Do Naked, Levels, Truvani, and Transparent Labs Protein Powders Have Heavy Metals?
Do Naked, Levels, Truvani, and Transparent Labs Protein Powders Have Heavy Metals?
All four brands say they test for heavy metals. Only two of them make it easy to check the actual number yourself. For the full picture on which protein sources and processing methods test cleanest to begin with, see our guide to protein powders without lead or heavy metals.
What the evidence actually shows, brand by brand
Naked Nutrition. Naked sources ingredients from suppliers that provide their own certificates of analysis, including heavy metals, and the company says it retains a sample from every production lot for its own verification. Its 100% Grass-Fed Whey is NSF Certified, meaning an outside lab checked the label against the contents and screened for contaminants; the Pea Protein carries the related NSF Contents Certified mark. Both are the products we recommend below, and both disclose a California Prop 65 warning for trace lead on the label, standard for nearly any plant or animal protein sold in the state and not evidence of a problem specific to Naked.
A separate Naked product not in our catalog, the Vegan Naked Mass Gainer, is named in an active lawsuit (Caballero v. Naked Whey Inc., filed November 2025 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California). The complaint cites a Consumer Reports test that found 7.7 micrograms of lead per serving in that product, about 15 times California's Prop 65 safe-harbor threshold, and alleges the marketing claims "verified for purity" and "independently tested for heavy metals" were misleading given that result. The case has not been decided, and it concerns the Mass Gainer specifically, not the whey or pea powders in our picks.
Levels. Levels' protein products appear on the Clean Label Project's certification site with a downloadable test certificate for each variant, meaning an accredited outside lab screened them rather than Levels reporting its own numbers. Clean Label Project's 2024-25 protein powder study found close to half of the top-selling powders it tested exceeded its safety thresholds for heavy metals, which is the backdrop that makes an outside certificate worth something. We could not find a specific published lead figure for Levels beyond the certificate itself; a shopper who wants the exact number needs to pull the PDF for their product.
Truvani. Truvani says every lot is tested for lead, cadmium, arsenic, and mercury, and its own site states plainly that it has not found a way to publish the full certificates yet: "This is something we want to make available to people, but we're struggling with finding a way to share this information," citing hundreds of pages of results per product across ingredients, the finished product, and individual lots. The one figure the company has shared shows lead close to zero, under what it says a serving of common produce carries. That is a real testing program without a public paper trail, a weaker position on transparency than a brand that posts the number.
Transparent Labs. Transparent Labs publishes certificates of analysis by lot number on its own site, and a customer can search a product to pull up the result. One recent posted figure for its whey isolate showed 0.16 micrograms of lead per serving, well under the USP's 5-microgram daily limit. That is the same kind of lot-level transparency Momentous and Legion carry in the picks below.
What it means for a buyer
Testing for heavy metals is close to universal among these four brands now. Publishing the actual number is not, and that gap is the real story here. Naked and Transparent Labs let a shopper check a figure directly. Levels gets partway there with a downloadable certificate. Truvani asks a shopper to trust a single example. None of that settles whether a specific product is actually clean, which is what our full guide and the picks below cover.
The picks that publish their numbers
- Momentous Essential Grass-Fed Whey Protein Isolate: best for published lab results. Two-ingredient label, NSF Certified for Sport, and a certificate of analysis through Light Labs for every batch.
- Legion Whey+ Protein: best overall. Grass-fed Irish whey isolate, Informed Sport certified, with heavy metals and banned-substance testing on every batch.
- Klean Athlete Klean Isolate: best two-ingredient option. NSF Certified for Sport, whey isolate and sunflower lecithin only.
- NAKED 100% Grass-Fed Whey Protein Powder: best single-ingredient whey. NSF Certified, one ingredient on the label, the product our Naked findings above actually apply to.
- NAKED Pea Protein Powder: best plant-based. NSF Contents Certified, single ingredient, dairy-free.
- Equip Foods Prime Protein: best for avoiding dairy and soy. Single-ingredient grass-fed beef protein isolate.
For where these brands' certification status fits into the wider picture, see which protein powders are Clean Label Project certified. Everything else we have vetted in the category is in the supplements recommendations.
Bottom line
Naked and Transparent Labs publish certificates a shopper can check directly. Levels gets there through Clean Label Project's certification page. Truvani says the testing happens but has not found a way to share it yet. The one adverse finding among these four, the lawsuit over Naked's Vegan Mass Gainer, applies to a product we do not recommend, not to the Naked powders in our own picks.