Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is In Conversation from Apple News. I'm Sam Sanders, in for Shamita Basu. Today, why we're so obsessed with protein. We are in the middle of a protein boom. Protein food products are a $100 billion plus industry and it's projected to grow even more in the next few years. You see it. Walk into any grocery store and you'll find unending lines of products with added protein.
Everything from protein popcorn to protein pasta to protein beer. You can even add protein to the foam on top of your latte at Starbucks.
Chapter 2: Why are Americans so obsessed with protein?
If there's a combination of food and extra protein you can dream of, it probably already exists.
Like the Buffalo Wild Wings espresso proteiny cocktail with 10 grams of protein.
That's health scholar Samantha King. She's written a new book with sociologist Gavin Whedon. It's called Protein, The Making of a Nutritional Superstar. Protein is an essential nutrient for our bodies to build muscle and maintain other functions. It's also found naturally in lots of foods.
And in their book, Sammy and Gavin argue that our obsession with protein consumption is driven a lot more by industry and marketing and cultural forces than by actual nutritional science.
I think it helps to mark out the distinction between the idea that protein is something we need, which is true, but it's in everything we eat, and the idea that it might be something that we want, that we affect certain kinds of desire to.
I sat down with Sammy and Gavin to talk about how protein became the most popular nutrient and how to think about it differently. Can we just start with a question for me as a real live human living in a protein world?
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Chapter 3: What drives the current protein boom in the food industry?
How much protein do we actually need? Please answer this question for me, for our audience, once and for all.
I hate to disappoint you, Sam, but we're not... As you smile. Look, the obsession with protein has little to do with what our bodies actually need. Protein deficiency is extremely rare in the absence of severe hunger. So in other words, people generally only become protein deficient when they're
This means that protein deficiency is practically non-existent among the demographics that are most preoccupied with their intake.
So what you're saying is... We don't need to sweat protein. If we're eating and getting full, we're fine?
Yes, we're fine.
Yes. That feels freeing.
Yeah. Oh, totally. It's liberating. I mean, even under the new guidelines announced by Health Secretary RFK Jr. in January, which, of course, increased the amount of protein we were being encouraged to consume, most American men are eating more than twice what they need. And most women are also exceeding the guidelines. Yeah.
But yes, people are supplementing with protein, not just to build muscle or to get stronger, but to develop glossier skin. People take it for energy, even though that's not the primary way that we gain energy that comes from carbohydrates. There are all kinds of ideals attached to it that are not borne out in the science of what it can actually do for us.
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?
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Chapter 4: How much protein do we actually need for our health?
Don't at me. But there's an awful lot of investment at this point in desiccation technologies to dry out whey because it's in its liquid form. It's obviously wet and filtrate it and ultimately produce the dry granular powder that's that we all now know, or many people now know, as the stuff in those big plastic tubs of protein powder or in the grocery store shelves.
Because that's the key question, right? If people say, why are people so interested in protein powder? The obvious answer... is, well, there's a lot of demand for protein. People really want protein and the market's giving them what they want.
And one of the things we try and show with this story is, well, actually, the dairy industry needed to find a home to create a market for this stuff that they now had in abundance in a comparatively palatable form. Palatable compared to liquid whey waste, maybe even palatable compared to Lee Big's extract of beef.
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?
Yes, you're right that there's a class dimension to every protein boom. One of the things that's different about the more recent one is that it is focused much more on the middle and upper classes. This isn't about fixing malnutrition necessarily or... maximizing a workforce, making a healthier population. It's about a lifestyle of optimization.
When we're talking about optimization and what has recently, or at least in terms of my contact with popular culture, seems to be recently the language of maxing. That's when we're into the realms of abundance and actualization and at a real distance from lack or scarcity.
So there's a lot more to say, I think, but it stands to reason that that would be the interest and preserve of those who have abundant resources.
I guess the other part, Gavin speaking to the cultural drivers of the present protein boom, and then there's also, I think, economic drivers related to the culture of overwork and burnout and pervading anxiety about many things, not just food and diet, but cost of living, global conflicts, etc.,
And protein rich foods are presented as offering, you know, vigor and vitality and a quick fix for energy and strength. And they can be marketed and they are marketed in that way without any change in the scientific status, right, or the biochemical knowledge that we have about protein. People can only eat so much.
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Chapter 5: What historical figure shaped our understanding of protein?
When you are faced with a cornucopia of protein options, when you're being offered the protein foam on your latte, when you see the Kardashian protein popcorn in the store, when you're about to start worrying about your protein intake for the day, what do you two do?
Well, I take a photo and I send it to Sammy. Okay. And I know if I need bringing down to earth, she'll be there for me. And I hope that I'm there for you when this happens, Sammy, because we both get sent this stuff all the time, even if we weren't encountering it in our own lives. So it's been normalized for me. And if I need to get a steady hand on it, then I'll send it over to my friend Sammy.
Well, and the most recent example I sent to Gavin was just this morning, the Buffalo Wild Wings espresso proteiny cocktail with 10 grams of protein.
Wait, wait, stop. Stop. Say that again.
Buffalo Wild Wings Espresso Proteiny Cocktail.
Oh, my goodness.
It's an espresso martini with a wild wing powder rub infused. Yeah. So don't say they're taking the joy out of eating like this is their.
OK, so now I'm going to have to send you both a picture of me enjoying that.
OK, we would love that. We would love that.
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