New Dietary Guidelines Give Animal Protein a Unique Opportunity

Animal protein is back, baby — well, at least that’s what the new Dietary Guidelines for Americans have communicated to the world. Yet, for many adopters of the term “everything in moderation,” meat and poultry products haven’t really gone anywhere despite price increases, pressure from plant and alternative protein segments and vegetarian and anti-meat advocates.

In fact, data from food & beverage intelligence company Datassential shows animal protein has been bouncing back over the past 12 months, at least compared to plant protein.

According to the company’s 2026 Trends Report, consumers have been making changes in the past year, with 37% of consumers saying they’ve increased their meat consumption more than they've increased their consumption of plant-based alternatives during that period of time.

Furthermore, there has been a 2% higher incidence of animal meat on menus in the past 12 months, and the incidence of plant-based meat on menus has declined by 3% in the same period. If that wasn’t enough evidence of the shift, the “Meat’s Back on the Menu” section of the report shows 34% of consumers believe it will be important to them to consume more meat when thinking about their health in 2026.

Nicole Johnson-Hoffman, chief operating officer of The Meat Institute, says the group and its members are pleased that the new guidelines represent “a clear statement about the value that animal protein has for human nutrition, and we believe it’s been unequivocally stated in these new Dietary Guidelines.” The institute had been engaged in the process because of the importance to numerous government-supported programs, such as the school lunch program and SNAP benefits.

“We believe with our whole hearts this is what’s best for public health and for Americans’ nutrition needs, so that part is thrilling,” she adds. “A lot of work has to be done on what it means to eat whole food and to eat real food, as Secretary Kennedy says, but we believe we’re on the right track.”

Tom Super, senior vice president of public affairs for the National Chicken Council (NCC), says the chicken industry shares the same level of excitement over the new guidelines, which encourage consumers to prioritize protein at every meal and position chicken as a whole, nutrient-dense, high-quality protein.

“If you thought the protein train was pulling into the station before, it has fully arrived,” Super says. “Chicken has been America's favorite protein for decades and is a mainstay of many healthy diets. Chicken is in a prime position to benefit from the new Dietary Guidelines.”

He explains that the guidelines’ recommendations on saturated fat and low-carb patterns provide additional opportunity for chicken.

“If the guidelines are recommending to almost double daily protein intake but saying to still limit saturated fats, there are only a few foods that fit here,” Super says, “and because chicken is a low-fat, high protein and affordable option, chicken can play a major role in helping to meet these requirements.”

Johnson-Hoffman says she was not surprised to see the guidelines acknowledge meat’s role in providing high-quality, nutrient-dense protein in Americans’ diets.

“This is something that most of us are talking about in our homes, with our friends, with our loved ones and with our doctors, and I think it’s great to see this acknowledgement,” she says. “I think this is a positive for human health.”

Taking the next steps

Even with the support of the Dietary Guidelines, the meat and poultry industries still need to focus on what they’ve been doing best, Johnson-Hoffman advises, and that is meeting consumer needs with options to fit the wide variety of diets out there.

“The U.S. meat industry does a beautiful job of providing options for all kinds of consumers in all kinds of situations, and that’s what we need to continue to do,” she explains. “What we do really well is give people choice, and we need to ensure that we’re providing excellent options for all kinds of consumers that are food safe, that are good for people’s health and that are at the right price point for different people.”

Some of the options available are further-processed or value-added meat and poultry products — which might seem to be under threat of the lingering debate over ultraprocessed foods (UPFs) and how that label should be defined. Johnson-Hoffman believes the exact label and definition shouldn’t be nearly as important as providing the variety of options to consumers, as mentioned above — logically and at the proper price point.

“If I need to put protein in my child’s lunch for school, it’s not going to be a steak, because that doesn’t work in the lunchbox,” she says. “But what works really well in the lunchbox is a beef stick and maybe a turkey sandwich, and I need to be able to do that in order to get my kid the right protein they need to have at lunchtime.”

The NCC believes the term UPF is overly broad and can mislead consumers by implying a food product is harmful simply based on how it’s made rather than its nutrient content. Super says any food characterization should prioritize nutritional composition and ingredient function, not the number of processing steps or ingredients.

“Consumers should be focusing on what is in the food, rather than how it was manufactured,” he says. “Chicken tenders and nuggets, for example, are great ‘bridge foods’; there are studies that show that when these products are on a child’s lunch tray, they're more likely to eat the broccoli or veggies that are also on the plate.”

Capitalizing on the potential for animal protein to grow requires meat and poultry processors to continue to innovate their operations and overcome some of the challenges present. Labor remains a critical hurdle that many processors need to jump, and Johnson-Hoffman has hope that the insurgence of artificial intelligence (AI) into the industry can help remove some of the truly labor-intensive, taxing jobs in the plants out of the hands of the employees.

“That’s something we’ve been working on in this industry for decades, but I think that work will never end,” she says. “We will always be looking for ways to make these jobs easier and more doable for our people, and also — where labor is scarce — to take work out that can be done by machines where we can’t find labor.”

Johnson-Hoffman relays that she’s seen real-life application of AI into foreign-material detection in high-risk foods in the past year that she believes is really exciting for the potential to further improve food safety for consumers and the bottom line for processors. Furthermore, tapping into AI and advanced technology to capture the legacy knowledge and experience that some of the retiring senior operators, technicians and management could be a gamechanger.

“If we can use AI to make the work easier for people with less experience and take some of the difficult decision-making out of these roles, that’s a great win for everybody,” Johnson-Hoffman says. “My hope is that AI systems can teach that work to people with a lot less experience, and that they can get as good — or even better — results using those kinds of tools.”