Susannah Savage and Michael Peel in London Published October 10 2026 Jump to comments section Print this page Unlock the Editor's Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favorite stories in this weekly newsletter. Just as cheese is often paired with ham, so cheesemaking has long gone hand in hand with pig rearing. The cheesemaker keeps the curds; the pigs get the whey. Some of Europe's best-known cheeses and cured meats owe their shared geography to this practical arrangement. In Italy, pigs destined for Parma ham were fed whey left over from making Parmesan, giving the meat its nutty sweetness. Now, the protein craze is giving cheesemakers a more lucrative mouth to feed. Dutch dairy co-operative Friesland Campina, for example, no longer sells whey proteins for animal feed. Instead, it intends to turn more of the whey left over from cheesemaking into concentrated proteins for human nutrition. For centuries whey has been seen as a byproduct of cheesemaking and used for fertilizer or animal feed. Now, says Guus Aerts, the co-op's global director of marketing and product strategy, "to some extent, cheese has already become a byproduct of whey."This turnaround reflects a protein boom that is reshaping the food industry. From dairy co-operatives to meat processors, companies are extracting more valuable ingredients from materials they once sold cheaply, while food manufacturers compete to secure supplies. The appetite for protein is driving billions in factory investments and acquisitions.
"Protein is increasingly [dictating] what food companies produce, where they invest capital, and how they differentiate and grow," says Brian Earnest, lead animal protein economist at agribusiness lender Co Bank. Show video info Show video description Video description Transcript How much protein is too much protein? And can you taste the difference? Susannah Savage puts foods with added protein to the test How much protein is too much protein? If you walk into a supermarket nowadays and look on the shelves, absolutely every product almost has added protein in, from cheese to Mars bars and bread. Most of these cost more than the ordinary version. Are they actually worth it and do they taste any good? Let's find out. This reminds me of like the Slim Fast shakes that you used to get in the '90s. Pizza bread number one. Oh God, I really don't know. Pizza bread number two. I think this is the normal one and the one before was the protein one. It's just less, maybe less doughy. So maybe this is the, maybe this is the protein one because it's drier. The second one that you tasted in this case was the protein. So you were right. So I was right the second time eventually. OK. Cheese number one. Cheesy. Yeah, this one's definitely the protein one. It definitely tastes more processed, not for me. From cheese to breakfast. Hmm. That's nice. There it's the second one. I'm gonna say this one is the one with the more protein in it. Correct. Mars bar number one. That one has a bit of a funny after taste. That's Mars bar number two in front of you now. This is the real Mars bar. The protein one. It tastes fine, but it doesn't feel like an indulgent treat. Here is milkshake number one. I think that's the protein one. Here's the second one. Oh no, I definitely got that wrong. The first one is the is the normal one and this one is the protein one. This one tastes, this doesn't taste that good. Yeah, you're right. All of the protein versions of these generally taste worse than the normal versions. A lot of the experts we spoke to said that in developed countries, people are not deficient in protein. We get enough protein from regular sources like eggs, meat, legumes like chickpeas and lentils, so that really makes you question what's the point in putting extra protein into products that don't naturally have it. But at the same time, food manufacturers are obviously cashing in on this trend. You've got a lot of influencers on social media pushin...
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