Morgan Gates starts off his day eating six eggs. Later he will down a smoothie made with Greek yogurt, protein powder and berries. For dinner, it’s a pound of red meat.
The 28-year-old sales representative is big on protein. “I found that if I prioritized protein and half-assed the rest of everything else, it gave me the body I wanted,” he said.
Gates’s two dogs follow a similar diet. The $367 billion U.S. food industry is on board, too, pushing protein beyond cereals and snack bars and into new realms like coffee, sweets and water.
Snack maker Wilde created a protein chip from chicken breasts, egg whites and bone broth. Protein Pints made its national debut this spring, offering cookie dough and mint chip-flavored ice cream tubs with 30 grams of protein each. Ontario-based Protein Candy rolled out brightly colored confections promising 14 grams of protein a bag—the equivalent of eating a half cup of cottage cheese—calling it for a while “candy that works as hard as you do.”
