Sam Sanders

Please answer this question for me, for our audience, once and for all.

So what you're saying is...

We don't need to sweat protein.

If we're eating and getting full, we're fine?

Yes.

That feels freeing.

I wonder if the best way to wrap our heads around what protein is right now, scientifically and culturally, is to go back to the start.

There's one guy who is owed a lot of credit for the way we think about protein now, and

His name is Eustace von Liebig.

He was doing stuff in the 1800s, and his story with protein includes a lot of foxes?

I want to stop you right there.

The father of Western protein, as we know it.

What's kind of wrong with the science?

Before Liebig came to that conclusion, he kept experimenting with protein.

He even created his own protein supplement, Liebig's extract of meat.

Basically, boiled down beef juice.

Liebig eventually began producing his extract at scale, using cheap cuts of meat from the cattle industry.

It became a thriving commercial product, it was sold as a high-protein supplement, and it helped spark what Sammy and Gavin called the first protein boom in the 1860s and 70s.

There was only one problem.

So Liebig's science and his product were faulty.