Super Bowl snack boom: High protein and global flavors dominate the natural field

Super Bowl snacks score a touchdown with protein-packed options and bold international flavors such as Sichuan and gochujang, redefining the modern snack aisle.

Prepared for the Snackocalypse yet? With Super Bowl LIX just nine days away, grocery aisles across the country dedicated to chips, popcorn, pretzels and the like are already beginning to feel like a South Florida Publix during a hurricane warning. By Sunday, these same aisles might broadcast some serious post-apocalyptic vibes.

Thanks to impressive innovation on the savory snack front, those Super Bowl-friendly boxes and bags stuffed with salty, crunchy things promise much more than the sour-cream-and-onion dusted potato chips of the recent past. Among other things, sales of protein-enriched snacks and products inspired by heritage foods have expanded during the past few years.

Products with one or both of these attributes were also easy to find among the more-than 1,000 entries to this year's NEXTY Awards. As a judge, I sampled every one of them.

This experience only helped drive home the notion that we are becoming a snackification nation. According to a Mondelēz's recent State of Snacking report, six out of 10 consumers said they favor multiple meals throughout the day, instead of three larger ones. Another recent study, Circana's Eating Patterns in America, also explored snackification, identifying it as a rising trend.

So, what are we snackers chomping, munching and scarfing down as we graze through our days? And why are protein-packed and heritage-inspired products rising to the top?

The sudden proliferation of high-protein snacks stands as the starkest evolution within the snack category. For generations snacks revolved around carbohydrates from grains. For the most part, people entered a protein-feeble zone when they sat down with a bag of pretzel sticks and watched another episode of Law & Order.

It's much different today. Grocery shelves support chips made from protein-dense chicken breast—the brand Wilde is the OG there. And meat snacks are positively booming, too.

The meat stick segment alone grew by 24% last year—and one brand, Country Archer, achieved meat stick growth of 166% during the year, according to company CEO and co-founder Eugene Kang in an email.

But shoppers also encounter cracker brands trumpeting their protein bona fides. Popcorn fortified with protein sits on shelves, cheek-by-jowl with protein-enhanced corn chips. Increasingly, the snack shelves are turning into proteinpalooza.

"Our country is protein obsessed, far more than any other developed country," said SPINS CEO Jay Margolis at Plant Based World Expo last year.

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