\n<\/p>\n
For generations, the Meives family made cheese. Tony Meives\u2019s grandfather, a Swiss immigrant, and his father both ran small cheese factories in Wisconsin, in the heart of America\u2019s dairyland. \u201cI worked in the cheese factory my whole life,\u201d Meives says. \u201cI have four world-class cheesemakers in my family.\u201d But when it came time to inherit the family business, Meives found there was more money in the industrial runoff that his grandfather would have once thrown away. Today, the 39-year-old bodybuilder and gym owner runs a company that sells whey protein powder, the watery byproduct of cheesemaking that was once considered waste. \u201cTwenty years ago, the only people who took whey were bodybuilders,\u201d he says. \u201cOver the past five years, the market has really opened up to each and every type of person you can probably think of.\u201d<\/p>\n
When Robert F Kennedy Jr, the US health secretary, declared late last month, that \u201cthe war on protein is over\u201d, he sounded a bit like one of those Japanese soldiers of second world war lore, who spent years bunkering in the jungles of south-east Asia, oblivious to the fact that hostilities had long ceased. Perhaps there was a time when advice leaned more towards a diet based around fruit, vegetables and carbohydrates \u2013 but by May 2026, the war on protein was surely over. Protein had won.<\/p>\n
double quotation markWhey protein is currently driving more a percentage of the farmer\u2019s check than it ever has beforeJoshua White<\/p>\n
You can see its victory parade in every supermarket aisle in the US \u2013 breakfast cereals, frozen foods, even iced lattes have been souped up with extra protein. Not even traditional \u201cjunk foods\u201d such as nacho chips, microwave ramen and pretzels are safe. According to a 2025 survey of 3,000 US adults, 71% said they were trying to eat more protein, up from 59% in 2022. \u201cA lot of different brands are on the protein bandwagon,\u201d Meives says. \u201cThey\u2019re putting it in everything.\u201d<\/p>\n
The cultural trend towards \u201cproteinmaxxing\u201d has driven demand in whey protein, which was previously considered little more than effluent by most dairy farmers.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a byproduct no longer,\u201d says Joshua White, vice-president of dairy ingredients at Missouri-based dairy marketer and trader TC Jacoby & Co. \u201cWhey is a co<\/em>-product now.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>An employee sifts a vat of curds (solid lumps from coagulating milk) and whey (the liquid substance left over) at the Groupe Lactalis diary product factory in Rodez, France.<\/span> Photograph: Bloomberg\/Getty Images<\/p>\n As keen readers of Little Miss Muffet may already know, whey is made during various dairy and cheesemaking processes. Enzymes are added to dairy milk, which causes the desirable curds to separate from the (previously less desirable) watery liquid called whey. Prior to the protein boom, the leftover whey was often used as feed or fertilizer, or reprocessed into other forms of soft cheese (ricotta takes its name from the Italian word for \u201crecooked\u201d, because it was traditionally made by letting whey ferment and then reheating it.) Trying to find something to do with whey is a millenia-old puzzle: around 460 BC, the ancient Greek medic Hippocrates prescribed whey serum to his patients in order to fortify their immune systems.<\/p>\n To make whey powder, liquid whey is filtered to remove fats and carbohydrates, then purified, evaporated and spray dried, producing a powder which can be mixed into protein bars or blended in a shake.<\/p>\n <\/span>\u2018We\u2019ve reached the point where there are shortages [of whey],\u2019 says Dean Sommers, a cheese and food technologist.<\/span> Photograph: Andreas Hauslbetz\/Alamy<\/p>\n Initially whey protein was marketed to powerlifters, gym rats and people who owned their own shaker cups. But the recent protein boom has made whey so popular that producers are facing shortfalls. \u201cWe\u2019ve reached the point where there are shortages,\u201d says Dean Sommers, a cheese and food technologist at the University of Wisconsin\u2019s Center for Dairy Research. \u201cThere are a lot of unfilled orders, and demand for orders. There simply isn\u2019t enough product around to fill those orders.\u201d<\/p>\n In response, some manufacturers are adding new equipment, to help produce more whey. Leading manufacturers are building whole new facilities.<\/p>\n All this demand means that in the past few years, the price of whey protein concentrates has shot up as much as fivefold. In the last two years alone, the price of whey concentrates has increased as much as 83%. At the same time, demand for dairy and cheese products has remained relatively stable, meaning there may soon be a point where whey demand and curd demand are out of whack.<\/p>\n \u201cWhey protein is currently driving more a percentage of the farmer\u2019s check than it ever has before,\u201d says dairy trader Joshua White. \u201cThat results in the potential of excess cheese production, in order to get to that whey. The cart is driving the horse.\u201d<\/p>\n There are, in the history of agricultural production, some precedents for this. Chicken wings were regarded as undesirable excess until, as the legend goes, an industrious chef from Buffalo, New York, thought to fry them and slather them in hot sauce. Now, chicken wings are so popular that they\u2019re one of the primary drivers of poultry prices, with demand for wings surpassing that for the rest of the bird. (It\u2019s estimated that Americans eat about 1.5bn wings on Super Bowl Sunday alone.)<\/p>\n The relationship between whey and the broader dairy market may be headed towards a similar disequilibrium. In order to head off a case where producers are stuck with excess cheese, dairy boards have increasingly looked to export markets in Latin America, China and as far away as the Pacific Islands.<\/p>\n The whey boom is at least partly attributable to the popularity in GLP-1-style weight loss drugs, which at least one in eight Americans admit to taking. As caloric intakes are tightened, protein consumption becomes even more important.<\/p>\n <\/span>Whey protein supplements on a shelf in a British food market.<\/span> Photograph: david ridley 2017\/Alamy<\/p>\n It\u2019s estimated that anywhere from 25-40% of weight lost during GLP-1 therapies is lean muscle. Drugs such as Ozempic, Wegovy and Zepbound do not distinguish between lean muscle and adipose tissue (better known as fat). The drugs\u2019 primary effects \u2013 regulating hunger signaling and gastric motility \u2013 have a more drastic effect on protein synthesis. Simply put, many people on these drugs are not hungry enough to eat the recommended dietary allowance of protein.<\/p>\n \u201cI was definitely concerned about losing muscle alongside the other weight,\u201d says Alex Sullivan, a 41-year-old who recently started taking Tirzepatide and upped his protein intake in turn. \u201cDoctors talk about how you lose muscle mass as you get older, and you should try to keep as much muscle mass as you can. I wanted to make sure I retained as much as possible, as I lost weight.\u201d<\/p>\n There is, however, a ceiling. It\u2019s generally recommended that most adults aim for 0.8 grams of protein per kg of body weight (or about 0.36 grams per pound). But research by Ian Neeland, a Cleveland-based cardiologist who specializes in diabetes, obesity and cardiovascular health, suggests that protein intake and muscle synthesis does not scale exponentially. In fact, it plateaus after that double-the-recommended-daily-allotment target is hit.<\/p>\n \u201cThe muscle building didn\u2019t really improve after 1.6 [grams per kg of bodyweight],\u201d Neeland says. \u201cYou really just need to eat enough protein to preserve muscle mass. It\u2019s more about preservation.\u201d In other words, more protein may be key for those on GLP-1s looking to retain muscle. But manic, whey-gobbling proteinmaxxing may not do much to achieve this goal, accomplishing little beyond driving up the price of whey.<\/p>\n If Ozempic and its chemically related cousins are pitched as \u201cwonder drugs\u201d, then whey protein can seem no less remarkable \u2013 a relatively easy way to mitigate GLP-1s deleterious effects on muscle and protein synthesis. But demand in whey powders is creating its own raft of side effects on the dairy and cheesemaking industries. While US cheese consumption remains relatively steady \u2013 a spokesperson from Vermont\u2019s agency of agriculture tells me that the average American consumes more than 40lbs (18kg) of cheese per year \u2013 dairy farmers are pivoting to other protein-rich products: yoghurt and even cottage cheese, those once maligned, nutrient-rich, wiggly curds that (seasoned with ketchup) were a staple of President Richard Nixon\u2019s spartan daily diet. \u201cThere\u2019s cheddar cheese manufacturers that are switching over to cottage cheese,\u201d said Sommers on the way protein has upended the industry.<\/p>\n This month\u2019s reporting from the US Department of Agriculture shows that the whey price is only growing, while supply is shrinking. Some retailers, like Tony Meives of Wisconsin, who buys whey from a wholesaler, worry that whey will become so expensive it\u2019ll end up threatening his business and send price-conscious consumers flocking to the cottage cheese aisle. \u201cI hope less<\/em> people take whey protein!\u201d he laughs. \u201cThat way the price does come down, and the cost to make it drops.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For generations, the Meives family made cheese. Tony Meives\u2019s grandfather, a Swiss immigrant, and his father both ran small cheese factories in Wisconsin, in the heart of America\u2019s dairyland. \u201cI worked in the cheese factory my whole life,\u201d Meives says. \u201cI have four world-class cheesemakers in my family.\u201d But when it came time to inherit<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":50852,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[710,24908,7918,522,4470,1725,949,1545,24909,622,24725],"class_list":{"0":"post-50851","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-boom","9":"tag-byproduct","10":"tag-dairy","11":"tag-demand","12":"tag-drink","13":"tag-food","14":"tag-high","15":"tag-industry","16":"tag-proteinmaxxing","17":"tag-star","18":"tag-whey"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50851","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50851"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50851\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/50852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}