High-Protein Diets Are Popular — but They Certainly Aren’t Sustainable

Podcaster Joe Rogan may have helped make meat cool again, but his preferred way of eating — the Carnivore Diet — is nothing new. It’s not meant to be; its core tenant is that humans thrive from eating how our primitive ancestors ate. High-protein, low-carbohydrate diets have peeked in and out of pop culture continuously over the last 50 years, each time rebranding and rebuilding upon fads of the past. At their core, the same disproven belief remains: that humans are healthiest when eating mostly or only meat.

But why does this obsession with massive amounts of protein persist? And what impact is it having on our culture, health and planet?

Part of the reason high-protein diets remain popular, Amy Bentley, professor of nutrition and food studies at New York University says, is that high-protein foods feel like an indulgence, rather than a diet. Current culture and politics are also creating  a macho moment ripe for diets high in animal products to become popular.

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 eating plant-based or even plant-forward, has “somehow been branded as anti-American.” Let’s take a look at how that happened.

High-Protein Diets, Then and Now

From the Stillman Diet of the 1970s to the carnivore movement of the 2020s, high-protein diets have evolved in both popularity and extremism over time. As each iteration pushes the limits of what’s considered “healthy,” these protein-focused diets continue to reinforce the notion that high-protein foods, particularly those that come from animals — meat, dairy, eggs —  are necessary and superior for human consumption, while sidelining concerns about long-term health effects and environmental sustainability about our current rates of meat consumption.

High-protein diets weren’t always a fad, though. Before the shift towards mass industrialization of food that began in the U.S. in the late 19th century, the majority of people (outside of the elite) were simply concerned with having enough 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 Diet, created by William Banting and Dr. William Harvey in the late 19th century in England, was the first fad diet to limit starches and focus on animal protein for weight loss.

But it wasn’t until the late 1960s that high-protein diets really took off. Physician Irwin Maxwell Stillman created the Stillman Diet, focused on ultra-low-fat, high-protein eating for rapid weight loss. This laid the groundwork for future trends, including the Atkins Diet phenomenon of the ‘70s, which took low-carb dieting mainstream.

By the 1980s, the Paleo Diet pushed the narrative beyond the demonization of carbs, toward romanticizing a pre-agricultural way of eating, urging the consumption of lean meat, fruits and vegetables, but rejecting grains and legumes. Then came the Ketogenic Diet (Keto) in the 2010s, pushing carbohydrate consumption to near-zero and popularizing the idea that fat — especially from animal sources — was the key to weight loss. By the 2020s, the Carnivore Diet emerged as the most extreme iteration of the high-protein diet yet, eliminating plant-based foods entirely.

Each step in this evolution has amplified the belief that animal-based protein is essential, even optimal, while ignoring mounting evidence about its environmental, ethical, cultural and human health costs.

Why the Obsession With Protein?

High protein diets of more recent years typically lean on the theory that early humans ate mostly — or even only — meat. Some Carnivore Diet proponents point to studies that refute long-standing evidence that humans were both hunters and gatherers, arguing we were instead “hyper carnivorous apex predators.” However, fact checkers say there is no conclusive evidence that our ancestors were exclusively carnivorous. 

The desire to eat “how cavemen ate” is part of a broader obsession with more “natural” living, guided in part by current political narratives around food and identity. This includes Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s promotion of things like raw milk, beef tallow and regenerative grazing. 

But even before the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement took hold in the U.S., “protein mania,” as the Guardian described it in 2019, was already spreading across much of the Western World. “For many people, protein has become a kind of secular unction,” writes food journalist Bee Wilson, “it instantly anoints any food with an aura of health and goodness.” And beyond that, protein, particularly from animals, has  become culturally and politically entrenched.

Over the past decade, the promotion of high-protein, meat-heavy diets has increasingly intersected with right-wing politics, hypermasculinity and white nationalist ideologies. Figures like Jordan Peterson and influencers in the alt-right space have championed carnivorism as a rejection of liberal dietary norms, with meat consumption  framed as a symbol of strength, traditional masculinity and resistance to perceived globalist agendas. 

Research has highlighted how online communities weaponize meat-eating against environmental and progressive movements, with meat-eating being politically and culturally positioned in opposition to plant-based eating — which, in some circles, is considered a threat to national identity. 

The meat industry has also played a part in the pro-protein narrative. Back in 2004, The National Chicken Council noted how the chicken industry was a “Big Winner From Low-Carbohydrate, High-Protein Diet Trend.” And since then, other industry groups have worked to promote meat as the optimal protein for humans, through endeavors like the National Cattlemen’s Masters of Beef Association Beef Advocacy program, also working with online “meatfluencers,” and through disinformation campaigns against plant-based meat. 

As Hanna Cutting-Jones, director of food studies at the University of Oregon writes for The Conversation, decades of marketing and consumer trends have transformed protein into a perceived “superfood,” leading to a multibillion-dollar industry that now also includes protein powders and other 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 will reach $22.58 billion by 2032. And according to a recent BBC Science Focus report, food companies over the last decade have increased high-protein product sales fourfold — due not to nutritional necessity, but because protein is profitable.

Health Impacts of High Protein Diets

North Americans are not protein deficient. In fact, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, U.S. adults are eating about 20 percent more protein than they need (though most are not eating enough fiber). Of course, those on high-protein diets consume even more protein, and some experts are warning about the potential health risks. 

As many high-protein foods are also high in saturated fats, getting too much protein could lead to elevated blood lipids, such as cholesterol and triglycerides, and increase the risk of heart disease. And because eating surplus protein can be hard on the kidneys, high protein diets also raise the risk of kidney disease in people who are already predisposed to it. 

A study published last month in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that the Carnivore Diet in particular, creates an “optimal environment” for the development of kidney stones, reaffirming past findings. Another study, published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry in 2024, found that high protein intake, such as on the Paleo Diet, led to neurological disorders in mice, due to toxin buildup in the liver.   

Research also shows that eating too much red and processed meats is linked to an increased risk of diabetes and risk of some cancers in humans. 

That said, high-protein, low-carb diets can work for rapid weight loss. Focusing on protein can feel less restrictive for some people — even when entire other food groups like fruits, vegetables and grains are restricted or eliminated. 

“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 often work for weight loss in the short term  “because it’s calorie reduction, because you’re cutting out so many categories [of food].” But she adds that eating mostly or only protein is not likely to be a sustainable diet over time. Perhaps this is why we see the high-protein diet reappearing with new names — and slightly new rules — every few years.

Environmental Impacts of High-Protein Diets

High-protein diets that are heavy on the steak also aren’t sustainable when it comes to climate.

Diets high in meat, particularly methane-belching ruminants like beef and lamb, have a notably higher climate impact than diets containing more or entirely plant foods. 

Indeed, a third of global greenhouse gas emissions come from food, with most of those food-related emissions due to meat, especially beef, at current rates of consumption. There are impacts beyond greenhouse gas emissions too: animal agriculture is also a leading contributor to deforestation, ocean degradation, land use, fresh water use and pollution and biodiversity loss. If we want to address greenhouse gas emissions, we need to eat less meat — not more. 

Accounting for those impacts doesn’t even touch the way farm animals are raised. Even without a massive shift to higher-protein diets, an estimated 99 percent of animals farmed for food in the U.S. are raised in intense confinement on factory farms.

The Bottom Line

Ultimately, Bentley calls eating a diet high in animal foods “a luxury” that is only affordable , at least in large quantities, to the most affluent populations in the world. “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 diet trends persists in the West, reshaping itself with new names, but carrying familiar implications — on our health, the planet animals and our culture — making it clear that the fixation on animal proteins comes at a meaty cost.