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?
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.