Protein Spiking Research Paper

Companies that produce protein powders as a supplement have been found to be spiking their protein blends by third party testing. This spiking has a number of different names that all mean the same; the only difference is how one describes the process of spiking such as nitrogen, protein, and/or amino spiking. Through third party testing of different blends of protein powder, companies discovered a way to lie to the total number of grams of protein that is actually in the blend. When testing the amount of grams of protein is in a protein blend, the third party testers would test for the nitrogen content found in the protein powder. Companies nevertheless have found that by placing BCAAs, or branched-chain amino acids, in their protein, which …show more content…
Choosing to spike protein, or claim to have a proprietary blend to hide the actual amount of ingredients in the blend may be seen as useful or beneficial to those who work in the company, as it would maximize profits while keeping the cost at a minimum. Nevertheless, this does not benefit the majority as more people are buying these products than those who are making and selling them. A process engineer can break down the utilitarian idea down into both act and rule utilitarianism further to get an idea of which specific utilitarian approach would best fit this moral issue. For a rule utilitarian, one could make a rule for those making supplement products that one must list the actual amounts of each ingredient on the labels of products. This will make it so that one may not hide behind the false spiking from nitrogen and BCAAs and completely hiding behind the term of proprietary blending. Next, the act utilitarian states the act is right if and only if it produces at least as much happiness as any other act that the person could perform at the time. This way of utilitarian thinking depends on how the engineer feels when deciding which process of making the protein to use. The problem the engineer faces in this situation is that there is no one set of rules that the engineer must follow as the company places these nutrition facts on their label. These leads to more of an act utilitarianism approach as the choices the engineer makes could be morally right if it produces at least as much happiness any other act that the person could perform at the time. Both of the choices that are available to the engineer such as to not hide behind these proprietary blends and nitrogen spiking or to hide behind these tricks could be argued to produce the same level of