V Shred’s public reputation is still in shambles, with most online reviews calling the fitness giant a “scam” or a “ripoff” (and that’s after weeding out the ones with four-letter words).
But, hey, we all love a good comeback story, right?
Vince Sant’s V Shred Recipe Guide could very well unseat Sean Nal’s Body Transformation Blueprint or Greg Doucette’s Ultimate Anabolic Cookbook as the best fitness cookbooks.
But does it? Is V Shred’s Recipe Guide any good?
Let’s find out.
About the Creator – Vince Sant
Vince Sant is an Ohio-born Capricorn with hazel eyes, tattoos, two sisters, and a past high school football career. (Which, of course, are the six traits of a trustworthy personal trainer.)
Aside from a LinkedIn page touting V Shred’s success, notably coming to the rescue of nearly one million “ordinary” people in three years, Vince Sant is an international man of mystery.
Here’s what we do know about the certified personal trainer, aside from his questionable fashion sense that includes backward caps and sleeveless hoodies.
Vince Sant — apparently his real name — has quite the following. His Instagram will soon hit the 700,000-follower milestone, while V Shred’s Facebook page has more than 8.5 million likes.
But beyond that, Sant is an entrepreneur blazing his own trail in the fitness industry.
He’s the co-founder of V Shred (a fitness platform) and SculptNation (a supplement brand), which explains the borderline tacky coupon codes on literally every page.
What is V Shred’s Recipe Guide?
Mildly disappointing, overhyped, and gimmicky.
V Shred’s Recipe Guide features more than 40 nutritional recipes. According to the ridiculously long-winded sales page, the V Shred team developed this plan to be:
- Pre-calculated for calories, fats, carbohydrates, and proteins
- Down-right delicious (no jet-fuel or cardboard-flavored meals here!)
- 100% adaptable to your current diet and training programs
- Simple to prepare on a busy schedule — often in a matter of minutes
- Easy to shop for, with ingredients available in every grocery store
V Shred also dials up the sales pressure by claiming that the $14.95 price tag won’t last forever.
In fact, if you don’t buy the Recipe Guide within the next few days, the price will increase (which corners newbies into making impulsive purchase decisions before they can read the reviews).
Don’t type in your card information until you read this!
V Shred’s Recipe Guide Details
Unlike other V Shred-branded programs, the Recipe Guide doesn’t have its own dashboard. It’s simply a 46-page PDF split into two chapters:
- Recipes: Pages 1 through 32
- Fitness Programs: Pages 33 through 43
(If you’re a complete newbie hoping to master nutritional principles or piece together your own diet, both chapters will leave you completely empty-handed.)
With that in mind, here’s what’s hidden behind that $14.95 paywall.
How Many Recipes Are There?
V Shred’s Recipe Guide features 47 recipes designed to satisfy any breakfast, lunch, dinner, or snack cravings.
This jam-packed recipe guide offers a tasty selection of healthy options, including a 10-minute veggie omelet, spicy orange chicken, grilled steak salad, and supreme pepperoni pizza.
What Each Recipe Includes
Whether you’re grilling up breakfast sandwiches or shoving a batch of turkey chili into the dutch oven, all included recipes follow a similar format. That includes:
Number of Servings
Will there be enough avocado-ranch salad to feed a small village for Thanksgiving? Or is that turkey wrap recipe a “just for you” type of deal?
This detail is easy to miss! But most V Shred recipes include the number of servings in a microscopic blue font just below the name of the meal (though some are missing).
Most recipes make 3–4 servings. So when you’re not cooking for the fam or a herd of hungry roommates, dishes like the 50/50 meatloaf and pesto chicken are great for meal prep lunches.
All you need are reliable food storage containers that you can nuke in the microwave.
Ingredients
Before jumping into the cooking instructions, each recipe includes a list of the must-have ingredients to spruce together a Guy-Fieri-approved meal. The ingredients list includes:
- The labeled ingredients listed in light grey text
- The amount needed in blue, hard-to-miss, bolded font
One of the Recipe Guide’s selling points was designing meals with ingredients available at any grocery store in America.
That’s absolutely true … if you know where to look. For example, everyday ingredients like tomato sauce, lemon juice, cucumber, and parmesan cheese are in those high-traffic aisles.
But lesser-used ingredients — such as rice wine vinegar and lemongrass — require a bit more grocery store know-how. (That’s where apps like Shops by Aisle411 become the hero.)
Also, if you’re still on the verge of “adulting,” now’s as good a time as any to invest in measuring cups, measuring spoons, and a kitchen scale.
Directions
Once you gather the ingredients and kitchen supplies, you’re finally ready to bring those chicken noodle pho, Tex-Mex turkey taco, or really any V Shred recipes to life.
Sant describes step-by-step how to cook each. For a veggie omelet, that means warming a skillet on medium heat and serving the final concoction with a side of whole-grain toast.
To be honest, even if you’re down to your final two brain cells rubbing together, it’s hard to mess up cooking directions that don’t set off the smoke detectors (been there, done that).
But complete newbies may still feel a little … lost.
For example, how do you know when chicken is 90% cooked? Or what counts as “golden brown” when firing up spinach chicken? (Additional research will definitely be of use!)
Approximate Macros Per Serving
Sant advertises this program as entirely customizable and adaptable, whether your goals are dropping 50 pounds of fat, cutting down to 10% body fat, or bulking up to a solid 200.
This dark blue box tucked away at the bottom of each recipe is more important than anything else in this guide: how many calories and grams of fat, carbs, and protein are in each serving?
The table below details the recipes clinching the highs and lows in each category:
| Calories | Fat (g) | Carb (g) | Protein (g) | |
| Breakfast Bowl | 558 calories (highest) | 25g | 60g | 29g |
| Healthy Baked Fish Sticks | 133 calories (lowest) | 3g | 9g | 17g |
| Fast and Easy Pot Roast | 520 calories | 26g (highest) | 14g | 53g |
| Spicy Orange Chicken | 259 calories | 2g (lowest) | 17g | 42g |
| Lemon Baked Chicken | 353 calories | 16g | 97g (highest) | 57g |
| Grilled Mahi | 230 calories | 7g | 1g (lowest) | 37g |
| Stuffed Oatmeal | 549 calories | 15g | 53g | 58g (highest – tie) |
| Baked Crispy | 281 calories | 8g | 57g | 2g (lowest) |
Short of eating double-servings (or half-servings) or swapping out ingredients, it’s not clear how to adapt these recipes to your physique goals.
Image of the Meal
Sant also attached a close-up photo for each recipe detailed in the guide. Though we can’t attest to the taste of each dish, these images certainly do them justice!
Fitness Programs
The good news is that 74.4% of the V Shred Recipe Guide is just that: recipes. The bad news is that Vince Sant, the ultimate grifter, saved the other 25.6% to advertise his own damn programs.
Starting on page 33, the guide hypes up ten V Shred programs, including:
- Fat Loss Extreme for Him
- Fat Loss Extreme for Her
- 90 Day Clean Bulk
- Ripped in 90 Days
- Toned in 90 Days
- Custom Plan
- Big Arms
- 6-Pack Shred
- Booty Builder
- 30 Day Challenge
- Recipe Guide *
* Yes, after dumping an hour’s pay into this V Shred Recipe Guide, Vince Sant says, “Hey, have you considered investing in our recipe guide?”
The guide closes with a full page dedicated to a SculptNation coupon code. (Don’t worry about scrolling that far, though, the code is in the upper-right corner of literally all 43 pages here.)
Does the V Shred Recipe Guide Live Up to Its Promises?
Vince Sant rambles off 1,733 words (literally — we counted) to convince you that the V Shred Recipe Guide is the best fitness-friendly cookbook on the face of planet earth.
But does the guide itself actually live up to these promises? After the massive letdown that was 2020, we decided it was worth investigating this whole shindig in more detail.
Below, we’ll help you decipher which promises Sant fulfills and which he fumbles worse than Ross when he and Rachel were “on a break.”
Meals That Perfectly Fit Your Diet?
That’s a big ole nope.
The biggest blunder with the Recipe Guide is that Sant shames the entire cookbook industry by claiming “most cookbooks are aimed at a very wide market,” which — to his credit — is true.
But then he rattles off 47 recipes that don’t seem to target any single fitness goal or diet.
If you’re trying keto, serving the baked crispy recipe would put you over your daily 50g of carbs. With 7g of protein, the avocado-ranch salad recipe is useless for hard-gainers.
These meals might fit your diet … if you find a way to make ‘em fit.
He also saddles up on his high horse to say most cookbooks aren’t created by “fitness experts.” But then he admits he had a chef create these recipes before slapping his name on them.
Take Minutes to Prepare?
If by “minutes” he means “technically less than an hour,” then sure (for the most part)!
The average American dedicates just 37 minutes a day to cooking. But while Sant markets these recipes as requiring literal minutes to fire up, that’s not exactly true.
We can pinpoint five recipes that include the word “hour,” including:
- The 50/50 meatloaf, which bakes for an hour and 20 minutes
- The fast and easy pot roast, which sits in a dutch oven for 2–3 hours
- The pesto chicken, which could marinate for up to an hour
- The turkey chili, which simmers for an hour
- The supreme pepperoni pizza, which requires the dough to sit for an hour
While most of these are “dump” recipes (just toss the ingredients into a pot as they cook), they’re not exactly time-friendly, even with meal prep.
Calculates Macros & Calories For You?
Yes, that’s, uh, what modern cookbooks do.
In an era where 42.4% of American adults are obese, with even more being overweight, adding a calorie and macro-count to cookbooks isn’t earth-shattering; it’s par for the course.
These often-overlooked details will definitely help you mix and match recipes to fit your goals.
But the V Shred diet is also not wholly math-free. While you don’t have to calculate every ingredient for each dish manually, you still have to select recipes that fit your daily goals.
And, since there’s no easy-to-scan chart listing the calories and macros for each meal, that’ll be a painstaking lesson in trial and error.
Ideal for Literally Any Fitness Goal?
In a way, yes.
There’s tons of variety in the Recipe Guide from the calorie and macro standpoint. Some meals are loaded with calories, others skimp on the carbs, and a few strike a delicate balance.
So if you have the patience to flip through all 47 recipes and analyze the data, there’s no doubt you can fit some of these recipes into a keto, carb-cycling, or flexible diet.
But there’s also a glaring misstep here. Sant didn’t include any nutritional guidelines for newbies (no introduction at all), meaning aligning these meals with your fitness goals falls in your lap.
A Huge Variety of Easy-to-Make Recipes?
That depends on how often you’re willing to repeat meals.
If you can’t fathom another brown rice, green beans, and broiled chicken combo, then the V Shred Recipe Guide will rile up your taste buds (in a good way).
Then again, 47 recipes isn’t a lot. (Those who eat six meals a day can power through every single one of these meals in quite literally eight days.)
There is a decent bit of variety from the flavor perspective, ranging from simple turkey wraps to salmon stacks to Greek yogurt shrimp wraps.
But the V Shred guide is also nowhere close to the variety found in the Body Transformation Cookbook, which includes a collection of desserts, snacks, and smoothies.
Based on Foods Available at Every Supermarket?
Assuming your grocery store has a fresh produce and deli section, yup!
Vince Sant is right in that this Recipe Guide doesn’t include any “where the hell do you get that?” ingredients, like saffron or any nonsense Dr. Oz has been hawking lately.
Yet, unless cooking is your hobby, you may still have trouble locating some of these ingredients in the aisles at your supermarket. Strap on your best hide-and-seek outfit as you search for:
- Rice vinegar
- Goat cheese
- Bok choy
- Tapioca starch
- Halibut
- Beef chuck shoulder roast (now that’s a string of words)
- Fennel seeds
We’re not saying that your grocery store doesn’t have these items. But if you don’t even own a skillet or a pot, finding these ingredients at the store will be like finding a needle in a haystack.
Full of Mouth-Watering Healthy Recipes?
No idea.
Disclaimer: we haven’t actually tried any of these recipes.
But Vince Sant mentioned that he asked a professional chef in Los Angeles for their healthiest and tastiest recipes and narrowed the list down to these 47 meals. So they should taste great.
Sant said he had these meals “made” for him. We’re not sure if that’s referring to the written list of recipes or hiring a personal chef, but we really hope it’s #1. (Can he be that tone-deaf?)
100% Adaptable?
Technically, every recipe is adaptable with nutritional and cooking expertise.
Sant uses some variation of the word “adaptable” six times while hyping up the V Shred Guide. Yet, there’s not a single mention in the guide of how to adapt these recipes to your needs.
What if you’re vegan or vegetarian? Allergic to almonds? Require a gluten-free diet? Need 150g of protein a day to meet your macro intake? Want to follow a carb-free diet?
Just adapt these recipes, of course. How? Hell if we know.
Sant also claims that these recipes are adaptable to travel and vacation.
But unless he’s referring to stowing away frozen meals in your suitcase, it seems he doesn’t realize that most of us don’t book hotel rooms with full-blown ovens and stoves.
Available With a Money-Back Guarantee?
About as likely as a legitimate company calling you about your car’s extended warranty.
One of the most common V Shred complaints is difficulty securing a refund when unhappy with the program as a whole. (It’s a whole process that includes emails and a long waiting period.)
It’s also not clear what “results” Sant attaches to the 100% money-back guarantee.
Is it being disappointed by the recipes? Not losing fat or gaining mass? Also, why are we calling it a “custom diet plan” when the only customization is the changes you make to the recipes?
5 Solid Benefits of V Shred’s Recipe Guide
- It’s a decent start if you’re new to the kitchen. If your current diet features microwave dinners, Hot Pockets, and granola bars, the V Shred Recipe Guide is a solid introduction to the fresh-cooked lifestyle. It includes relatively simple meals that’ll make even newbies feel like Bobby Flay (well, to an extent).
- Most of the ingredients and recipes are generally nutritious. The recipes are heavy on fresh meats, vegetables, whole grains, and low-fat dairy (or alternatives, like almond milk). From a health perspective, this Recipe Guide is right on target.
- The layout is easy to follow, even for newbies. Sant includes detailed directions, ingredients lists (plus measurements), and a macronutrient breakdown for every recipe.
- There’s a decent bit of variety in the flavor department. While Sant goes a little heavy on the seafood and fails to include a single shake or smoothie, the meals won’t feel too repetitive. The Recipe Guide targets nearly every palette, with recipes ranging from BBQ turkey meatloaf to steak burritos to tuna salad.
- Some recipes are meal-prep-compatible. A few of the recipes make just one or two servings. But others, like the sweet and sour chicken, serve four. That gives you two options: refrigerate the rest for dinner or hop on the meal prep bandwagon.
5 Negatives of V Shred’s Recipe Guide
- The entire recipe guide is a contradiction. Vince Sant dishes out a smackdown, shaming other cookbooks for having an “anonymous cook” author … then says he had a chef “friend” create these recipes for him. He says you don’t need to calculate the macros and calories … then suggests it’s your duty to tailor them to your lifestyle. Sant claims all meals take minutes to cook … then includes five that take more than an hour.
- There’s little advice to help users adapt or customize the recipes. By Sant’s logic, any meal or recipe book is customizable or adaptable to fit your physique and fitness goals. There are literally zero tips explaining how to make these changes yourself.
- There were quite a few missed opportunities. With 47 recipes included, it would’ve been nice to list them all in a table with a calorie and macronutrient breakdown. Also, some guidance on how to adapt each meal would’ve been nice.
- It’s definitely not the “last recipe book you’ll ever need.” Forty-seven recipes will last you a month or two before you repeat dishes. But when alternatives like Greg Doucette’s Anabolic Cookbook offer 60 mouth-watering recipes with far more variety (like desserts and shakes), the V Shred Recipe Guide doesn’t seem all that ground-breaking.
- A quarter of the guide advertises V Shred programs. Ah, yes, the ultimate sales pitch. Charge customers for your programs, and then dedicate 25% of the content to advertising more of your programs like VSU.
Wrapping Up This V Shred’s Recipe Guide Review
The V Shred Recipe Guide is decent for newbies desperate for healthy foods that don’t take forever to cook or call for flat-out bizarre ingredients.
There’s a decent bit of variety, it’s meal-prep-friendly (to an extent), and there’s no questioning the nutritional aspect of these dishes.
But if you’re expecting the guide to living up to Sant’s promises, you’ll be sorely disappointed.
There’s little more to this guide than the recipes, leaving you on the hook for the customization and adaptations that Sant suggests are in-built.
Plus, piecing together these 47 recipes to fit your daily calorie and macronutrient counts is tedious at best, with a quarter of the guide being a blatant V Shred advertisement.
Is it any good? Sure, if you prefer healthy recipes and are in the early days of a full-body transformation. But for most fitness fanatics, the V Shred Recipe Guide is disappointing.
Rating: 5/10
