FoodStuff by Kevin Ryan
Will Tariffs Finally Kill the High-Protein Trend?
Here is what’s in today’s edition (and the last edition, in case you missed it):
Will Tariffs Kill Finally Kill the High Protein Trend: Prepare for protein turbulence
Building a Consumer-First Pipeline in Our Era of Uncertainty: Tariffs, recession…
The Clean and Convenient Evolution of Seasonings: Rethinking the shake
The Unexpected Rise of the Wafer Bar: Why wafer bars are winning
Gut Reaction: My hot takes on new offerings
Tidbits: The latest in food industry news, from the profound to the funny
Will Tariffs Finally Kill the High-Protein Trend?
Walk down any grocery aisle and it’s clear: protein has become the universal upgrade. Bars brag about it. Yogurt cups shout it. Even cereals, once the domain of cartoon mascots, now flex their grams of protein like gym selfies.
Protein feels unstoppable. It’s the rare trend that satisfies performance nutrition buffs, weight-loss shoppers, and wellness dabblers alike. In a world of fleeting claims and fad diets, protein has managed to feel like an immortal trend.
But what if it isn’t?
As the global supply chain reshuffles and tariff threats creep closer to the ingredient list, there’s a very real risk that protein’s reign, at least in its current form, is more fragile than it looks.
How the Protein Trend Took Root (and What Could Shake It)
The high-protein trend didn’t rise because consumers suddenly became amino acid experts. It rose because brands found functional, cost-efficient ways to pack protein into everything. That strategy has leaned heavily on a small set of ingredients: whey, soy, pea, collagen, and a handful of niche plant proteins. Behind the scenes, these proteins are often imported, volatile, or geopolitically tangled.
Pea protein is a prime example. It’s been the golden child of plant-based innovation, but very large portion of functional pea protein is still imported from China (even with anti-dumping regulations in place). The same exposure applies to collagen inputs, much of which is sourced from Brazil. Even “clean label” proteins like rice or hemp are usually coming from Asia or Europe.
Whey seems like the safe bet here, produced largely in the U.S., already mainstream, and well-established in performance nutrition. But even whey has its blind spots. The U.S. may be the world’s largest whey producer, but that also means it's heavily reliant on exports. If trade partners slap retaliatory tariffs on U.S. dairy, we could actually see a glut of whey protein flood the domestic market.
That sounds like a win (cheap, stable, local protein!) but it’s not that simple. A surplus of whey might drive prices down, but that doesn’t automatically benefit brands. Not all whey is created equal, and formulation isn’t plug-and-play. Plus, a crash in global cheese trade (whey is a byproduct) could dry up supply just as quickly as it builds. And if cheap whey starts undercutting plant-based protein, it could destabilize an entire class of “clean” or vegan skus that built their value story on avoiding dairy.
What Happens When That Margin Gets Squeezed?
Some brands will pivot. Premium skus can play defense, shrinking serving sizes, tweaking protein claims, shifting to less concentrated inputs, or reframing the message around “fullness,” “strength,” or “balanced energy.” But budget-tier and plant-based brands will be hit hard. Many of them rely on imported isolates to hit price points that already walk a margin tightrope.
The real risk is at the intersection of cost and consumer expectation. Shoppers have been trained to expect protein in everything, from ice cream to cereal to pasta. They expect it at a price that feels like a bonus, not a premium. If tariffs force prices up or grams down, the illusion of easy protein starts to break. And that’s when a trend that once felt like a forever upgrade starts to wobble.
So, Will the Protein Trend Die?
No, but it will evolve. And fast.
Here’s what comes next:
· Reformulation with domestic inputs: Expect more innovation around U.S.-grown legumes, seeds, and grains. Could we grow to love soybean protein? We grow a lot!
· Blended solutions: Brands may mix whole food protein sources (nuts, seeds, pulses) to build claims more affordably, even if it means losing the “20g” brag.
· Narrative pivots: The days of relying on one giant number on the front of pack may be waning. Satiety, recovery, and “real food protein” may step in as more flexible claims.
· Infrastructure investment: Watch domestic processing grow (but this will take time). Pea protein production in the U.S. is already ramping up, expect more deals, more plants, and more funding.
Net-net: Tariffs won’t kill the protein trend, but they’ll kill the illusion that we can endlessly fortify, without friction or cost.
Protein’s immortality was never about consumer demand alone. It was built on a supply chain of convenience and of cheap, functional, imported ingredients that brands could scale fast. Tariffs (and trade instability more broadly) seriously threaten that foundation.
Building a Consumer-First Pipeline in Our Era of Uncertainty
As tariff tensions ripple through global trade, inflation lingers, and geopolitical instability dominates headlines, consumers are navigating more than a typical economic downturn. This isn't just another potential recession, it's a persistent era of uncertainty, shaped by overlapping disruptions: financial pressure, climate anxiety, distrust in institutions, and post-pandemic lifestyle shifts.
In this new normal, brands can’t rely on legacy playbooks or nostalgia for how consumers once behaved during economic slowdowns. Consumer needs haven't vanished, they’ve evolved, fragmented, and intensified. The brands that succeed won’t just cut costs, they’ll build resilience into their product pipelines by aligning with how people actually live, shop, and eat today.
Over the past two decades, including during the Great Recession and the pandemic, I’ve conducted hundreds of ethnographic interviews across income levels and life stages. Certain truths remain, but the context around them has changed. Here are five strategic pivots that food companies must make now to stay relevant and recession-resistant in today’s environment:
1. From Value to Volume-Value-Effort Hybrid
Consumer Shift: Consumers still care about price, but “value” is now a layered equation. It includes quantity, utility, mental effort, and time saved. It’s not about “cheap,” it’s about worth it, lasts longer, and makes life easier.
What to Do:
Create Value Tiers Within Brands: Introduce bulk-friendly or family-size formats with smart per-unit value cues.
Highlight Usage Efficiency: Messaging like “5 meals in one box” or “snack it 10 times” reframes value as longevity.
Design for Low-Cognitive Effort: Lean into formats and claims that reduce planning (e.g., “Complete in 3 steps” or “Easy lunch-builder”).
Leverage Retail Media Networks: Use digital shelf cues or hybrid app shopping reminders to reinforce these messages in real time based on consumer behavior.
2. Partner with Private Labels as Accelerators, Not Threats
Consumer Shift: Private label isn’t viewed as a trade-down anymore. For many consumers, especially younger ones, retailer brands are the trusted brands. And increasingly, these retailers shape the trends. While, as a manufacturer, you may not like it, trying times may mean partnerships.
What to Do:
License Sub-Brands Strategically: Let select brands live within club and discount formats to tap new audiences without eroding core equity.
Incognito Innovation: Co-develop products behind the scenes that carry a retailer brand but keep your R&D pipeline active.
Use Retailer Platforms for Test-and-Learn: Retailers want exclusive innovation. Use them to test bold formats or value-engineered versions fast.
3. Elevate Emotional Utility Through Mood, Identity, and Comfort
Consumer Shift: Emotional needs don’t shrink under the pressure of uncertain times, they grow. But they now show up as self-care, aesthetic pleasure, and identity expression, not just nostalgia or indulgence.
What to Do:
Design for Mood States: Calming teas, focus snacks, energizing bites, consumers want to manage how they feel through what they eat.
Aesthetic as Utility: Products that look good on counters, shelves, or social feeds have a perceived value beyond ingredients. Presentation means A LOT.
Comfort 2.0: Yes to nostalgia, but update it. We’ve hit a lot of the basic nostalgia launches already and consumers are kind of over that. Now its nostalgia it needs to be nostalgia with a twist.
Affordable Wellness: Don’t drop functional claims, but make them accessible. Stress support, gut health, and adaptogens should live in every tier.
4. Re-Architect Your Assortment for Blended Lives
Consumer Shift: Post-pandemic life means people no longer live in clean, predictable dayparts. Work, parenting, and eating happen all at once. Consumers want flexible, context-aware products that fit their fractured days.
What to Do:
From Standalone to Meal Anchors: Reposition products as meal foundations. Help them complete the plate. They’ll see value in that and pay for it.
Build Multitaskers: Products that flex across use cases (breakfast and snack; solo or shared) win because consumer see added utility.
Offer Formats That Signal Control: Think resealable, solo-serve, or “mix & match” modular packaging that lets consumers customize portions. This means less waste.
Deconstruct Multipacks: Smaller trial sizes and “pack your own” kits align with tighter budgets and pantry control.
5. Rethink Innovation Through the Lens of Stability, Not Just Novelty
Consumer Shift: Consumers still want newness, but their filter is different. New for newness sake is a luxury. Instead, the product must really solve something, fit their current reality, or be low-risk.
What to Do:
Run Parallel Concepts: Every new idea should have a lower-cost or shelf-stable twin. Innovation should flex by channel and economic mood.
Prioritize Formats That Do More: Frozen, shelf-stable, and multi-use products aren’t “boring,” they’re resilience tools for families and individuals.
Experiment with Merchandising, Not Just Product: Try cross-category bundles, in-aisle recipes, or digital shelf cues that unlock value perception without changing the formula.
Use Retailer-Exclusive Launches as Rapid Prototyping: Get faster feedback, mitigate risk, and position yourself as adaptive, not reactive.
What’s Next
This isn’t a “wait it out” cycle (I think we all know that). We’re in an extended period of economic, cultural, and psychological recalibration. Consumers are rewriting the rules, and they’re not asking brands to guess, they’re showing you what matters: emotional reward, economic efficiency, functional flexibility, and brand trust built on behavior, not legacy.
A resilient product pipeline today isn’t about nostalgia for what worked in the Great Recession. It’s about showing up for consumers in the chaos of now, with products that earn their place in a cart with inflation, post-pandemic, tariffs and recession all in play.
Spicy Goddess Blends has launched a line of versatile, clean-label spice mixes designed to elevate everyday meals. The range includes Fiery Goddess, a dill-forward green goddess blend with Aleppo chili; Rowdy Ranch, an Ancho chili ranch with black lime; and Smoky Onion, a toasted onion dip-inspired mix. Each blend is gluten-free, dairy-free, and crafted with recognizable ingredients. Available individually or as a Magic Bundle at their website.
Chef James Barry has launched Pluck, an all-purpose seasoning blend combining organic herbs with freeze-dried, grass-fed beef organ meats, liver, kidney, heart, spleen, and pancreas. Available in Original, Zesty Garlic, Spicy Mild, and Pure (unseasoned) varieties, Pluck offers a nutrient-dense, umami-rich flavor without added sugar or fillers. The blends are gluten-free, keto- and paleo-friendly.
Buckwheat purveyor Lil Bucks has launched Everything BUCKS, a gluten-free seasoning blend combining sprouted buckwheat with classic everything bagel spices. The product offers a crunchy texture and is available in single jars or multi-packs on their website.
Lofoten Seaweed has introduced a line of seaweed-based spice blends featuring organic winged kelp from Norway. The range includes Wok & Greens (garlic, coriander, lime), Fish & Seafood (dill, lemon, garlic), and BBQ & Meat (smoked paprika, chili, garlic). Each blend is gluten-free, plant-based, and available at lofotenseaweed.no and Amazon.
UK-based Flava People has expanded its Flava It! lineup with three new air fryer seasoning sachets (Greek, Tikka, and Jerk) targeting the growing demand for convenient, at-home meal solutions. Available at Morrisons.
The Clean and Convenient Evolution of Seasonings
For decades, seasoning was treated as the afterthought of healthy eating. You’d go all-in on clean ingredients (grilled chicken, steamed vegetables, maybe some quinoa) and then end up drowning everything in salt, garlic powder, and that oddly neon “taco mix” from the back of the pantry. Because let’s be honest: in most health-forward meals, flavor was the first casualty.
That’s what makes this new wave of seasoning products so interesting. They aren’t trying to be health food heroes. They’re trying to solve a very real problem: how do you make clean, convenient meals taste good without defaulting to artificial flavors and sodium bombs?
What’s emerging is a class of seasonings that are formulating for function, not just culinary function, but lifestyle function. Air fryer blends don’t just taste good, they crisp better. Freeze-dried meat dusts give you umami without having to sneak in MSG. Grain-based blends add crunch and fiber in a way that makes your vegetables feel like more of a meal. These products are meeting consumers where they are, cooking fast, trying to eat better, and wanting their meals to feel satisfying without being indulgent.
And maybe most importantly, they acknowledge that most people don’t want to reinvent the way they cook. They just want to tweak it. The brilliance of seasoning as a format is that it’s opt-in. It doesn’t demand a new routine or appliance. It’s a small upgrade that fits into the way people are already eating.
So, what should we be expecting next?
Expect to see seasonings take on even more of the functional food playbook. Adaptogens, prebiotics, and protein inclusions are all fair game. There’s already precedent, these ingredients have been inching into snacks, cereals, and bars for years, but seasoning gives them a low-commitment landing pad. Sprinkle some “stress support” turmeric-lion’s mane blend on your rice and call it a win.
At a time when inflation is pushing more meals into the home and health goals are butting up against culinary boredom, seasoning is stepping into a surprisingly strategic role. Not to dominate the plate, but to quietly make everything else on it better (and less likely to end up in the garbage) while not compromising on health.
The Unexpected Rise of the Wafer Bar
There’s been a noticeable uptick in wafer-based snack bar launches recently, and they’re doing surprisingly well. At first glance, the reason seems obvious. Snack bars have become a dietary staple, especially for those looking for a hit of protein on the go. But here’s the thing: most of them feel the same. Whether it’s peanut butter-packed, date-paste filled, or collagen-boosted, they all share a similar chew. Enter wafers, bringing a crisp, light, somewhat nostalgic texture to a world that’s gotten overly dense.
But if texture alone was the winning variable, then why haven’t fluffy mousse bars or gummy-textured snacks seen the same success?
Here’s where I’ll propose a different lens: I call it the Tortilla Theory. I’ve watched consumers switch to making their sandwiches with tortillas instead of bread, not because they love the taste or the flexibility, but because they believe it’s “lighter.” Tortillas are flatter, thinner, and therefore, in their mind, must be healthier (spoiler: not always true). It’s a visual and tactile miscue, a sleight of hand on the senses.
Wafers do the same thing. They don’t feel like a “real” bar. They seem insubstantial. They snap, crumble, and dissolve. Even if the calorie count matches their chewy counterparts, they present as lighter, less serious, more snackable. That sensory illusion makes them feel like less of an indulgence and more of a clever workaround.
In a category increasingly trying to balance between indulgence and nutrition, wafer bars hit a surprising sweet spot. They aren’t pretending to be raw or whole food based. They’re not protein-first, but they’re also not candy bars in disguise. They tap into a specific consumer logic: “This feels better.”
And that’s why I think we’re only at the beginning. Expect more innovation in the wafer format and even beyond, snack forms that play on visual or tactile cues to give the impression of “less” while delivering just as much.
Illusions, it turns out, taste pretty good.
GUT REACTION
TIDBITS
Food Industry
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MrBeast Says Trump’s Tariffs Make It Cheaper To Make Chocolate Outside The U.S.
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Fun & Odd
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Fermenting miso in orbit reveals how space can affect a food’s taste
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