Your Mass Gainer Is Mostly Sugar. Here Is the Label Maths.
We read the declared panel on nine mass gainers sold in India. One 100 g scoop carries 29.2 g of sugar, two tubs declare none at all, and the zero sugar ones are not what you think.
One 100 g scoop of MuscleBlaze Mass Gainer XXL carries 29.15 g of sugar. The World Health Organization suggests an average adult stay below 25 g of free sugars in a whole day.
So a single scoop uses your entire day's allowance and then some, before you have eaten anything else.
We read the declared nutrition panel on all nine mass gainers we track in India. Two of them declare no sugar at all, and those two are the most interesting rows in the table.
- ·Declared sugar across nine tubs runs from 0 g to 29.15 g per serving
- ·Two tubs declare zero sugar and carry 250 g and 405 g of total carbohydrate
- ·That gap is maltodextrin, which is not sugar on a label and acts like it in your blood
- ·Read total carbohydrate on a gainer, not the sugar line
- ·Gainers are 10 to 18 percent protein by weight. Whey is 65 to 90
- ·You are paying 6.29 to 11 rupees a gram of protein, above the whey range
Nine tubs, nine labels
| Tub | Scoop | Sugar | Total carbs | Calories |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MuscleBlaze Mass Gainer XXL | 100 g | 29.15 g | 70 g | 367 |
| MuscleBlaze Weight Gainer | 100 g | 27.84 g | 72 g | 387 |
| ON Serious Mass | 334 g | 20 g | 254 g | 1,243 |
| MuscleBlaze Super Gainer Black | 100 g | 19 g | 78.95 g | 375 |
| MuscleTech Mass Tech Extreme 2000 | 281 g | 10 g | 232 g | 1,062 |
| Labrada Muscle Mass Gainer | 333 g | 0 g | 250 g | 1,244 |
| GNC Pro Performance Weight Gainer | 485 g | 0 g | 405 g | 1,860 |
Values as declared by each brand on its own nutrition panel, per the serving size the brand states, recorded in our database and checked on 16 September 2026. Two further gainers we track are excluded here because they do not publish a complete panel. Declared figures describe what a label claims rather than what laboratory testing would find.
The scoop size is doing half the work
Before comparing anything in that table, notice the second column. The scoops range from 100 g to 485 g, which makes per serving figures almost meaningless on their own.
MuscleBlaze Mass Gainer XXL looks worse than ON Serious Mass on sugar: 29.15 g against 20 g. But its scoop is a third of the size. Per 100 g of powder, Mass Gainer XXL is 29.15 g of sugar and Serious Mass is about 6 g.
Always convert to per 100 g before you compare two gainers. It is the only way to see the powder rather than the portion the brand chose. The same trick runs through whey, which we took apart in why two tubs both say 60 servings.
Zero sugar, 405 grams of carbohydrate
Now the two most interesting rows. Labrada Muscle Mass Gainer and GNC Pro Performance Weight Gainer both declare 0 g of sugar.
They also declare 250 g and 405 g of total carbohydrate per serving.
That is not a contradiction and it is not a lie. Sugar declarations cover mono and disaccharides: glucose, fructose, sucrose, lactose. Maltodextrin is a polysaccharide, a starch derived carbohydrate of longer glucose chains, so it is correctly declared under total carbohydrate rather than under sugar.
Maltodextrin is not sugar, and that is not reassuring
Maltodextrin's glycemic index is usually quoted between 85 and 105. Table sugar sits around 65. So the ingredient that lets a tub print zero sugar raises blood glucose faster than the sugar it replaced. A zero sugar claim on a mass gainer tells you about the labelling rules, not about what the powder does.
This is why total carbohydrate is the number to read on a gainer, and sugar is close to decoration. On that measure, GNC Pro Performance at 405 g per serving is the heaviest tub in the table by a wide margin, zero sugar declaration and all.
What that does to a normal day
The WHO guideline on free sugars recommends staying below 10 percent of daily energy, which is roughly 50 g for an average adult, with a further conditional reduction to below 5 percent, roughly 25 g.
| One serving of | Sugar | Of the 25 g figure | Of the 50 g figure |
|---|---|---|---|
| MuscleBlaze Mass Gainer XXL | 29.15 g | 117% | 58% |
| MuscleBlaze Weight Gainer | 27.84 g | 111% | 56% |
| ON Serious Mass | 20 g | 80% | 40% |
| MuscleTech Mass Tech Extreme | 10 g | 40% | 20% |
Most people using a gainer take two servings a day, because that is what the label suggests when you are chasing a calorie target. On the top tub that is 58 g of sugar from the shake alone, which is above the looser WHO figure before you count your chai.
None of this means a gainer will harm a healthy person. It means the sugar is not incidental, and if you were already watching it, this is a large addition.
You are paying whey money for maltodextrin
Here is where the label maths turns into your bank balance.
Mass gainers in our catalogue are 10.3 to 18 percent protein by weight. Whey runs 64.9 to 90 percent. So the bulk of a gainer tub is carbohydrate, which is the cheapest ingredient in the supplement industry.
And yet, on cost per gram of protein, gainers come to 6.29 to 11 rupees against 4.54 to 9.75 rupees for whey. Every gainer we track delivers protein at a higher price than the cheapest whey.
You are paying a protein price for a powder that is mostly carbohydrate. If the calories are what you are after, calories from your own kitchen cost a fraction of that. The economics of the shelf are in cost per gram of protein, and how brands inflate protein numbers on a panel covers the rest of the label games.
The shake you can make for less
A gainer is calories, carbohydrate and some protein, blended. A kitchen version is the same thing with fewer steps between you and the ingredients.
Milk, a banana, oats, peanut butter and a few dates gets you to roughly 600 to 700 calories with real food, for well under what a single scoop of most tubs costs. Add a scoop of whey to that and you have a gainer with protein you can actually account for.
It is not as convenient, and convenience is a real reason to buy things. Just be clear that is what you are buying.
If you are buying one anyway
Read the panel in this order:
- 1Total carbohydrate per 100 gNot per serving, and not the sugar line. This is the number the scoop size hides.
- 2Protein as a percentage of the powderProtein per serving divided by serving size. Under 12 percent is a lot of carbohydrate to pay for.
- 3Where maltodextrin sits in the ingredient listFirst means it is the main ingredient by weight, whatever the sugar line says.
- 4Cost per gram of proteinIf it is above the whey you could buy instead, ask what the carbohydrate is doing for you.
You can see live mass gainer prices across 19 retailers with cost per gram of protein worked out on each one.
Do you need a gainer at all?
Three conditions, and you want all three before a gainer makes sense. You are genuinely underweight rather than just wanting to be bigger. You have tried eating more real food for at least a couple of months and could not sustain it. And you are training consistently, because a surplus without training is just fat gain.
If you fail any of them, whey plus more food is cheaper, cleaner and easier to control. That argument in full is in mass gainer or whey protein. If this is your first tub of anything, buy whey first if this is your first tub.
- ·You have diabetes or prediabetes, or a family history of either
- ·You have PCOS, or any condition involving insulin resistance
- ·You have kidney or liver disease
- ·You are under 18, or buying it for someone who is
- ·You are pregnant or breastfeeding
- ·You are on medication that affects blood sugar
How we read these labels
Every figure in this article is the value the brand declares on its own nutrition panel, for the serving size the brand states, as recorded in our product database and checked on 16 September 2026.
We did not test any powder. A declared figure tells you what a label claims, and independent testing of Indian supplements has repeatedly found gaps between the two, which is the subject of what FSSAI approved actually means.
Whey2Much sells nothing and earns nothing from a click. No brand in this table paid to be included or excluded.
The bottom line
Sugar in Indian mass gainers runs from nothing to 29.15 g a scoop, and the tubs declaring nothing are carrying 250 to 405 g of carbohydrate instead.
So ignore the sugar line and read total carbohydrate per 100 g. Then check what percentage of the powder is actually protein, and what that protein is costing you.
On our shelf, every gainer delivers protein at a higher price than the cheapest whey, while being 10 to 18 percent protein instead of 65 to 90. That is the whole case, and it is made entirely out of numbers printed on the back of the tubs.
This article is general consumer and nutrition information rather than medical or dietetic advice, and it has not been written or reviewed by a medical practitioner or registered dietitian. Nothing here says that any product causes diabetes, weight gain in a specific place, or any other health outcome, and nobody should start or stop a supplement on the basis of it. If you have diabetes, prediabetes, PCOS, kidney or liver disease, are pregnant or breastfeeding, or are under 18, speak to your doctor before using a mass gainer. All sugar, carbohydrate, calorie, protein and serving size figures are the values declared by each brand on its own nutrition panel as recorded in our database, with prices from our live tracking across 19 Indian retailers, all checked on 16 September 2026. Declared figures describe what a label claims rather than what laboratory testing would find, and no product in this article was independently tested by us. The free sugars figures refer to the World Health Organization Guideline on Sugars Intake for Adults and Children, 2015, which recommends free sugars below 10 percent of daily energy with a conditional further reduction below 5 percent. Glycemic index values for maltodextrin and sucrose are published ranges and vary by product and measurement method. Whey2Much sells nothing, takes no commission and accepts no payment from any brand or retailer for inclusion, ranking or placement.
Common questions
It ranges enormously. Across the nine mass gainers we track in India, declared sugar per serving runs from 0 g to 29.15 g. The highest is MuscleBlaze Mass Gainer XXL at 29.15 g in a 100 g scoop. Two tubs declare no sugar at all, but they carry 250 g and 405 g of total carbohydrate per serving, which is the number that matters more.
It is around the middle of the range we see, and it is still a lot in the context of a day. The WHO conditional guideline for free sugars is below 25 g a day for an average adult, so 11 g from one scoop uses about 44 percent of it before you have eaten anything else.
Of the nine we track, two declare zero sugar: Labrada Muscle Mass Gainer and GNC Pro Performance Weight Gainer. Read that carefully though. Those same two declare 250 g and 405 g of total carbohydrate per serving respectively, most of it maltodextrin, which is not counted as sugar on a label but behaves similarly in your blood.
Chemically no, practically it is close for blood glucose purposes. Maltodextrin is a starch derived carbohydrate made of longer glucose chains, so it is not declared as a sugar. Its glycemic index is usually quoted between 85 and 105, which is higher than table sugar at around 65. So a zero sugar claim on a gainer tells you about the label rather than about the carbohydrate.
Sugar declarations cover mono and disaccharides such as glucose, fructose, sucrose and lactose. Maltodextrin is a polysaccharide, so it sits in the total carbohydrate line rather than the sugar line. That is correct labelling, and it is also why total carbohydrate is the more useful number to read on a gainer.
That is a question for your doctor, not for an article. Mass gainers are built to deliver large amounts of rapidly absorbed carbohydrate, and one serving in the tubs we track ranges from 70 g to 405 g of carbohydrate. If you have diabetes or prediabetes, discuss any supplement with the doctor managing your treatment before you use it.
Mass gainers do not cause fat in any one place. What they do is make a calorie surplus very easy to reach, and a sustained surplus adds fat as well as muscle. A single serving of ON Serious Mass is 1,243 calories, so two servings a day on top of normal meals is a large surplus for most people.
Food first is the sensible answer for a teenager, and any supplement decision for someone under 18 should involve a doctor. A growing teenager who wants to gain weight usually needs more regular meals and more consistent training rather than a 1,200 calorie shake.
For most beginners, whey plus more food. Across our catalogue, gainers deliver protein at 6.29 to 11 rupees a gram while whey runs 4.54 to 9.75, so the gainer is also the more expensive way to buy protein. A gainer earns its place only if you genuinely cannot eat enough.
Written by
Whey2Much
India's smartest supplement price comparison platform. We track real-time prices across the country's top retailers so you never overpay.
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