ROWDY Review: Gut-Healthy Collagen Powder

Welcome to our ROWDY review!

As the first product on the market to combine collagen protein with prebiotic yacon root, ROWDY was born out of a need for a healthy, gut-friendly, protein-loaded bar that could withstand backpacking and other outdoor adventures that founder Kellie Lee and family liked to embark on.  

Although the bars are being discontinued (as of this printing), ROWDY is still in the prebiotic protein game, providing three tasty flavors of yacon root collagen powders. 

We awarded ROWDY with an overall A- grade, with higher points given for their top-tier ingredients—truly, they couldn’t get better—and great philanthropic initiatives and customer service despite their small team.

ROWDY Pros and Cons

Let’s Get ROWDY: The Adventurous Backstory of Prebiotic Collagen 

Back in 2013, Kellie Lee and her husband were—and still are—into backpacking, and on trips she would make the food while he was in charge of their gear.

Kellie was making homemade bars and granola but was looking for alternatives to the sugar-loaded dates that are often used in such recipes. 

That, combined with health issues like hypothyroidism and digestive problems, led her to discover yacon root—a Peruvian root vegetable that doesn’t impact blood sugar and benefits the gut.

ROWDY Founder Kellie Lee (Source: RowdyHealth.com)

She started combining yacon root with collagen, coming up with a new bar recipe that she—and everyone else—loved.

Fast forward a few years, and Kellie got her MBA and used her business learnings to launch ROWDY prebiotic collagen bars in 2018.

While the bars paved the way for ROWDY, the collagen protein powders—currently their only products—came along in late 2020. 

Now, ROWDY is still a woman-owned and family-operated business, with Kellie and her sisters leading the helm and focusing day in and day out on their mission—”offering gut-boosting superfood snacks and grass-fed protein powder, with premium ingredients for optimal gut health.” 

Our ROWDY Review

• Quality (A)
• Transparency (B)
• Website Experience (A-)
• Customer Service (A-)
• Value (B)
• Brand Value (A-)

These scores balanced out to an overall A- grade—let’s get into the details. 

Quality 

In this section, we take a look at ingredient quality but also need to gauge sourcing and manufacturing quality, certifications, formulation, and more to get a complete picture.

A major—and essential—thing that ROWDY is doing right is ingredient quality. 

Although their product lineup is small, the three flavors of collagen powders all have excellent ingredients:

• Grass-fed bovine collagen
• Organic yacon root powder
• Himalayan pink salt
• Monk fruit extract
• Flavorings, like ground vanilla bean, organic cinnamon, or cocoa powder 

We also liked the ingredient formulation, as yacon root is a unique sweetener that isn’t often seen—especially not in collagen powders.

As Kellie states, “I came across yacon root divinely. I was researching binding agents to get away from brown rice and dates, and I like honey, but I wanted something with less calories.”

And she found it with yacon root—a naturally sweet, low-glycemic Peruvian root vegetable that looks like a sweet potato.

But unlike sweet potato, yacon root has way less impact on blood sugar, as it contains indigestible fibers called fructooligosaccharides (FOS) or inulin, which are prebiotics that the body can’t digest. 

So not only does yacon root provide sweetness without sugar, but it also benefits the gut—win-win! 

The collagen powder also contains a tiny bit of monk fruit extract, but you won’t find stevia, sugar alcohols, or artificial sweeteners in any ROWDY products. 

ROWDY products are also Certified Gluten-Free, and while they used to have their non-GMO certification, the current budget of their small team didn’t allow them to renew it at the moment. 

Overall, these factors led to an A for quality.

Now, let’s take a look at the products ROWDY has to offer. 

ROWDY Product Catalog

In addition to the Vanilla Bean Collagen Protein Powder, ROWDY also carries Snickerdoodle and Chocolate flavors. 

Their first product was the prebiotic collagen bars, which are currently discontinued—but they may have plans to bring it back in the future.  

Transparency

While the ingredient list on the back of a ROWDY package contains just a handful of recognizable, whole-food ingredients, we also like to know a little bit about where they come from.

ROWDY’s product pages contain the basic information and usual specs about each product—ingredient list, nutritional information, and some basic benefits. 

However, one thing we’re seeing right now in the collagen world is an issue of sourcing from the Amazon, where cattle farms contribute to deforestation. 

While ROWDY is not sourcing from areas contributing to deforestation, we only gleaned this information from our convo with Kellie—but we’re sure customers would like to know this, too. 

The site shows that the yacon root is sourced from Peru, and we learned from Kellie that most other ingredients come from somewhere in the U.S. and the products are manufactured in Southern California. 

ROWDY also does a great job of showing customers a peek behind the curtain, with ample information about Kellie and her founding story, plus blurbs about the other key players in ROWDY—namely, her sisters. 

Lastly, transparency also applies to the boring stuff, like how easy it is to find shipping and return policies—and the former was easily found in a typical footer link, while details about returns were a little harder to find in the FAQ section. 

Website Experience

The ROWDY website is simple and straightforward, offering little in the way of high-tech features or designs. 

However, as long as the site is non-distracting and no issues arise (glitches, incessant pop-ups, difficult navigation, etc.) , we focus more on the education and information offered, as well as the smoothness of the e-commerce experience. 

As ROWDY currently only has three products, shopping around is so easy a caveman could do it—no issues there.

We also enjoyed the ample educational resources, including a “Science” tab that leads you to pages about prebiotics and their star ingredient, yacon root. 

ROWDY also provides a blog with wellness tips, articles about prebiotics and gut health, recipes, and more. 

We only saw one minor issue when browsing on mobile: a “More Info” button hovered on top of the text, making some words unreadable. 

Other than that, ROWDY’s website provided what we needed to know in a simple, no-frills manner. 

Customer Service

ROWDY only has one customer service channel—an embedded contact form that goes to email.

While having a more immediate option (phone or live chat) is preferable, we understand that they are a small team and may not have the resources. 

On the plus side, the email reply was reasonable, taking approximately five hours. 

Plus, they have a generous money-back guarantee if you’re not satisfied with the product—what we consider the gold standard as far as return policies go. 

We don’t have much information about shipping costs, as it depends on location and order weight, but they do offer free shipping on orders over $75 (a bit steep).

All in all, the generous return policy helped to balance out the sole customer service channel, landing us on an A- grade.

Value

We never consider value simply on price tag alone—we consider the importance of quality as well. 

Fortunately, ROWDY has quality in spades, allowing them to justify some of the slightly higher price points here. 

For example, while many vanilla-flavored collagen or protein powders will use natural vanilla flavors, ROWDY uses ground vanilla bean.

Currently, ROWDY’s prebiotic collagen powders are $34.99 for an 11.85oz bag, which contains 14 servings with 20g of collagen each. 

Although no one is doing collagen quite like ROWDY, our closest comparison is Primal Kitchen Snickerdoodle Collagen Fuel, which provides a lower price per ounce but with less collagen per serving.

Let’s take a closer look at how some other collagen products compare. 

Collagen Product	Collagen Per Serving	Servings Per Container	Price
ROWDY Vanilla Collagen Powder	20g	14	$34.99 for 11.85oz($2.95/oz)
Primal Kitchen Snickerdoodle Collagen Fuel	10g	24	$34.95 for 13.54oz($2.58/oz)
Vital Proteins Vanilla Collagen	20g	14	$29.99 for 11.5oz ($2.61/oz)
Ancient Nutrition Vanilla Collagen	18g	12	$24.95 for 8.51oz($2.93/oz)

Although it’s a little difficult to compare, given the varying amounts of servings and collagen in each, you can see that ROWDY is on the higher end of the price range.

Although it’s still relatively on par with these other premium brands, there’s no getting around the fact that it’s on the pricey side ($35 for just 14 servings). 

Brand Value

Lastly, brand value scores are considered by a combination of product innovation, industry disruption, impact on public nutrition, and philanthropic or sustainability efforts. 

ROWDY has a few great things going for them here, including an innovative product formulation (combining yacon root with collagen) that is not seen elsewhere. 

Although collagen powders can now be found just about everywhere, ROWDY was certainly innovative back in 2018 when they launched their gut-supporting, prebiotic collagen bars. 

We also loved that, despite their small team, they have a commendable focus on philanthropic initiatives.

To name just a few of the dozen or so, ROWDY donates or partners with:

• JDRF (Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation)
• The Olivia Caldwell Foundation
• Run 4 Love
• Northern Nevada Children’s Cancer Foundation
• Nevada Diabetes Association

And, while ROWDY isn’t doing a ton on the sustainability front, they have removed the plastic scoops from their powders and have moved to recyclable packaging. 

Lastly, you could definitely say that their products have a beneficial impact on public nutrition, as prebiotics are widely under-consumed in the American diet (as is collagen), giving a (helpful) one-two punch to gut health. 

Our Experience With ROWDY

We tried ROWDY’s Chocolate collagen protein powder—but as we received sample pouches, we can’t comment on the packaging you would get upon ordering a full-size item from the site.

We tried the chocolate collagen mixed with water and blended with almond milk—as with most protein powders, it tasted better when blended with almond milk versus mixed with water.

However, it still tasted fine with water—albeit a little on the bland side—but did not have any of the odd aftertastes that tend to accompany other protein or collagen powders when consumed on their own. 

Although a bit bland when combined with water, it did mix easily and quickly—no floating remnants or chalky residue. 

While we can’t comment on their other flavors, the Chocolate collagen was tasty and not overly chocolatey, and we would recommend it for a quick protein shake (blended is best!). 

ROWDY FAQs  

Final Thoughts 

With attributes like high-quality ingredients, innovative product formulation, and charitable commitments, ROWDY earned an A- grade from our team. 

A few details, like the higher price point, only one customer service channel, and lack of collagen sourcing transparency, were the only less-than-perfect areas.

Overall, we enjoyed ROWDY’s collagen powder and hope that their prebiotic collagen bars will soon be back on the market. 

As Kellie concludes about ROWDY’s mission, “We are a company committed to empowering people to better digestive health so they can restore balance and get back to being themselves, so they can get back to being Rowdy.”