How protein took over the supermarket

Tortilla chips, pudding, ranch dressing, even vodka: all now come in a protein version. Count the packages that shout protein on the front and you reach 37,232, good for roughly $90 billion at the register in a year.

Weight lifters, doctors advising people on GLP-1 medicines and new federal guidelines that raised recommended protein by more than half all feed the demand. Demand has doubled the price of whey in five years; cheesemakers used to throw it away.

Almost nine in ten Americans were already eating enough of it. A nutrition scientist who helped shape the guidelines calls protein sprinkled into snacks “fairy dust”: add 10 grams to a doughnut and you still have a doughnut.

Read the full story at The New York Times ↗