How We've Perfected the Taste of Vegan Protein

Early plant protein powders tasted bad because pea and soy isolates carry compounds that create bitterness and a gritty texture. Faba bean protein largely avoids those compounds, especially in isolate form, which is why it can taste mild and smooth without needing heavy flavouring to cover it up. Inna Protein uses faba bean isolate for exactly this reason, paired with natural sweeteners and flavours rather than artificial ones.

Taste is the reason most people quit plant protein. Roughly 30% of people cite taste as the barrier stopping them from buying plant-based products in the first place, according to research from the Good Food Institute Europe. 

That's not a small problem. It's the main one.

Why does plant protein have a reputation for tasting bad?

The reputation is earned, just outdated. Soy was one of the first widely available plant proteins, followed by pea, rice, and hemp. Each came with its own flavour baggage: soy's beany aftertaste, pea's earthy bitterness, rice's chalkiness, hemp's heavy nuttiness.

Researchers have traced a lot of that bitterness to specific compounds. A flavour study on faba bean ingredients found that free phenolics, vicine, and convicine drive bitterness and dry mouthfeel in faba bean protein concentrate.

The same study found that faba bean protein isolate avoids most of that bitterness profile, since isolate processing removes far more of those compounds than concentrate processing does. This is the gap between an average plant protein and a genuinely pleasant one: it's not about whether it's "plant-based"; it's about which compounds survive processing.

What makes faba bean protein different?

Faba bean protein isolate starts from a milder base than pea, soy, or rice. It doesn't carry the same earthy or grassy notes, and the texture is smoother rather than gritty. That's a real formulation advantage, not marketing language. You can build a good-tasting shake from a mild-tasting base. You can't always build one from a bitter one, no matter how much flavouring you add.

Faba beans are also a complete protein, containing all nine essential amino acids. So the taste improvement doesn't come at the cost of nutritional quality. You're not trading flavour for function.

How we formulate Inna Protein for taste

Every flavoured Inna Protein product uses only natural sweeteners and natural flavours, plus the faba bean isolate base: no artificial sweeteners, no artificial flavours. The unflavoured version is just the isolate on its own, for anyone who wants to add protein to a meal without adding any sweetness or flavour.

Everything is made in Victoria in a HACCP-certified facility, and it's gluten-free, GMO-free, and vegan. Getting the taste right took choosing the right base ingredient first and building the flavour system around it second, not the other way around.

Does faba bean protein still taste "beany"?

This is the question we get most, and the honest answer is: less than you'd expect, and less than most other plant proteins. Faba bean isolate has a much milder flavour footprint than pea or soy, so there's less bean character to mask in the first place. It's not flavourless on its own, but it's mild enough that vanilla, chocolate, and coconut versions can taste like vanilla, chocolate, and coconut, rather than like a bean shake with flavouring dumped on top.

That matters more than it sounds. A study on Australia's plant protein market projects the category to grow from around $554 million in 2025 to roughly $792 million by 2029. Taste is a big part of what decides which brands hold onto customers as that market gets more crowded, not just which ones people try once.