Excessive-Protein Diets Are Common — However They Definitely Aren’t Sustainable

By Jessica Scott-Reid, Sentient Media

Podcaster Joe Rogan might have helped make meat cool once more, however his most well-liked manner of consuming — the Carnivore Eating regimen — is nothing new. It’s not meant to be; its core tenant is that people thrive from consuming how our primitive ancestors ate. Excessive-protein, low-carbohydrate diets have peeked out and in of popular culture constantly during the last 50 years, every time rebranding and rebuilding upon fads of the previous. At their core, the identical disproven perception stays: that people are healthiest when consuming largely or solely meat.

However why does this obsession with large quantities of protein persist? And what influence is it having on our tradition, well being and planet?

A part of the rationale high-protein diets stay fashionable, says Amy Bentley, professor of diet and meals research at New York College, is that high-protein meals really feel like an indulgence, reasonably than a eating regimen. Present tradition and politics are additionally creating a macho second ripe for diets excessive in animal merchandise to turn into fashionable.

With sarcasm, Bentley describes the mindset: “‘Meat is such a central right, a bedrock base of the American diet. It’s our God-given right to have our meat.’” And opposing that, by consuming plant-based and even plant-forward, has “somehow been branded as anti-American.” Let’s check out how that occurred.

Excessive-Protein Diets, Then and Now

From the Stillman Eating regimen of the Nineteen Seventies to the carnivore motion of the 2020s, high-protein diets have advanced in each reputation and extremism over time. As every iteration pushes the boundaries of what’s thought-about “healthy,” these protein-focused diets proceed to bolster the notion that high-protein meals, notably people who come from animals — meat, dairy, eggs — are mandatory and superior for human consumption, whereas sidelining issues about long-term well being results and environmental sustainability.

Excessive-protein diets weren’t at all times a fad, although. Earlier than the shift in the direction of mass industrialization of meals that started within the U.S. within the late nineteenth century, nearly all of individuals (outdoors of the elite) have been merely involved with having sufficient to eat.

“And then at some point, when you have an established middle class and merchant class, and a stable food supply, then there becomes issues of overconsumption, and thinking about diet in terms of not just, ‘What is the food I’m eating?’ [but also, ‘are these], the optimal components for a healthy diet?’” Bentley says. The Banting Eating regimen, created by William Banting and Dr. William Harvey within the late nineteenth century in England, was the primary fad eating regimen to restrict starches and deal with animal protein for weight reduction.

But it surely wasn’t till the late Nineteen Sixties that high-protein diets actually took off. Doctor Irwin Maxwell Stillman created the Stillman Eating regimen, targeted on ultra-low-fat, high-protein consuming for fast weight reduction. This laid the groundwork for future tendencies, together with the Atkins Eating regimen phenomenon of the ‘70s, which took low-carb weight-reduction plan mainstream.

By the Nineteen Eighties, the Paleo Eating regimen pushed the narrative past the demonization of carbs, towards romanticizing a pre-agricultural manner of consuming, urging the consumption of lean meat, vegetables and fruit, however rejecting grains and legumes. Then got here the Ketogenic Eating regimen (Keto) within the 2010s, pushing carbohydrate consumption to near-zero and popularizing the concept that fats — particularly from animal sources — was the important thing to weight reduction. By the 2020s, the Carnivore Eating regimen emerged as essentially the most excessive iteration of the high-protein eating regimen but, eliminating plant-based meals fully.

Every step on this evolution has amplified the idea that animal-based protein is crucial, even optimum, whereas ignoring mounting proof about its environmental, moral, cultural and human well being prices.

Why the Obsession With Protein?

Excessive-protein diets of more moderen years sometimes lean on the speculation that early people ate largely — and even solely — meat. Some Carnivore Eating regimen proponents level to research that refute long-standing proof that people have been each hunters and gatherers, arguing we have been as an alternative “hyper carnivorous apex predators.” Nonetheless, truth checkers say there is no such thing as a conclusive proof that our ancestors have been solely carnivorous.

The need to eat “how cavemen ate” is a part of a broader obsession with extra “natural” dwelling, guided partly by present political narratives round meals and id. This contains Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s promotion of issues like uncooked milk, beef tallow and regenerative grazing.

However even earlier than the Make America Wholesome Once more (MAHA) motion took maintain within the U.S., “protein mania,” because the Guardian described it in 2019, was already spreading throughout a lot of the Western World. “For many people, protein has become a kind of secular unction,” writes meals journalist Bee Wilson, “it instantly anoints any food with an aura of health and goodness.” And past that, protein, notably from animals, has turn into culturally and politically entrenched.

Over the previous decade, the promotion of high-protein, meat-heavy diets has more and more intersected with right-wing politics, hypermasculinity and white nationalist ideologies. Figures like Jordan Peterson and influencers within the alt-right area have championed carnivorism as a rejection of liberal dietary norms, with meat consumption framed as an emblem of power, conventional masculinity and resistance to perceived globalist agendas.

Analysis has highlighted how on-line communities weaponize meat-eating in opposition to environmental and progressive actions, with meat-eating being politically and culturally positioned in opposition to plant-based consuming — which, in some circles, is taken into account a menace to nationwide id.

The meat business has additionally performed a component within the pro-protein narrative. Again in 2004, The Nationwide Hen Council famous how the rooster business was a “Big Winner From Low-Carbohydrate, High-Protein Diet Trend.” And since then, different business teams have labored to advertise meat because the optimum protein for people, via endeavors just like the Nationwide Cattlemen’s Masters of Beef Affiliation Beef Advocacy program, additionally working with on-line “meatfluencers,” and thru disinformation campaigns in opposition to plant-based meat.

As Hanna Reducing-Jones, director of meals research on the College of Oregon writes for The Dialog, a long time of selling and client tendencies have remodeled protein right into a perceived “superfood,” resulting in a multibillion-dollar business that now additionally contains protein powders and different dietary supplements. The U.S. protein powder market has grown from $3.5 billion in 2015 to $9.88 billion in 2024, with projections estimating it would attain $22.58 billion by 2032. And in response to a latest BBC Science Focus report, meals corporations during the last decade have elevated high-protein product gross sales fourfold — due to not dietary necessity, however as a result of protein is worthwhile.

Well being Impacts of Excessive-Protein Diets

North People will not be protein poor. In truth, in response to information from the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention, U.S. adults are consuming about 20 p.c extra protein than they want (although most will not be consuming sufficient fiber). In fact, these on high-protein diets devour much more protein, and a few consultants are warning in regards to the potential well being dangers.

As many high-protein meals are additionally excessive in saturated fat, getting an excessive amount of protein may result in elevated blood lipids, comparable to ldl cholesterol and triglycerides, and improve the danger of coronary heart illness. And since consuming surplus protein might be arduous on the kidneys, high-protein diets additionally elevate the danger of kidney illness in people who find themselves already predisposed to it.

A examine revealed final month in The American Journal of Medical Vitamin discovered that the Carnivore Eating regimen particularly, creates an “optimal environment” for the event of kidney stones, reaffirming previous findings. One other examine, revealed within the Journal of Organic Chemistry in 2024, discovered that prime protein consumption, comparable to on the Paleo Eating regimen, led to neurological problems in mice, on account of toxin buildup within the liver.

Analysis additionally exhibits that consuming an excessive amount of pink and processed meats is linked to an elevated threat of diabetes and threat of some cancers in people.

That mentioned, high-protein, low-carb diets can work for fast weight reduction. Specializing in protein can really feel much less restrictive for some individuals — even when complete different meals teams like fruits, greens and grains are restricted or eradicated.

“That especially was the genius of the Keto diet and Atkins: you can have bacon, you can have steak, you can feel like you’re not denying yourself,” Bentley says. “Of course, you can’t eat watermelon; you are denying yourself certain things, but it doesn’t feel like it so much because I think meat is a high-satiety product…it has a lot of aroma cues and texture cues and fullness cues, and so if you can eat those things, that feels like an indulgence.”

Bentley says high-protein diets usually work for weight reduction within the quick time period “because it’s calorie reduction, because you’re cutting out so many categories [of food].” However she provides that consuming largely or solely protein will not be prone to be a sustainable eating regimen over time. Maybe that is why we see the high-protein eating regimen reappearing with new names — and barely new guidelines — each few years.

Environmental Impacts of Excessive-Protein Diets

Excessive-protein diets which can be heavy on the steak additionally aren’t sustainable on the subject of local weather.

Diets excessive in meat, notably methane-belching ruminants like beef and lamb, have a notably increased local weather influence than diets containing extra or fully plant meals.

Certainly, a 3rd of world greenhouse fuel emissions come from meals, with most of these food-related emissions on account of meat, particularly beef, at present charges of consumption. There are impacts past greenhouse fuel emissions too: Animal agriculture can also be a number one contributor to deforestation, ocean degradation, land use, contemporary water use and air pollution and biodiversity loss. If we need to tackle greenhouse fuel emissions, we have to eat much less meat — no more.

Accounting for these impacts doesn’t even contact the way in which cattle are raised. Even with no large shift to higher-protein diets, an estimated 99 p.c of animals farmed for meals within the U.S. are raised in intense confinement on manufacturing unit farms.

The Backside Line

In the end, Bentley calls consuming a eating regimen excessive in animal meals “a luxury” that’s solely inexpensive, at the least in massive portions, to essentially the most prosperous populations on the planet. “Most people are happy to have a diet that’s 70 percent grains and vegetables and fruits, with meat as an accent, meat as a flavoring agent, meat in small amounts and in a variety ways.”

Even so, the cycle of high-protein eating regimen tendencies persists within the West, reshaping itself with new names, however carrying acquainted implications — on our well being, the planet animals and our tradition — making it clear that the fixation on animal proteins comes at a meaty value.

This text initially appeared in Sentient at https://sentientmedia.org/high-protein-diets/.

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This story was initially revealed by Sentient Media.

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The publish Excessive-Protein Diets Are Common — However They Definitely Aren’t Sustainable appeared first on The Good Males Challenge.

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