Every food commercial, advertisement, and packaging in the US is currently protein obsessed. I just bought 3 burritos, and the most noticeable thing on the entire package is its protein content. TV commercials about waffles are advertising that they have X amount of protein per serving. The products in my jobsite’s vending machine have protein all over every package.
Did America have a protein thing recently?
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Marketing & the obsession of a healthy lifestyle promoted by influencers.
If you want to build muscles you need proteins. => You need proteins to build muscle.
But also if you want to lose weight, you have to reduce carbs and eat more proteins. => Your body needs more energy to break down the proteines and convert it to energy than for carbs and fats=> You feel full longer & “burn” more calories when digesting.
Unfortunately, people don’t realize that fibers are more op than proteins. And just eating proteins how some influencers are promoting is kinda BS for your longterm digestive system. => TLDR eat beans over just meat. Also, look forward to the high fiber fad that is about to be started.
Right wing/influencer jockey/stupid American marketing/FOMO/idk we just buy whats cheapest and skip/block ads
It turns out the answer is realy very long, but it’s a hell of a ride. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K35FtbuyTh4
TLDW:
It’s a right-wing grift. The Leftist Cooks argue that carnivore and “protein-maxxing” diets are not about health; they’re tied to masculinity, control, grift, and far-right politics. They use figures like Jordan Peterson and the Liver King to show how restrictive meat-heavy high protein diets can become symbols of power, identity, and pseudo-scientific authority.The broader argument is food is never just food. Dietary choices can carry cultural meaning, political signaling, and ideological pressure, and that high protein culture is part of a larger ecosystem that can normalize authoritarian, anti-science, and anti-egalitarian thinking.
The video is excellent though. It’s basically a miniseries on the various causes and effects of this and it’s incredibly well put together, even if it is 6 hours long. 😱
I thought protein was last year and fiber was this year
Lmfao at this whole thread of nonsense answers.
It’s not a weird obsession.
If you want to be muscular, then you need to eat a lot of protein.
If you want to be muscular and have a low body fat percentage, then you need to eat a lot of protein, and eat a lot of protein / calorie you eat.
If you’re old and want to slow down how quickly your muscles waste away to maintain your physical health, you need to eat a lot of protein.
And protein is generally one of the more expensive parts of food, so companies constantly try and cut back and replace it with carbs and sugar instead… All leading to people seeking out food with high protein content
Agreed, although I’ll add a few things. Protein has a much higher thermic effect of food (TEF), meaning your body expends more energy processing it. Protein and carbs both contain around 4 calories/gram and fat around 9, but TEF is roughly 20–30% for protein, 5–10% for carbs and 0–3% for fat. In other words, your body burns roughly that percentage of the calories from each just processing them.
More importantly, protein supplies the amino acids your body needs to maintain and rebuild muscle; carbs can’t substitute for the essential amino acids you have to get from your diet. That’s particularly useful during a caloric deficit, when you’re trying to lose fat while preserving muscle, and as you get older and age-related muscle loss becomes a concern.
Protein also tends to be more satiating than carbs or fat and affects appetite hormones like ghrelin, GLP-1 and CCK. So while there’s no magic number of calories that adding protein will make you eat less, the evidence supports protein making it easier to feel satisfied on fewer calories.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32768415/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8878356/So protein helps you maintain muscle, makes you feel fuller per calorie, and costs your body more energy to process. There are pretty good reasons people trying to lose fat, build/maintain muscle, or stay healthy as they age to seek out higher-protein foods. The marketing obsession didn’t come out of nowhere, even if companies take advantage of it by plastering the protein content across the front of the package while leaving things like carbs, saturated fat, and total calories much less prominent.
It’s a weird obsession because people are trying to eat significantly more than they need.
People misunderstood grams per kilogram and just switched it to grams per pound without actually converting units
Its another fad/advertising thing.
At another point, when the Keto Diet was everywhere, there was a restaurant near me that proudly announced that 100% of its menu was “Keto Diet”. There where Keto diet snacks and Keto diet frozen meals etc.
Then there was the fat free phase, I dunno if you remember the fat free cookies that you could buy, or fat free salad dressing, or fat free bread etc.
This trend seems to come from the rise of fitness influencers, and in this case its based in some kind of truth. You need protein if you are working out a lot, you cant built real muscle without it. And so fitness influencers started making videos about the food they ate, and the big thing about it was how much protein it had because that’s what they cared about.
And since influencer driven sales are huge now, you see a lot of companies wanting to cash in on the protein craze, so the packaging shifts towards showing off the protein content, because thats what everyone (or enough people) are tracking right now.
It’s the fad of the day (decade).
If you look closely, you might start seeing “high in fiber!” creeping in. You know how the last ten years there were articles about how Americans don’t eat enough fiber? Well, now fiber is the new selling point…
I ate a whole box of fiber one bars all at once almost 2 decades ago and I have been regular ever since I could leave the house after eating them all.
Because you can slap on a ‘30g protein’ label on junk food and charge double for it
Congratulations, you’ve discovered the nature of advertising.
A while back during the gluten-free craze my laundry detergent proudly had “gluten-free” on the packaging.
EDIT: I learned it’s possible for plant-based detergents to have contact with gluten, so for those with zero tolerance it can be a concern.
From Celiac.org
Do I have to use special gluten-free soaps, shampoos and lotions if I have celiac disease? Can gluten be absorbed through the skin?
No. Gluten cannot be absorbed through your scalp or skin. It must be ingested to affect those with Celiac disease.
https://celiac.org/2016/05/20/9-questions-about-celiac-disease-answered/
I drink my laundry detergent so this is important for me.
GMO free water is my favourite
I would very much like to know if that’s true. Removing every pollutant from water isn’t easy.
My dog shampoo proudly states that it has not been tested on captive animals… so I’m left wondering if they’ve tested it on free animals, or if I should think twice about using it on my dogs.
I always thought this meant “this specific product was not tested on animals but the research it is based on maybe probably involved animal testing.” Like there’s some foundational knowledge that forms the basis of “how to make a shampoo”, and that knowledge may be gotten through some unethical means.
I just had a great mental picture of some scientists chasing down and tackling a wild dog to try and shampoo it.
Animal testing typically involves injecting chemicals or rubbing directly into purpose-made abrasions or the eyes of animals. It is MUCH more brutal than it sounds.
Im sure they washed dogs with the final formula.
Animal testing typically involves injecting chemicals or rubbing directly into purpose-made abrasions or the eyes of animals
Man…why are we like this…
Animal testing doesn’t even guarantee that it’ll react the same way in/on humans. We have so many other options and yet we continue cruel practices because tradition. Ugh.
Or they’re taking the approach of software companies nowadays: don’t test, just make the users test in production
Although my dogs have protested loudly about being bathed with this shampoo, I can confirm that they survived and were cleaner as a result.
So while it sounds insane for detergent to label itself gluten-free, for people with severe gluten sensitivity toiletries, cosmetics, and other non-consumable items can still cause them symptoms with exposure, or so I’ve been told by someone I know with gluten intolerance. Whether this is an exaggerated concern or not, there is demand (albeit small) for such products.
I only just found out that I have a severe gluten intolerance, but not coeliac.
My wife and I used to make fun of all the random products that had GF labels, but now we understand the reason for them. There’s so many household items that just contain gluten as a thickening or binding agent and the labels are actually a huge help.
I stand corrected.
The detergent I used was supposed to be eco-friendly so its target audience might be looking at plant-based cleaners.
my laundry detergent proudly had “gluten-free” on the packaging.
I wonder if this has anything to do with Tide Pods and tiktok… Lmao
Is that even a concern for people with celiac disease? I know you’re not supposed to spend a lot of time in a bakery just because of airborne flour, but how much fucking gluten were they putting in detergent to begin with??
Macho culture -> bulking-> protein
As a vegan, it’s annoying. This obsession makes everyone concerned “where I get my protein.”
But no one seems to track their fiber, sodium, iron, riboflavin, etc. and would be miffed if I constantly asked people about it.
You might be interested in my reply above then. Essentially, thats part of why the obsession exists. I’m funding it hard to state it in a none conspiracy theorist way, but it’s largely right wing anti science grifters winning an argument against health.
People’s diets generally consists of meat and carbs so they think a vegan will eat the same minus the meat.
Wouldn’t you get most of the other nutrients fairly easily as long as you eat a varied diet? Accounting proteins/carbs/fats (and their sub-category types) seems harder
A varied diet provides protein as well.
Science time! Proteins are made up of amino acids. Certain chains of amino acids form “complete proteins,” which are what most people think of as “protein.” However, the constituent amino acids connect with each other in our bodies even if they’re obtained from different sources. So two sources of “incomplete” proteins can still provide “complete proteins” if both are consumed. Which means it’s a lot easier to get your protein from a varied, vegan diet than most people might think.
Beans. The answer to all of the above is beans.
“Oh, I’m good on protein intake. Thank you. But now that you mention it: I have been wondering how to bring up my concern for your possible riboflavin deficiency…”
Fiber was the latest crazy a long time ago.
Remember Colon Blow? https://youtu.be/Ku42Iszh9KM
Its not because of obsession, it’s because it’s literally the starting point for nutrition knowledge, and it’s the most obvious thing that would be lacking in a vegan diet. When people think substantial protein they think meat first and dairy and eggs second.
GLP-1, Ozempic or weightloss drugs.
heres a youtube video about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4y3r5vyac8
havent watched it. this discussion just popped up in another forum a few hours ago.
probably something about the lower calories intake while still getting enough proteins or smth like that.
It’s this, the weightloss drugs. Protein AND fiber products are being pushed everywhere.
Fiber atleast you cant get too much of, and the majority of people don’t get enough to begin with.
On the contrary, getting too much fiber is quite easy, especially if supplemented, and getting too much of it can have highly negative consequences.
thats… not true. as always, the dose makes the poison.
I was referencing mostly that people already by and large get more protein than they need, and that it is easier to get to an amount of protein where it starts being bad for you (at least if you eat a regular western diet). Of course anything in excess is bad for you.
For sure! Especially millennials - there’s way too many of us dying from colon cancer these days.
Im guessing it also has something to do with all the noise around lowered testosterone in men lately. Protein dude bro think
i assumed it was the popularity of gym culture moving into every day life
I also think this is it. I have a couple of friends that buy these kind of products, and they are also the only gym goers I know. So for my tiny sample it’s an absolute one to one correlation.
Aside from people working out protein isn’t really going to make a difference.
It does, it makes your farts smell way worse.
Interesting question and answers here. The GLP1 stuff makes sense.
They don’t tell you about the bioavailability of the proteins though. Waffles or plants among others don’t get utilized by the body as well as protein from meat or whey.
We’re idiots
