When chocolate bars become protein bars: the compliance risk hiding in the new snacking category

For years, these two categories lived in completely separate aisles. Protein bars were functional. Chocolate bars were indulgent. Consumers were expected to pick a side, treat or training fuel, and the marketing reflected that. Now, those categories are colliding, and the products emerging from the collision are among the fastest-growing in the snacking sector.

We are seeing protein chocolate bars, high-protein cookies, reduced-sugar peanut butter cups, and collagen-enhanced gummies launching across major retailers. The biggest names in the industry are leading the charge. Mars has partnered with Myprotein to create Snickers-flavoured whey protein products, and Mondelēz has taken a majority interest in the performance nutrition brand Grenade, leading to collaborations such as Grenade Creme Egg and Grenade Oreo.

Here is my take on what is driving it and where the compliance trap is for the brands trying to follow.

Why are function and indulgence merging

The simple answer is that consumers no longer want to choose. They want snacks that feel like a treat but still deliver something useful, such as protein, fibre, lower sugar, and added functional ingredients. The “guilt-free indulgence” framing that brands have leaned on for years has evolved into something more demanding: indulgence that genuinely performs.

That shift has pulled confectionery brands into functional positioning and pushed sports nutrition brands toward more indulgent formats. The result is a category that is no longer easily classified as either, which is exactly what makes it commercially attractive and regulatorily risky.

Because the moment a product starts talking about protein content, functional benefits, or health outcomes, it leaves the relatively forgiving territory of confectionery marketing and enters the much more tightly regulated space of nutrition and health claims.

Where the compliance risk sits

In Australia, claims about nutrition content and health benefits are governed by Standard 1.2.7 of the Food Standards Code. The Code distinguishes between nutrition content claims, statements about the presence or amount of a nutrient, such as “good source of protein”, and health claims, which link a food or property of food to a health effect.

Both types of claims have specific conditions, and both come with conditions that brands often underestimate.

A protein claim, for example, is not simply a marketing choice. To make any nutrition content claim about protein, a serving of the food must contain at least 5 g of protein. To use the descriptor “good source”, a serving must contain at least 10 g of protein. These thresholds are set out in the conditions table at section S4-3 of the Code and apply regardless of how the rest of the product is formulated.

The bigger trap, though, sits a step further on. The moment a brand moves beyond stating the amount of protein and links that protein to a health benefit – such as “supports muscle growth” or “contributes to recovery” – the product has moved from a nutrition content claim to a health claim. And health claims are governed by a different set of rules.

Under section 1.2.7-18 of the Code, a food cannot make a health claim at all unless it meets the Nutrient Profiling Scoring Criterion, or NPSC, a scoring system that weighs a food’s energy, saturated fat, total sugars, and sodium against its content of fruit, vegetable, nut and legume ingredients, protein, and fibre.

This is where many protein-enhanced indulgent products run into trouble. A chocolate bar reformulated with added protein can comfortably contain enough protein to use a nutrition content claim, but its sugar, saturated fat, or energy profile can prevent the food from meeting the NPSC, which means the more compelling health-related messaging is off the table.

The product can be a good source of protein. The label cannot necessarily say that the protein supports anything.

The functional ingredient question

The risk does not stop at protein. The new wave of snacks often includes ingredients positioned for specific functional benefits, collagen for skin, ashwagandha for stress, magnesium for recovery, and mushroom extracts for cognition.

In Australia, any claim that links a food, nutrient, or substance to a health outcome falls under the health claims framework. General level health claims must be based on either a pre-approved food-health relationship listed in the general level health claims table at section S4-5 of the Code, or on a self-substantiated relationship that the brand has established through the systematic review process set out in Schedule 6 and notified to FSANZ.

Many of the trendiest functional ingredients do not have pre-approved health relationships under the Code, which means brands wanting to make claims about them need to do the underlying scientific work themselves. That is not impossible, but it is substantially more involved than most start-up brands realise, and it cannot be sidestepped by softening the wording of the claim.

There is also a related risk that often catches brands out: even where a substance has a legitimate functional reputation in consumer wellness language, the Code may not permit its addition to food at all without specific approval. The ingredient list itself can be the compliance problem, before any claim is even made.

The cross-over format makes everything harder to assess

Part of what makes the protein-confectionery crossover category particularly tricky is that the products often sit awkwardly across categories that are regulated differently.

Formulated supplementary sports foods have their own provisions under Standard 2.9.4 of the Food Standards Code; they are defined as products specifically formulated to assist sports people in achieving specific nutritional or performance goals, with their own composition, labelling, and warning statement requirements. A product that looks and is marketed like a chocolate bar but is positioned as a sports nutrition product needs to genuinely meet those requirements; it cannot simply borrow the sports nutrition aesthetic to access a more permissive claims environment.

Equally, a protein bar that leans heavily into indulgent imagery and confectionery-style marketing may invite questions from regulators about whether the product’s overall presentation is misleading, particularly if the implied health positioning is not supported by the product’s full nutritional profile.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has been clear that the overall impression a label creates matters, not just the technical accuracy of individual claims. A product that is technically compliant on a claim-by-claim basis can still breach the Australian Consumer Law if the broader message it sends to consumers is misleading.

What this means for food businesses

The protein-confectionery crossover is one of the most commercially interesting categories in food right now. It is also one of the most exposed.

Brands building in this space are often working at the intersection of consumer trends that move quickly and a regulatory framework that does not. The faster a category evolves, the more likely it is that products are launching with claims, ingredients, or positioning that have not been properly stress-tested against the Code.

The brands that will navigate this well are those that treat regulatory strategy as part of product development, rather than as a final-stage label check. That means understanding before formulation whether the protein, sugar, saturated fat, sodium, and energy profile will support both the nutrition content claims and the health claims the brand wants to make. It means checking whether the functional ingredients in the formulation are permitted, and whether the claims about them are substantiated. And it means thinking about the overall impression of the label, not just the legality of individual statements.

The opportunity in this category is real. So is the compliance risk. The brands that will win are the ones that take both seriously from the start.

Most compliance issues in this category don’t surface at launch, they start much earlier, in the formulation decisions and marketing language that lock in risk long before the label is finalised. We’ve put together a free guide breaking down the six biggest mistakes food brands make with labelling and health claims, and how to avoid them before they become expensive problems. Download the free guide here: https://learn.nprconsulting.com.au/labelling-health-claims