Why everyone is obsessed with protein—and whether you actually need more

May 13, 2026

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Why everyone is obsessed with protein—and whether you actually need more

Are we really falling short on protein—or is the high-protein craze overblown?

By Rachel Feltman, Bethany Brookshire, Fonda Mwangi & Alex Sugiura

RICCARDO MILANI/Getty Images

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Rachel Feltman: For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Rachel Feltman.

Go into any grocery store these days and you’ll see plenty of food-related fads, both new and old, being used to hawk products: You’ve got your paleo ketchups, gut-microbe-friendly sodas, and, my personal favorite, plant-based chips that are none-too-subtly billed as mimicking the singular taste of a Cool Ranch Dorito. But one of today’s biggest nutritional buzzwords is actually kind of basic: protein.

Influencers say we’re not getting enough, food marketers want us to know they’ve got it, and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., seems to think more meat could do us all some good. But what does the science actually say about this buzzy macronutrient?

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Here to tell us more is science journalist Bethany Brookshire, the author of a recent story on SciAm about this wave of protein enthusiasm.

Bethany, thanks so much for coming on to chat with us today.

Bethany Brookshire: Thank you for having me.

Feltman: So we’re here to talk about protein.

Brookshire: [Laughs.]

Feltman: Why, why are we talking about protein so much? Why is it everywhere? Are we getting enough? What’s happening? Could you just start us with, with your—a brief overview of your thoughts? [Laughs.]

Brookshire: [Laughs.] Having, having just written a carefully reported piece on protein, when people are, like, asking me, “What’s up with protein?,” my honest answer is, “I wish I knew.” I really do.

Feltman: [Laughs.]

Brookshire: There is a recent—and when I say recent, past 10, 15 years, it’s kind of been building—this idea that we need to get more protein ...

Feltman: Mm-hmm.

Brookshire: That we’re not getting enough protein, that somehow we desperately need this and we could be our absolute best selves if we just hit the meat harder. And [Laughs] ...

Feltman: Oh, what a phrase, but please do go on. [Laughs.]

Brookshire: [Laughs.] I do my best.

And it’s interesting because it has been embraced particularly by the “Make America Healthy Again” movement. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who is the current secretary for health and human services, when he unveiled his new upside-down food pyramid declared that “we are ending the war on protein.”

I am unsure of the genesis or reality of that particular conflict, don’t think anybody ever thought we were in a war on protein. [Laughs.] But there is kind of an idea in some wellness spaces that one of the things we all could stand to get more of is protein, and that’s kind of been growing over the past 10 to 15 years.

It started, as many of these wellness trends start, in the fitness and bodybuilding spaces ...

Feltman: Mm.

Brookshire: And has now become much more widespread, to the point that you can go to a coffee shop and get protein-boosted cold foam on top of your latte, which is also protein-boosted.

Feltman: Right, well, and I’m glad you mention the idea of, like, protein-boosted products because, you know, one of the results of this obsession with protein is a lot of, for lack of a better term, sort of proteinwashing and a lot of focus on putting as impressive a number of protein per serving as you can on the front of a bag of something. What has your reporting told you about sort of how customers are responding to that?

Brookshire: I have not actually looked specifically into how customers respond to it. I can tell you, I did run a taste test of a certain very popular toaster pastry in its regular and protein-boosted forms amongst an n of 12 of various ages, genders, and etcetera. I can tell you that the vast majority—and when I say vast majority, I mean 11 out of my n of 12—preferred the regular pastry to the protein-boosted pastry. The one person who did prefer the protein-boosted pastry now is in possession of the rest of them, so. [Laughs.]

Feltman: [Laughs.]

Brookshire: It definitely can create—it depends on the product. Most of the products that I’ve come across are boosted with whey protein, which is derived from milk, and that can sometimes mess with the texture of something.

Feltman: Right.

Brookshire: And so often people find that different texture to be a little unusual or not what they&rs