Proteinmaxxing is puny remedy for consumer giants

Unilever

07/10/2026 15:16

The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist.  The opinions expressed are her own.
By Aimee Donnellan
DUBLIN, Oct 8 (Reuters Breakingviews) - Walk down any supermarket aisle and you will see a lot of protein. Giant companies like PepsiCo PEP.O, Kraft Heinz KHC.N and Nestle NESN.S have packed the shelves with goodies touting a dose of the nutrient as they attempt to bulk up margins by appealing to health-conscious shoppers. Products including ice cream, Doritos, macaroni and cheese, water and even beer have received a protein boost. But the market is still relatively small and many products are highly processed. The "proteinmaxxing" fad seems unlikely to revive the sickly consumer goods industry.
Consumer companies could do with a sales pickup. Soaring energy and commodity prices drove up costs after the pandemic, forcing purveyors of branded goods to raise prices by as much as 10% in one year. Inflation then prompted shoppers to seek out cheaper alternatives. The result is a toxic recipe of declining sales and squeezed margins. Operating profit margins at Danone DANO.PA, Nestle, Tyson Foods TSN.N, PepsiCo and Kraft Heinz have shrunk by an average of over two percentage points since 2018.
The vogue for consuming more protein therefore looks like a saviour to the embattled industry. Aging western populations need it to protect muscle and preserve healthy bones. Doctors advise users of weight-loss drugs to load up on protein to protect lean muscle, which can account for up to 40% of the weight lost from anti-obesity medication. Around 15% of US adults and 3% of the UK population are taking these so-called GLP-1 drugs. Younger, health-obsessed shoppers want to hit their daily protein targets, while parents want more of it for their children. Google searches for “high protein” more than doubled in the five years after the pandemic.
Consumer goods giants have responded with a variety of strategies. Nestle is focusing on seasonings that add spice to fresh foods like chicken and fish. Kraft Heinz plans to slap more high-protein labels on the cold cuts and lunch meats it has always sold. But the $26 billion group has also launched PowerMac, a new version of its signature blue-box macaroni and cheese which boasts 17 grams of protein in each serving.
Few brands are safe from the proteinmaxxing craze. Mondelez MDLZ.O, which sells Philadelphia cream cheese in Europe, has added protein to the dairy spread. PepsiCo introduced Doritos Protein, a variant of its tortilla chips; Kellanova offers protein Pop Tarts. Brewing giant AB InBev ABI.BR has launched a protein beer in Brazil that promises 10 grams of the nutrient in each can. Ireland’s Glanbia last year started selling protein water.
Changing tastes have also reshaped dealmaking. When Unilever ULVR.L in March combined its food division which makes Knorr stock cubes and Hellmann’s mayonnaise with Cholula hot sauce maker McCormick MKC.N in a $66 billion deal the two companies said their plan was to create a “global flavour powerhouse”. The thinking was that in a world shaped by weight-loss drugs and young health nuts, selling seasoning for bland chicken fillets offered more growth potential than expanding into snack foods. Carbohydrate-heavy Italian pasta producer Barilla last month agreed to buy Goodles, another purveyor of high-protein mac-and-cheese.
Consumer groups are hoping the trend will help them regain some much-needed pricing power. A 48-gram bag of protein-enhanced Doritos costs £2 in the United Kingdom, almost twice as much as a regular packet of the tortilla chips. Similarly, AB InBev’s protein beer is expected to sell for over 10 Brazilian reais, twice the price of a regular bottle of suds. Food and drink companies are betting that consumers that want to boost their protein intake will grab a ready-to-go product when a fresh high-protein meal is not available.
However, in many cases these “innovations” are essentially modifications of existing products, which savvy supermarkets can easily replicate with cheaper own-brand alternatives. The arrival of a new breed of highly processed food products may also be a turnoff for consumers. The likes of Kraft Heinz may have more luck with a new range of cleaner label foods, pasta sauces and other products that have fewer ingredients and are less processed.
Moreover, higher prices don’t necessarily mean fatter profits, as the protein boom has also pushed up the cost of raw ingredients. In May whey protein concentrate, which is used in shakes and snack bars, hit a record €26,000 a tonne, according to Dutch firm DCA Market Intelligence. The protein market is also relatively small at less than $60 billion last year, according to Towards FnB. Though the research firm expects sales to expand by almost 8% a year, it is too early to tell whether protein is actually moving the dial for Big Food. Kraft Heinz has yet to disclose any sales figures for its new macaroni and cheese and Nestle doesn’t disclose financial details for its division which sells products and seasonings for food cooked in air fryers. PepsiCo has stayed similarly tight-lipped about its protein Doritos.
Investors aren’t convinced either. Though the protein vogue offers the prospect of selling consumers more of a product they want at a higher price, the valuation of consumer goods stocks remains depressed. PepsiCo is trading at 14 times expected earnings for the next twelve months, down from nearly 20 times in 2024, according to LSEG. Similarly, Tyson Foods was trading at nearly 16 times forward earnings two years ago and is now valued at just 12 times. The era of proteinmaxxing is unlikely to revive consumer groups’ shrivelled prospects.
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(Editing by Peter Thal Larsen; Production by Pranav Kiran)
((For previous columns by the author, Reuters customers can click on DONNELLAN/Aimee.Donnellan@thomsonreuters.com))