April 13, 2026, 8:44 am | Read time: 3 minutes
Building muscle and strength training are hardly conceivable without sufficient protein intake. But are there differences in how well certain supplements work? Brazilian researchers from the University of Minas Gerais reviewed dozens of studies and arrived at a surprising conclusion.
What Did the Researchers Investigate?
The review, published in the journal “Translational Sports Medicine,” evaluated 78 studies involving a total of 4,755 healthy adults.1 The researchers compared 13 different protein supplements, including collagen, the milk proteins whey and casein, as well as plant-based options like soy or rice protein. All participants had engaged in strength training in the studies. Placebos—some carbohydrate-based—or control groups without additional protein intake served as comparisons.
The primary focus was on muscle strength. Additionally, the researchers analyzed lean body mass, which includes everything in the body except fat, with increases in strength training typically explained mainly by muscle mass.
The evaluation was conducted as a so-called network meta-analysis. This means not all types of protein were directly compared with each other. The ranking is therefore largely based on indirect statistical comparisons between different studies.
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The Results
The analysis shows: Only collagen and whey protein had statistically significant advantages over placebo. However, the effects varied in strength.
Muscle Strength
With collagen, participants increased their strength more than without the supplement. Across various strength tests, the gain was measurably higher. Whey protein also showed a significant advantage, though it was less pronounced than with collagen.
Important: This difference arises from the overall statistical evaluation of the studies and is mainly based on indirect comparisons—not on many direct head-to-head studies between collagen and whey.
Other protein sources like soy, casein, or rice protein did not show a statistically significant additional effect compared to placebo.
Lean Body Mass
Under collagen, lean body mass increased more than without the supplement. Whey protein also led to a significant increase, though again, less than with collagen. Here, the ranking is also primarily based on indirect comparisons within the network meta-analysis. No statistically significant additional benefit was demonstrated for other protein types.
What Does the Study Mean?
The fact that collagen achieved higher effect values in this analysis than whey protein is surprising, as whey is traditionally considered a particularly high-quality muscle protein.
However, this ranking is largely based on indirect comparisons within the network meta-analysis, a statistical method that combines results from different studies. Studies comparing collagen and whey protein directly are rare. The authors therefore emphasize that the apparent superiority of collagen should be interpreted cautiously. The results do not automatically mean that collagen is generally better than whey. Rather, they show that in this overall statistical evaluation, collagen achieved the highest effect values, with limited direct comparison data. The analysis still suggests that collagen is effective. Whether it is truly better than whey will need to be shown by further studies.
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