Vital Proteins Review: 3 Trials Used This Powder, None Measured Skin

Vital Proteins calls itself the market leader in collagen in the United States, and its owner Nestlé Health Science says the same. Its label promises support for hair, skin, nails, bones and joints, and its FAQ says “Published research investigates the use of 10g to 20g of collagen per day.” So we went looking for the research on this powder in particular: the trials that gave people Vital Proteins and wrote that down. We checked everything on 22 October 2026.

The short version: we found three. They measured bone markers and muscle. None measured skin, hair or nails.

What is in the tub

The Collagen Peptides label filed with the NIH Dietary Supplement Label Database lists one ingredient, 20 g of bovine collagen peptides per serving of one to two scoops, with 70 calories, 18 g of protein and 110 mg of sodium. The front of the tub lists five benefits: “Youthful appearance”, “Healthy joints & bones”, “Skin hydration”, “Skin elasticity” and “Hair & nail support”.

The label does not name the peptides inside. That matters, because the collagen trials you usually hear about tested specific branded peptides, and the researchers who used Vital Proteins said as much in their own paper: “Detailed amino acid profiling specific to the collagen peptide product was not available from the manufacturer.”

The Advanced version adds 120 mg of hyaluronic acid and 100% of the Daily Value of vitamin C, for $29.99 against $27.00 for the plain 9.33 oz tub.

The three trials that used Vital Proteins

We searched ClinicalTrials.gov for registered trials naming Vital Proteins and read the methods of the papers that turned up in PubMed and Europe PMC. Three trials named it as the product people took.

Trial	People	Dose, length	What was measured	Result
Kuhlman 2026	22 female distance runners	20 g/day, 4 weeks	Bone turnover and inflammation markers	Bone-formation marker P1NP rose (p = 0.04); bone-breakdown marker CTX-1 did not differ (p = 0.13); IL-6 fell (p = 0.03)
Seyhan 2026	40 resistance-trained men, 4 groups	10 g/day, 8 weeks with training	Muscle mass, bone density, strength	Collagen alone: +0.46 kg muscle vs +0.10 kg on placebo; lumbar spine density +0.023 g/cm²
UCF, NCT06465407	36 planned	Collagen “commercially available as Vital Proteins or Peptan”	Calf muscle thickness after exercise	Status unknown; no results posted

These are real results, but they are small and they are not about the claims on the front of the tub. The runners’ study measured blood markers for four weeks, not bone density or fractures, and its authors call for “larger, adequately powered trials incorporating structural bone outcomes.” The Turkish trial ran from January to April 2024 according to its registry record, which was filed in September 2025, after the trial had finished. Its biggest gains came when collagen was added to 30 g of whey protein, which makes it hard to separate collagen’s share from the extra protein.

No trial we found gave people Vital Proteins and measured their skin, hair or nails.

The trials behind the claims tested other peptides

The well-known collagen trials did find something, but with other products and smaller doses:

• Nails: 25 people took 2.5 g of VERISOL peptides for 24 weeks in an open-label trial with no placebo group. Nail growth rose 12% and broken nails fell 42%.
• Knees: 139 athletes with activity-related knee pain took 5 g of specific peptides or placebo for 12 weeks. Pain during activity improved more than on placebo (p = 0.046); pain at rest did not (p = 0.209).
• Bones: 131 postmenopausal women with low bone density took 5 g of specific peptides or placebo for a year. Spine and hip T-scores rose slightly against placebo.
• Joints in athletes: 147 athletes took 10 g of a collagen hydrolysate drink or placebo for 24 weeks; data from 97 could be analysed, and several pain scores favoured collagen.

Collagen peptides are made by cutting collagen into fragments, and different makers’ processes give different fragment mixes. A 2024 laboratory comparison of ten commercial products, Vital Proteins among them, found the share of small peptides ranged from 42% to 80%. Whether that changes what happens in your body has not been tested. What it does mean is that a result for one branded peptide is not automatically a result for another powder.

Skin: the trials split by who paid

Skin is the claim most buyers care about, and it has the most trials. In 2025, Myung and Park pooled 23 randomised trials with 1,474 participants. Taken together, collagen improved hydration, elasticity and wrinkles. Then they split the trials by funding. In the trials not funded by pharmaceutical companies, collagen showed no effect on hydration, elasticity or wrinkles. The high-quality trials also showed no significant effect in any category.

Their conclusion: “There is currently no clinical evidence to support the use of collagen supplements to prevent or treat skin aging.”

That is one meta-analysis, and earlier reviews read the same trials more kindly; our collagen for skin guide covers them. But its authors say it is the first meta-analysis to split the trials by funding source and quality, and the split changed the result.

It is protein, but not complete protein

The label lists 18 g of protein per scoop pair. The amino acid table on the same label, as filed with the NIH, lists “Tryptophan 0mg”.

Tryptophan is an essential amino acid: your body cannot make it. A protein missing one is classed as incomplete under PDCAAS, the method the FDA uses to correct protein for quality. The FDA’s supplement labelling rule says that when a percent Daily Value for protein is given, it must be calculated from that corrected amount. The Vital Proteins label in the NIH database shows the 18 g with no percent Daily Value beside it.

None of this makes collagen useless as food. A 2019 modelling study, one of whose authors works for a collagen maker, calculated that collagen peptides can make up to 36% of the protein in a typical American diet while essential amino acid needs are still met. So it can add to your protein, alongside meat, dairy, eggs or legumes, but 18 g of collagen is not the same as 18 g of whey for building muscle. The Turkish trial points the same way: whey plus collagen beat collagen alone.

Recall, ownership and complaints

The 2023 recall. In April 2023 Vital Proteins recalled 59,701 24 oz canisters of Collagen Peptides (lot 30095993HA) because “pieces of one blue broken lid may be in one or more canisters”. The FDA classed it Class II, the middle category, and recorded it as closed in October 2024. It is the only Vital Proteins entry in the FDA’s food enforcement database.

Ownership. Nestlé Health Science agreed to buy a majority stake in Vital Proteins in June 2020, saying it would “continue to operate as a standalone business”, and later announced it had “completed the final acquisition”.

Complaints. The Better Business Bureau lists Vital Proteins in Franklin Park, Illinois, as not accredited, with 9 complaints in the last three years and 1 in the last 12 months, five of them about the product.

The lawsuits

We searched CourtListener’s federal dockets for cases with Vital Proteins in the caption on 22 October 2026.

• Cole v. Vital Proteins, LLC, No. 1:25-cv-04080 (N.D. Ill.), was filed on 15 April 2025. Every entry since the complaint is an extension of time, the latest on 30 September 2025, and the case had no termination date. The docket lists no nature of suit and the complaint is not public, so we cannot say what it concerns.
• Mackey v. Vital Proteins, LLC, No. 0:25-cv-62202 (S.D. Fla.), was removed from state court on 30 October 2025. The plaintiff filed a notice of voluntary dismissal, and the court entered an order closing the case on 12 January 2026. Its complaint is not public either.
• Byrum v. Vital Proteins LLC, a 2024 copyright case, closed in September 2024. Vital Proteins itself sued a shipping company in 2025, and that case was open.

Nestlé Health Science, the parent company, is a defendant in several other federal cases, but they do not name Vital Proteins, and Nestlé sells many brands, so we have not attributed them to this product.

Who it might suit

If you want extra protein in your coffee and like that it dissolves without taste, Vital Proteins is a single-ingredient powder at about $1.61 to $2.14 a serving, and that is what you are getting. Count it as part of your protein, not all of it.

If you are buying it for your skin, the trials that used this powder did not look at skin, and the independent skin trials pooled in 2025 found no effect. If you are buying it for nails, knees or bone density, the trials that found modest benefits used 2.5 g to 5 g of other companies’ named peptides, so check whether a product uses those peptides if that is what you want to copy.

We do not link to Vital Proteins. The powder does what a collagen powder does, but the evidence for the five benefits on the tub comes from other products.

The bottom line

Vital Proteins Collagen Peptides is 20 g of bovine collagen with 18 g of incomplete protein and no tryptophan. Three trials used it: a four-week bone-marker study in 22 runners, an eight-week study in 40 weight-training men, and a registered study with no results. None measured skin, hair or nails. The nail, knee and bone trials behind collagen’s reputation used other branded peptides at 2.5 to 5 g, and the 2025 meta-analysis of skin trials found no effect once industry-funded trials were set aside. There was one recall, in 2023, for pieces of a broken lid.