The Future is Carnivore

What’s Actually Happening

Every few years, America announces a return to nature.

Paleo. Raw milk. Backyard chickens. Sourdough starters. Now it’s ribeye, bone broth, tallow, and a confident rejection of seed oils. Steak clubs are forming. Vegan restaurants are closing. “Low-carb” no longer sounds retro. It sounds strategic.

Something real is shifting and it’s not random. Some are declaring the future carnivore.

To understand it, we have to look at the pressures reshaping the food landscape simultaneously.

What Ended the Plant-Based Surge

For most of the 2010s, plant-based eating carried momentum. It aligned with climate data, animal welfare arguments, and venture capital optimism. Alternative proteins were framed as inevitable. Meatless Mondays became institutionalized. Grocery shelves were filled with engineered substitutes designed to replicate beef, chicken, and pork.

Then economics intervened.

Alternative proteins struggled with three structural problems:

• Price parity with conventional meat
• Taste consistency across mainstream consumers
• Ultra-processed ingredient lists undermined “natural” positioning

When inflation hit, grocery decisions became pragmatic. Consumers who might experiment when budgets are loose retreat to what feels familiar and filling when budgets tighten.

Restaurants operate on thinner margins than customers. If a concept doesn’t sustain traffic, it closes.

The environmental argument didn’t disappear. It simply lost priority when cost and satisfaction reasserted dominance. Because values matter. But price and pleasure usually matter more.

GLP-1s Quieted Hunger and Protein Filled the Silence

The most under-discussed driver of the carnivore shift is pharmacological.

GLP-1 medications suppress appetite. Millions of Americans are now eating less volume. That changes the nutritional conversation.

When appetite decreases, food becomes functional. The question is no longer “How do I restrict?” It becomes “How do I preserve muscle, metabolism, and strength?”

Protein moves from performance supplement to biological insurance policy.

This matters for businesses.

If consumers are eating less overall, they will prioritize what they believe delivers the most return per bite. Protein density becomes a strategic attribute. Steak, eggs, broth, and visible animal products fit this frame more cleanly than engineered alternatives.

The carnivore aesthetic benefits from that reframing.

The Aging Variable No One Is Talking About

America is getting older.

Sarcopenia (age-related muscle loss) is becoming mainstream health discourse. Strength is no longer aesthetic. It is functional independence.

An aging demographic combined with GLP-1 usage amplifies protein prioritization.

Business leaders should pay attention here. Protein-forward products aimed at active aging will likely expand. Messaging will shift from “get shredded” to “stay strong.”

That language broadens the market dramatically.

Strength is Replacing Sustainability as the Dominant Signal

Gen Z and Millennials still care about sustainability. Survey data consistently shows higher concern about climate change among younger cohorts than older ones.

But expressed values do not always predict daily purchases.

Under economic pressure, abstract environmental benefit competes with immediate bodily reassurance. Muscle retention feels tangible. Climate stabilization feels distant.

There’s also cultural fatigue. Sustainability messaging became institutional. Corporate. Sanitized. When every multinational brand prints “plant-based” and “climate-friendly” on packaging, the signal loses edge.

Rebellion requires friction. In some circles, ordering steak now feels more transgressive than ordering an Impossible Burger ever did. That reversal is culturally telling.

Right now, strength is selling better than sacrifice. Simplicity is selling better than complexity. Experience is selling better than instruction.

That does not mean sustainability disappears. It means sustainability will need to align with strength, rather than compete with it.

Purity Is the New Luxury

The seed oil panic isn’t primarily about fatty acid chemistry. It’s about distrust of food processing, regulatory agencies, and corporate nutrition science.

In a system perceived as manipulated, simplicity feels premium. Carnivore rhetoric offers a single rule: eat animals. No label decoding. No macro tracking. No ingredient panel analysis.

Cognitive relief is powerful.

For business leaders, this is a warning and an opportunity. Consumers increasingly equate short ingredient lists with integrity. Products that appear engineered face higher scrutiny. Transparency is no longer a differentiator; it’s the baseline.

Steak Clubs, Ritual, and Belonging

Food is rarely just nutrition. Steak clubs are emerging not because consumers suddenly forgot about methane emissions, but because communal eating remains one of the oldest bonding mechanisms in human history.

In a digitally fragmented culture, shared ritual carries weight. Fire, meat, table — these are primal symbols. Nothing activates belonging like eating together.

For brands, this signals an important shift: experience is everything. Restaurants and food concepts that create visible ritual may outperform those that lean solely on ethical positioning.

Belonging scales better than guilt.

So Is the Future Actually Carnivore?

FADS has never been about which diet wins.

Environmental pressures remain real. Agricultural policy, water constraints, and land use economics don’t disappear because steak is trending. Hybrid models blending plant and animal proteins are still quietly expanding as I predicted they would. Regenerative agriculture narratives are reframing beef as environmentally restorative rather than destructive.

The extreme “carnivore versus vegan” narrative is a social media construct. The supply chain will be more pragmatic.

The carnivore moment sits at the intersection of several ancient drives:

• Fear of aging and decline
• Desire for strength
• Suspicion of manipulation
• Need for belonging
• Preference for simplicity

Marketing doesn’t create these drives. It scales them.

For consumers, the useful question isn’t “Is carnivore correct?”, but “What anxiety is this diet solving for me?”

And for business leaders, the question is sharper: “Which anxieties are durable enough to build around?”

The pendulum will move again. It always does.

But if you follow the incentives of pharmacology, aging demographics, inflation, and distrust of industrial systems, the carnivore turn looks less like rebellion and more like recalibration.

And recalibration is predictable. Like so many other FADS we’ve seen before and will see again.