The Protein Boom

Once upon a time, I indulged at breakfast — banana bread, fruits, the occasional bowl of my kids’ cereal. Then protein propaganda wore me down.

I’m sure you’ve experienced it, too: It feels as if every expert, every algorithm, every podcast is exhorting us to consume more protein. Now I concoct virtuous but joyless Mason jars full of overnight oats (5g of protein), kefir (6g), whey (24g), collagen (9g) and peanut butter (7g). I’m stuffed until lunch, but I miss banana bread. Apparently this is how I’m supposed to live?

I thought about the pressure we all feel to optimize and do better while reading a story that published today about the David bar, a product designed to maximize protein. It’s “basically a protein Scud missile wrapped in gold foil,” reports Elizabeth Dunn.

I wanted to know: How much protein do we actually need? Has this fad gone too far? The Times has published some excellent journalism about the protein boom. Here’s a quick guide.

The science

Expert advice. Protein builds muscle and can help with weight loss. But what’s the right amount? Recommendations are tricky, since everyone is different. In general, scientists say you need at least 1 gram for every 3 pounds of body weight (well, 2.76 to be precise) each day — and more if you exercise. So a 150-pound person would need 54 grams of protein, about the amount in a strip steak.

Are you getting enough protein? This helpful calculator, using your age and weight, will tell you.

Don’t be fooled. The idea that Americans don’t eat enough protein — the main message on my social media feeds — is a lie. “The average man in the United States is overshooting the federal protein recommendation by more than 55 percent and the average woman by more than 35 percent,” according to this explainer by Alice Callahan, a Times reporter with a Ph.D. in nutrition. Your body can’t store extra protein. Once you’ve eaten what you need, your liver breaks down the extra to use as calories or store as fat. If I didn’t work out, my breakfast would be overkill.

So is protein powder a scam? Thankfully, Alice has answered that one, too.

The money

The protein craze is big business, and it’s changing the way we eat: A third of Americans say they’re gobbling more protein, and surging interest has remade the grocery store. The number of products that claim to be high in protein quadrupled between 2013 and 2024, according to one estimate. Cottage cheese is flying off the shelves. Improbably, you can even drink soda suffused with our favorite macronutrient.

All of it has altered the food economy:

Reshaping agriculture: Demand has given new life to dairy farmers. I learned a lot from this piece about how they derive whey protein, once considered a worthless byproduct, from the cheese-making process. (The photos are also very cool.) In the early 2000s, whey made up around 3 percent of earnings. Now it’s triple that.

Fueling start-ups: This profile — “The Little Food Lab Fueling the Big Protein Boom” — also had great pictures and videos. It tells the story of YouBar, which started in 2006 as a two-person kitchen operation for protein snacks and now pumps out shakes, nut butters and baked goods for other companies. Its clients were desperate for protein muffins, protein toaster pastries, protein churros. “It doesn’t matter what it is,” the founder told our reporter. “People want to put protein in it.” Now YouBar’s factory runs 24/7.

Spurring innovation: Companies are finding inventive ways to pack more protein. That’s the story behind the David bar. Read about how it cornered the market for a modified plant fat to make its snacks even more protein-forward.

It’s good to know, at least where my breakfast is concerned, that I have options.

If you’re oatmeal-curious, I’ll put my recipe at the very bottom of today’s newsletter. It’s a decent disguise for a protein bomb — and a cheap meal when you purchase the ingredients in bulk.

THE LATEST NEWS

Gaza

• Israel will make it easier for aid to reach Gaza after global outrage over hunger there.

• The military announced that it would revive the practice of dropping aid from airplanes. It will also let aid convoys move through Gaza by land.

• In several of the hospitals still functioning in Gaza, nurses are fainting from hunger and dehydration and doctors are feeding newborn babies water instead of formula. Read about starvation in Gaza.

Other Big Stories

• The cost of renovating Air Force One is officially, and conveniently, classified. But a clue may be hiding in another budget, David Sanger and Eric Schmitt write.

• ICE took half of one company’s work force. It’s struggling to stay open.

• Despite a cease-fire agreement, fighting continues on the border between Thailand and Cambodia.

• Smoke from Canadian wildfires is blanketing New York City.

• In Alabama, the police charged seven people in connection with a sex trafficking operation that abused at least 10 children, many between 3 and 10 years old, in a concrete bunker, officials say.

• Trending online yesterday: People were searching for information after several people were stabbed at a Walmart in Traverse City, Mich. A suspect is in custody.

THE SUNDAY DEBATE

Should Columbia University have accepted its deal with the Trump administration?

No. The deal cost Columbia its independence and doesn’t prevent the government from restarting its attacks. “A poorer, smaller Columbia would at least still be a university committed to freedom of expression and academic autonomy,” Suresh Naidu writes for The Times.

Yes. The agreement leaves Columbia with more sovereignty than the government wanted it to have. “If the administration’s other campus investigations end in similar agreements, we might come out of the whole mess with the academy and its mission intact,” Bloomberg’s Stephen Carter writes.

Women’s soccer: Nigeria beat Morocco 3-2 to win the Women’s Africa Cup of Nations.

NASCAR: Austin Hill received a “reckless driving” penalty after another driver, Aric Almirola, crashed. Hill said it wasn’t intentional. He could be facing suspension.

TAKE A WALK

Are you getting in your steps? The supposed magic daily number, 10,000, has long been a fitness cliché. Researchers have come up with a more scientifically sound goal, and thankfully, it’s also more attainable: 7,000 steps.

To arrive at that number, researchers analyzed more than 50 studies. They found that even a small amount of walking was beneficial: Regular, moderate walks were associated with a lower risk of dementia and cardiovascular disease. But more is better, and people who walked 7,000 steps a day — roughly three miles — have a 47 percent lower risk of death compared with those who walked 2,000 steps.

“It is just as important to walk 7,000 steps a day as it is to take your pills,” said Dr. Joshua Knowles, a cardiologist at Stanford Health Care.

THE INTERVIEW

This week’s subject for The Interview is Robert Reich, a former labor secretary who has been ringing the alarm bell about rising inequality for decades, including on social media, where he has built a devoted audience of millions. Reich, who’s 79, is also the author of a new memoir, “Coming Up Short,” in which he examines what he sees as the failures of the Baby Boom generation.

The title of your memoir is a pun on the fact that you’re short, but it also refers to your argument that your generation failed to strengthen democracy, failed to reduce economic inequality and, generally, failed to contain “the bullies.” What went wrong?

We took for granted what our parents and their parents bequeathed to us. I was born in 1946, as were George W. Bush and Bill Clinton and Donald Trump. The so-called greatest generation gave us not only peace and prosperity but the largest middle class the world had ever seen. What I try to understand is how we ended up with Donald Trump. Trump is the consequence, not the cause, of what we are now experiencing. He is the culmination of at least 50 years of a certain kind of neglect. And I say this very personally, because I was part of this failure. It is a reckoning that is deeply personal.

But how useful is the generational frame? Because alongside the shortcomings, baby boomers helped reduce racial discrimination, grew the environmental movement, bolstered feminism and gay rights and helped to shepherd along giant technological advances. So is it really accurate to describe the problem as a “generational” failure?

It’s not fair to blame a generation, but I think it is fair to say there has been, in America, a failure to appreciate the importance of democracy, the importance of holding back big money. Because as inequality has gotten worse and worse, the middle class has by many measures shrunk. That is an open invitation for corruption. We see more and more big money undermining our democratic institutions.

Earlier this year, my colleague on The Interview, Lulu Garcia-Navarro, interviewed the Democratic senator Ruben Gallego, and he made a point that Americans don’t necessarily begrudge the wealthy because they, too, would like to be wealthy, and Democratic messaging perhaps misses that in favor of an “eat the rich” philosophy. Is there something to that?

That’s utter B.S. It may have been the case in the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, maybe even early ’90s, when the gap between the wealthy and everybody else was not a chasm. But it’s now utterly ridiculous to make that point. The idea that the American dream is still alive is, for most people, a sham.

Read more of the interview here, or watch a longer version on YouTube.

THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE

Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was clowned.

Can you put eight historical events — including France declaring war on Britain and the Sumerians creating a board game — in chronological order? Take this week’s Flashback quiz.

And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku, Connections and Strands.

Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times.

P.S.: The Book of the Week feature is taking a summer break. It will return next week.

Overnight protein oats, Adam’s way

This recipe, imbued with chocolate and peanut butter, makes five servings. The consistency is more dense and sticky than soupy. If you prefer something viscous, try almond milk instead of kefir. Add a dollop of maple syrup if you want it sweeter. — Adam B. Kushner

You’ll need: Pint-size Mason jars; a 32-ounce bottle of vanilla or unsweetened kefir; peanut butter; chocolate-flavored whey powder; chocolate-flavored collagen powder; chia seeds; psyllium-husk powder (optional); whole rolled oats.

1) Open five Mason jars. Add ¾ cup of kefir to each. This will use up the bottle.

2) First, add a heaping tablespoon of peanut butter to each jar. Then add the powders: a scoop of whey (or the entirety of a single-serving package); a tablespoon of collagen; a tablespoon of chia seeds; a teaspoon of psyllium-husk powder. Stir it all together until the consistency is even and nothing is stuck to the sides of the bottle.

3) Now add ½ cup of oats into each jar and stir them until they’re well mixed. Seal them and put them in the fridge. They’ll be ready tomorrow morning and last for about 10 days.

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