November 8, 2025· 43 min

The Viral Milk That Helped Set Off America's Protein Boom

Corey Geiger

Orality

Model

55%

Mixed oral/literate (blogs, casual essays)

Speaker Breakdown

HostJoe Weisenthal(1,614 words)

M:94%

HostTracy Alloway(1,758 words)

M:94%

GuestCorey Geiger(4,133 words)

M:28%

Oral Indicators

Agonistic30%

literally, completely, definitely

Engagement63%

you, our, your

Memory Aids100%

listen, now, right

Repetition100%

milk (93x), dairy (80x), like (78x)

Parallelism71%

And I'm Jill Weisenthal...., And so I'm, like, holding serv..., So, like, I know progress, but...

Sound Patterns46%

44 question(s), alliteration: "markets move", alliteration: "barclays brief"

Formulaic Phrases4%

you know what, i mean

Literate Indicators

Hedging8%

may, maybe, rather

Passive Voice4%

are refrigerated, be shipped, is priced

Abstract Nouns18%

investment, recommendation, business

Subordination7%

although, because, while

Sentence Length29%

Avg: 12.2 words/sentence

Word Complexity48%

investment, analyze, anticipate

Academic Markers0%

Impersonal Style37%

595 personal pronouns found

Descriptive Style78%

literally, completely, apply

Description

Protein seems to be everywhere these days, with brands from Starbucks to Pepsi jumping on the trend. But the obsession with protein may have started earlier — with a humble dairy product that defied the broader decline in US milk consumption. Fairlife, which uses a specialized filtering process to boost protein and cut sugar and lactose in its milk products, helped spark the modern protein craze that’s unfolded alongside the rise of Ozempic and other GLP-1 drugs. Since Coca-Cola acquired the brand in 2020, Fairlife has become one of the company’s biggest growth drivers. Yet its success also highlights deeper challenges facing the American dairy industry, where per capita milk consumption continues to fall. So how did Fairlife buck the trend? And what does its story reveal about the future of US dairy? On this episode, we speak with Corey Geiger, lead dairy economist at CoBank. Subscribe to the Odd Lots Newsletter Join the conversation: discord.gg/oddlots See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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