In 2010, Harvard Business School professor Youngme Moon published a book called Different. I teach it at USC, and every fall it explains something new in the grocery store.
Her argument goes like this. In a mature category, companies compete by adding. One brand adds a feature, everyone copies it, then someone adds to that. Every brand gets a longer list, and they all end up looking the same. Moon called this heterogeneous homogeneity: more variety on the surface, more sameness underneath. It speeds up once a whole category agrees on one number to compete on.
Right now that number is grams of protein. NIQ counts 37,232 products with a protein claim on the front of the package. Americans spent about $90 billion on them over the past year, including more than $2 billion on protein pizza and $35 million on protein toaster pastries. Meanwhile, the USDA says nearly 90% of Americans already get enough protein.
