I ate all the protein snacks I could stomach in a day. I’d rather be weak.

There is no escaping the sense that we are living in the era of peak protein, a moment in time in which reverence for the macronutrient borders on religion.

Protein proselytizers have been around for years, of course. There were weightlifters and their murky shakes spiked with GNC powder, then the carb-shunning South Beach-ers of the early aughts.

But these days, it’s not just the protein-maxing, macro-counting gym bros espousing their lust for the stuff. At some point, protein became the shibboleth for the suddenly trendy menopausal and perimenopausal set, along with power-walking in weighted vests. The MAGA movement, which touts beef tallow and red meat, is on board. Wellness influencers laud it for building strength and curbing appetites, while often overlooking the fact most of these products marketed as health foods qualify as the kind of ultra-processed fare we’re told to avoid.

Acolytes are not just content to house chicken breasts and hard-boiled eggs and beef jerky. Everything, it seems, is getting protein-ified – even toothpaste, is case you want gums that are swole, not swollen. Never mind that most Americans are already eating the recommended amount of protein.

How much is enough? The federal recommended dietary allowance is 0.8 grams daily per kilogram of body weight, which is about 54 grams of protein for a person weighing 150 pounds. But that is the minimum. For active people, experts recommend between 1 to 1.2 grams per kilogram and even up to double the daily minimum. For athletes, some researchers recommend more.

No matter, food companies eager to capitalize on the collective hunger for protein are packing it into just about everything.

You could, I noted to an editor, spend a day eat nothing but protein-boosted food, which is how I would end up with an assignment to do just that. (Perhaps this will teach me to keep such observations to myself.) With my mission set, I first went shopping, and found it easy to fill up a cart. The day was heavy on snacks since many of the popular products are designed for on-the-go eating.

In my account below, I’ve noted the protein contained in one serving of each item I tried, although I did not finish a full serving of each. I wanted to survive the full day, after all. Here’s how my day of eating like a fruit-fearing amino acid freak went down:

Wheaties Protein (29 g protein per serving: 21 g from the cereal; 8 g from ¾ cup whole milk): I started off like a champion – with a bowl of Wheaties. The company has always associated itself with athletes, so its new protein-packed flavors seem quite on-brand. I tried the honey pecan variety, whose sweetener gave the traditional flakes a strange texture, rendering them sticky and not crunchy. The cloying fake vanilla flavor wasn’t doing them any favors either, although I appreciated that at least some of the cereal’s protein came not just from soy protein isolate but from pecans and sunflower seeds.

Running tally: 29 grams

Legendary Foods Strawberry Protein Pastry (20 g protein per serving): If you’re more of a Pop-Tart person, there’s a jacked-up breakfast for you – this sure looks like dupe for the nostalgic treat, with its confetti-flecked icing topping. A protein blend of calcium caseinate, micellar casein (both derived from dairy) and whey protein isolates were the first ingredients on a list that included a litany of unappealing lab-wizardry, from sugar substitutes erythritol and sucralose to Yellows No. 1 and 5. This Mock Tart tasted as fake as one might suspect, even after a warmup in the microwave that the wrapper promised would give me a “next level experience.” Honestly, I’d rather eat the grocery bag.

Running tally: 49 grams

Ready Protein Water (20 g of protein per serving): Of course there is such a thing as protein water, a product that caused me to ask a question I never expected to mull: Can water feel slimy? The answer, it turns out, is yes! This drink was viscous and flavored with cherry, giving it both the mouthfeel and taste of cough syrup. Alas, it lingered long after I had managed to gulp it down, leaving behind a tooth-coating stevia sweetness.

Running tally: 69 grams

Khloud Protein Popcorn (7 g of protein per serving): My midmorning snack was the most high-profile of the lineup. The brand fronted by reality royalty Khloé Kardashian, promises “Good stuff zero fluff,” and after my last science experiment of a snack, the simple, easily pronounceable ingredients (popcorn, milk protein isolate, cane sugar, olive oil, coconut milk and mineral salt) were welcome. I would have preferred the white cheddar flavor, but my local market only had the sweet and salty kettle corn style in stock, so that’s what I went with. The kernels had a nice sweet-salt balance and no off flavors, but they felt a little stale, and the powdery dust covering them was chalky. Still, unlike nearly all of the other bites I tried on this fateful day, I actually went back for a second handful.

Running tally: 76 grams

Barilla’s Protein+ pasta (10 g of protein per serving) and Chad & Barney’s Sturdy Sauce (20 g of protein per serving): For lunch, a bowl of pasta awaited – but not anything your nonna would recognize. The penne got some heft from pea protein and chickpea flour, and the marinara was bulked up with something called “hydrolyzed bovine collagen.” The pasta itself was passable, if a tad gummy. But the bitter, astringent sauce tasted like licking a can of sour tomatoes. I was halfway through the day and already ready to quit – protein is supposed to help you get stronger, but my will to finish this project was suddenly feeling quite feeble.

Running tally: 106 grams

Redefine Foods’ oatmeal protein pie (15 g of protein per serving): Later in the afternoon, I sampled a trio of peanut-powered products. First up was a sandwich of soft chocolate disks and a filling made with what I assumed was Skippy brand peanut butter. But when I examined the packaging, I noticed that nowhere was the phrase “peanut butter” actually used, and that underneath the large font used to tout the “chocolate” was the smaller modifier “flavored.” As it turned out, there wasn’t much of the promised flavoring, and I’m not sure I would have known the pie was chocolate if I didn’t have the visual cue and the packaging to tell me. The filling itself was fine at first bite, but I quickly got that suspiciously cloying note – and another glance at the wrapper revealed the culprit: stevia, my nemesis of the day.

Running tally: 121 grams

One Reese’s Peanut Butter Lovers Flavored Protein Bar (18 g of protein per serving): Another giant of the peanut butter space, Reese’s, is half of the collab with protein-bar maker One. I sighed when I spotted yet more low-calorie sweeteners – this bar includes maltitol, a sugar alcohol; and isomalto-oligosaccharides, which are derived from starch – that gives this bar the feeling of a Franken-candy. It was chewy, gritty and brought to mind stale taffy.

Running tally: 139 grams

Lenny & Larry’s Complete Cookie (8 g of protein per serving): This soft-baked cookie with peanut butter and chocolate chip earned the dubious distinction of being my least-loathed of the three, with a chewy texture and more natural flavor. But if you’re in the game for protein, this cookie might be a bit misleading: The packaging says it contains 16 grams, but an examination of the nutritional label clarifies that the single cookie comprises two servings, meaning each serving contains only 8 grams of protein.

Running tally: 147 grams

Quest protein chips (19 g of protein per serving): A combo of crispy snacks awaited me later. I was excited (well, as jazzed as I could be after the day’s onslaught) by the Quest tortilla-style chips in the ranch flavor, which some fans have hyped on social media as a substitute for Cool Ranch Doritos, my guilty pleasure of a road-trip snack. They were, alas, a pale shadow of that classic chip, with a one-note tang and a texture I found oddly … sandy? And really, people – more stevia?

Running tally: 166 grams

Lenny & Larry’s Fitzels (7 g of protein per serving): This snack, a play on “pretzels” and … “fitness,” probably, offered more potential for misunderstanding. The packaging notes that there are 20 grams of protein per bag, but again, you have to read the fine print to glean that there are three servings in the small pouch. The “cinnamon bun” flavor had a nice bakery-like scent, but they didn’t have the same snap as real pretzels (perhaps due to the addition of pea protein). Still, I felt like I was ending the day on a relatively high note, because I didn’t want to actually throw this snack across the room.

Final tally: 173 grams

My day of protein-packed eating was, mercifully, over. I finished the marathon feeling a bit wiser (if more than a little nauseous): It seems that the world of protein-enhanced products is laden with so many highly processed ingredients. Shoppers should scour those ingredient labels carefully. And maybe not everything needs to be “health” food?

I planned to skip dinner, probably. Or maybe just nibble on (gasp!) a carrot.