L-Glutamine Powder

The same amino acid, flexible by the spoon — the post-training shake version.

There is a kind of supplement-taker who lives in the kitchen. The protein scoop is already on the counter. The shaker bottle is already in the bag. The blender comes out for breakfast. For this person, a capsule is a step backwards — it adds a ritual to a day that has already been engineered around mixing and pouring.

This little pot is for that kitchen. One hundred grams of pure crystalline L-glutamine, fine white powder, no flavour, no sweetener, no fillers. A teaspoon is roughly five grams. A heaped tablespoon is roughly fifteen grams. The pot scales to whatever your day looks like — a small dose in coffee, a meaningful dose in a post-training shake, up to the label's 15g a day.

Same molecule as the capsule version of this product. Same crystalline amino acid. The choice of form is purely about how the dose enters your day. If your day already has a shaker bottle in it, the powder is the more honest fit.

A clean cream tub, the green band of our label running around it, one hundred grams of fine white crystalline powder inside. It looks like caster sugar but a little finer, a little more uniform. It dissolves in water within a few seconds of stirring, leaving the liquid clear or only very slightly hazy.

The taste is faintly sweet, almost neutral, with a barely perceptible savoury note at higher doses. It mixes invisibly into protein shakes, smoothies, oat milk, almond milk, or even plain water. It does not pair well with very acidic drinks — orange juice or lemon water — because glutamine is mildly heat-and-acid-sensitive, but in the cold neutral liquids most shakes are made of, it sits perfectly.

Glutamine is a conditionally essential amino acid: the body normally makes its own.

Glutamine is an amino acid the body normally makes itself; this pot adds a measured amount.

Glutamine was first isolated from beetroot juice in 1883 by the German chemist Ernst Schulze. Commercial-scale production today is by clean fermentation, typically using a strain of Corynebacterium glutamicum, the same family of bacteria used to produce monosodium glutamate. The output is the fine white crystalline powder that fills this pot.

Within sports nutrition, glutamine had its first real moment in the 1990s, when bodybuilding magazines treated it as the must-have post-workout supplement. The hype settled. What remains, after several decades of more careful research, is a sensible, modest position: glutamine is a single amino acid in pure form.

Three reasons people choose the powder over the capsule.

Dose flexibility. A capsule is locked at 500mg. A teaspoon is 5g. A tablespoon is 15g. If your protocol is anything above two grams a day, the powder is dramatically less work — one or two scoops versus four to ten capsules.

The shake is already happening. If your morning is already built around a protein shake or a smoothie, adding a scoop of glutamine to it costs no time and no extra step. The capsule, by contrast, is an additional swallow on top of an already-busy ritual.

Cost per gram.The capsule pays a small premium for the convenience of the form factor; the powder is the cheaper, more direct route to the molecule.

For most people who train, the natural rhythm with glutamine powder is the post-workout shake. Five to ten grams — one to two teaspoons — stirred into the protein shake or the recovery smoothie, taken within an hour of finishing the session.

Some people add a second smaller dose in the morning — five grams in coffee or hot oat milk (after the coffee has cooled to drinking temperature, since glutamine is heat-sensitive in solution). Some take it before bed in plain water. Take 5 g to 15 g a day. For more intentional protocols — endurance training blocks, periods of high physical demand — five to ten grams a day, split across two doses.

Don't exceed fifteen grams in twenty-four hours. Drink it cold, drink it within ten minutes of stirring it in (glutamine slowly degrades in water once dissolved), and don't pair it with very acidic liquids.

A teaspoon — about 5g — into a glass, shaker, smoothie, or plant-milk drink of choice. Stir or shake for ten seconds. Drink within a few minutes. With water or with food, depending on what your stomach prefers. Most people find a 5g scoop is invisible in a 300ml shake; a 10-15g scoop is detectable as a slight savoury note.

The pot of 100g lasts roughly twenty days at one teaspoon a day, ten days at two teaspoons, or as little as a week if you are running a higher-dose protocol.

This is a food supplement — it complements a varied diet, it doesn't replace one. Glutamine is one of the most-studied amino acids in sports and clinical literature, but the research base on its benefit in healthy, well-fed adults is modest. People with chronic kidney disease, chronic liver disease, or any condition involving impaired ammonia metabolism should not take supplemental glutamine without medical supervision, as glutamine metabolism produces ammonia which the impaired kidney or liver may not clear well. Pregnant or breastfeeding women, or anyone on medication, should speak to their GP before taking.

Don't exceed fifteen grams in a single day. Don't dissolve it in boiling water — pour it into the cooled drink. Keep the pot cool, dry, sealed, out of reach of children. The product is suitable for vegetarians, vegans, kosher and halal.

If you have a medical condition, are pregnant, breastfeeding or taking medication, consult your doctor before use.

— Vitadefence