Packing in protein

0:01We are going to extreme lengths to get more protein these days. The powders, the shakes, the cottage cheese and the oatmeal, the peanut butter and everything, and the chicken smoothie. I went to the store, got like some chicken breast, boiled it, blended it in a blender. It was like, added a splash of water and then it smelled like, you know, I was just like, dude, I'm making soup here. This is so weird. So then I added like every berry, every frozen banana, like everything I could basically find in my freezer and, you know, to make it a little bit more tolerable. Have you tried the chicken smoothie?

0:39And then my wife tried it, too. And she was like, oh, yeah, you could definitely feel the chicken on that. And so I had this like, you know, venti-sized chicken smoothie that I had to drink all myself because I can't waste anything in my house. Coming up on Today Explained, protein madness.

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1:57Amazon-Verpackungsdaten aus dem Jahr 2025 in Großbritannien und der EU. You're listening to Today Explained. I'm Noelle King. Today's show is a rerun and we are rerunning it because you and me and everyone we know is going to the gym lately. And so is writer Chris Gaiomali. Chris publishes a health and wellness newsletter called Heavies. And last year he wrote a big piece for Grub Street about protein that started with his path to protein obsession. This actually started a few years ago. Here in New York, once lockdown restrictions sort of eased up, the gyms were kind of the first thing to open.

2:34And so mostly out of boredom, I started going to my Muay Thai gym like five or six days a week and got really, really fit. Around that same time, I started listening to health podcasts like Huberman Lab. When I heard this, I thought, there's no way this is true, which was making sure that you get 30 or so grams of protein within 30 minutes of waking. And I was constantly getting all these messages that like, you're not getting enough protein in your diet. And so that sort of triggered my fall down this trap door towards the protein event horizon. People think it's crazy that I've eaten 200 grams of protein for almost 20 straight years, every single day.

3:13The biggest lie that you're telling yourself is that you can't hit your protein goals. Stop overcomplicating it. I blend chicken twice a day to be an open pro bodybuilder. Chug that baby down. Somebody get this man's self-protein! I myself do listen to Huberman, and I have gotten the message, too. I think a lot more about protein than I ever thought I would think about protein. Same here. Me of 36 months ago would not recognize this person. Tell me where protein mania begins. Is this a recent phenomenon? So it actually really starts with whey protein. And for that, you have to go back to right after World War II.

3:55The Japanese have accepted our terms fully. That is the word we have just received from the White House in Washington. And I didn't expect to hear a celebration here in our newsroom in New York, but you can hear one going on behind me. A lot of farming became really industrialized. And around that time, we really saw dairy production really start to ratchet up here in the United States. Milk is one of our most wholesome foods. Now, where are the milk cows and the dairy farms of the United States located? In an area commonly called the Dairy Belt. There was just like so much cheese that they were making, especially in Vermont and Wisconsin.

4:35Cheese, a more concentrated food, is more valuable per pound than milk. When you make cheese, its liquid byproduct is whey, which has historically been treated as a refuse that was either dumped in the rivers or fed to pigs and cattle. Once the whey is discarded, at least, it kind of has nowhere to go. And there was one cheese plant in 1942 that actually used to dump all its whey product into an old drinking well. The substance produced so much gas that at one point the well's cover blew off. Things really started to change in the 1970s when a couple of things started happening in tandem. The big one was there was kind of this swell of environmental legislation that came out that sort of just made dumping whey, not the move.

5:21All these manufacturers had to find a use for this stuff that was essentially garbage. And meanwhile, there were technological breakthroughs in fields like microfiltration, which made it easier to transform the whey into a powder that you could actually mix with water and drink down. So that's kind of how we got to this point where you're able to drink whey protein as we know it today. And then the other thing that happened was in 1977, there was this big documentary that came out called Pumping Iron. And now we come to the heavyweights, over 200 pounds. Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. The greatest feeling you can get in a gym or the most satisfying feeling you can get in the gym is the pump.

6:04It was kind of a mind-blowing thing at the time. Like this guy came out of nowhere and had biceps on top of his biceps. Blood is rushing into your muscles, and that's what we call the pump. Your muscles get a really tight feeling, like your skin is going to explode any minute. It kind of kicked off a real bodybuilding boom, and from there, people just really wanted protein and to look like the Terminator. I'll be back. Whey protein, like, that kind of set the model for a lot of different plant proteins. it was basically the same model where it was like, you know, we have all this excess trash and mush, like especially from the soybean oil industry.

6:44And they were like, hey, we have all this soy mush left over from, you know, extracting oil. What should we do with it? And then they figured out that you can really transform this stuff into soluble powders. And it's actually pretty nutrient dense, too. But what's really funny about it is like this whole protein boom is like people just figured out that you can take existing garbage, essentially, and sell it to people. And so that's how we got to where we are today. But more recently, you know, they're sort of synthesizing all sorts of plants. There's soy, there's pea, there's algae, there's hemp, there's rice.

7:20Yeah, all sorts of stuff that they're sort of mushing up and extracting protein from and turning it into powders that they can jam into all sorts of wacky snacks, which I've tasted a lot of during this journey. You also tasted a protein soda. Tell me about that. Oh my gosh. So when I came across this, the existence of this protein soda called Feisty, I was like, protein soda? That's so wild. But then I talked to the founder. Yeah. Hi, my name's V. I'm the founder of Feisty. And she's a former designer at Louis Vuitton based in London and she actually had her own interesting journey with protein she had like a gnarly knee injury not too long ago and her PT was basically like you should get into lifting and I gave it a go I've never been sporting my whole life I never had this feeling of like an endorphins hit before and I was like wow this is so incredible and just like fell in love with like all things fitness and from the lifting uh she kind of fell in love with the sport and then started researching how to create her own drink that wasn't as heavy, not like a shake that you would have to guzzle down.

8:33And so she landed on this idea for a fizzy protein soda. I heard of this like hydrolyzed pea protein, which is like a pea protein which dissolves in water as clear. And I was like, why has no one put this in a soda? This is cool. You did talk to some plant protein scientists. What does that job entail? There's a lot of research being done right now in like genetically modifying certain plants, say pea or, you know, even potatoes. So protein is really tricky. And I'm by no means an expert in like how all that stuff sort of holds together. My name is David Julian McClements, and I'm a distinguished professor in the Department of Food Science at the University of Massachusetts.

9:16And I do a lot of work on protein fortification of plant-based foods. First of all, ridiculous that that exists. I love it. So we're trying to make plant-based alternatives. The most common way is you just basically take the plant, you grind it up into a powder, then you put it in water, and then you make it very alkaline, and that causes the proteins to dissolve. And then you collect them, and then you change the pH again, and they all come out of solution, and you get this big curd that you can take and dry and use as a protein isolate. So we've made plant-based scallops. I admittedly, like, I get a little bit squeamish around, like, fake meats like that.

9:55Plant-based chicken and plant-based eggs that are fortified with proteins and other healthy ingredients. So things like potatoes or peas or soybeans or nettles. There's no way I should be eating this burger that is designed to taste like a cow but isn't a cow. I'm kind of like, just be yourself, burger. So there's two parallel tracks here. And one is we are able to just make more kinds of proteins and put them into more types of foods. Exactly. And then sell them to people. And the other is people want them, right? People are also buying the stuff. What came first, the chicken or the egg? Or is this just a nice confluence of what the customer wants, the industry is prepared now to provide?

10:38In my reporting, I sort of found that, you know, of all the macronutrients, the big three are fat, carbohydrates and protein. Protein is kind of the only one that's never really been demonized by marketers and like pop scientists and Atkins and like all that stuff. It's like you think of carbohydrates. It was like that was verboten at one point. The great diet debate, low carb or low fat. You probably have had some friends or family members or yourself trying the no carb or low carb diets. Fat, definitely verboten at one point. The analogy I like to use is protein is kind of like the Dolly Parton of macronutrients.

11:12Like we can all agree that she's pretty great regardless of your identity or like political affiliation. My hopes for the new year is a little more kindness, a little more love. So speaking of Dolly, and also speaking of Arnold Schwarzenegger, I love Arnold, but as like a woman, I don't aspire to look like Arnold. But the algorithm has found me anyway. Like I go on Instagram and the ladies are serving me protein. Most women are not eating enough protein. Oh my God, you're looking for a high protein breakfast option that takes less than 10 minutes to make and it's 65 grams of protein? Yeah, buddy.

11:50I know that's what you wanted. And I'm a giver. I'm a lover. How did we go from this is kind of male dominated muscles on muscles on muscles to a lot of female health influencers are evangelizing it also? When does that turn happen? It has to do with the sort of normalizing of fitness culture, which you have also fallen into in the past couple of months. I work out all the time. I can bench you, bro. And it's addicting, right? And I think part of it is like, you know, post pandemic, we were just so concerned about our mortality and watching death sort of surround us in a real way that a lot of people decided to get healthy kind of at the same time.

12:27But also, you know, your point about influencers is really interesting. One of the big ones is Dr. Gabrielle Lyon. She's a part of the sort of Huberman cinematic universe. There is not one macronutrient more important to an aging individual than protein. Really compelling figure in her mid-50s, I think. And she looks like she could deadlift like a Miata if she needed to. But she's argued that women, especially as they enter menopause, need to be lifting weights and eating way more protein to stay healthy. Protein for dummies. Source. Meat, which include pork, beef, lamb. She's so turbo, but I think she's on to something.

13:08And I think that's really like hitting a note with a lot of people across all stripes. The other big cultural moment that we're in is the moment of Ozempic and Munjaro and other GLP-1s. Those also affect how much protein we want or need. You know, retailers like Walmart especially are like sort of already stocking their shelves with foods that are a little bit more nutrient dense and high in protein. Nestle just announced a new frozen food brand that it says is intended to be a companion for GLP-1 weight loss medication users and consumers focused on weight management. The makers of Kit Kat are coming out with some food items that you'll be able to find on your local grocery shelves soon.

13:49And these foods will be geared towards you and me, users of GLP-1 medications. Let's take a look at what they are. Mostly because these kind of drugs are so popular right now and they really do limit the amount of food you can eat. So if you can't eat as much food, the thinking goes that you need stuff that's just packed with more nutrients in order to feel okay and good and healthy. So it's kind of really shaping the industry in a very real way right now. What I eat in a day on miso-zempi. I always start my day with some Greek yogurt. Chobani is my favorite. Today is the day that we take our ozempic shot, so you already know what that means.

14:21We need to get in a good high-protein meal before doing so. Let's make a protein coffee while I talk about the importance of protein while on a GLP-1 medication. I was like shopping for breakfast cereals for my three-year-old, just like looking around. And I noticed this svelte new box of Wheaties protein, which like advertised 20 something grams of protein on the cover. There was no old Wheaties like this. It had been replaced seemingly overnight by this like very, you know, buff new insurgent. And so I was kind of like I was like, huh. And so in the course of this, I hit up General Mills, which, you know, owns this big portfolio of food products and Wheaties especially.

15:01Ben asked if I could come out and check out what they're doing over there. And weirdly enough, they said yes.

15:11Coming up, Chris goes behind the veil at General Mills.

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16:06Today Explained is back with me, Noelle from work, and Chris Gaiomali. Now, as you've skittered around the aisles of your local grocery store, you have likely wondered at some point, how are they getting the protein into all this stuff? Chris had the same thought, and then he scored an invitation. So last November, I landed in Minneapolis and took an Uber out to General Mills headquarters. And it's this beautiful picturesque campus just outside of Minneapolis. They have like this sculpture garden outside. It's just this beautiful campus with duck ponds and there was like foliage everywhere. And then I'm inside this building where they make all these snack products.

16:46General Mills, they began looking into, you know, jamming protein into a lot of their products maybe a little over 10 years ago. they had this nature valley bar that they had like jammed a little bit more protein in and then once they started selling it they realized they can make a lot of money off of this stuff i think it did like a hundred million dollars in its first year or something like that so they were like okay maybe there's other products we can put protein into that would make us a ton of money and so wheaties being you know their flagship sort of uh cereal product that like you know has tiger woods and michael jordan and serena williams and all those people on the cover Better eat your Wheaties.

17:23I better eat my Wheaties. They realized Wheaties would be a good test for this stuff. And so they went out to their roster of fitness enthusiasts. And the information they were hearing back was, you know, a Wheaties protein product would ideally have at least 15 grams of protein preserving, which is kind of a lot. You know, the challenge for them was preserving the fidelity of the flake because Wheaties eaters are surprisingly hardcore about what a Wheaties should taste like and how hard it should be. like how crunchy it should be. So it was actually wheat germ and soy protein isolate that they had to combine and make it somehow taste like the old version of Wheaties.

18:02And they went through 40 different iterations over it, over a multi-year R &D period. And it was kind of funny because they rolled out all these different versions over the years in little glass containers, kind of like little, I don't know, like Jurassic Park embryos or something. And I asked them to take a picture of it. And then they were just like, Like, oh, no, we can't do that. Like, it was like Illuminati levels of secrecy for all these cereal shapes. Speaking of Jurassic Park, I was trying to picture how do you get protein into food? Because it's not just Wheaties. It's also Cheerios. It's also, like you said, it's granola bars.

18:39It's everything. And all I can imagine is a person with like a big needle. Somehow the needle has liquid protein. They're just like plunging the needle into a Wheatie flake. I'm guessing no. but how does it work? Like how do they get the protein? Yeah, it isn't too far off from Jurassic Park as I understand it. You're altering the DNA of whatever the food is on a like granular level. You know, it's like they'll take the wheat germ that they were using for Wheaties, for example, put in some protein and then they have like all these calculations about like how much liquid to use. And they're just calibrating that until they get something that sort of resembles the traditional product, but is maybe just a little bit off.

19:19And then on top of that, They'll try to mask it with, you know, nut clusters and all this other stuff to sort of like take your eye off the ball a little bit that this isn't the old one you're eating. But it's a little bit different, but it can't be too different. And I think that's kind of the trick towards all these new protein food products, honestly. You know, you're pointing at something here. Listeners will know I am obsessed with ultra processed foods and what they may be doing to us. I drank a protein shake the other day and I was like, oh, my God, none of this is stuff that I could find in my own kitchen.

19:48And so a thing I wonder is, are we just eating junk food? Is all the high protein stuff crap? Yeah, you know, where I sort of landed and this flip flops every day, if you ask me the same question tomorrow, I might have a different answer for you. But it's still junk, but it's kind of a lesser evil situation to my mind. And a lot of the researchers I talked to, there was this one guy named Alan Aragon, who's sort of like been at the forefront of a lot of protein and fitness research over these past couple decades. He made the point that really kind of shocked me that this stuff is actually really useful for people who are maybe a little bit older and they're dealing with age related muscle loss.

20:29And it's just so much easier for them to eat a bowl of cereal versus like a huge sirloin steak that a carnivore diet influencer would make for themselves and eat off a cutting board or something like that. It's maybe not ideal. Maybe we should be getting our protein from whole sources like, you know, fish and like grass fed meat and tofu and stuff like that. But, you know, we don't live in a sort of ideal world. We're always on the move and like need convenience when we can. And so I'll occasionally indulge in like a protein thing that tastes like a Pop-Tart and feel not too bad about it if I can help it.

21:03There's a thing that happens. It has certainly happened to me, probably most people, where you realize that like you're not getting enough calcium, right, or enough iron. And then suddenly you are slamming iron tablets and spinach and steak. And then you read something that's like, oh, you should only actually be getting such and such milligrams every day. We are, as a culture, really obsessed with protein right now. Has anyone dug into whether we are getting too much? So in terms of how much protein a person might need, the RDA works out to basically 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight.

21:40That's a lot of math, but most people probably aren't getting enough, especially if you work out. And, you know, protein is a source of our cellular healing and all that stuff. So, yeah, we're probably all not eating enough, honestly. We've all learned to be suspicious of big food companies, right? There are a lot of problems with the American diet, and we're all aware of it. There are a lot of chronic conditions that stem from the American diet. When you think about what the story of protein and its rise and then continued rise tells us about ourselves, what do you think is the story behind the story here?

22:20I feel like we're just getting so much smarter about nutrition now. I always think back to my youth when the, you know, the food pyramid at the bottom of it was like your foundation of a healthy diet is like six to 11 daily breads or something. That's so many carbs. That's so much bread. It's so weird because some of this stuff gets really rigid really fast, but then research is also moving fast. And so it's kind of weird because you have to balance some conspiratorial thinking with all these like, you know, podcasters and people, randos on TikTok who are making like really strong health recommendations not founded in any sort of like real science with sort of what sounds about right.

23:05And so it's kind of like a personal calculation is where I've kind of landed on it. You know, if like eating a little bit more protein helps you feel good, then by all means do it. I've personally sort of started eating double the amount that I was eating prior to reporting this story. Then I feel pretty good and not too terrible with myself. So that's where I've landed with all of that. And your muscles got bigger. Yeah, my muscles are so brolic right now, dude. There you go. There you go. That is it. That is why we do it. I know.

23:46All right. Chris Gayomali. Check him out at Heavis on Substack. Gabrielle Berbet produced today's show. Amina El-Sadi edited. Matthew Billy and Andrea Kristen's daughter engineered. And Laura Bullard checks the facts. The rest of our team includes Hadi Mwagdi, Ested Herndon, Danielle Hewitt, Miles Bryan, Ariana Espuru, Dustin DeSoto, Kelly Wessinger, Sean Ramosfer, Miranda Kennedy, Avishai Artsy, Jolie Myers, Patrick Boyd, Peter Ballinon, Rosen, Andrea Lopez-Crisado, and David Tadashore. We use music by Breakmaster Cylinder. I'm Noelle King. Today Explained is distributed by WNYC, and the show is a part of Vox.

24:49I'll see you next time.

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