From Protein to Matcha Food Fads Spread Faster Than Ever (Economist)

Summary

A Business-section piece (sub-head: "Supply chains struggle to keep up") on how social media now builds demand for a single ingredient in weeks while farms and dairies need years to respond. The capture holds only the lede; the full text was recovered from an archived copy. The health-relevant core: the protein craze has pushed whey — once pig feed — into a fivefold price spike, with cottage cheese in similar shortage. Firms cope by spotting trends early and riding them before consumers move on.

Key claims (with numbers)

• Whey protein concentrate rose fivefold in price in the three years to June 2026 (Vesper, a research firm) because demand for gym shakes soared while dairies did not scale cheese production (whey is cheese's by-product). Independent corroboration: NutraIngredients, June 2026 cites Vesper data putting WPC80 at record levels around $32,000 per tonne, up about fivefold since 2023, with some suppliers sold out for the rest of 2026.
• Cottage cheese, which TikTok influencers also recommend for "bulking up", has seen a similar shortage.
• Tencha leaves (the matcha input) nearly tripled in price between 2024 and 2025; the bushes take years to grow, and middlemen crowding into the market pushed prices further (Rocky Xu, Los Angeles matcha seller).
• Dubai chocolate: a 2023 TikTok video of a pistachio-pastry bar was viewed >100m times; months later top chocolatiers sold versions, straining global pistachio production.
• Food is unusually prone to virality: photogenic (matcha, ube lattes) and cheap enough to try once (even a $19 Japanese strawberry); young buyers lean to novelty (Dan Frommer, The New Consumer).
• Historical fads: Georgian-era pineapple rental shops; Swiss fondue in 1960s–70s America and the pots now in cupboards.
• Starbucks as the anticipation case: green-tea lattes in 2006, "popping pearls" in 2024 before bubble tea went mainstream, and a protein range now as popular as flat whites in Europe; it moved from "small focus groups" to tracking "millions of customers shaping trends in real time" (Louise Direito). Collaborations (Fly by Jing chilli oil with Shake Shack, 2022) are another hedge.
• Not every fad is worth joining: Starbucks' olive-oil coffees were pulled in America and Canada less than a year after their 2024 launch amid complaints about laxative effects.

Health reading

The article is about commerce, not physiology; it makes no claim that extra protein, matcha or cottage cheese improves health. Its value to the health brain is as the demand-side record: protein supplementation is now a mass consumer behaviour driven by influencers rather than by evidence of need — the same marketing-ahead-of-evidence pattern as Electrolytes You Probably Don't Need (Economist) and the D2C tests in Can You Hack Your Gut Microbiome (Economist). Whether the protein fad has a nutritional basis is the question the 2026-10-31 Well Informed column on protein powders addresses (not yet paged; sub-head "Pure whey is the way to go").

Connections

• Food Fads — concept page.
• State of the Consumer 2026 (McKinsey) — the "health revolution" and maximalist-optimiser wellness spend behind the demand.
• Dietary Nudging — the policy side trying to push the same consumers the other way.
• The Economist

Captured-by trigger

Source file: raw/processed/Economist 2026-09-05 Business - From protein to matcha food fads spread faster than eve.md (lede only; full text recovered from an archived copy of the article).