When longevity physician and podcast host Peter Attia began recommending David Protein bars to his large audience of health-focused listeners, the brand’s already-rising trajectory accelerated fast.
Attia, known for his science-backed approach to nutrition and performance, gave the product the kind of credibility that ad spending alone cannot manufacture. For a bar promising 28 grams of protein, 150 calories, and zero sugar at up to $4.99 each, an endorsement from one of health media’s most trusted voices seemed to confirm what the glossy packaging was already suggesting: this was something genuinely different.
According to sources, a federal class action lawsuit is now calling those numbers into question, and the fallout has spread well beyond the fitness community.
Filed in federal court in New York, the lawsuit alleges that David Protein engaged in “unlawful and deceptive practices in labeling and marketing,” knowingly selling the product with inflated health statistics to drive sales.
The plaintiffs did not simply dispute the label. They sent bars, available in flavors like red velvet, blueberry pie, cake batter, and fudge brownie, to an accredited laboratory for independent testing.
The results, they say, were eye-opening: the bars allegedly contain up to 83% more calories and 400% more fat than what the nutrition label states. According to the plaintiffs, discrepancies of that scale place the company in direct violation of FDA regulations.
The lawsuit has drawn comparisons to a scene from the film “Mean Girls,” in which the character Regina George is unknowingly given bars engineered to cause weight gain. David Protein addressed the reference directly, posting to its Instagram story that “no one is getting Regina Georged.” The company’s position is that the apparent gap in numbers comes down to how calories are measured, not misrepresentation.
“When food is burned in a device called a b*mb calorimeter, it measures the heat released. But nutrition labels aren’t based on how much heat something produces when burned. They’re based on what the human body can actually absorb and use for energy,” the company wrote in its statement. “That distinction matters for ingredients found in David, such as fiber, sweeteners, and fat substitutes like EPG. Burning them in a b*mb calorimeter treats them as fully digestible calories, even though they are not. That’s why the FDA requires different calculation methods for those ingredients when determining calories.”
The statement concluded with a firm declaration: the David bar “is 150 calories.”
EPG, or esterified propoxylated glycerol, is a fat substitute central to the bar’s formulation and to the company’s legal defense. Because the ingredient’s caloric contribution is calculated under a different FDA framework than traditional fats, the company argues that standard laboratory tests will always register higher numbers than what legally belongs on the label.
Company founder Peter Rahal reinforced that position in an interview with Vanity Fair. “This particular claim, among other things, fails to understand how the FDA measures the calories for EPG, one of our key ingredients. We intend to defend this claim vigorously,” he said.
The plaintiffs remain unconvinced. They are seeking a jury trial in pursuit of damages, restitution, and injunctive relief.
The protein bar industry, now a multi-billion dollar market, has long drawn scrutiny over packaging claims that portray products more favorably than their contents may warrant.
