The Factors at Play in the Protein Boom

If you walk through Hyde Park, the student area of Leeds, 2kg packs of protein powder are part of the furniture. Stored on tops of fridges and cupboards, it is a more reliably featured element in a student kitchen than most kitchen appliances. How? In recent years, the protein industry has boomed and is set to almost double to a value of 114 billion U.S. dollars by 2030.

Protein pancakes, protein oats, protein ice cream, and protein...alcohol? (Apparently yes, a contestant of The Apprentice pitched for the £250,000 business deal with it). You can’t move for protein propaganda in the fitness industry.

Where previously, protein-enhanced foods were reserved for health-food stores and the diets of a niche group of avid bodybuilders, it is now supplemented by the mainstream populous and is a key element inserted into the diets of the majority. High-protein diets, recipes, meals, and supplements are dominating pop culture and consciousness, supermarket shelves, and online spending.

Is it a fleeting diet and market trend of the moment praying on appearance trends that in years to come we will see as comparable to demonising carbs and culling fat? Or is it making us healthier, stronger, and fitter - either way, how did it take hold so successfully?

The protein boom refers to the rise in protein consumption and protein promotion by brands and online personalities that have been noticeable in the past 5 years. Despite economic and marketing factors, it has undoubtedly been carried to success on the shoulders of social media, influencers, and content creation. The hashtag #proteinrecipes on TikTok has a total of 157.4 million views and similar tags boast more or similar numbers; #protein totals 7.5 billion. This content is populated with tips, hacks, supplements, meal ideas, baking, and ‘How To’s. They are posted by fitness influencers and amateur gym-goers alike, creating an echo chamber that crowns the consumption of high levels of protein as a key to success in body transformation and a healthy diet. Keeping you fuller for longer and building lean muscle at the same time, it is crowned as a golden ticket to gym progress.

‘What I eat in a day’s, recipes, and hauls feature multiple protein bars, high protein meals, protein oats, homemade protein bars, and protein shakes. Where there isn’t a high protein content, it is often inserted by the means of supplements. Their brownie, flapjack, cupcake, and pancake recipes often contain ‘1 scoop of protein’ in the ingredient list. Protein powder, usually made from Whey, or Pea Protein, is mixed into yoghurt, oats, sauces, pancakes, and smoothies. Where there isn’t protein powder manually combined by the consumer, there are pre-made protein bars or high-protein versions of foods like pasta available to up your intake.

The British Nutrition Foundation recommends a daily protein intake of (on average) ~56g a day for men and ~45g a day for women depending on body weight – but the fitness industry operates on an ‘as much as possible’ recommendation. On average in the UK, we spend around £36 a month on supplementing the stuff – writes Arabella Ogilvie for My Protein, and fitness personalities promote their diets that sometimes triple the NHS recommended amount. Tutorials on how to cram 150, 190 or upwards of 200 grams of protein into a certain calorie count populate the hashtags online. But when looking at medical research concluding that we can only absorb 20g-30g of protein at one time and excrete the rest due to the maximum rate of urethra synthesis, these efforts and supplementing seem like a convoluted way to make going to the toilet the same as tipping a protein shake down it. We are in no danger of a protein-deficient diet, and those who are aren’t prioritising spending their money on protein shakes – so what’s the appeal?

Tammy Hembrow was probably the first fitness influencer to be well-known in the popular consciousness for their partnership with a protein supplement brand. Famously sponsored by Women’s Best, her brand placement was very overt - it inadvertently said ‘I look like thanks to this’, and the partnership worked. Nowadays, sponsorships and partnerships and adverts are a LOT less obvious, especially before the legislation requiring their disclosure, but are equally (if not more) common. In the mix, too, there are PR packages sent to influencers that aren’t sponsorships but are often promoted with the same enthusiasm to solidify rapport and links with a brand. In the past, consumers were more likely to buy things if they were on an overt product placement, but now the less sponsored something seems, the more likely we are to purchase it. Brands have managed to hack this through the means of PR packaging and giving discount codes to influencers rather than physically sponsoring them. ‘What I eat in a day’ YouTube videos using all the same brand of bar and protein powder stink of a PR package but convinces consumers to purchase them all the same. 

TikTok and reels also make virality easy to reach. By becoming one of the millions of videos under #proteinbars, a person can score their views for their own gain, and at the same time are advertising a product at no cost to the brand. A sort of echo chamber of consumption is created as consumers become the advertisers. Like Tammy Hembrow overtly told us ‘I look like this thanks to this’ by pretty much pointing at the stuff, seeing someone consume nothing by X brand and look amazing has the same effect, despite never being fed the sponsorship script, the facts, or the nutritional research. 

Online content creation is an industry that is dominated by women – only 19% of influencers are male. Women also make up consumers more than men (toiletries, beauty products, makeup). If we combine these two statistics, we get an online marketing space that is almost completely dictated by women and their habits, both spending and lifestyle. Not so shockingly, therefore, the popularisation of the industry almost exactly aligns with when lifting became popular for women.

Women both decide the trends, and fall victim to them, thus marketing is almost completely directed towards them. In 2019 diet and aesthetic culture evolved to favour a strong, athletic build and was pioneered by toned physiques on popular TV programs and athletic-looking influencers on Instagram. In opposition to the trend of almost malnourished-looking figures of the noughties and early twenty-teens (heroin chic), celebrities got surgery to fill out their lower body, and women lost their fear of consuming carbs and protein. The complimenting answer to ‘does my bum look big in this’ was ‘YES!’.

Along with aiming to grow their lower body, once women found a hobby in weightlifting, the goal became to get stronger and fitter and take up more space as an almost feminist agenda began. Consciously decentring the male gaze and the wishes of men who wanted a woman as dainty and small as possible came hand-in-hand with women lifting heavy. Being told by men that they look ‘unattractive now!’ and having them scoffing at your deadlift became almost a medal of success. Lifting more became an empowering achievement and was encouraged by terms like ‘muscle mommy’; women that didn’t shy away from growing more ‘masculine’ physiques of broad backs and capped shoulders.

Women are also being encouraged to lift for health reasons. Personal trainer Michael Hamlin, NSCA, CSCS, and founder of Everflex Fitness confirms that “Weightlifting can offer numerous benefits for women that go beyond aesthetics”. “Improved bone density to reduce risk of osteoporosis, reducing the risk of injury, improved mental health and reduced risk of chronic diseases” are just some of the things he credits to weightlifting in women.

As the women, then, got into lifting, it is no wonder that protein consumption boomed. To aid recovery and muscle growth, protein consumption and a nutritionally dense diet are encouraged. Men consume protein supplements and worldwide consume more than women, but we cannot ignore women’s contribution to the protein boom and its presence in mainstream media. Not only is it harder for women to gain muscle so they need more protein than they think, but they also consume the most online content and adverts and create the most online content and adverts. We also can’t ignore the way that diet culture often affects women more than men and, unfortunately, the protein boom is an arm of a diet trend. Most of the results on protein hashtags are created by women, for women.

However, despite the positive affiliations of protein mania, of course, it is diet culture masquerading itself as health and wellness.

There is a notion in disordered eating therapy that people have ‘safe’ and ‘fear’ foods, and these are often based on nothing other than a mental barrier. ‘Fear foods’ don’t have to be high in calories or salt or sugar, and ‘safe foods’ aren’t necessarily healthy, they are created by phycological factors, information, or media that a person consumes, upbringing, and habits. Is pushing high protein consumption creating ‘safe’ foods out of foods that incorporate protein and making ‘fear foods’ out of foods that don’t? Is it okay to have normal pancakes for breakfast? It seems deeper than wanting to get more nutrients out of meals.

My Protein recently launched a ‘Treat Without the Cheat Snack Box’ containing protein bars of varying flavours that are high in protein. The calorie content is the same as the ‘treats’ they are replacing – water and chocolate bars, all that is changed is the protein content is upped. “To weight-conscious people, the word protein has a halo effect,” writes Sirin Kale for The Guardian - putting protein in front of something seems to be making it a safe or acceptable thing to consume for the health-conscious, and it feeds the back pockets of CEOs rather than doing any health-related good to the consumer.

We must remember that the driving forces of the protein boom are not scientists or nutritionists but are instead CEOs, marketing budgets, sponsorships, and people who have found a hobby in gym-going, all creating an echo chamber of what is good and what is not.

Were we, and are we, being taken advantage of? In the same way that our parents were pushed ‘Slimfast’, diet pills, and did crash diets of cabbage soup, and we recently were sold over priced laxatives as ‘flat tummy teas’  – has capitalism found a soft spot and dressed it as someone with rippling quads? Of course.

Increased research into nutrition and sports science is also partly driving the consumption of protein as people try more and more to do what is best for their bodies. After all, protein is vital in recovery and as more people use the gym to counter a more sedentary lifestyle of driving, desk work, and working from home, increased research means we can safely and effectively workout, recover, and fuel our bodies.

We must remember that the high protein diet is not only created by the consumption of whole foods, and instead is engineered through a highly supplemented diet of processed substances. Unlike either foods or drugs, supplements do not need to be registered or approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) before production or sale. Influencers and online personalities are also quick to promote products with little regard for fact checking. YouTube personality Josh Pieters has proved this in multiple stunts tricking influencers into enthusiastically promoting gravel (‘moon rock’), and endorsing fake charities and ridiculous campaigns like teaching underprivileged African children to ski.

Not only are there potential risks in excessive and unregulated protein consumption, but it’s also often redundant. Due to MRUS (max rate of urea synthesis) determined by Rudman et al, the liver and kidney can only metabolise a maximum of 30g of protein at one time, and the rest is excreted. And the truth is, even the most avid gym goers are not doing enough exercise to require the amount of protein that they consume. Shane Bilsborough, an independent researcher with B Personal Pty Ltd, and Neil Mann, from the Dept of Food Science, RMIT University Melbourne define excessive protein as more than 35% of total energy intake (total calories consumed) - however, the market pushes the best rate of consumption as seemingly ‘as much as you can’. Exceeding this protein can cause adverse effects on kidney and liver function due to too much pressure on the organ, resulting in hyperaminoacidemia, hyperammonemia, hyperinsulinemia, nausea, ketosis, diarrhoea, and even death of ‘rabbit starvation syndrome’ (a form of malnutrition caused by a diet deficient in fat and carbohydrates because almost all calories consumed come from protein).

Not only are there possible adverse long-term effects, but gymgoers also often report negatives that come with a lifestyle of bodybuilding and protein consumption such as ‘lifting acne’ and extremely bad digestive issues. Research too proves side effects such as worsened acne, increased aggression, and bad digestion. Will this high-protein diet be looked back on in the same way we look at the Atkins diet that demonised cards, or in the way that many people try to survive on crash diets and juice cleanses with dangerous effects?

Spending money on consuming excessive amounts of protein is proof of the power of marketing buzzwords, the impact of online content, and the influence of an echo chamber of consumption – and above all the way that we sadly spend any amount of money to conform to aesthetic trends.