The Nutritional Outlook Podcast Episode 43: Why Formulators Are Rethinking Protein Blends

Rising whey protein prices, driven in part by surging demand linked to high-protein diets and the popularity of GLP-1 medications, are pushing finished product manufacturers to reconsider their protein sourcing strategies. In this episode of the Nutritional Outlook Podcast, host Nicholas Saraceno speaks with Andrew Ross, DO, a science liaison with collagen ingredient supplier Rousselot, about what a partial substitution strategy actually looks like in practice, and what the science says about doing it without compromising product quality.

Ross draws a clear distinction between whey and collagen from the outset. Whey is a complete protein, delivering all essential amino acids including branched-chain amino acids and tryptophan. Collagen, by contrast, is rich in glycine, proline, and hydroxyproline, and lacks tryptophan. But rather than framing that difference as a limitation, Ross positions it as complementary. Where whey signals muscle protein synthesis, collagen supports the connective tissue infrastructure (tendons, ligaments, bone, and skin) that allows muscle to function effectively. He calls the combination "the protein power couple."

On the clinical side, Ross references a 2023 study published in the International Journal of Sports Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism in which participants consuming a 25 g whey/20 g collagen blend performed comparably to those consuming 45 g of whey alone across markers of muscle damage and recovery, a finding he argues gives formulators a credible evidence base to build around.

From a formulation standpoint, collagen peptides offer meaningful advantages: superior solubility in hot and cold liquids, temperature and pH stability, a neutral taste profile, and a softer mouthfeel in bar formats that Ross notes some brands are already leveraging quietly, without yet advertising the blend on-label.

Ross's background in osteopathic medicine and orthopedic surgery informs a broader point: as the industry's understanding of collagen's role in the extracellular matrix deepens, its applications well beyond traditional beauty and joint categories are becoming harder to ignore.

A transcript of their conversation can be found below.

Nicholas Saraceno: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another episode of the Nutritional Outlook Podcast. I am Nico Saraceno, senior editor of Nutritional Outlook magazine. And today we have a very special guest. He is Andrew Ross, DO. Rousselot's science liaison. They are considered by many to be one of the leaders of collagen-based solutions for the food, health and nutrition, biomedical and pharma sectors. But today, of course, we'll be focusing on the nutrition aspect of things.

Dr. Ross, thank you so much for taking the time. I really do appreciate it.

Andrew Ross: Absolutely, thanks so much for having me. I'm thrilled to be here.

Saraceno: Many people would agree that whey protein prices have been quite volatile as of late, but in relation to that, some manufacturers are looking at partial substitution strategies, I think is a good way to put it. So a “ hybrid strategy” in order to manage costs without necessarily sacrificing protein content or label appeal. From that standpoint of the formulation science, what does blending whey with collagen peptides actually change about a product? And the 1B to that question is, are there any functional or nutritional tradeoffs that brands need to understand before making that kind of shift? Because that is a big change to be making. Could you get into that a little bit?

Ross: That’sa great question and very insightful. I mean, even outside of my professional life, I'm noticing myself the price of whey protein going up. So it's definitely a real thing and it's a real problem. A lot of that's the supply and demand issue with the rise of the GLP-1 agonists. A lot people are wanting higher protein diets, protein supplements. So there's a bit of a supply issue as well as just in general, the health and lifestyle craze that's going on. Then, there's the other aspects, the production and operational costs, and your global economic factors and things like that.

But to answer both your questions, we'll start on nutritional and then we'll get into that functional. From a nutritional standpoint, there are some major differences. Whey protein is very different than collagen in its composition. Still made of amino acids, but whey protein is a complete protein, meaning that it's going to have all of your essential amino acids, your branched chain amino acids and tryptophan, so on. Like collagen, collagen is primarily glycine, hydroxyproline, and proline. It lacks tryptophan and lacks some of those essential amino acids. They are different in different things. We can get into more on the nutritional side of things, but on the functional side of things, yes, there are some major differences.

Actually, collagen has a lot to offer when combined with whey. So, collagen is soluble in hot and cold liquid solutions. It's a pretty neutral taste and odor. So easily maskable with just very minor flavor additives. Unlike whey, it is temperature stable. Those major proteins—alpha-lactalbumin, beta-lactoglobulin—those become denatured a little bit. Change structure under heat.

Collagen on the other side is temperature stable. So that is increasing its storage. And then also things like baking. It's also pH stable and it's very easy to blend. So as I said, it can go into a cold drink. It can go into a hot coffee. And then when you mix it with whey protein, the more collagen you add, the more and more soluble the total solution comes. There's kind of a little bit of tradeoff there, but there's a lot of benefits from adding collagen in terms of shelf life, stability in terms of taste and in terms of how easy the protein supplements can mix into solution.

Saraceno: Thank you for that. And you kind of led us into the next segue. Actually, that's exactly what I was going to get into. As you alluded to, collagen and whey, are certainly completely different amino acid profiles. I won't restate what you kind of dove into, but I'm curious. When a brand is moving to a whey, collagen sort of blends, given their profiles of the collagen and the whey, how is that shift impacting this protein quality picture? And I'm wondering, I know a lot of people in the industry are going to ask, what is the clinical evidence for the combination that is giving formulators something to build around? And what would be the argument for doing so?

Ross: It's a great question. And that's the really the biggest point of this whole conversation, right? What happens if I decrease some of the total percentage of protein from way to collagen? Am I suddenly getting this less complete protein? Am I not getting all of the benefits? As we talked about, there are some amino acid differences. So with whey, the substantial thing that whey is going to do is going to be signaling to build and repair those muscle fibers. What happens that's different with collagen is you start to get that added holistic benefit. You get things like bone strength, increased bone formation, less bone turnover, increased tendon strength, increased ligament strength. You have all the structural things you think of like, skin integrity. The beauty side of things, as wall as hair, nails. And then there's a lot of research of collagen actually showing help with sleep as well.

But in terms of clinical evidence, that's kind of the million dollar question. We did a study in 2023 in the International Journal of Sports Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism. So it was actually a really elegant design. A placebo-controlled parallel study randomized 22 active people. One group got 45 g of whey, and the other group got 25 g of whey and 20 g of collagen. So we’re switching, it's 44% blend now. It's almost 50-50, getting close there. A substantial amount of collagen is being added instead of whey.

That supplementation process occurred over a period of 3 weeks. We looked at different types of exercise performance and things like that. And there's actually no change in terms of muscle damage—looking at markers like creatine kinase, the specifics of that are not important for this conversation. But also the participants reported no change in their muscle performance or soreness. There are studies coming out to show that collagen in and of itself is capable of doing a lot of these types of muscle recovery and performance type things that we think of. And then just looking at things a little bit more globally, it's not all about building muscle when we're talking about performance.

Your muscles need those tendon connections to the bone to really perform. And as we see, more and more injuries where people are rupturing something like their Achilles because they're playing pickleball, it doesn't matter necessarily how much muscle mass if you're losing, the strength that the tendon level. Having that whole holistic picture, we think of it as the protein power couple, having the whey there, that's going to hit those muscle-building signaling pathways. But collagen is also coming in and allowing way to do its full job too.

We need those tendons. We need those ligaments. And then a million other things that collagen can holistically do and things like extracellular matrix and skin-gut barrier, all that kind of stuff.

Saraceno: I feel like like collagen, not that it gets the bad end of the stick per se, but it does the “not so sexy” things that are just as valuable, the more the behind-the-scenes sort of function. So it's very important to point those out for sure.

Ross: I think even physicians and scientists don't quite put enough, importance and even education understanding in the extracellular matrix. The extracellular matrix is our body dry weight is, our protein mass is 30% collagen. And extracellular matrix is the scaffolding ourselves grow on. Collagen is structural, but it's also doing a lot of cell-to-cell signaling, cell proliferation differentiation. Collagen is doing a lot more work than just nice hair, skin, and nails for sure.

Saraceno: I think that's what my initial impression was, that collagen was only for those 3 primary functions when I first started in the industry. I'm curious to kind of just dive into that a little bit more. Of course, your background is as an osteopathic physician, which I think provides a unique perspective to our industry. How does that clinical lens that you provide impact or change how you're kind of evaluating and thinking about this evidence for collagen peptides?

Ross: You often think of the traditional medical route as not always necessarily thinking as holistically as we do. It’s nice to be able to kind of have that clinical lens, and understand things from a disease state. But, also working backwards, like, let's not get to the disease. Let's talk about health optimization and prevention, as opposed to attacking the problem when it's there.

Really from a clinical lens, my, residency training was in orthopedic surgery. So again, skin, joints—major passions of mine. The shift that's starting to occur in the medical space and especially working with surgeons, you're starting to learn,dDo you need a great surgeon to do the perfect surgery? But actually, what's getting these great outcomes that we're seeing is what's the nutritional and exercise level of the patient prior to surgery.

What are we doing during the rehab process after surgery is supplementing with collagen and these type of things? And how do we optimize the total holistic well-being of the patient? And that's actually as important as doing these surgeries or taking that drug. It's kind of that whole holistic wellness. There's a lot of players involved. As we start learning more and more about science, and especially in this new like AI computational world, we're starting to connect all these different things. How is the collagen, extracellular matrix talking to all these different cells? What's collagen's role in the gut? What's its role in metabolism? As that whole web, we getting a better picture on it nowadays.

We're starting to see the importance of health and nutrition and supplementation and some of the really great evidence that's building around collagen peptide supplements. It’s certainly an exciting time to be in the industry.

Saraceno: You covered a lot thus far. I know we didn't really touch upon as much of the sensory performance side of things. I think obviously that's certainly also important to keep in mind, whether from a formulation is reaching the market and things like that. What do you think finished product manufacturers should be expecting when they're introducing these collagen peptides into like an existing whey-based formula? Because obviously you have to think about like the flavor, solubility, mouthfeel, etc.

Ross: That's a major concern, right. Who really cares what the science says if no one's going to use or eat this product? It is important. I'll answer that in 2 parts. I'll answer it with what we do at Rousselot and then more globally with what collagen does. One thing that we do at specifically at Rousselot is we have a really great application labs and science teams. We don't just sell the cologen to a business and say, here you go, make your product. We actually have, multiple applications labs where we'll work with the companies to say hey, let's tinker with the pH.

We’ve already figured out the solution. You have this combination away and this kind of combination of collagen, you want it a little bit less cloudy, you want it, you're worried about the solubility or whatever it is. Fortunately with collagen, you can do it because it's so pH and temperature stable. You can actually do a lot of tinkering around within the world of applications and formulation science to really improve the taste and mouthfeel and everything of the product.

But then just globally looking at collagen peptides in general, because of the differences in viscosity with collagen, actually a lot of brands make their collagen bars a little bit softer and a little bit more chewier, approaching that nougat feel that you would get like with a Snickers bar, like when you're having that whey protein bar, you kind of have that harder chalkier kind of you can break it apart and it crumbles type a thing going on. Because of the viscosity of collagen, when you add collagen into that whey protein blend, you actually get a lot softer mouthfeel. We see a lot of companies now that aren't necessarily yet advertising, hey, this is the way collagen blend, but they're already sneaking collagen in to increase the mouthfeel of their marketed whey protein. But collagen is just there for taste and texture. Going into the liquid and shake side of things, in terms of solubility, adding collagen is going to bring the ability for your total protein. The powder that you're putting into your shake to go into solution easier just because of its increased solubility, so there's a lot of advantages there.

In terms of flavor, by the time we're getting these small, small hydrolyzed collagen peptides, which are much smaller than your whey proteins, they are not as hydrolyzed or not hydrolyzed at all. The taste, odor, and ability to go into solution iis actually a lot more advantageous with collagen.

Saraceno: That was a good breakdown there. I actually didn't really know that a lot of these companies are slipping the collagen in there for that extra, it kind of cancels out the chalkiness and that aftertaste of the way I feel like that was always my concern with whey products, too.

Ross: You can see with the 10 g, you know, 10 or 20 g of collagen, you can dump it into like a coffee and spoon stir it. You can imagine when you put in 20 g, you're either blending or like using a shaker pretty vigorously to get that into total solution. That allows collagen to be used in things. That's how we can sell collagen shots. And with such a small bottle, you can easily get 5-10 g in just a shot volume of water because it goes into solution so much easier. Definitely interesting. Then again ,what sets us apart is our dedication to that applications process.

We really let you know to troubleshoot with companies and work with them into getting that best product and get that perfect mouthfeel. We’ll work on our end to achieve that as well.

Saraceno: You know what they say if at first you don't succeed, try try again,

Ross: It can be a bit of a troubleshooting process, but it seems to be working well. And, and, you know, because of all the reasons we've discussed, particularly with price and economics behind things right now too, I think we're going to see it more and more within the industry. Collagen is having these really unique things that we didn't necessarily associate with collagen and some unique benefits that other protein supplements, casein or whey, they just don't have.

It's the power couple. You're getting the best of both worlds. You're hitting that holistic picture. You're not just focusing purely on muscle growth. Well, that is important. You know, it's nice to have both. Certainly you can't.

Saraceno: You have to have that yin-yang mentality. I think it's important to bring attention to that. But thank you, Dr. Ross for taking the time today to hop on and to educate and share some knowledge on all the possibilities that exist with this hybrid combination.

I think our listeners are going to gain plenty of extra knowledge that they're going to find quite useful, o I appreciate you taking the time.

Ross: It was a real pleasure again. I'm super interested in this, obviously professionally, but it means a lot to me, even in my personal life as a user of all of these substances myself. It was a real pleasure to speak with you and glad to be here. Hopefully, we cando this again in the future.