PERSPECTIVE article
Front. Sustain. Food Syst.
Sec. Agricultural and Food Economics
Global diet not likely to become carnivorous as animal-source calorie consumption shares and human trophic levels stabilize in the long run
Provisionally accepted
- 1Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Bolzano, Italy
- 2University of Lincoln International Business School, Lincoln, United Kingdom
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We investigate the hypothesis that the global human diet will become carnivorous in the future. A long-term view of the development of global animal-source calorie consumption shares and human trophic levels is presented based on FAO food balance sheet and World Bank data. Our results show that across an analytically constructed period of 248 years both measures have stagnated in high-income countries since around 1985. Our findings imply that global food consumption patterns are not likely to endlessly increase the environmental burden associated with animal agriculture.
Keywords: animal-source products, Diet sustainability, global food consumption patterns, human trophic level, long-term development
Received: 17 Oct 2025; Accepted: 02 Jan 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Kipkoech, Ruto and FISCHER. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Christian FISCHER
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