{"id":428459,"date":"2025-09-16T08:50:15","date_gmt":"2025-09-16T08:50:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/428459\/"},"modified":"2025-09-16T08:50:15","modified_gmt":"2025-09-16T08:50:15","slug":"want-more-protein-for-less-money-dont-be-fooled-by-the-slick-black-packaging-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/428459\/","title":{"rendered":"Want more protein for less money? Don\u2019t be fooled by the slick black packaging"},"content":{"rendered":"

Black packaging by design<\/strong><\/p>\n

Food marketers\u00a0use colours<\/a>\u00a0to give us signals about what\u2019s in a package.<\/p>\n

Green signals natural and environmentally friendly, reds and yellows are often linked to energy, and blue goes with coolness and hydration.<\/p>\n

These days, black is often used as a visual shorthand for products containing protein.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s more than that. Research also suggests\u00a0black conveys high-quality or \u201cpremium\u201d products<\/a>. This makes it the perfect match for foods marketed as \u201cfunctional\u201d or \u201cperformance-boosting\u201d.<\/p>\n

The \u2018health halo\u2019 effect<\/strong><\/p>\n

When one attribute of a food is seen as positive, it can make us assume the whole product is health-promoting, even if that\u2019s not the case. This is called a\u00a0\u201chealth halo\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n

For protein, the glow of the protein halo can make us blind to the other attributes of the food, such as added fats or sugars. We might be willing to\u00a0pay more too<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s important to know protein deficiency is rare in countries like Australia. You can even\u00a0have too much protein<\/a>.<\/p>\n

How to spend less to get more protein<\/strong><\/p>\n

If you do have good reason to think you need more protein, here\u2019s how to get better value for your money.<\/p>\n

Animal-based core foods are nutritionally dense and high-quality protein foods. Meats, fish, poultry, eggs, fish, and cheese will have between 11 to 32 grams of protein per 100 grams.<\/p>\n

That could give you 60g in a chicken breast, 22g in a can of tuna, 17g in a 170g tub of Greek yoghurt, or 12g in 2 eggs.<\/p>\n

In the animal foods, chicken is economical, delivering more than 30g of protein for each $1 spent.<\/p>\n

But you don\u2019t need to eat animal products to get enough protein.<\/p>\n

In fact, once you factor in costs \u2013 and I made the following calculations based on recent supermarket prices \u2013 plant-based protein sources become even more attractive.<\/p>\n

Legumes (such as beans, lentils and soybeans) have about 9g of protein per 100g, which is about half a cup. Legumes are in the range of 20g of protein per dollar spent, which is a similar cost ratio to a protein powder.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Black packaging by design Food marketers\u00a0use colours\u00a0to give us signals about what\u2019s in a package. Green signals natural…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":428460,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4318],"tags":[186,1203,146123,105,725,3368,704,12,4434,6661,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-428459","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nutrition","8":"tag-australia","9":"tag-food","10":"tag-food-marketing","11":"tag-health","12":"tag-health-news","13":"tag-marketing","14":"tag-new-zealand","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-nutrition","17":"tag-protein","18":"tag-uk","19":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115213121913925920","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=428459"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428459\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/428460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=428459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=428459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=428459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}