Stop obsessing over protein goals — the latest health craze — and just enjoy your food

The cookbook section of any used bookstore is a museum of past health trends. Browse through the stock and you’ll trace the rise and fall of nutritional villains: eggs, butter, red meat and more — first demonized, then rehabilitated by the next wave of experts.

We’ve all seen America’s food rules shift beneath our feet, as nutritional gospel one year becomes heresy the next.

In 2025, we’re in the era of protein. More specifically, we’re in the era of more protein.

Inspired by bodybuilders, weight-lifters and hardcore health gurus, packing on the protein has gone mainstream. 

But while these athletes need the nutrient to build muscle and maintain their exercise routines, the average carpooling mom has no such requirement.

Yet grocery-store shelves shout their macronutrient stats like badges of honor: “18 grams per serving!” “Protein-rich!”

Social-media influencers cheerfully explain how to sneak ever more protein into cookies, pancakes and even ice cream; cottage cheese is the new star of the show, blended into everything from pasta sauce to dessert bars.

Ads hawk “gourmet protein powders” to be dumped into your morning latte.

Many women’s Instagram feeds have become a stream of “high-protein lunchbox” reels and “six ways to eat 100g of protein” posts.

I recently watched as one food blogger, a former champion of plant-based eating, crammed half a rotisserie chicken into her mouth on camera. Her caption: “Gotta hit those protein goals!”

Curious about my own goals, I calculated how much protein I’d need to eat in a day to meet the online experts’ frequently cited benchmarks.

The result was nauseating: seven eggs for breakfast, a whole chicken breast for lunch, meat again for dinner, plus multiple high-protein snacks — Greek yogurt, nuts, cottage cheese, protein bars — to stay on target.

This isn’t just a quirky health trend. It’s disordered eating with a veneer of wellness.

That’s not to say protein is bad for you; quite the opposite. It’s a vital macronutrient, essential for muscle repair, hormone production and immune function; it also provides a sense of fullness after meals, helping to maintain a healthy weight.

For growing kids, pregnant women, aging adults and those recovering from illness or intense exercise, protein is especially crucial.

The problem isn’t the nutrient itself, but the obsessive, all-consuming fixation on it.

Consider this: For a healthy, active 175-pound man, the National Institutes of Health recommends about 63 grams of protein per day.

But the popular MyFitnessPal website advises that same man to aim for 164 grams, well more than double the federal guideline.

“The average man in the United States is overshooting the federal protein recommendation by more than 55%,” says Alice Callahan, a New York Times health reporter who holds a nutrition PhD, “and the average woman by more than 35%.”

What happens to all that extra protein?

The body can’t store it. Instead, the liver converts the surplus into energy — and if that isn’t used, packs it on as fat.

So if we’re already getting enough, why the obsession?

Maybe it has something to do with who’s leading the conversation. 

A 2017 study published in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics found that 49.5% of registered dietitians were at risk for orthorexia nervosa, a condition marked by an unhealthy fixation on eating “correctly.”

Another 13% were at risk for traditional eating disorders like anorexia, and 8% had previously received treatment for them.

In other words, the very people we look to for food guidance may be struggling with disordered eating habits themselves.

Women are more prone to eating disorders than men by orders of magnitude — and the current protein craze is largely female-led. 

Compared to other nutrition fads, the high-protein trend might seem harmless; after all, it’s not demanding the total elimination of food groups, or promoting outright starvation.

However, it’s steeped in the same obsessive mindset. When every bite must be justified by its protein content, when food becomes math instead of nourishment, something has gone wrong.

A healthy approach to protein centers on real, unprocessed foods like eggs, fish, beans, nuts, meat and dairy — not processed powders with ingredients you can’t pronounce, or bars that taste like compressed chalk.

You don’t need to count every gram or hit some arbitrary benchmark. Just eat a variety of whole foods, and you’ll get what you need.

Food fuels our bodies, but it’s also meant to be enjoyed. We shouldn’t have to choke down dry chicken or gag on cottage-cheese brownies in the name of health.

Because if wellness doesn’t include balance, sanity and flexibility, it isn’t wellness at all.

Bethany Mandel writes and podcasts at The Mom Wars and is a homeschooling mother of six in greater Washington, DC.