McAloo Tikki has been on McDonald’s India menu since 1996. Last year, the fast food chain came up with a plant-based protein slice—pea and soy protein, developed over 500 days in partnership with the CSIR-Central Food Technological Research Institute—that could be added to any burger on the menu. The technical challenge was ensuring that the slice retained texture, meltability and flavour compatibility. One Protein Plus slice took the McAloo Tikki’s protein content from 8g to 13g. Within 24 hours of its launch, 32,000 slices had been sold.
When McDonald’s starts marketing protein, the trend has become a market.
The economy
India’s protein market is valued at around Rs15,300 crore in 2026 and projected to reach about Rs21,000 crore by 2031. The drivers of this expansion are several. Nikita Garg, a Mumbai nutritionist and founder of Entech Wellness, argues the first is psychological. With the rise of the internet, AI platforms, fitness experts, nutrition coaches and social media influencers, Indians are more educated about health than at any prior point. “The era of accepting issues as genetic or normal is slowly ending,” she says. The second driver is economic and more urgent. Diabetes care, cardiac treatments and chronic disease management have become brutally expensive. Prevention, Garg argues, is now common sense.
Protein, repositioned from a bodybuilder’s supplement to a preventive macronutrient, essential for metabolism, recovery, muscle preservation, hormonal health, immunity and healthy ageing, sits squarely at the intersection of such anxieties. “Protein is now being recognised as the quintessential macronutrient it truly is,” says Garg.
Razia Ali, founder and CEO of Bengaluru-based Profuel Foods & Beverages that makes Poptein, which claims to be India’s first protein popcorn brand, says people are demanding protein in their snacks. “That demand is a market signal,” says Ali, adding that she built Poptein not just for fitness enthusiasts but for every Indian who wants to eat better without having to eat boring. “Everyday consumers are reading labels, asking ‘how much protein?’ before ‘how many calories?’ and that’s a profound behavioural change,” she says.
Akshay Jatia, CEO of Westlife Foodworld (McDonald’s-West & South India), frames his company’s entry into the space not as opportunism but as meeting an observed consumer shift. Protein, he says, is now an “everyday aspiration” across age groups and lifestyles. The Protein Plus slice was designed, he adds, to slot protein into meals.
That framing, of access, is one the industry has broadly adopted.
The demand
How did protein become a lifestyle marker? Luke Coutinho, an integrative lifestyle expert from Mumbai, says it now signals discipline and modern health consciousness. Today the urban consumer sees it as a part of looking fitter, ageing better, avoiding cravings and staying productive. Influencers, gyms, startups and food brands have accelerated this view. “In some ways, that has helped people pay attention to an important nutrient,” says Coutinho. “But it has also created confusion.” Many people now assume that a product labelled “high protein” is healthy, a conflation the market has done little to correct and much to encourage.
The consumers this economy has created are varied, and not always who the industry imagined.
After her son’s birth in 2017, Megha Mahajan, who is from Delhi, weighed 82kg, exercising regularly with no results. A dietitian’s intervention repositioned protein as a dietary priority for weight management, energy, recovery and wellness. The intervention held through life’s subsequent demands. “During perimenopause, protein became crucial for managing my energy levels and recovery,” she says. Long-distance runs and two-hour gym sessions that had previously left her depleted no longer did. Muscle cramps diminished. Recovery came faster.
What Mahajan built was not a protein regimen so much as a protein philosophy. Whole food are its first principle. Her breakfast is four eggs, boiled or in an omelette. Paneer finds its way into poha and cheelas. Hung curd boosts protein intake. She prefers chicken breast and soya chunks to ready-made snacks. To evaluate any packaged product, she applies a simple test: multiply the protein grams by 10, then compare the result to the calorie count. “If protein x 10 is less than the calories, it’s not doing much for you,” she says. The philosophy extends to her eight-year-old son, whose momos are remade with paneer or chicken and steamed rather than fried, whose pasta uses atta-based white sauce, and whose sandwiches have Greek yoghurt where mayonnaise once sat.
Dr Gaurav Katyal, CEO, Indraprastha Apollo Hospitals, New Delhi, has been calibrating protein intake since he was 19. At 48, he targets 1.4g per kg of body weight daily—from eggs, chicken and whey. His day begins at 5am: black coffee, then gym by 6am. Post-workout comes a whey protein shake. Breakfast is oats with milk, soya, chia seeds and fruit. The mid-morning snack is dried fruits and nuts, followed by a lunch of chicken soup, eight egg whites, dal, mixed vegetables and a bowl of curd. Evenings bring boiled chicken and coffee. Meals are finished by 7pm. Vitamins D and B12 and magnesium supplements complete the routine. “Once you bring discipline into fitness and diet, it spills over to the rest of your life,” he says.
Packaged products, he says, too often tempt people with shortcuts. India is inclining towards vegetarian protein substitutes, but the substitute and the supplement are not the same thing as the nutrient delivered by a varied, whole-food diet. For those with busy schedules or limited cooking time, his advice is to establish daily calorie needs, combine protein-rich meals with exercise and avoid crash diets. Weight changes of half a kg to one kg a week beat dramatic interventions, he adds.
The body
Beneath the boom, a more complicated nutritional reality persists, and it is one the protein economy has, in some ways, obscured. The ICMR-National Institute of Nutrition’s What India Eats report, which Coutinho cites as the essential baseline, notes that cereals and millets contribute nearly half of protein intake in both rural and urban India. The probability of protein inadequacy ranges from 36 to 44 per cent. More significantly, even where total protein intake appears adequate in quantity, quality can remain poor.
India’s protein problem is not simply one of grams. It is one of quality, diversity and digestibility, a problem of what kind of protein, from what sources, combined in what ways, not merely of whether the number on a label clears a threshold. “India needs protein literacy, not protein obsession,” says Coutinho. “We cannot solve this by adding a protein claim to every snack, dessert, atta, coffee or packaged food.” Protein’s value depends not only on grams but on amino acid quality, food combinations and gut health, none of which appears on a label in any meaningful form. “The real conversation is not ‘more protein at any cost’,” he says. “It is better protein from more diverse, accessible, culturally acceptable food. Dal, curd, sprouts, eggs, fish, paneer, soy, nuts or seeds can be more meaningful than a highly processed product with a protein badge.”
It is women who carry a particular and underacknowledged dimension of this gap, points out Aditi Almal De, founder of Diet Mantra, a nutrition and wellness clinic in Kolkata. Protein requirements rise for women beyond the age of 35 as bone density shrinks with age. The reduction of oestrogen during menopause accelerates muscle and bone loss. Protein stimulates muscle repair. Vegetarians face a compounded version of the same challenge: limited protein sources mean the gap between requirement and intake widens faster, and is harder to close without diversity and planning.
Like Coutinho, De highlights the issue with the high-protein label. A protein chip is still a processed snack. A protein ice cream is still a dessert. The label changes the perception, not the product. “If people start believing every packaged food becomes healthy just because protein is added, it is a cause for concern,” she says. “We may be creating a new problem of over-reliance on marketed health food instead of building balanced eating habits.”
Garg adds that the expansion of the protein market has created a second problem along with the first it set out to solve. Consumers are shifting towards low-quality or heavily processed protein products without understanding the science that distinguishes one protein source from another. Apart from providing essential amino acids and being digestible, a protein source must also be bioavailable enough for the body to actually absorb and utilise.
For instance, nutrition science has long used egg protein as its digestibility reference. Eggs score the maximum in the protein digestibility score, meaning virtually all of what is consumed is absorbed and utilised by the body. They are also among the most affordable complete protein sources available in the Indian market, widely accessible at a fraction of the cost of any fortified packaged equivalent.
Soy protein, widely used across fortified products for its affordability and relatively high protein content, illustrates the complexity. Soybeans naturally contain trypsin inhibitors, compounds that reduce the activity of digestive enzymes responsible for breaking down proteins, which can lower digestibility and contribute to digestive discomfort if the protein is not properly processed. Poorly processed plant proteins, gluten-heavy formulations and protein products with anti-nutritional fractions may contribute to bloating, gas, diarrhoea, gut irritation and poor nutrient absorption.
This does not indict plant-based proteins or traditional Indian food, Garg is careful to say. Dal, legumes and sprouts apart, curd-rice combinations and khichdis remain deeply valuable and culturally sustainable nutritional systems when prepared properly, balanced intelligently and matched to individual digestive tolerance and metabolic condition. Their limitation is that they often come with higher carbohydrate loads, starch and omega-6-rich patterns, which, in excess or in metabolically unhealthy individuals, may contribute to inflammation, blood sugar fluctuations and poor metabolic outcomes. The solution is composition and combination, not replacement by a packaged product that corrects the grams while adding new problems of its own.
Vinit Baptist, founder and chief coach at Zest Gyms in Kolkata, draws a distinction the market rarely makes—between protein supplements and protein snacks. Supplements, he argues, are generally the more efficient option: they deliver more protein for fewer calories. Snacks can work, but only when the protein-to-calorie ratio fits meaningfully within the individual’s overall diet. “The challenge,” he says, “is that many people focus on food labelled ‘healthy’ when their actual goal may be weight loss or calorie management.”
Context, Baptist argues, is everything. Regular potato chips are calorie-dense and easy to overeat. Protein chips may offer more protein and sometimes fewer calories. Side by side, they can represent a better option, but this does not mean protein chips are nutritional solutions, nor that regular chips must be avoided entirely.
The label
A product, as Coutinho puts it, still needs to be judged by its full ingredient list and how it fits into the person’s lifestyle. “A protein cookie or protein chip should be evaluated as a packaged food first,” he says. “These products may have a place occasionally, for athletes, older adults, people with higher clinical needs, or those genuinely unable to meet requirements through food alone. For most people, the first step should be improving the everyday plate.”
The real issue, as Garg frames it, is the oversimplification of the protein conversation into labels instead of scientific education. The next stage of India’s protein movement should focus less on more protein and more on better protein: helping people learn about quality, digestibility, amino acid balance, metabolic health, food diversity and sustainable eating habits. “If this literacy improves, much of the confusion, myths, fear-based marketing and unnecessary dependence on processed protein products will naturally disappear,” she says.
The equity dimension of the boom is the one Coutinho presses hardest, and the one the industry speaks of least. India needs affordable, clean-label, culturally relevant protein solutions, not only premium products. If the protein economy serves only the people who can afford expensive packaged food, it misses the larger public health opportunity entirely, and leaves the population that actually carries the nutritional burden, the cereal-heavy, protein-poor diet of lower-income India, exactly where it was.
Back at the burger counter, the McAloo Tikki may now offer an additional 5g protein at a price point accessible to urban consumers worried about their protein intake. But whether those 5g address a true nutritional gap, and whether they reach the population whose gap is the greatest, are the key questions.
