More than half of consumers say high protein is an important when buying food for their families

More than half (55 percent) of consumers say high protein is an important attribute to consider when buying food for their families, according to Nielsen research, but their knowledge of protein content in common food items doesn’t match up with reality.Drawing on a half-dozen of its longitudinal research studies, Nielsen calculated that 6 percent of households include someone who lives on a high-protein diet, totaling more than 5.4 million people. But “the blockbuster protein sources” — beef, chicken and pork — “didn’t score well in the minds of consumers,” the research firm said in a new report.In fact, between 45 percent and 64 percent of consumers didn’t consider beef, chicken or pork to be “high in protein” in a 2018 Nielsen survey, a wider range than when Nielsen conducted the same survey in 2015.A little more than half (55 percent) were able to correctly identify the amount of protein in beef, compared with 42 percent who could do that same for chicken and only 36 percent for pork.Data shows that consumers are still choosing traditional sources of protein such as meat, eggs and dairy as their primary source, and growth in those categories is up 1.1 percent over the period. Still, alternate sources of protein is a fast-growing sector, with sales of other “good” or “excellent” sources of protein rising 1.3 percent. Meanwhile, 78 percent of respondents said they believed peanut butter is higher in protein than it actually is, and most did not rank shrimp or cottage cheese as high-protein foods although the protein count for these items is quite high.Noting that consumers make 60 percent of their purchase decisions at the shelf, Nielsen research pointed out that the results indicate an opportunity to market protein content with on-pack notes and in-store signs, “even for products where it seems obvious.”