Yaozheng Liu

1 INTRODUCTION The global sports food and drinks market was valued at $79.8 billion in 2020 and is expected to grow to $115.2 billion by the year 2026 (Businesswire, 2022). Protein beverages, a portion of this growing market, consist of both ready-to-drink (RTD) and ready-to-mix (RTM) products. Protein beverages consist of both ready-to-drink (RTD) and ready-to-mix (RTM) products. RTM beverages are made with instantized protein powders and can be mixed with water or another liquid of choice (B. J.

All articles published by MDPI are made immediately available worldwide under an open access license. No special permission is required to reuse all or part of the article published by MDPI, including figures and tables. For articles published under an open access Creative Common CC BY license, any part of the article may be reused without permission provided that the original article is clearly cited. For more information, please refer to https://www.mdpi.com/openaccess.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST STATEMENT The authors declare no conflicts of interest. REFERENCES , & (2012). Consumer preference for watermelon varieties in urban environment of Ibadan Metropolis, Oyo State, Nigeria. Foods, 6(1), 93–96. Agricultural Marketing Resource Center. (2021). Watermelon. https://www.agmrc.org/commodities-products/vegetables/watermelon?msclkid=9dc98d7ba9f811ecac7c8a0e1a29a4a5 Agricultural Research Service. (2017). Watermelons.