The products: At weight rooms, jogging tracks and football fields across the country, the path to athletic success is often littered with protein bar wrappers and empty protein powder canisters.
Many athletes -- especially bodybuilders and others looking for extra muscle mass -- have become near-obsessive in their quest for protein, says Ben Miller, an assistant professor of health and exercise science at Colorado State University in Fort Collins who specializes in nutrition and athletic performance. A dedicated cyclist, Miller eats the occasional protein bar himself, but other exercisers make him look like a protein lightweight. "A lot of strength-training athletes eat protein every two or three hours," he says.
Grocery stores and health food stores offer lots of high-protein powders, shakes, bars and pills for the gym set. Many of the products contain whey, an extract of curdled milk. Soy, egg and casein (another milk byproduct) are also popular ingredients.
A couple of examples: Designer Whey, a concentrated powder that comes in a variety of flavors, contains 18 grams of protein and 2 grams of carbohydrates per scoop. Users are instructed to mix a scoop of powder with water or some other liquid. The label suggests getting a full scoop's worth of the mix before exercise, a scoop's worth 15 to 20 minutes after exercise, and intermittent sips during exercise. A 12.7-ounce canister costs about $13, which adds up to roughly a dollar per scoop. A 2.8-ounce Nitro-Tech Hardcore protein bar containing 30 grams of protein and 32 grams of carbs costs more than $2. (That adds up to about $1 for each 15 minutes of aftertaste.) The website encourages users to enjoy a Nitro-Tech bar at any time "as part of your diet and strength training."
The claims: The label for Designer Whey promises "better stamina," "better power" and "better recovery." According to the company website, Designer Whey "has produced bigger and better results than any other protein supplement in history -- up to 3 times better than regular whey proteins." The label for Nitro-Tech Hardcore protein bars simply states that it "builds muscles fast."
The bottom line: Anyone who's serious about exercise needs to be serious about protein, says Richard Kreider, chairman of the department of health and kinesiology and director of the Exercise & Sport Nutrition Laboratory at Texas A&M University in College Station. Just as the ads claim, the body does need extra protein to build muscle and recover from a strenuous workout, Kreider says. "Almost everyone agrees that the RDA for protein isn't sufficient for athletes or anyone exercising for more than one hour a day."
