Perfecting Plant Protein
Protein isn’t just a trend or a fad — it’s becoming the defining nutrient of the decade. For the fifth year in a row, protein is the nutrient that most Americans say they are trying to consume — with 70% actively seeking it out in 2025.
While a longstanding marker of a healthy food, “good source of protein” has become the top criterion Americans are using to define a healthy food for the first time. For the third straight year, a high-protein diet is the most common eating pattern Americans are following — climbing from just 4% in 2018 to an impressive 23% in 2025.
Why the protein surge? According to the International Food Information Council (IFIC), the protein craze is being driven by media attention and increased consumer interests in topics like GLP-1 medications, weight management, fitness, energy, and healthy aging.
And this isn’t just consumer preference. It’s clinical guidance: 12% of U.S. adults have used a GLP-1 drug like Ozempic, Wegovy, and Mounjaro — and their healthcare providers are telling them to cut caloric intake by roughly 50% while prioritizing protein at every meal.
As a registered dietitian at UCHealth, the University of Colorado Health system, put it: “If you’re only able to eat 50%, you should make every bite as nutritious as possible — protein, fiber, and hydration is the name of the game.”
Not eating enough protein is especially concerning for people on GLP-1 drugs. That guidance isn’t just about optimization — it’s about prevention. According to Harvard Medical School’s Dr. JoAnn Manson, roughly 25% of the weight lost on these medications comes from muscle and lean body mass — making adequate protein intake critical for preserving strength, stability, and metabolic health.
For food and beverage developers, the implication is clear: demand for high‑protein products is accelerating in every direction — from GLP‑1 patients to fitness enthusiasts to everyday consumers looking to feel and look their best. Healthfulness has become a powerful market driver, with 62% of consumers saying it plays an important role in their food and beverage purchase decisions.
And increasingly, that demand is pulling toward plant‑based sources. The plant‑based protein market is projected to hit $22 billion in 2026, growing at 8.5% CAGR through 2036 — a long‑term structural shift, not a fad. Innova Market Insights named “Authentic Plant‑Based” a top five global food trend for 2026, reflecting a consumer base that’s moved past novelty and now wants plant‑based products that are nutritious, minimally processed, and naturally functional. Plant proteins also align with the digestive wellness movement — perceived as easier on the gut, especially for the lactose‑intolerant and dairy‑sensitive. And while sustainability still matters, it’s no longer the only reason consumers reach for plant protein. Nutrition and functionality now lead, with brands winning when they can deliver predictable performance in solubility, taste, and texture.
But here’s the catch — as developers turn to plant proteins like pea, oat, and soy to meet this demand, they run into notoriously difficult taste challenges. Bitter, beany, astringent, cardboard‑like off‑notes can derail even the most nutritionally impressive formulation.
The Implication for Product Developers
This shift creates a massive market opportunity. It also creates a formulation challenge.
For brands, competition is intensifying. Major market reports show that plant‑based protein sources are not only rising in popularity, but have become one of the top trends shaping the global protein market, attracting a wave of new product entrants—many of which offer clean‑label, plant‑forward, or functional formulations. With competitors rapidly matching these trends, simply being plant‑based, clean, or functional is no longer enough. Staying ahead of the game means finding ways to deliver on high protein without sacrificing taste.
It’s a formulation tightrope. Too much of the functional ingredient and taste suffers. Too much of what introduces good taste — the fats, sugars, and salts of the nutrition panel — and you risk losing on the metrics consumers equate with nutritious.
Plant proteins walk this line. As product developers turn to using pea, oat, soy, and other plant-based proteins to meet the high protein demand, they run headfirst into some of the most stubborn sensory challenges in food science.
Bitter.
Starchy.
Astringent.
Beany.
Cardboard-like.
Rancid.
Formulators looking to keep sugar content low often turn to high-intensity sweeteners like stevia or monk fruit in their plant-based protein products. But these can introduce their own flavor challenges — bitter linger, metallic aftertaste, or an artificial sweetness profile — compounding the off-notes already inherent in plant proteins.
And what works at the bench doesn’t always survive scale-up. Heat processing steps like pasteurization and UHT can amplify off-notes that were barely perceptible in a small-batch sample — or unlock entirely new ones. Bitterness intensifies. Astringency sharpens. A formulation that tasted clean in R&D can taste dramatically different coming off a commercial production line. For developers, this means the flavor challenge isn’t solved at the bench — it’s solved at scale.
Read more on sweetening with less sugar without compromising on flavor.
The result? High protein products that check every box nutritionally but fall short on the one factor that matters most to consumers when choosing their protein sources: taste. Per the 2025 IFIC Spotlight Survey on protein, taste and price are the top two factors Americans consider when choosing protein sources — outranking healthfulness.
The bottom line is that a product that doesn’t taste good won’t get a second chance — no matter how impressive the nutrition panel.
Let’s Talk Taste
Plant proteins come with well-documented off-notes.
A CPG brand launched a plant-based protein snack bar. On the label, they were fantastic. They offered key nutrients, high protein, and low net carbohydrates. The feedback they got was not fantastic. The bars were bland, starchy, bitter, and had astringent off-notes… all of these inherent consequences when using plant-based protein and high intensity sweeteners.
One customer even said, “These bars may be the blandest bars I’ve had yet.”
No formulator wants to hear that.
Another brand released a plant-based protein shake. Their feedback? Oxidized pea flavor and cardboard off-notes. These critiques were topped off with a bitterness and funk from high-intensity sweeteners.
Food and beverage companies are working hard to come out with innovative products that match the nutrition needs of their consumers, while making them taste good. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
The ClearIQ™ Solution
ClearIQ™, created with mushroom mycelial fermentation technology, is a next-generation flavor modifier that can mitigate those challenging and common off-notes like bitterness and also enhance flavors to deliver better-tasting products without compromise on nutrition.
ClearIQ™ doesn’t just mask off-notes. It harmonizes the full flavor profile, bringing out the brightness of citrus, the umami of a savory high-protein application, and the richness of caramel and chocolate. It also helps to improve mouthfeel.
It’s a clean-label addition that’s heat stable, pH stable, and pressure stable — meaning ClearIQ™ performs consistently across processing conditions, from baked bars to protein powders. It’s also non-GMO, keto-friendly, and adds zero sugar or carbohydrates. These are huge advantages for formulators working within tight nutritional guardrails on high protein products.
What makes ClearIQ™ unique is its multifunctional abilities. Rather than targeting a specific off-note or flavor to modify, it can mitigate a myriad of the off-notes that plague plant protein formulations: bitter, metallic, sour, astringent, starchy, beany, and carboard. At the same time, it’ll enhance desirable flavors already present in the system, brightening and clarifying them rather than burying them with the off-notes.
ClearIQ™ enables a cleaner, more harmonized taste profile that lets the product’s intended flavor — not its protein source — shine through.
And it does this at remarkably low usage rates. In a plant protein shake formulation, just 0.04% (20 ppm) of ClearIQ™ delivered measurable improvements across the board: increased chocolate notes, reduced oxidized pea flavor, reduced cardboard and beany notes, reduced stevia bitterness, and increased dairy-like texture and mouthfeel — meaningful sensory improvement at a micro-dose inclusion with minimal impact on cost of goods. That said, optimization matters. ClearIQ™ follows a bell curve of effectiveness — too little yields unsatisfactory results, and too much may suppress overall flavor, and that’s why MycoTechnology application experts work directly with product development teams to find the right dose for each unique formulation, ensuring the modifier is dialed in for maximum impact.
Case Studies
ClearIQ™ successfully mitigated several off-notes in this plant-based protein product. It was able to enhance the creaminess of the vanilla flavor, improve sweetness, and smooth the sweetness curve of stevia. It neutralized bitter, starchy, and astringent off-notes while highlighting caramel flavors. The reformulation and relaunch of these bars enabled exponential growth for the brand, improving consumer satisfaction and allowing them to enter big-box retailers.
Remember that “these bars may be the blandest bars I’ve had yet” comment from earlier? Feedback went from that to “I gotta say, great improvements. The flavors are much better than before.”
ClearIQ is now utilized across their entire plant-based protein product portfolio, including two line extensions and a ready-to-mix powder line.
Protein shakes are one of the most direct and common ways consumers are hitting their protein goals — but pea protein, a popular choice for its amino acid profile and clean-label appeal, brings a laundry list of sensory challenges. Cardboard and bean-like notes paired with a bitter linger from stevia made this shake a challenge.
Enter ClearIQ™. This plant protein shake with pea protein isolate, soluble corn fiber, cane sugar, cocoa, and stevia extract added a tiny bit of ClearIQ™ and delivered a dramatically improved performance. Chocolate notes were amplified and clarified. The funky oxidized pea flavor that dominates plant protein formulations was significantly reduced. Cardboard notes minimized. Stevia’s bitter linger and sweetness curve was leveled. The overall mouthfeel improved — smoother and closer to the dairy-like texture consumers love to see in a protein shake.
The result was a product that was a chocolate shake first and a plant-protein supplement second, with just a tiny addition of ClearIQ™.
Learn more about ClearIQ™ in alternative dairy applications in our case study.
The Bottom Line
The protein movement isn’t slowing down. Consumers are actively seeking it out, dietitians are prescribing it, GLP-1 users need it, and the market is rewarding brands that deliver on both nutrition and taste. But for product developers working with plant proteins, the path from “high protein” on the label to “great tasting” in the consumer’s hand isn’t a straight line.
Bitter, beany, cardboard, astringent — these aren’t just minor inconveniences. They’re the reasons products get one-star reviews, stall at scale, and sit on shelves. In a market where taste outranks even healthfulness as a purchase driver in high protein formulations, off-notes aren’t just a formulation problem. They’re a business problem.
ClearIQ™ was built for exactly this challenge. Not to mask. Not to cover up. But to fundamentally improve the way plant protein products taste — from bars to shakes to ready-to-drink beverages — while protecting the clean label and nutritional profile that got the product greenlit in the first place.
The case studies tell the story. A protein bar went from “the blandest bars I’ve had yet” to big-box retail shelves. A plant protein shake became a chocolate shake first and a supplement second. An oat latte went from a stalled line extension to a brand’s fastest-growing product.
Every one of those products had the nutrition and label appeal. What they needed was the taste to match. That’s what ClearIQ™ delivers.
Dealing with a plant-based protein product and it’s just not quite right? The nutrition is likely there. Let’s get the taste to deliver. Connect with the MycoTechnology team today to find the optimal ClearIQ™ dose for your formulation.