by eating enough protein and calories. Supplements can make small differences at the edges, but none of them are required and none of them work without the training.
- Which supplement has the strongest evidence for muscle growth?
- Creatine monohydrate. It is one of the most studied sports supplements there is, and it produces small but consistent improvements in strength and training volume, which over months adds up to more muscle.
- Are BCAAs worth buying?
- Not if you eat enough protein. Branched-chain amino acids are already present in the protein you eat, and studies giving them to people on adequate protein intakes find no meaningful extra benefit.
- Is a pre-workout better than a coffee?
- For most people, no. The active ingredient doing the work is usually caffeine, and a strong coffee delivers it for a fraction of the price. Pre-workouts are convenient rather than superior.
- Should I take a mass gainer if I struggle to eat enough?
- It is usually cheaper to make your own with oats, milk, peanut butter and a banana. Mass gainers are mostly maltodextrin and cost several times what the equivalent food does, though they can be useful when you genuinely cannot face eating.
References
Every figure in this guide traces to one of these documents. Open them and check.
- ISSN position stand: safety and efficacy of creatine supplementation in exercise, sport, and medicine — Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition (2017)
- Protein — British Nutrition Foundation
- ISSN position stand: protein and exercise — Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition
Educational information for adults aged 18 and over. It does not diagnose, treat or manage any medical condition. If you have a health condition, or symptoms that worry you, speak to a qualified clinician.