The Viral Milk That Helped Set Off America's Protein Boom

SPEAKER_2 (0:02)

Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio, News.

Tracy Alloway (0:18)

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway.

Joe Weisenthal (0:22)

And I'm Joe Weisenthal.

Tracy Alloway (0:23)

Joe, you're a gym person, aren't you? Notice I did not say gym bro.

Joe Weisenthal (0:27)

Yeah, that's right, that's right, thank you. Aspirationally, I do go to the gym regularly. I don't go to the gym regularly enough to see a difference. I think because, like I'm at the stage of life, or like every day I'm getting a little bit closer to death. And so I'm like holding serve, I'm like sort of holding at the same. So like I know progress, but maybe I'm not regressing. But yes.

Tracy Alloway (0:46)

I still think if you go to the gym regularly, you're a gym person.

Joe Weisenthal (0:50)

Yeah, okay, yeah.

Tracy Alloway (0:51)

All right. That's impressive.

Joe Weisenthal (0:52)

And I'm gonna have less shame about it.

Tracy Alloway (0:53)

Okay, here's my question. Have you noticed the drinking habits of some of your fellow gym people? Have you noticed anyone walking around with bottles of milk?

Joe Weisenthal (1:03)

I have. I mean, I still see more people with like the energy drinks rather than milk. But yeah, I've definitely seen it. I think like back in the day, you had these guys, I think some of them still do with actual like people who try to drink a gallon of milk in a day. There's that famous guy, he has a book called Starting Strength. He's like a cult guru within the barbell world whose name I'm blanking on. I think he's a big like drink a bunch of milk guy.

Tracy Alloway (1:32)

If you're serious about it, you got to mix raw eggs in with milk. That's what I say.

Joe Weisenthal (1:37)

You do? Have you done that?

Tracy Alloway (1:38)

No, I haven't. Although, I did when I triple fractured my foot when I was in Hong Kong, and I did have a doctor who advised me to drink a lot of milk to build up the calcium and heal the foot. Anyway, we're getting slightly off topic. One of the milk brands that you see a lot in gyms is something called Fairlife.

Joe Weisenthal (1:56)

Yeah, I've seen it. I actually literally had never thought about what it is. But yes, I had seen this brand.

Tracy Alloway (2:03)

I don't know that much about it, but I first got kind of interested in the company reading Austin Frerich's book, Barrens. There's a whole chapter in there about dairy barrens. And it's about Fair Oaks, which turned into Fairlife. All I know about Fairlife is that Coke bought them. They had a big distribution deal with Coke. And we know how important distribution is in the beverage industry from our previous conversations on Celsius and things like that. And it's turned into this phenomenon where Fairlife is this milk that's I guess supposed to be healthier. It has more protein. It has less lactose or no lactose, I can't remember, which means you can keep it in your fridge for like 100 days. Which is actually, I find that useful. So we should talk about it because it's also kind of kicked off this whole protein craze.

Joe Weisenthal (2:55)

Protein everywhere.

Tracy Alloway (2:56)

I know, I don't get it.

Joe Weisenthal (2:57)

Like Starbucks, they have these, now you can get this protein drinks. I haven't tried them yet.

I, you know, when did it become a crime to just eat normally? I get, I eat some meat and I eat some veggies and occasionally eat some carbs and stuff like that and whatever. But yeah, you get, over time, it's like different macronutrients trend, right? So there was a while, it's like good fats, right? People were really into fats for a while. And then it's like, oh, you need fermented stuff. So, you know, let's eat more of that. It's good for your gut health. But we're in like a, we're certainly in a protein bull market right now. People really want more protein because reasons.

Tracy Alloway (3:34)

Yeah. And what's interesting again about Fairlife is it's making a lot of money. That's feeding into Coke's bottom line. Share price has gone up quite a bit. And it's also at odds with basically everything else that's happening in the dairy industry where, you know, prices tend to be pretty low and have been kind of stuck in a downward spiral for a long time. Profit margins are very, very thin. So this is an outlier.

Joe Weisenthal (3:59)

People are consuming less traditional dairy. I think a lot, you know, at least I don't know how big it is, but some of the quote alternative milks, the almond milks of the world, the cashew milk, soy milk is probably taking some. Yeah, plain old regular dairy. Now, I never talk about, by the way, number two milk. I feel like everyone's either skim or fat these days because more of the sort of like polarization of society that no one likes a nice middle ground milk anymore. So now apparently they want super high protein milk too.