Bad news for protein bros: you might be getting scammed

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Hello. Hello. I'm Brittany Luce, and you're listening to It's Been a Minute from npr, a show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident. It's 2025, baby, and a lot of us are getting started on our New Year's resolutions. And According to Pew, 79% of New Year's resolutions are about one thing, health. But there are so many different aspects to our health, and it's hard to separate fact, fiction, and fading. We're kicking off 2025 with a little series called New Year, New Me. We're getting into some of the big questions and cultural confusion around our health and wellness. This week, we're diving deep into a diet obsession that's been making me scratch my head. Protein. If your algorithm is anything like mine, you've probably seen recipe videos like this one.

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Let me show you how to make a quick and easy lunch that has over 6. 60. Yes, 60 grams of protein.

1:28

Now, protein is an essential macronutrient. We all need it. But I've been noticing some confusion about whether we're eating enough protein or not. So I went out on the street to see what the people think about their protein intake.

1:37

I'm saying bulk of what you're eating, it should be more protein focused.

1:52

How much protein do you think you eat in a day?

1:56

I want to say, like, 60 to.

1:58

70 grams of protein.

2:00

Okay. Do you think that's enough?

2:02

I would say yes, but I have no idea.

2:03

I probably don't get enough. I should probably have more, but I know I definitely don't get enough protein.

2:05

It's honestly so confusing, and the obsession is so deep. It's even changed the way food producers market their products.

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A few months ago when I was in Whole Foods, I saw ice cream that was advertised as being high in protein. That shows how protein has invaded even the dessert aisle.

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That was Vox senior reporter Kenny Torella. I sat down with him and food writer Samantha Maxwell to understand the cultural tides bringing protein to the front of our minds. Why it's increasingly tied to politics and how much protein we actually need to eat. Samantha. Kenny, welcome to It's Been a Minute.

2:31

Thanks for having me.

2:51

Thanks for having us.

2:52

So we are here to talk about protein. I've seen it in pancake mix Cookies. I'm getting served, you know, these recipe videos on Instagram where there's like 50 grams of protein in one serving of a dish. You know, maybe there are some people who need that. Right. But it just sometimes seems like a lot. And so I wonder, where do y' all think this is coming from? Like, how did a big focus on protein become a new fad?

2:53

I think there's a historical context for it. I think, you know, back in the 80s and 90s, fat was really the demonized macronutrient. And then going into the early 2000s, you started having the Atkins diet, the keto diet, which focused on, you know, trying to be as low carb as possible. So I think protein is really the only macronutrient that's never been villainized. And so a lot of people view it kind of as a safe source of nutrition.

3:18

Well, yeah, I think Samantha was right. Protein has kind of escaped the nutrition wars unscathed every time. I also think there are some cultural factors at play. Oh, you know, most protein comes from animal sources from meat and dairy. About two thirds of the protein that Americans consume comes from animal products. It's always kind of been associated with masculinity. And men actually tend to consume much more protein than women. You know, I think men are advertised to. To eat a lot of meat to be manly. I mean, there was a Burger King commercial, I think, like 10 years ago or so was called I am Man.

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I am man Hear me roar in numbers too big to ignore and I'm way too hungry to settle for chick food.

4:24

And it was all these men kind of joining together, singing this song, saying that they were going to wave tofu goodbye.

4:35

Wave tofu bye bye. Now it's fawpa be vibration.

4:41

And at the end, they all pick up a van and throw. Throw it off of a bridge.

4:46

What?

4:50

To kind of demonstrate their. Their manliness. It was an advertisement for a Texas double whopper. But we see this also in pop culture. I mean, think of like Ron Swanson in Parks and Recreation. Yeah, he was kind of this hyper masculine figure who is always eating bacon.

4:51

I call this turf and Turf. It's a 16 ounce T bone and a 24 ounce porterhouse. Also whiskey and a cigar. I'm gonna consume all of this at the same time because I am a free American.

5:06

Yeah. And I mean, think of the inverse, like an increasingly used pejorative often used by people on the right, but not entirely, is soy. Boy. So eating lots of meat is masculine, but then also eating lots of soy products. Is seen as like weak or effeminate.

5:19

Another thing that I think about, I recently saw this photo floating around that compared what Hugh Jackman looked like shirtless in the first X Men movies versus how he looked in the most recent Dead, Deadpool and Wolverine or whatever. And he physically looks very different, like even 20 years ago. I think even for men who were in like action films, let's say, who were meant to look very muscular and have a, you know, an appearance that some people might call quite jacked, they still had a physique that wouldn't be out of place at like a local gym, you know, But Marvel movies, they consistently feature physiques that required constant exercise, super restrictive diets, and at times even severe dehydration to make their arms on screen. Male characters look way, way, way more jacked. I think that male body image has also probably been deeply affected by that.

5:37

You know, men are just as concerned with their looks as women or anyone else and it just kind of manifests in a different way. A lot of this has to do with diet culture, which for I think a long time that's been more associated with women. But I think over time there's increasing pressure on men to be big and strong and kind of an increased interest in bodybuilding.

6:27

And I think a lot of this also comes from social media. Like if you are on social media, health can be kind of measured by aesthetics versus maybe like less visible indicators of health. So, you know, no one is going to see if you, you know, are really regular because you eat a lot of fiber, but they can see if you have built a lot of muscle because you're eating a ton of prote. So I think that's definitely a factor as well.

6:54

Coming up, how protein got political.

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I mean, Marjorie Taylor Greene even said that, oh, the government is going to come out and zap people if they eat cheeseburgers.

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Stay with us.

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8:42

To your point, Kenny, I find that some people, especially men, might not want to call their protein obsession, protein consumption dieting. But it seems like counting macros and, you know, like being very attentive to how you train in the gym and counting calories. Those things are very much in line with traditional notions of dieting. I mean, a lot of those things are coded as very feminine, which may be why some people might run from that name. But protein does have a more masculine bent to it. So I could see how it's easier for men and women to partake in like, heightened protein consumption and perhaps not call it dieting or not call it restrictive eating even when it could be.

8:58

I think the idea of, like, not having a restrictive diet is so big now because we've seen the damage that restrictive diets can do to people's, you know, both physical and mental health. I think it really is a lot of times about weight loss. Eating a high protein diet is supposed to be correlated with, you know, eating fewer calories overall because protein is satiating.

9:44

I actually just recently read a paper, I think it was from an ag economist at Kansas State University, and he wanted to look at whether the rise in news media coverage of the links between, like, fitness and protein, the importance of protein in fitness and exercise, was actually causing people to consume more protein. And he found pretty much no correlation. But what was interesting is that the study just looked at news media. I didn't look at social media.

10:05

Oh, that's where it's going down, right?

10:37

That is where it's going down. I mean, this kind of content is just like built to go viral. You know, videos of like sauteing huge steaks with an entire stick of butter.

10:39

Or not even cooking them. Like the liver king, right?

10:50

Eating it raw.

10:53

What up, primals? Liver king here. We just took down a Mongolian yak and what do you think we're going to start? Of course, the liver first, because liver is king.

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The liver King. I should Mention to listeners actually turned out to be taking steroids.

11:05

Thousands of dollars of steroids every month.

11:10

Yes. Yeah. And what was interesting about the case of the Liver King is that I found that a lot of the social media around things like the carnivore diet or the caveman diet, a lot of it is kind of trying to appeal to this bygone era when, you know, times were simpler and we didn't have to deal with the modern trappings of computers and processed foods and we should just get raw meat and eat it like our ancient ancestors. There's really kind of this rejection of modernity, which is also interesting because modernity has also given us this abundant amount of meat that we now have.

11:12

Ah, with factory farming, Right?

11:50

Yeah. Americans are eating more meat than pretty much any country in the world. But a lot of this kind of all meat diet is kind of speaking to this desire for people to trim the complexity of the modern world down to these simple tenets. You know, the Liver King had like nine simple tenets, and a lot of them were actually normal, like, you know, sleep and bond with your friends and family. But one of them was also eat raw liver.

11:52

Yeah, that seems like a lot to take on every day. But I think that where we are with, like, America's big protein kick right now, it seems to be reflecting something broader about shifts that are happening in our culture. In your eyes, what does the protein kick reflect about these broader changes we're seeing in our culture right now?

12:20

Yeah, I mean, I think the masculinity point is a really big one. I think you can also see kind of like a strain of alt right, like white nationalism there as well. There's an anonymous social media personality and author called the Raw Egg Nationalist who kind of came from the bodybuild. He's been referenced by Tucker Carlson, and he kind of like rails against the globalist food system and promotes raw eggs kind of because he thinks they're the perfect food, the perfect protein, and kind of sees it as like white men having strong, healthy bodies means they can better fight globalism. Oh, I think you could also see milk as a symbol for the alt right. So there's been instances of people literally chugging milk at neo Nazi rallies. Oh, there's hashtag milk Twitter, which is kind of a dog. Wh. That's, you know, put in juxtaposition to the soy boy, like Kenny mentioned earlier. And even prominent alt right figures like Richard Spencer at one point had milk emojis in their bios. Kind of like a symbol of Their belief system, their white nationalism.

12:38

Kenny, what kinds of connections do you see between conservative politics and emphasis on protein?

13:45

Yeah, I think the right has really kind of taken it up as this increasing part of their cult. I mean, Marjorie Taylor Greene even said that, oh, the government is going to come out and zap people if they eat cheeseburgers. Just totally nonsensical stuff. But it speaks to the base somehow. It's not uncommon for right wing politicians to kind of conjure up totally fictional threats to meat consumption. And I think some of that has to do just with the fact that people like meat. You know, it's a very calorically dense food. It tastes good. So any kind of assumption that going to be taken away from you is this threat. But I also think it's kind of been baked into the mythology of America's founding in some ways. You know, you have images of like the cowboy on the open range. So that's always been kind of tied to the American identity, often in more subtle ways. But it can get really overt sometimes on the campaign trail.

13:53

That iconography around meat or cattle or livestock is very baked into a lot of American iconography. It's, it's very much going back to what you said about like the Maha rhetoric. It feels like there's this widespread idea that's causing a lot of people a lot of anxiety that what we're eating or the way we're eating is not right. We see that in the Maha rhetoric, but also that's something we see in clean eating, some strains of veganism, people who eat raw, people who are keto. There's a lot of cultural noise about what eating right actually looks like that might be playing into all this.

14:53

I think one, I want to say, like, I don't want to criticize anyone for eating, you know, more protein than what the US government recommends. I mean, I think ultimately a lot of this protein obsession is people just trying to be healthier. You know, America has pretty high rates of chronic diseases like heart disease and certain forms of cancer. So I think the protein obsession is maybe part of a larger search for a kind of healthier way to live. I mean, ultimately, I think there's kind of general consensus among like nutritionists as to like what we should eat and usually does not fall into any of these kind of more fringe short lived diets. It's kind of general advice like try to eat a balanced diet where you're eating enough calories every day. You're eating lots of different colors, different fruits and vegetables and whole grains. And a variety of kinds of protein. It's kind of the common sense stuff that a lot of us probably grew up hearing. But I think a lot of people, and that's evidenced by the Maha movement, feel somewhat like wronged or like duped by American food regulators and food companies. And they're searching for some way to fix that. And I don't think eating, you know, tons of more protein is going to do it, but I understand why people gravitate towards that.

15:31

I think Kenny's right. I think it's largely a response to the industrial food system, which, you know, has caused a lot of harm. And I mean, I also think that there's a lot of anxiety around health right now because of the way our medical system is structured. Like, if you get sick in this country, it could be a financially devastating event for you.

16:57

Sure.

17:16

So to stay healthy in this medical environment seems more important than ever.

17:17

Okay, let's actually talk about how much protein we probably should be eating. How much protein do we really need and are we getting it?

17:21

Disclaimer. I'm not a nutritionist or a doctor or dietitian, but Generally what the US government recommends is that people eat around 0.36 grams of protein per pound of body weight. So just to put out a number there, let's say you weigh 150 pounds. I think that's 54 grams of protein. The general guidance on this is that if you're eating enough calories and if you're having a somewhat balanced diet, you're going to meet your protein needs. I mean, protein deficiency is not a problem in the United States, like.

17:31

Oh, like it may be in other parts of the world.

18:01

Sure. In parts of the world in particular, where people have not enough calories to eat, they're just not getting enough food or they don't have as much access to the, to the variety of foods that we might have in, you know, high income countries like the United States. So one caveat I'll say is that dietitians do recommend that if you are, you know, exercising vigorously, if you're pregnant, if you're elderly, then you do need to eat a little more protein. But men consume about 30% more protein than is recommended. Women consume about 12% more protein than is recommended.

18:04

Wow.

18:38

And year after year we see these surveys where we find like half or even more than half of Americans say that they're trying to eat more protein.

18:39

So even as we're already kind of having more than enough, at least in the United States, there are lots of Americans that are like, gotta get my protein up.

18:48

That's right. And I would argue that one of the problems with this obsession with protein is that we're missing fiber. So there's this huge fiber gap, is what dietitians call it fiber gap.

18:56

I think they should call it a fiber crisis. But that's just so people aren't having enough fiber.

19:12

We're journalists. We want to add the word crisis to every single problem in the United States. But yes, there is a fiber crisis where about 95% of Americans aren't getting enough fiber as the US government recommends. And that's really important for gut health, for digestion. Eating more fiber is associated with lower risks of all kinds of issues like heart disease in certain kinds of cancer. And where does fiber come from? It comes from plant based proteins like beans and lentils.

19:19

Well, I for one, am a huge fiber girly and I welcome any and all to the fiber club. Samantha, Kenny, thank you so much for coming on today. I really appreciate it.

19:49

Thanks so much for having us.

20:01

Thanks for having us.

20:02

That was food writer Samantha Maxwell and VOX senior reporter Kenny Torella. This episode of It's Been a Minute was Produced by Liam McBain. This episode was edited by Jasmine Romero. Our executive producer is Verilyn Williams. Our VP of programming is Yolanda Sanguini. All right, that's all for this episode of It's Been a Minute. From npr, I'm Brittany Luce. Talk soon.

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