Key takeaways:
- The protein boom has spread from sports nutrition into mainstream snacks, dairy and beverages, allowing brands to reposition indulgent products as functional foods.
- Yet many high-protein foods remain firmly within the ultra-processed category, raising questions about whether protein improves nutrition or simply creates a new health halo.
- In the emerging GLP-1 era – where consumers may eat less but need more protein to preserve muscle – the industry’s reliance on heavily processed protein snacks will face even greater scrutiny.
Protein is the food industry’s favourite nutrient. Ultra-processed foods (UPFs) are its biggest reputational headache. Put the two together and you get the paradox the sector would rather nobody examined too closely.
Because the reality is awkward: many of the foods now marketed as high-protein – cookies, brownies, breakfast cereals, yogurt drinks, shakes and even iced coffees – are also ultra-processed foods.
So what exactly is the industry selling consumers? Better nutrition or better positioning?
This contradiction is emerging just as two powerful forces reshape the global food system. Consumers are demanding more protein than ever. At the same time, concern about UPFs has become one of the defining debates in modern nutrition.
And increasingly, the food industry is trying to sit on both sides of that argument.
Protein is the ultimate health halo
Protein has become the nutrient that can seemingly redeem almost any product.
For decades, the language of food reformulation revolved around subtraction – less sugar, less fat, fewer calories. Today’s consumer mindset is different. Shoppers want foods that add something beneficial: fibre, probiotics, micronutrients and, above all, protein.
The industry has responded with enthusiasm. Protein has spread far beyond sports powders and gym bars into mainstream packaged foods. Snack companies are reformulating biscuits and brownies; dairy producers are doubling the protein in yoghurts and milk drinks; beverage makers are experimenting with protein coffees and fortified teas.
Retailers, too, are amplifying the trend. In the US, retailers like Walmart and Target now carry extensive ranges of protein bars and fortified snacks. UK supermarkets including Tesco and Sainsbury’s group protein snacks alongside sports nutrition ranges. And across Asia, convenience stores are pushing ready-to-drink protein beverages aimed at busy urban consumers.
Consumer demand is real but so is the hype.
A recent survey of 3,000 Americans conducted by The New Consumer and Coefficient Capital found that 29% of consumers want to increase their protein intake this year, up 10 percentage points from 2025. Among Gen Z and millennials, 65% say they are actively trying to consume more protein.
Brands have noticed. Nearly four in five younger consumers say they have seen companies adding protein to more foods and beverages.
But the same research reveals another reality the industry cannot ignore: 38% of Americans now cite processed and ultra-processed foods as their biggest food-related health concern.
Consumers want more protein – but they increasingly distrust the way modern food is made.
Engineering the high-protein snack
Delivering protein in snacks isn’t as simple as adding an extra ingredient. Most high-protein snacks rely on concentrated ingredients such as whey protein isolate, milk protein concentrate, pea protein or soy fractions. These ingredients allow manufacturers to increase protein levels dramatically – often reaching 10 to 20 grams per serving.
But they behave very differently from traditional baking ingredients. Protein isolates can make baked goods dense, dry or chalky. They can introduce bitterness or compromise texture. To maintain the familiar taste and mouthfeel consumers expect, developers frequently turn to emulsifiers, stabilisers, sweeteners and flavour systems.
In other words, making snacks ‘high protein’ often means more formulation, not less.
Protein powders themselves illustrate the point. Producing them involves isolating protein from foods such as milk or plants through industrial processes including filtration, separation and drying. The result is an ingredient rich in amino acids but far removed from its original food source.
That’s not inherently problematic. Food technology has always relied on isolating and concentrating ingredients to achieve specific functionality.
But it does expose the contradiction at the heart of the protein boom: the ingredient used to make snacks appear healthier often pushes them deeper into the ultra-processed category.
When protein meets ultra-processing
Under the widely used NOVA classification system, UPFs are industrial formulations containing ingredients rarely used in home kitchens: flavourings, emulsifiers, sweeteners and other additives designed to enhance texture, taste or shelf life. By that definition, many high-protein snacks remain firmly within the UPF category.
Cakes, biscuits and cereal bars already sit near the boundary. Add protein isolates, flavour systems and stabilisers and they move squarely into NOVA’s Group 4 territory.
And it’s this classification – or, critics say, the blunt way it’s applied – that creates much of the controversy.
Food scientist Kantha Shelke believes the public conversation around processing increasingly collapses complex science into a simplistic good-versus-bad narrative.
Shelke, principal at Corvus Blue and senior lecturer at Johns Hopkins University, argues that the term ‘ultra-processed’ frequently lumps together foods with vastly different nutritional profiles and technological purposes. In reality, many of the ingredients criticised in UPF debates perform essential roles in modern food systems – from ensuring microbial safety and extending shelf life to maintaining texture and stability in large-scale production.
“The idea that processing automatically makes food unhealthy is simply not supported by the science,” Shelke says. “Most of the research linking ultra-processed foods to health outcomes is observational. It identifies correlations, not direct cause-and-effect relationships, yet the public conversation often treats it as proof.”
That oversimplification, she argues, risks obscuring the role food technology has played in improving global nutrition. Techniques such as pasteurisation, fermentation and nutrient fortification have historically reduced foodborne illness and nutrient deficiencies.
Shelke also warns the backlash against UPFs is already producing unintended consequences. Consumers are increasingly avoiding products such as fortified cereals, enriched breads and shelf-stable baby foods because they associate them with additives or ‘chemicals’.
“When fear of processing leads people to reject foods designed to deliver essential nutrients, we’re no longer improving diets – we’re potentially making them worse,” she says.
At the same time, Shelke cautions against assuming protein itself transforms indulgent foods into health foods.
“Protein may be the destination ingredient du jour but adding it to candy bars and chips does not magically transform them into health food,” she says. “If it looks, smells and tastes like a treat, it is a treat – just one donning a health halo it did not earn.”
Scientific evidence suggests that halo may indeed be influencing consumer perception. A controlled crossover trial published in Nature Metabolism last year examined how people responded to ultra-processed diets enriched with protein. Participants consuming the higher-protein diet ate slightly fewer calories and experienced changes in hormones linked to satiety.
Yet the data told a more complicated story. Participants ate slightly fewer calories; their metabolism shifted but the protein-enriched foods still didn’t stop people overeating.
Protein changed the physiology; it didn’t change the behaviour.
The credibility test for protein innovation
None of this means protein innovation is misguided. Protein plays a critical role in muscle maintenance and satiety, particularly for older adults and physically active consumers. And in the emerging GLP-1 era, its importance may only increase.
Weight-loss medications such as Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro are reshaping how consumers eat. These drugs suppress appetite and reduce overall calorie intake, but they can also accelerate the loss of lean muscle mass. Nutrition experts increasingly emphasise higher protein intake as a way to help preserve muscle during rapid weight loss.
That shift is already influencing product development. Food companies are reformulating products to deliver more protein per serving – positioning them as tools for satiety, recovery and muscle maintenance in a world where consumers may simply be eating less.
But it also complicates the conversation around UPFs. If protein becomes nutritionally more important for consumers using GLP-1 medications, the industry may find itself defending foods that are simultaneously functional and heavily processed.
In other words, the protein paradox isn’t going away. If anything, the GLP-1 era may make it harder to ignore.
Fortified foods can help people meet nutritional needs in convenient formats. But the industry should be careful about the narrative it builds around them.
Consumers increasingly interpret protein as shorthand for health. Yet the underlying products haven’t always changed dramatically. A protein brownie is still a brownie; a protein cookie is still a cookie; a protein cereal bar is still a snack.
Right now protein sits at the centre of an uncomfortable tension. It allows brands to recast indulgent foods as functional ones but it also raises difficult questions about whether those products have truly changed.
And those questions are only going to get louder. Because if protein becomes the food industry’s latest health halo, consumers will eventually ask the same question they have asked about sugar, fat and ‘natural’ claims before it:
Is this genuine innovation or simply clever reformulation?
The answer may determine whether protein remains the most powerful claim in the snack aisle… or the next one consumers decide they no longer trust.
Study:
Hägele FA, Herpich C, Koop J, et al. Short-term effects of high-protein, lower-carbohydrate ultra-processed foods on human energy balance. Nat Metab7, 704–713 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42255-025-01247-4
