Is Veganism Dead?

Is it me, or is veganism experiencing a steep decline in popularity?

Last year, I stumbled upon an article in ELLE posing the question of whether wellness culture has "cancelled" veganism. Lizzo had announced that she was no longer vegan. She was not the only celebrity who had stepped away from a vegan diet. And ever since, I come across many of such declarations by ex-vegans online.

ELLE attributed this change largely to shifting trends within wellness culture, focusing on people's growing concerns about ultra-processed foods, including plant-based meat substitutes*, and claims that oat milk causes sharp spikes in blood sugar. While some of these concerns are valid, the analysis misses a crucial point, namely, the context in which these wellness shifts take place.

As I wrote wrote in an article for De Groene Amsterdammer (2025). the diminishing visibility of veganism coincides with political shifts that extend beyond questions of health. In fact, health claims often function as a convenient surface explanation, but a closer examination of dietary shifts and influencer content promoting animal-based diets suggests that emerging diet trends are about much more than just health. According to media researchers S. Marek Muller and colleagues, the renewed emphasis on meat consumption coincides with the rise of far-right online communities that position themselves against a perceived left-wing global elite. This elite is portrayed as suppressing 'ordinary people’, that is, supposedly, white populations in Europe and the United States, and white men in particular. How the hell did we get here?

I'm getting a virtual glimpse of the contents of Lynette Venema’s refrigerator, which is filled with butter, milk, yoghurt, large cuts of meat and cheese, and sixty eggs. Sugar-including carbohydrates from grains, pasta and bread—is strictly avoided. "I don’t eat vegetables or fruit either," says Venema, an influencer and public representative of the Dutch charity foundation, in an episode of Pointer Checkt, an investigative YouTube series produced by the Dutch public broadcaster.

Venema follows a strict animal-based diet called carnivore diet, and she is not alone. On social media the carnivore diet has gained popularity in internationally, including in the Netherlands. Enthusiasts believe that animal products, particularly red meat, are essential to human vitality. The diet is said to promote weight loss and to help prevent or even combat serious illness. However, by strictly consuming animal products, Venema and people like her deviate strongly not only from mainstream dietary guidelines but also from the cultural shift of recent decades that seemed to head more and more toward plant-based eating. When asked how she arrived at this decision, she points to social media. "On my birthday I took photos of my family, and when I saw myself I thought: I really need to lose some weight. I’d read so much about the carnivore diet already, so I thought- what do I have to lose?"

In recent decades, social media has become a central source of information on food and health. Wellness influencers and self-proclaimed nutrition experts constantly introduce new dietary trends, and more than half of the population reports being guided by what they read online. We can see that now in how protein has become the nutrient of the moment, so much so that experts speak of 'protein propaganda' that is backed by a massive marketized industry. But I'd like to push further to shed light on the ideological dimension of such propaganda.

Obviously, the carnivore diet is in many ways the antithesis of a plant-based diet. Over recent decades, plant-based eating gained traction as part of the vegan movement. At its core, veganism is an ethical movement focused on animal liberation. However, health, weight loss and environmental impact were often embraced as secondary benefits. When some people discovered that a plant-based diet could support weight loss, as described in the bestselling book Skinny Bitch by Kim Barnouin and Rory Freedman, many women started to embrace a vegan diet. Celebrities such as Victoria Beckham (who said was inspired by this book), but also Miley Cyrus and Beyoncé jumped on the vegan-bandwagon and started to promote Veganuary and launch their own vegan meal plans respectively. In recent years, however, veganism appears to be losing ground. Companies have begun removing vegan products from their assortments. Heinz discontinued its vegan dressing in response to what it described as 'changing culinary trends and tastes.' The vegetarian brand Quorn withdrew its vegan bacon slices, while companies such as Oatly and Nestlé have respectively scaled back and eliminated vegan product lines. Dutch newspaper Het Parool observed a similar trend, reporting that many vegan businesses in Amsterdam are closing. For long-term vegans like myself, this development is felt. Not only do vegan spots disappear, the range of vegan options in everyday food venues is also shrinking or replaced by vegetarian (lacto-ovo) options.

Diving into this new carnivore hype, I noticed that we're not just dealing with a diet, but more so a movement, drawing on a mix of ideas about nature, esoteric spirituality, physical strength and nationalism. The influencer Carnivore Aurelius describes the carnivore diet as a form of ideological awakening. Drawing on red-pill rhetoric, he describes it as a difficult but clarifying process that exposes society as fundamentally dishonest, with food positioned as the primary site of resistance and transformation: "Everything begins with food. This movement cannot be stopped."

For some, eating meat functions as a rejection of the political values they associate with veganism and with 'woke culture' more broadly. There appears to be a desire to return to so-called traditional values, even when these values are entangled with outdated ideas about ethnicity and culture (and oftentimes also gender). Among neo-Nazi groups, for example, the consumption of dairy has become a coded symbol of white supremacy. These groups often reference the work of American economist Justin Cook, who argues that global political and economic inequalities can be explained by differences in lactose tolerance. Early weaning from breast milk, he claims, shortens lactation periods and allows women to bear more children in their lifetime, leading to exponential population growth. According to Cook, this should explain Europe’s economic dominance during the colonial era compared to regions where lactose intolerance is much more common.

Russian academic Andrey Shcherbak builds on this line of thinking, arguing that the 'European diet' is an indicator of success and physical attractiveness, and that political and economic inequalities are largely biologically determined. Within this framework, milk becomes a symbol of European racial identity, while plant-based milk is framed as a serious cultural threat. Despite the absence of scientific evidence, the belief persists that soy and other plant-based products raise oestrogen levels, lower testosterone, and undermine masculinity. A term like 'soy boy' is frequently used to portray men as weak or feminized.

What many meat- and dairy-oriented groups share is an obsession with purity and a rejection of what is considered 'unnatural' or 'foreign'. This reflects a broader tendency in which notions of purity are intertwined with the idealization of a socially segregated past. Ideas about the optimal diet are ultimately shaped by oppositions between 'us' and 'them'. In The Nutmeg’s Curse, writer Amitav Ghosh describes how spices such as nutmeg and mace were once highly valued by European elites. When these spices became widely accessible, elites felt the need to distinguish themselves in yet another way, and so, bland food became a marker of social identity. And yes, this European blandness is echoed among carnivore enthusiasts who discourage herbs and spices because of their plant origins and instead favour a more restricted, sober, and, of course, local palate.

Some carnivores go as far as pursuing purity through the consumption of raw meat, including organs, raw milk and raw egg yolks. German influencer Valeria Uslar, also known as agirleatingsteak, is a former vegan who claims to thrive on an animal-based diet. As founder of the Carnivore College, she shares striking food content with nearly one hundred thousand followers on Instagram. I feel my jaw clench as I watch her bite into a raw beef heart, or scoop the brain from a lamb’s head. The explicit imagery naturally generates thousands of views, but is primarily framed as educational content. Beneath the videos, Uslar lists nutrients—vitamin B, cholesterol, fatty acids, phospholipids, sphingomyelin, choline, explaining their supposed benefits for brain health, liver function and neurotransmitters. As a medical student, she claims to speak from a place of authority. I can't help but wonder whether she once made similar claims about plant-based food, and whether such extreme dietary devotion conceals a recurring pattern. Research has shown that restrictive diets can sometimes function as a cover for disordered eating, but I'll leave that for another article.

Media researchers Joshua Molloy and Eviane Leidig, who examined prominent figures within the emerging 'raw movement', also note that the idealised return to unprocessed, 'traditional' food functions as some sort of resistance against a system that is believed to control people physically, mentally and spiritually. Those who live by such worldview find it crucial that men reclaim their masculine strength in order to protect women and children from perceived injustice.

Conservative commentator Tucker Carlson and far-right influencer Michael Mahoney (alias Mike Ma) present the consumption of raw animal products as the ultimate expression of masculinity, rooted in a connection to 'wild nature'. Their content circulates in Telegram groups where raw meat and dairy are promoted and celebrated as essential to sexual and reproductive health. These dietary practices articulate not only ideas about the body, but reveal a broader belief system about culture and gender. Similar dynamics appear in aesthetic trends such as cottagecore, which is popular among so-called tradwives. The aesthetic romanticises a rural, self-sufficient past, typically imagined within a Western agrarian setting. In De mythe van het gezin (The myth of the family), Dutch writer and sociologist Lotte Houwink ten Cate describes this imagery as follows:

a mother living near the sea or in the forest, in a house built by her husband; he wears a lumberjack shirt and is always outdoors; the children wear clothes she has made herself; there is baking and crafting.

When combined with far-right ideology, such idealisation of rural life recalls the concept of Blut und Boden, a Nazi doctrine that sought to unify blood, land and national identity. The contemporary emphasis on 'pure' diets, i.e. local, unprocessed and meat-heavy, often coincides with the celebration of 'native' culture and a rejection of multiculturalism, climate justice, gender equality and other values labelled as 'woke'. They're essentially right in one respect: it really is all connected. Food, politics, aesthetic trends, the manosphere...

Obviously, not everyone who has abandoned their vegan diet is a conspiracy-minded extremist. For many, veganism functioned primarily as a trend. Plant-based products became widely available and appealing, but as availability decreased and prices started to rise, some people adapted their diets accordingly. At the same time, veganism itself is not immune to problematic ideologies. There is a longer history of animal welfare and environmental concern within white nationalist movements, including among prominent figures in Nazi Germany. Hitler himself was vegetarian.

So-called 'Aryan veganism' represents a form of gastronativism in which diet and white supremacy intersect. Those calling themselves Aryans believed themselves to be genetically predisposed to a meat free diet, unlike other groups, including Jews. This supposed predisposition was framed as evidence of their moral superiority. Even Hindus, they claimed, were not true vegans, as their practices were seen to be motivated only by belief in the afterlife (karma) rather than genuine concern for animals. This logic - also known as ecofascism - speaks directly to the widespread belief among the people of color that white folks care about animals more than they care about humans that aren't white.

While ecofascist ideas remained marginal after the Second World War, the carnivore diet has now reached a far broader audience thanks to social media, as well as wellness culture. But the rightward shift in Western politics have ultimately played a significant role to push these narratives in the first place and help them go viral, and vice versa. The popularization of certain food diets illustrate how food can function as a political instrument. Today's rhetoric celebrating meat consumption is normalized by influential figures on the political right, including politicians such as Thierry Baudet, leader of the Dutch far-right party Forum for Democracy. Parties like the agrarian-populist BBB build their entire public image around it. Food becomes political, and the consumption of animal products a symbolic act within broader cultural and ideological struggles. All at the expense of animals and the environment.

*for more nuance, click here.