MEN’S HEALTH INVESTIGATES

HAVE WE FINALLY REACHED PEAK PROTEIN?

From doughnuts and biscuits to pasta and crisps, the muscle-building nutrient has become Big Snack’s big sell. But do all these extra grams really add up to more muscle?

Words by Mickey Rapkin

PHOTOGRAPHY: ANDREW B MYERS; COURTESY OF DAVID PROTEIN

‘I ve got four kids,’ Kyung Kim told me as I shoved one of his high-protein marshmallow biscuits into my mouth. Kim is the founder of Redefine Foods, which also sells protein-enhanced doughnuts. He would pack their lunch, he says, unthinkingly throwing in sweet treats packing up to 30g of sugar. ‘I’m like, “What am I doing? I need to come up with something that’s healthy for you.”’

Kim was just one of the many (many) vendors at Natural Products Expo West, a four-day event I attended in Anaheim, California, in March. Expo West is built around ‘empowering your future in the world of natural and organic products’. I still don’t know what that means, so I’ll describe the event as a snack convention where big brands and upstarts alike pitch hungry professionals new eats.

More than 64,000 people attended the 44th annual event, a crowd which included food distributors, retailers and buyers. Some 3,000 brands had set up booths, including titans such as Liquid Death and Oatly, but 30% of the companies were new to Expo West.

I listened to many impassioned speeches from pitch people like Kim. I witnessed attendees filling giant bags with free samples. I saw lines dozens-deep for Wilde protein chips (made from chicken breast) and Kodiak Cakes, a boxed pancake mix that counts Zac Efron as its chief brand officer.

And most of these companies seemed to be marketing items loaded with protein, a nutrient that has recently become the snack industry’s big sell: a muscle-building, weight-losing ingredient they could add to anything.

Whether a doughnut or cookie – even one with 15g of protein – can really be considered ‘healthy’ is up for debate. But Kim picked the right market. The value of high-protein foods is projected to grow by more than $50bn (around £36.5bn) between 2023 and 2028, according to a report from Research and Markets, with buy-in from the likes of Nestlé, PepsiCo and Coca-Cola.

High-protein cereals, pastas, crisps, pancakes, yoghurt, bagels, even soft drinks… despite the flood of new products on the market, 42% of consumers say they want even more, according to a 2024 Kantar survey.