27-07-2025
The Protein Bar Arms Race
In late August 2024, the physician and longevity guru Peter Attia posted a new reel for his 1.3 million Instagram followers, featuring a close-up of a stack of golden boxes, each about the size of a hardcover book, piled up on a marble countertop. The image stood out; Mr. Attia's grid consists mostly of snippets from his popular podcast, The Drive, and straight-to-camera clips of him sharing advice on topics like zone 2 cardio training or the importance of getting regular colonoscopies.
'Pretty awesome day in the Attia household,' he said from behind the camera. 'Just received, yesterday, the first official shipment of the new David bar.'
These protein bars would become available to the public in a few weeks, Mr. Attia explained, and the teenagers in his home — a demographic not known to be obsessed with optimal nutrition — had been devouring his supply. 'I think these are just awesome, and I am really excited for people to start trying these things,' he said.
The David bar, created by the RXBar co-founder Peter Rahal and a Keto cookie entrepreneur named Zach Ranen, was diving into a marketplace already up to its eyeballs in protein. In recent years, protein supplementation has crossed the species barrier from fitness-coded products like bars into everyday foods. Today's supermarkets offer high-protein frozen waffles, breakfast cereals, popcorn, pastas, ice cream — even protein-enhanced soda and candy. According to the market research firm Mintel, the number of food and beverage products coming to market with a high protein claim quadrupled between 2013 and 2024.
The protein maximizer can now begin her day with a Legendary Foods Brown Sugar Cinnamon Breakfast Pastry (20 grams of protein), move on to Immi's pea protein-based instant ramen for lunch (24 grams), snack on Wilde chips made from chicken and egg white (10 grams), and microwave a Vital Pursuit high-protein frozen pepperoni pizza (22 grams) for dinner — all, to borrow Michael Pollan's aphorism, without eating anything her great-grandmother would have recognized as food.
But for the protein-obsessed, the bar still reigns supreme. The category-leading protein bar, Quest, tops out at 21 grams of protein for 180 calories: almost as much protein as a McDonald's Big Mac, for less than half the calories. 'We knew we could do more,' Mr. Rahal said recently, during a visit to the brand's offices in Manhattan. 'The question is, what's the upper limit?'
Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
