By French advertising for Liebig’s Extract of Meat.
Wikimedia Commons
Protein consumption has remained a central component of nutritional advice and marketing campaigns ever since, even amid recycled and recurring arguments over the optimal amount of protein and whether plant or animal sources are best.
Around the time Liebig launched his extract company, John Harvey Kellogg, a staunch vegetarian, set out to redefine traditional American meals at his health sanitarium in Battle Creek, Michigan.
The Kellogg family invented flaked breakfast cereals, granola, nut butters and various “nut meats,” which they produced, packaged, marketed and sold across the nation. Kellogg wrote countless tracts denouncing meat-heavy diets and assuring readers that high-protein plant foods could easily replace meat.
In an April 1910 issue of his periodical “Good Health,” Kellogg posited that “Beans, peas, lentils and nuts afford an ample proportion of the protein elements which are essential for blood making and tissue building.”
How protein regained its status
Alongside the meat and cereal companies consistently touting the high protein content of their foods, the first processed protein shake appeared on the market in 1952 with bodybuilder mogul Bob Hoffman’s Hi-Proteen Shakes, made from a combination of soy protein, whey and flavorings.
In the 1970s through the 1990s, protein products remained visible but receded somewhat with the dietary spotlight firmly fixed on low-calorie, low-fat, sugar-free snack foods and beverages following the publication of studies linking sugar and saturated fat consumption to heart disease. These decades gave us Slimfast and Diet Coke as well as fat-free (and guilt-free) SnackWell’s cookies and Lay’s potato chips.
New research in 2003, however, suggested high-protein diets could aid in weight loss, and protein quickly regained its former nutrient-superstar status.
Entire diets followed, each offering an array of protein drinks and bars. Robert Atkins first published his low-carb, high-protein “Dr. Atkins’ Diet Revolution” in 1982. It went on to become one of the 50 best-selling books of all time by the early 2000s, despite a New England Journal of Medicine article in 2003 clearly recommending that “Longer and larger studies [were] required to determine the long-term safety and efficacy of low-carbohydrate, high-protein, high-fat diets” such as Atkins’.
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The long-term pursuit of protein in hopes of achieving bigger muscles, smaller waists and fewer hunger pangs shows no sign of abating, and there has never been a dearth of those willing to take advantage of the public’s dietary goals by handing out unnecessary advice or a new protein-packed product.
In the end, most people living in high-income nations are consuming enough protein. When we replace meals with a protein bar or shake, we also risk missing out on the rich sources of antioxidants, vitamins and many other benefits of real food.
Hannah Cutting-Jones, Lecturer, Department of History, University of Oregon
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.