Protein Is About To Get Even More Expensive This Summer

What will cause the protein trend that’s been raging on for years now to finally end? Will it be customers finally getting sick of having it in everything? Will it be food companies running out of ideas? Or will it be some other nutrient rearing its head that vies for its attention in all these products?

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To be honest, it might be none of these things. Instead, the relentless march of protein could be stopped by price, because it’s about to get way more expensive. Here’s why.

A Valuable Nutrient

In a move that feels slightly predictable, whey protein has become both more expensive and less abundant in the last few years. Inc. reports that from 2024 to 2025, raw whey protein isolate increased in price by anywhere from 50-110%, and in the first three months of 2026, it shot up by another 50%. There’s little let-up, if any, in these price rises, and they look set to continue throughout the rest of the year.

While the push to put protein in anything food developers can think of has arguably been a contributing factor to these price rises, the increasing use of GLP-1’s has also driven demand for whey protein, says The Guardian. Individuals who take these medications frequently require more protein to preserve their muscle mass, the publication states. As such, whey protein has never been such a hot commodity.

How Is The Food Industry Responding?

In several ways. Some companies and manufacturers have had to temporarily halt production on products that contain whey protein, or on selling whey protein itself. Others have experimented with alternative proteins in their items. The problem is that whey protein provides texture as much as it does the protein itself, and so it’s not as simple as merely swapping it out for a different isolate. 

Where things haven’t been affected so much yet is in the price of items for customers. However, given that whey protein is only going to get more expensive, we could soon see all those protein shakes shooting up in cost. This is probably the last thing that everyone wants to hear, given that grocery prices are already so high, particularly for meat — and for a lot of people, whey protein acts as a good stand-in for eating chicken or beef three times a day (and a more affordable one, too). But we guess nothing is safe from price rises this year.