A data story · Singapore · 2019 to 2026
Protein bubble tea. Protein chips. Meiji or Rokeby? This year, Singapore put protein in everything. I wanted to know if it's hype that burns out or a habit that stays. Five questions, and you get to answer the first one.
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Question 1 of 5
Search interest climbed for three years and hit Google's top score of in . What happened next? Draw your guess for May to October in the shaded area.
Draw here ↘
Not over. Cooling. Down % from the peak, but still above the same month last year.
in
the same month a year earlier
Your line was off by points a month on average. Interest is falling against its own recent high, but still growing year on year. And the April peak wasn't the Hyrox fitness race, as many assumed: fibre and calorie searches peaked the same month, a wider health wave. The brands are only arriving now: PlayMade launched protein bubble tea at all 28 stores in October 2026, six months after searches peaked.
Keto cooled too, and then it vanished. Is protein heading the same way?
Question 2 of 5
Unlikely. Hype burns out. Protein is shaped like a habit.
Keto peaked at in , during the circuit breaker, and scores today. Each time keto dipped, it bottomed out lower. Since 2023, each protein dip has bottomed out higher.
Is that just keto? I checked 31 more trends.
Each row is one trend, scaled to its own peak and coloured by the shape it follows. The darker the cell, the closer that month was to the trend's high. Hover to read any month.
The word "protein" sits with the new surges. But the high-protein diet, the actual eating habit, sits with the slow climbers and has been building since 2019.
Google Trends, Singapore, 3-month averages. Shapes grouped with k-means clustering.
People are searching. But is anyone actually eating more?
Question 3 of 5
Searches nearly doubled. Eating and training rose about a tenth.
Singaporeans are careful: reading about protein doesn't immediately turn into eating more of it. Buying moved more than eating, and it is moving to the easiest format. Gym powders spiked and faded in brand searches, while ready-to-drink protein held.
And the people who need it most aren't the ones buying.
%
of adults aged 18 to 49 get enough protein
%
of adults aged 50 to 69 do
National Nutrition Survey 2025, National Population Health Survey 2025, Euromonitor via CNA, Google Trends.
So the hype is cooling and the habit is quiet. What happens next? One country has already been through this.
Question 4 of 5
Look at Japan. The diet burned out. The nutrient kept climbing.
Japan had its own keto: 糖質制限, carb restriction. In , Japanese users searched it more than タンパク質, protein as a nutrient. It peaked in and has fallen to % of that peak. The powder word プロテイン peaked in and has held at more than half its high. The nutrient word just kept climbing. The hype cooled, and the conversation moved from the shaker to the plate.
And around the region
Rose in step with Singapore through 2026, and is still above last year: against .
Same wave, same timing, still above last year: against .
Never had a powder craze. 단백질, the everyday word for protein, climbed steadily and is above last year: against .
The early warning. Peaked first, in , and is already below last year: against .
Google Trends, 3-month averages. Japan's three words come from one download, so they share a scale. In the cards, each country is scaled to its own peak since 2019, with Singapore as the faint dashed line. Data caveats are in the case study.
Put it together.
Question 5 of 5 · So how long will it last?
The protein hype is cooling. The protein habit isn't.
The habit isn't a guess: Singaporeans are eating about a tenth more protein than before, and in Japan and Korea the everyday word for protein has kept climbing long after the hype.
My bet, which I will score against each new month rather than a fixed date, since no model I built could call the turn: interest keeps easing, the way it already is in the US, and settles on a higher floor than before, the way it has in Japan since 2020. Protein is a nutrient, not a diet with rules, so it is harder to abandon. The habit is moving to the easiest format: ready-to-drink over powder.
The bigger opportunity isn't another protein bar for gym-goers. It's reaching the adults over 50 who genuinely need more.
Behind the story
Google Trends downloads
search terms
data points
analysis methods
hypotheses tested
dead ends, documented
Without fibre, April 2026 shoots above the band and Hyrox looks guilty. Add fibre and April falls inside the normal range. Fibre jumped at the same time as protein, and nobody eats more fibre for a fitness race, so both were riding a wider health wave. Without fibre in the model, the only explanation it had was Hyrox.
Regression on matcha, air fryer, collagen and Ozempic searches (plus fibre in the second model), trained on November 2021 to March 2026. A separate five-year Trends download.
The random forest stayed flat because it can't predict a value higher than anything it has seen, and the highest month in its training data was 58. The winner was the simplest rule, "next month looks like this month". It scored best because it always arrives one month late, which means it never predicts a turn at all.