There’s never a time where BCAAs or any amino acid supplement would be worth taking over something like whey.

And if you still couldn’t connect the dots, all the random claims you hear about BCAAs aren’t true either. When compared to whole protein, free amino acids don’t improve soreness and extra leucine isn’t needed for the elderly. BCAAs also don’t retain more muscle during a diet and they don’t prevent muscle loss during fasted cardio.

Their only use is to make you look like a clown who likes to buy expensive lemonade. Oh man, my pettiness is through the roof today. But speaking of pettiness though, here are the last 2 decades of research that consistently shows BCCAs are either pointless or even detrimental.

• Leucine has a low ceiling effect (5). Even adding leucine to an EAA mix that doubled the leucine content while passing this threshold to 3.5 grams didn’t have any benefit (6).
• Long term leucine or leucine rich amino acid supplements don’t promote muscle growth or prevent muscle loss during catabolic states like dieting or fasting (7).
• When compared to whey protein, even when matched for the same essential amino acids, EAA and BCAA supplements stimulate less muscle growth (8). This is true even in elderly populations who have more anabolic resistance (10). In fact, many bad coaches think elderly populations should take BCAAs because old geezers require more leucine for muscle growth. However, research shows BCAAs don’t help and might not even stimulate muscle growth for them, only whole protein does (3,12-15,17,18).
• The compromised protein balance is why BCAAs don’t help you spare more muscle during a deficit (9). Even at a high dose BCAAs couldn’t help retain muscle in immobile limbs (31).
• When paired with strength training, a high dose pre and post workout for 8 weeks straight had no effect (11). BCAAs become completely irrelevant when you’re already consuming sufficient protein (16). No markers of performance, strength, body composition, hydration or recovery improve from amino acid supplements (17-22,34,35).
• BCAAs don’t show any effect even when compared to a placebo of cornstarch or sugar (23,24).
• Even when you piece together all free forming amino acids together, an intact source is still better. EAAs are still inferior to whey (25). And BCAAs are definitely the worse as they can even negate certain amino acid absorption pathways (26).
• In fact, BCAAs when taken in isolation can cause net muscle loss (27). When free leucine flips on muscle protein synthesis, if the other amino acids aren’t present, your body may breakdown other tissues to provide building blocks.
• HMB, another popular amino acid supplement which is essentially a leucine metabolite. It sucks too (28,29,30,32,33).