Sam Sanders

But the ideas about protein that he popularized took root and endured into the next big protein boom, which happened in the 1950s and 60s.

This one was driven by international development efforts in places like South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.

Public health officials had turned their attention to widespread child malnutrition following decades of colonization and upheaval.

This effort became known as the Great Protein Fiasco.

Aid organizations pumped resources into creating protein-enriched products that took the form of powders, sludges, and bars.

In particular, they relied on the booming US dairy industry and shipped tons of powdered milk overseas.

But by the mid-1970s, most experts came to agree that the real problem was not a global protein gap.

It was a food gap.

People just didn't have access to enough food, period.

A food supply issue.

And beyond that, Sammy says that these campaigns did lasting damage to those communities' cultural relationships to food.

So how do we go from this moment of pushing protein on undernourished people abroad to today, where consumers in the US are clamoring to buy this stuff?

Gavin says it all traces back to that same thriving dairy industry in the US.

Try telling that to Americans.

Yeah, yeah.

So then let's move...

into this current protein boom.

You've already mentioned that it feels culturally different in some ways.

Those previous booms were about the lower class and working class.

This new protein boom seems to be the biggest obsession of people who are middle or upper class, no?