Cottage cheese used to be the sort of food you associated with 1970s diet plans, uninspiring lunches and people who claimed to enjoy eating grapefruit for breakfast.
Author
- Katie Edwards
Commissioning Editor, Health + Medicine and Host of Strange Health podcast, The Conversation
Now it’s a TikTok sensation.
Social media creators are blending the curdy, clumpy white stuff into everything from cookie dough and chocolate brownies to flatbreads and even slapping it onto hot dogs. Apparently, there’s no recipe that can’t be improved with a generous helping of cottage cheese.
But why has this rather unglamorous dairy product suddenly become so fashionable?
The answer is protein . We’re in the middle of a protein boom, with supermarkets filling their shelves with high-protein yoghurts, cereals, puddings and snacks. Even tea, it seems, isn’t safe from the protein treatment.
Cottage cheese, naturally high in protein and relatively low in fat, has been embraced by fitness influencers who claim it can help build muscle and burn fat. But does the science support these claims?
That’s what my co-host, Dan Baumgardt, a practising GP and lecturer at the University of Bristol, and I investigate in the first episode of the second season of Strange Health , The Conversation’s podcast exploring the weird and wonderful world of health and wellness trends.
To find out whether this unlikely superfood deserves its newfound celebrity status, I spoke to Dominic Farsi, a researcher at King’s College London, who’s become something of a resident cottage cheese expert for us.
We investigate what makes cottage cheese nutritious, whether it really helps with muscle growth and weight loss, and why the evidence behind some of its more extravagant health claims is less convincing than social media would have us believe.
Proteinmaxxing – how much is too much?
But cottage cheese is only part of a much bigger story. We also explore “proteinmaxxing”, the growing trend for deliberately consuming large quantities of protein through food, shakes, bars and supplements.
Protein is essential for maintaining muscle, repairing tissues and supporting the immune system. And some people, including older adults and those doing intensive resistance training, may benefit from consuming more.
But how much is enough? And can you have too much?
Dan explains why the benefits of increasing protein intake eventually level off, and what can happen when people take their protein obsession to extremes.
We even venture into the rather alarming history of “rabbit starvation” , a term used by early explorers to describe the potentially fatal consequences of surviving on exceptionally lean meat, such as wild rabbit, without enough fat or carbohydrates.
And we ask whether the source of your protein matters as much as the quantity, particularly when so many processed foods are being marketed as healthier simply because they’ve had extra protein added.
Have you spotted a bizarre health trend you’d like us to investigate? Email [email protected] . The stranger the question, the better.
Strange Health is hosted by Katie Edwards and Dan Baumgardt. The executive producer is Gemma Ware, with video and sound editing for this episode by Anouk Millet. Artwork by Alice Mason.
If you’ve got a question about a viral trend or video you’ve seen and you’d like us to delve into the science behind it in a future episode, please email us at [email protected].
Listen to Strange Health via any of the apps listed above, download it directly via our RSS feed or find out how else to listen here . A transcript is available via the Apple Podcasts or Spotify apps.
