How Do the Viral ‘High-Protein’ Bagels Actually Compare to the Original Kind?

Protein has been more than having a moment, so it’s no surprise that I’ve tried a whole bunch of high-protein twists on popular dishes (high-protein fluffy yogurt, high-protein pumpkin pancakes, and high-protein Diet Coke, to name a few) as part of my role as a food writer. But high-protein baked goods?

Well, that was newer territory for me, so I was taken by surprise when I saw them trending on TikTok. High-protein DIY bagels happen to be the app’s latest food craze, touted for being fitness-friendly since they pack a purported nine to 12 grams of the macro each. Based on the handful of videos I watched one afternoon, I wasn’t confident that the final product would live up to my rigorous bagel standards, but I was intrigued enough to give it a try myself.

While the recipe for high-protein bagels varies a bit between TikTok tutorials, the basic premise remains the same: You’re gonna use cottage cheese to proteinify them. This dairy powerhouse contains around 25 grams of the macro per cup, so it’s no surprise it pops up a whole lot in these recipe twists.

First, I whisked one cup of flour, one cup of pre-blended cottage cheese, and two teaspoons of baking powder together in a small bowl until the mixture had taken on a doughy consistency. Because my mixture turned out a little too powdery, I added an extra half cup of cottage cheese to improve the texture. Then, I molded three dough chunks into the typical bagel shape: a circle with a hole in the center (a.k.a. a torus, as I discovered while writing this article!). In the end, I wound up with three bagels: a small, medium, and large, because, well, my eyeballing for size wasn’t so great.

Finally, I drizzled on some olive oil in place of egg wash, sprinkled on some salt and Everything Bagel seasoning, plopped the dough onto a sheet of aluminum foil, and slid the pan into the oven to cook at 375 degrees Fahrenheit for 3src minutes. When I took them out after the allotted 3src minutes, my bagels were still visibly underdone, so I left them in for another 1src or so before calling it.

My finished bagels weren’t nearly as nice and neat (or, um, as uniform in size) as the ones you see at Dunkin’ Donuts or Starbucks—they were asymmetrical and uneven, brown and rigid in some areas and white and squishy in others—but, hey, don’t judge a book by its cover, right? Slicing my first bagel in half, I saw the interior had a slightly spongy, aerated appearance, almost like an English muffin. When I bit into it, it was still slightly doughy in some spots (probably should’ve left it in the oven for longer), but I was also taken aback by how much I liked it. Not only did it taste like, well, a store-bought bagel, it was arguably even better—softer, more moist, and more flavorful. Unless you’d read the recipe instructions beforehand, you would’ve had no idea it contained cottage cheese—a major plus for me, as someone who’s not the biggest fan of the stuff and would never eat a plain bowl of it.

So my protein bagels more than had my personal seal of approval flavor-wise, but what about how they stacked up nutritionally? Do they have any legitimate advantages over the real thing, or is it all TikTok hype?

Well, there’s nothing wrong with them, but you might not be getting quite as much of an absolute protein boost compared to the original as you may think, Desiree Nielsen, RD, a recipe developer with a focus on plant-based nutrition, tells SELF.

“It makes so much intuitive sense that if we’re using cottage cheese, which is a high-protein ingredient, then these bagels must be high-protein,” she says. “But as we see, when we actually look at the comparison between regular bagels and these cottage cheese bagels, it’s not actually that big of a protein win.”

That’s because it’s actually a misconception that regular bagels are a source of carbs and not much else, according to Nielsen. Since the flour used to make regular bagels often clocks in at between 12% and 13% protein, the final products ring up at around seven, eight, or even double-digit grams apiece, depending on factors like size or other ingredients like cheese—so not too far off from the 9-to-12-gram average quoted by most high-protein bagel recipes I saw on TikTok. So even though they’re primarily a vehicle for carbs, it’s not like they’re totally lacking in protein. As for my bagels? Between the flour (16 grams of protein per cup) and the cottage cheese (24 grams per cup) I used, I’d estimate that they would have contained 17 grams of protein and 35 carbs each if I had made them all a uniform medium size. In comparison, a regular medium-size bagel comes in at roughly 4src to 55 grams of carbs and 8 to 11 grams of protein, per the USDA.

Long story short, if you’re looking at total protein content, “protein bagels” aren’t much of an improvement on the regular kind despite their name. In fact, you’d take in close to the same amount of protein eating a store-bought bagel—which kind of defeats the main purpose of trying this recipe.

That said, because you will be swapping in cottage cheese to replace some of the carb-rich flour that would otherwise be used, that small bump in protein also comes with a potential advantage over the original kind: They’ll have a lower carb-protein ratio, according to Nielsen, which can be helpful for folks who need to be more mindful of carbs. Because of their heavier carb content, regular bagels are more likely to cause a blood sugar spike that can potentially cause an energy crash, since this slew of carbs isn’t offset by other nutrients like protein or fiber. While the absolute difference in carbs might not seem like a ton, it’s still enough to change the macro breakdown in a way that affects how your body processes it.

By the same token, high-protein bagels—which offer a less skewed ratio of carbs to protein—are less likely to have these effects. For this reason, high-protein bagels could be an especially smart option for people who have blood sugar regulation issues, like folks with diabetes, according to Nielsen. So “for the person who loves to have a bagel every day and really needs additional help supporting their blood sugars and enjoys the flavor of this recipe, this could definitely be a win,” Nielsen says. Of course, she adds, that same person could also have an independently protein-rich food along with a regular bagel (say, a container of Greek yogurt) and reap the same benefits, but where’s the fun in that?)

To recap: Sorry to burst your protein bubble, but this high-protein bagel recipe isn’t really all that much of an improvement over the original. Basically, don’t eat “high-protein bagels” solely for the purported protein benefits—but that doesn’t mean don’t eat them at all. “I would not recommend them automatically over a regular bagel,” but “I would say for the person who likes playing around in the kitchen, for the person who loves cottage cheese, absolutely give them a try,” Nielsen says. “Go for it,” she adds. “It’s not an unhealthful recipe at all.”