Are High in Protein Claims Being Abused These Days?
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the marketing of products these days is starting to get a little out of hand. Brands are making some pretty outlandish call-outs on labels and marketing materials and causing the naïve to be suckered into thinking that products with added protein are high in protein like the label claims. But not so fast. For many products, sure, they have some added in them, but it’s a glorified unhealthy product. Many bars out there fit the bill. It’s simply a glorified candy bar.
Related Article: Pay Attention to Your Protein Source
Look, a turd is a turd regardless if you add chocolate to it or protein. There are so many things zipping around in my head about this topic that we need to jump right into this.
Just Because it Says High in Protein Doesn’t Mean It’s a Good Choice
Protein cookies, brownies, bars, donuts, ice cream, even protein popcorn… the list goes on and on. Many are deeming these products as functional foods. To me, eh, that’s kind of a stretch. Let me explain.
If you look at some of the products on the market today that claim to be high in protein, you need to take a deeper dive into the ingredients. While, indeed, the product may be high in protein (or at least able to say that based on the label breakdown – which I’ll get to in a bit), all the other macros could be astronomical.
As an example, let’s use the new AllMax Nutrition Hexapro Protein Popcorn (I don’t want to pick on them but their product is the perfect example of what I’m explaining). Many will look at the packaging, understand that it’s popcorn with added protein, wipe the drool from the side of their mouth, and yell “shut up and take my money!” And they have every right to do that – heck, the popcorn according to the packaging looks delicious. But when you turn it around and look at the label is where, in my opinion, the wheels fall off.
For starters, when you grab a bag of popcorn, we all know damn well that no one is going to look at the serving size. In the case of the AllMax popcorn, it’s four servings per container. Excuse me while I chuckle a little bit. That entire bag is going to get demolished in one sitting – let’s be real. But hey, if you have self-control, good for you if you can put the bag down after opening it.
Each serving of this high in protein popcorn is 250 calories, 12g fat, 29g carbohydrates, 15g sugar, and 10g protein. Let’s just do the math for everyone and consuming the whole bag will give you 1,000 calories, 48g fat, 116g carbohydrates, 60g sugar, and 40g protein. Now, I don’t want to pick on AllMax as they are just trying to provide consumers with a “healthy” snack. The problem is, it’s not. While it calls out on the packaging that it has 40g of protein, it doesn’t call out the fact that you’re probably going to be consuming half of your daily recommended calories from consuming the entire bag just to get the 40g of protein they are showing on the front of the packaging.
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