Not even two months into my job here at WIRED, I found myself barfing in the office bathroom.<\/p>\n
Technically, it was work-related stress, but not in the way you might imagine. It was, instead, the unfortunate and almost immediate result of my efforts to switch to a diet solely consisting of foods, drinks, and supplements marketed as high in protein\u2014and thereby meet the level of daily protein intake recommended by the US Department of Health and Human Services under Robert F. Kennedy Jr.<\/p>\n
The conversation on the porcelain telephone came about an hour after I sampled Ghost\u2019s Nutter Butter\u2013flavored whey protein powder. My partner Mads uses it as workout fuel, and I saw it as an easy shortcut to 26 grams of protein. She had already grumbled about me having some for journalistic purposes\u2014\u201cit\u2019s expensive!\u201d\u2014but was relieved that she wouldn\u2019t have to taste-test any of the other slop I had on my list to eat that week. I foolishly took the jar\u2019s suggestion to add a heaping scoop of the Ghost powder to 5 or 6 ounces of water and wound up trying to choke down a glass of peanut butter sludge. (After I vomited, Mads told me that she only ever puts a small dose of this foul powder in her cereal milk). As a protein-maxxing newb, it was a lesson learned.<\/p>\n
I doubt Kennedy has these problems. Earlier this year, the US health secretary unveiled a \u201chistoric reset\u201d of dietary guidelines<\/a> for Americans, and the very first item was \u201cPrioritizing Protein<\/a>.\u201d The department claimed that official dietary guidance in years past had \u201cdemonized protein in favor of carbohydrates.\u201d On his social media accounts, Trump\u2019s health secretary can be found visiting a Texas barbecue restaurant<\/a> for a \u201cprotein-packed\u201d meal, touring a Pennsylvania farm<\/a> that produces \u201cprotein-rich\u201d dairy, and appearing at an event<\/a> with Mike Tyson to promote the Trump administration\u2019s efforts to put protein \u201cat the center of the American plate.\u201d<\/p>\n The food industry has responded to Kennedy\u2019s \u201cMake America Healthy Again\u201d agenda with a dizzying assortment of high-protein items now available in chain restaurants and on store shelves. Despite his frequent claim that ultra-processed foods are making Americans sick<\/a>, protein-loaded versions of those same foodstuffs are everywhere, as an apparent compromise.<\/p>\n I\u2019m not the kind of guy who lifts weights in jeans<\/a>\u2014I prefer to run a few miles outdoors most days for my exercise\u2014yet I wondered whether I was missing out on the alleged benefits of protein-maxxing. Perhaps if I upped my nutrient stats with all these trendy protein bowls, bars, and beverages for a week I would start noticing some improvements to my overall quality of life. Certainly, I reasoned, it has never been easier to fill up a grocery cart with products that loudly proclaim their protein content. So that\u2019s what I did.<\/p>\n Manly Breakfasts<\/p>\n Eager to up my protein consumption at breakfast\u2014while maintaining a level of masculinity that seems core to the MAHA ethos\u2014I paid $20, plus $7 in shipping fees, for a box of something called Man Cereal, easily the worst food I ingested for this experiment. The maple bacon flavor is touted as \u201csweet, smoky & sigma,\u201d further confirming that the stuff is made for gym bros who listen to problematic podcasts, and a bowl nets you 2.5 grams of creatine, a compound that supports muscle development. Too bad it\u2019s both offensively artificial on the palate and nearly impossible to chew through, a fitting exercise for anyone who believes they can improve their jawlines by \u201cmewing<\/a>.\u201d As the hard, styrofoam-like balls finally break down, they coat your teeth in gritty morsels that should make even the most performatively masculine dude question his commitment to the act. Oh, and it\u2019s only 16 grams of protein.<\/p>\n Other options were less revolting but equally short on protein. I picked up a box of Protein Boostin\u2019 Brown Sugar Cinnamon Pop-Tarts, which hit the market last fall, and a package of Kodiak Cakes\u2019 \u201cprotein-packed\u201d French toast sticks. Both tasted fine, even if the French toast sticks were on the bland side, but when I compared the protein content of a serving of either of these foods\u201410 grams each\u2014I realized it was slightly less than I got from my usual breakfast of Special K with milk, which gives me 13 grams of protein to start the day.<\/p>\n In this way, the current protein craze may be distorting the facts around Americans\u2019 access to it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Not even two months into my job here at WIRED, I found myself barfing in the office bathroom.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":577774,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[49,48,1376,10773,84,1058,395,714],"class_list":{"0":"post-577773","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nutrition","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-donald-trump","11":"tag-food-and-drink","12":"tag-health","13":"tag-medicine","14":"tag-nutrition","15":"tag-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577773","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=577773"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577773\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/577774"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=577773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=577773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=577773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}