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Home > Sangre Celestial > Any which whey: America's protein obsession
Podcast: Sangre Celestial
Episode:

Any which whey: America's protein obsession
Category: Arts
Duration: 00:00:00
Publish Date: 2025-08-22 19:00:00
Description: "Eat more protein!" We've all heard the advice. And we've been listening. Americans are eating more protein than ever, often in the form of whey. Whey is a byproduct of making cheese, and it used to be a headache for cheese makers. Now, it's big business. In 2020, a pound of high protein whey cost $3. Today, it costs approximately $10. The whey-production industry is booming, growing about 10% each year. New York Times reporter Kevin Draper wrote about how this protein rich elixir is transforming the dairy industry . A cheesemaker separates the curds from the whey. Photo via Shutterstock. What is whey? Different cheeses are made in different ways but here's a simplified explanation. Cheese is made out of milk, rennet or enzymes, and other additives to give it different flavors or colors. But only 10% of the milk that goes into that ends up in the cheese. Roughly 90% of the milk is left over, and that's what whey is. It is the 90% of milk that's left over after cheese is made. It still has lactose, protein, and fat in it, so it was often used as animal feed. It was also sometimes used in baby formulas. In the late 1980s and early '90s, we started seeing whey used in protein powders and targeted at people who were going to the gym to get big muscles. Whey, the byproduct of cheesemaking, still contains lactose, protein, and fat. Photo via Shutterstock. More recently, the growing use of Ozempic and other GLP-1 agonists contributed to the whey protein boom. In addition to losing fat, people often lose muscle. When you're on something like Ozempic, it can be difficult to eat the amount of protein you need to stem that muscle loss because you don't feel hungry. So people have turned to protein powders to get the protein that they need. "They can get a much denser product that has a lot more protein in it for a relatively small portion size," Kevin explains. What does that mean for the dairy industry? Because of the way the US government regulates milk prices (it's complicated), it's not terribly lucrative. In fact, the price that farmers receive for milk today is about the same as it was 25 years ago. So farmers have moved to make their operations more efficient. They have also looked to additional income streams, like whey. In fact, the rise in the price of whey has saved many dairy farmers while the price of milk remains so low. "It's not like whey is helping them thrive," Kevin says. "They're not building huge new facilities or buying hundreds more cows because of it. They would be in dire shape without this, and because of it, they're okay."
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