Protein: The Trendy Macronutrient Marketers Are Using to Sell Ultra-Processed Foods

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Protein is the hero nutrient of the moment. Walk around the grocery store, and you'll see high-protein labels on everything from cookies and pasta to cereal and bagels. High-protein lattes are popping up at popular coffee chains. Even the beverage cooler could be in for a makeover: High-protein water is already available online and at big box stores.

Tyler Mayoras, managing director of the global private equity firm Manna Tree, points to Gen Z as a driving force behind the protein craze. Gen Z is “very health conscious,” and they’re talking a lot about nutrients—particularly protein, he told The Epoch Times.

“When you eat a lot less calories, you have to eat a lot more nutrient-dense calories,” he noted. “And so you’ve got people focused on protein, fiber, other vitamins, and macronutrients.”

Food manufacturers are responding with high-protein snacks and meals that deliver more nutrients with fewer calories per serving.

“Your body’s like a house,” Carol-Ann Robert, a registered dietitian and nutritionist at Team Nutrition in Canada, told The Epoch Times. “To build a house, you need building blocks or bricks, and proteins are those bricks.”

Our bodies break down protein from the food we eat into individual amino acid “bricks” and use them to “build” new proteins that make up the structure of our cells and tissues.

Mark Rifkin, a registered dietitian, told The Epoch Times that we’re likely wasting our time.

“Biologically, once needs are met, there is no nutritional benefit to adding more,” he said.

“It becomes a problem depending on where you get those proteins,” she said. “Are you reducing the variety of foods that you eat?”

David Goldman, a nutrition and exercise scientist and a Fellow of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, refers to this trade-off as “protein leverage.” He told The Epoch Times that overdoing protein can mean missing out on key nutrients from other foods.

“If it’s displacing fruits and vegetables,” he said, “then that’s a bad move.”

This is because vitamins, minerals, and dietary fiber get crowded out, according to Goldman.

“Adding protein to a cookie—it’s still a cookie,” Rifkin said. “You’re still looking at a processed food. It doesn’t suddenly become a paragon of nutritional virtue simply because we’ve added protein to it.”

Yet virtue is exactly what many people attribute to protein. Thirty-eight percent of consumers equate “high protein” with “healthy” despite the fact that many packaged foods sporting high-protein claims also contain large amounts of salt, sugar, and fat.

“Ultimately, the high sales and high appeal of all these products are not because of the quality of the product,” Rifkin said. “It’s because the audience is vulnerable to the marketing.”

Such vulnerability could undermine our health rather than improve it. Processing may strip protein foods of beneficial compounds we’re not even aware we need, Robert said.

“We don’t know everything about nutrition. We don’t know everything that’s in one single food,” she said. “If you take, for example ... an apple—if I try to make a pill or a food that has all those nutrients to replace the apple, I’m probably gonna forget some things.”

Robert agrees that the RDA may fall short of what people actually need. However, her recommendations are more conservative and vary depending on health goals and activity levels.

“It’s more like 1.2 grams per kilogram a day for healthy adults—1.2 to 1.8,” she said. “And then for athletes or people doing weight loss, we would go for 2.0, 2.4.”

For a 150-pound adult with a normal activity level, that’s about 82 to 123 grams of protein per day. An athlete or someone on a calorie-restricted diet would need between 136 and 164 grams, depending on their body weight.

“I think the number one place you can get protein is single-ingredient protein,” Mayoras said, citing foods such as cottage cheese and organic beef.

In addition to providing protein, these foods contain essentials such as vitamins, minerals, and fiber that support our overall health. Combining them with other nutrient-rich foods such as vegetables, fruits, and whole grains in balanced meals and snacks throughout the day can help us meet protein goals without relying on ultra-processed snacks.

Striking that balance is fairly straightforward, according to Rifkin.

“ Fundamentally, I’m looking for a protein-dense choice at every meal,” he said.

However, neither he nor Robert is completely opposed to including processed proteins in some circumstances. For example, products such as protein-enriched pancake mixes can allow older adults with limited appetites to get protein from foods they already enjoy. Protein snacks and less-processed ready meals are handy when traveling and can serve as what Robert calls “an occasional portable supplement” on busy days.

As a general habit, however, Rifkin said we should see ultra-processed foods for what they are: treats that don’t have to be altered into marketable health foods.

“Let’s let the cookie be a cookie,” he said. “Every food we eat doesn’t necessarily need to treat disease.”

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