Many people dismiss popular diets as fads, but some meat market analysts think new diets are not only making money for livestock producers, but could brighten prices permanently.
“It’s changed people’s attitudes about meat,” said University of Missouri meat market analyst Ron Plain.
“(Meat) has gone from something people think they have to minimize in their diets to something they should work to maximize. People feel less guilty about eating steaks.”
High protein, low carbohydrate diets have become popular in the past decade, but now that the number of followers has reached about 30 million in the United States alone, their effect on the market is dramatic.
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George Morris Centre analyst Kevin Grier said his forecasts have been thrown off by an unexpected surge in demand for meat over the winter, and high protein, low carbohydrate diets are the most likely explanation.
“Something is causing demand to rise to levels that are completely off the charts,” said Grier.
“The levels of supply should be resulting in much lower price levels. I think it’s Atkins, but I can’t say for sure.”
The Atkins diet is the most famous of a number that preach a similar message: to lose weight and be healthy, people need to consume considerable amounts of meat and fat, but need to minimize most carbohydrates, virtually eliminating bread, potatoes, rice and most fruits and root vegetables.
The Atkins diet begins with a short period of shock treatment in which followers are urged to consume larger-than-usual amounts of meat and fats but consume almost no carbohydrates at all. After initial weight-loss periods these programs recommend a lifelong diet that stays heavy on meats, fats and some green vegetables, but lowers intake of most cereals, potatoes and rice.
Livestock Marketing Information Centre analyst James Robb thinks the meat diets are behind the recent surge in demand for all major meats. And he thinks it is part of the recovery of red meat demand, which slid from the 1970s to the late 1990s.
“We’ve really turned the corner with this,” said Robb, who is based in Colorado. “The whole red meat and poultry complex has moved up.”
People are willing to consume more beef, pork and poultry and pay more for it, Robb said. The change began in 1998, ending the market slide of beef, but the most dramatic impact has been seen this winter, with first quarter 2004 demand up by 10 percent.
Robb doesn’t think meat demand will keep increasing like that but nor does he see it falling.
“We think it will stabilize,” he said.
“The Atkins effect has been felt, but we don’t see another 30 million people taking up these diets.”
Robb said he believes this recent diet craze will not fade as quickly or as completely as other diet fads, so much of that new demand will stay in the meat marketplace in the future.
“We don’t think we’ll fall back into the declining demand era,” said Robb.
Plain said all diets tend to fade in popularity after a few years, but the real impact of the high-protein diets on the market has been their lifting of the public’s negative attitude toward meat, and especially red meat.
“That may last long after the number of Americans on the Atkins diet has gone from 30 million to three million,” said Plain.
