| Today’s letter |
| Divide by 20 before you buy another protein bar |
| For about a year I bought the protein version of everything: protein waffles, protein cereal, protein chips. One morning at the freezer case I stood there holding two boxes of the same waffles, from the same company, and the only difference between them was the word PROTEIN across the front and a dollar eighty on the price tag. That one went in the cart, and it went in every week after that. Not once did I turn the box over. |
| I told other people to buy them too, which is the part I’m not proud of. What I was doing is the same thing I now spend my days warning women about: letting one word on the front of a box stand in for reading the box. The word did all the work, and most of that work was for the company that printed it. Women write to me about this almost every week, and the line in those letters is always some version of the same question. |
| “Why am I still hungry?” |
| You did everything that aisle asked of you, reading the labels, switching the brands, paying two dollars more for the box with the word on it, keeping a bar in your purse for the three o’clock slump. Nobody works harder at this than a woman who has been told for thirty years that she isn’t working hard enough. Then four o’clock came anyway, and there you were at the counter, eating crackers out of the sleeve. |
| So you did what you have always done, and looked at the woman holding the crackers and decided she was the problem. The protein was supposed to keep you full, you ate the protein, and the hunger came anyway. Nobody ever offers you a second explanation. There is only ever the one… and the one is always you. |
| Here’s what gets me. |
| None of that was your fault. You were reading the only number they put where you could see it. |
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| Let me show you how I know. Not with my opinion, but with a study that went out and counted the packages. |
| A team of food scientists at the University of Milan walked the major supermarket chains in Italy and pulled every pre-packaged product they could find with a protein claim on the front. They ended up with 418 of them. Snack bars were the biggest group at 100 products, then yogurt at 68, then those little protein mousse cups at 43. |
| Then they did the one thing almost no shopper has time to do. For each product they took the numbers off the label and worked out what share of that food’s calories came from protein, rather than trusting the grams printed on the box. |
| What they found |
| University of Milan, 2026. Tucci et al., International Journal of Food Sciences and Nutrition. |
| The crackers with the claim (about 16 percent) |
| Crackers carrying a protein claim got a median of roughly 16 percent of their calories from protein. Everything else in the box was something else. |
| The same claim, other shelves (about 70 percent) |
| Over on the processed meat shelf, that same claim sat on foods getting close to 70 percent of their calories from protein. One word, four times the food behind it. |
| The researchers’ own conclusion: a protein claim tells you almost nothing about how much protein is actually in there. |
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| In other words, the word on the front is not a measurement. It is an advertisement that happens to be legal, and it may be telling you nothing at all about the food inside. |
| Your willpower had nothing to do with it. Mine didn’t either. |
| So how does one word get to do that much work? |
| Here in the States the rule is looser still, and it has nothing to do with calories. Ten grams of protein in a serving, and the box is allowed to say excellent source of protein, no matter how much sugar, oil and flour rode along with it. A 380 calorie toaster pastry with 10 grams qualifies. So does a 90 calorie cup of plain yogurt. Both get the same word in the same bold type, and your brain does the rest, because one good word on a package makes people stop reading the package. Food scientists have a name for that effect. They call it the health halo, and it is the cheapest thing a company can buy. |
| You never stood a chance in that aisle. Neither did I, and I read this stuff for a living. |
| That’s the part no one says out loud… the label was never built to be read. It was built to be glanced at, from four feet away, by someone pushing a cart with a kid in it. |
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| Try this today |
| Next time you pick up something with protein on the front, turn it over and find two numbers: the calories per serving, and the grams of protein. Divide the calories by 20. That answer is the amount of protein the food would need before the word on the front means much, because in Europe a food has to get a fifth of its calories from protein before it can say high protein at all. A 200 calorie bar needs 10 grams to get there, and a 400 calorie one needs 20. If what is printed on the back sits well under your number, put it back and keep your two dollars. This is not about counting anything you eat. It is one piece of math, done once, in the aisle. |
| One division problem, and the front of the package stops making the decision for you. |
| Promise me you’ll try it today? Saying it out loud is half of what makes it stick. |
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| None of this works because 20 is a magic number. It works because it hands the decision back to the side of the package where the numbers have to be accurate. Notice, too, which foods never carried the word at all. Whole food has no front of the package to shout from. |
| I got there eventually. My freezer still has waffles in it… they are just the ones I checked first, and about half the time now the cheaper box wins. |
| You have been shopping in a store designed to beat you, with the one number you needed printed on the back in six point type. That is not a character flaw. There’s still time for you. |
| So the next time you put a box down and walk away… |
| It was never your fault. |
| — Cole |
| P.S. How many things in your kitchen right now have the word protein on the front? Go count, then hit reply with just the number. I’ll tell you tomorrow how you compare. |
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