Protein above all else: anatomy of a nutritional trend

"The trend for the last 20 years has been 'low fat'. Today, 'high protein' tends to be labelled everywhere." These are the words of Alexandre Scholer, Managing Director of Happy Snacks, towards the end of his interview with the Journal, confirming an observable change in the way we think about healthy eating. Scholer was already interested in high-protein nutrition long before it began to gradually sneak into the market last year. Today, because of his busy work schedule, he no longer has the time he used to have as a student to go to the gym several times a week: But in his "best times", he managed to gain from 75 to 112 kilograms in just under five years, he recalls.

The now 37-year-old is not afraid to half-jokingly say that he is "actually a total nerd". In his childhood and youth, he spent many hours gaming, rarely went outside and could have been described as rather lanky. That changed when he moved to the United States in 2008 to study.

It all started with peanut butter

In the States, Scholer suddenly found himself hanging out a lot with sportspeople, especially hockey and American football players – "they were real units, really ripped, " he laughs. They took him to the gym. "One thing is to train, the other is to make sure you eat. It's 50 per cent about nutrition, 30 per cent about fitness, and then 20 per cent about sleep and recovery." This is what his new-found friends taught him.

The advice was generally simple: "Alex, eat everything you can." That's when he first started eating peanut butter "like a madman". But he didn't stop there. "When it came to protein, we had the golden rule: you should eat one gram of protein for every pound of weight you have."

Today, he thinks back to this time almost nostalgically – because the student years are the phase in which you objectively have the most time to build muscle mass quickly and efficiently. Also thanks to your younger body, adds Scholer.

"I used to eat ten to twelve eggs in the morning, no joke." Plus toast, sausage, cheese, loads of tinned tuna and anything else that was available. At some point, he even started meticulously separating egg white from yolk: The low-calorie egg white mainly provides protein, in addition to water, while egg yolks tend to provide fat, vitamins, minerals, and choline. Macro-optimisation as written in the book; not least because egg whites are easier to eat in large quantities.