The idea of "protein" as a distinct nutritional category is younger than most people assume — the term itself was coined in 1838 by Dutch chemist Gerardus Johannes Mulder, derived from the Greek proteios, meaning "primary" or "of first importance," at the suggestion of Swedish chemist Jöns Jacob Berzelius, who believed it represented the most essential substance in animal nutrition.
The 19th century: quantity without quality
Early protein science, dominated by figures like German chemist Justus von Liebig, focused almost entirely on total protein quantity, with little understanding that different protein sources varied in nutritional value. Liebig himself famously (and largely erroneously) promoted a concentrated "meat extract" as a nutritional powerhouse — an early, scientifically shaky precursor to the concentrated protein supplement industry that exists today.
Early-to-mid 20th century: discovering amino acids matter
The real turning point came from biochemist William Cummings Rose's work at the University of Illinois through the 1930s-1940s, which identified the nine essential amino acids humans cannot synthesize and definitively demonstrated that protein quality — not just quantity — determined nutritional adequacy. This research directly underpins the "complete vs. incomplete protein" framework still used today (see our complete protein guide).
Late 20th century: scoring systems and sports science
The FAO/WHO's adoption of PDCAAS in 1991 formalized protein quality scoring for the first time on an internationally standardized basis (see our protein quality guide). In parallel, sports nutrition research through the 1990s-2000s began establishing the field's modern pillars: nitrogen balance studies refining athletic protein targets well above the general RDA, and early muscle protein synthesis research beginning to separate total protein intake from meal timing and distribution effects.
The 2000s-2020s: amino-acid-level precision
Stuart Phillips' and others' research isolating leucine's specific mTOR-activating role (see our leucine threshold guide) through the 2000s-2010s pushed the science from "protein amount and quality" down to a single amino acid's precise mechanistic function. The 2013 FAO adoption of DIAAS as PDCAAS's more precise successor reflected this same trend toward finer-grained measurement.
Where this leaves the current "maxxing" trend
The 2025-2026 social-media protein trend is, in a real sense, a highly compressed, informal echo of nearly two centuries of this actual research — the underlying science (protein matters, quality matters, amino acid composition matters, timing matters somewhat) is genuinely well-established. The trend's actual weakness isn't that it's pointing at fake science — it's that it frequently strips out the nuance (thresholds, individual context, diminishing returns) that took 180 years of research to establish in the first place.