Executive Summary

In October 2025, the EAT-Lancet Commission will publish EAT-Lancet 2.0 an update to the planetary health diet first released in 2019. While the first report is one of the most influential academic studies ever released, it also faced significant online backlash – much of which was orchestrated by the meat industry. This report provides the first in-depth mapping of the connections between some of the industry-friendly scientists, doctors, health influencers, journalists and authors behind the initial backlash. We explore how narratives have evolved, and how industry is mobilising a communications drive ahead of EAT-Lancet 2.0 due for release in October 2025.

The first EAT-Lancet report

In January 2019, the EAT Foundation and the medical journal The Lancet published Food in the Anthropocene: the EAT–Lancet Commission on Healthy Diets from Sustainable Food Systems. The EAT-Lancet Commission comprised 37 leading scientists from 16 countries working in human health, agriculture, political science and environmental sustainability, and sought to create a framework for a ‘planetary health diet’ that, in a world of 10 billion people, balanced human nutrition with ecological sustainability.

With more than 600 policy citations by 2024, the EAT-Lancet report is one of the most influential academic studies ever released. However, the potential of the report to lead to regulation and societal change that could pose a serious threat to the interests of Big Meat and Dairy led to significant online backlash – against the report’s findings and the Commission itself. The onslaught of attacks marked a pivotal moment in food systems and diet becoming entangled in ‘culture wars’. Early research into the backlash showed how the hashtag #Yes2Meat, around which the attack converged, had reached 26 million people on Twitter, compared with 25 million reached by those promoting the research, and that the negative campaign had succeeded in moving ‘undecided’ users, with critical posts shared six times more frequently than supportive ones.

There were notable real-world impacts. In March 2019, the World Health Organization pulled its sponsorship of an event to promote the report, following pressure from the Italian government, which reflected narratives from the online backlash. The Commission’s researchers and scientists have reported sustaining mental health impacts because of the online personal attacks they faced, and that in some cases their careers had been affected.

Our research

This Changing Markets Foundation report provides a detailed analysis of the online backlash, exposing for the first time a tightly connected network of ‘mis-influencers’ – individuals and entities that spread disinformation or amplify misinformation within digital spaces. Our findings strengthen the evidence of industry interference and its ties to key mis-influencers. Through analysis of conversations on (what was then) Twitter between 1 June 2018 and 30 April 2019, our research provides the first in-depth mapping of the connections between industry-friendly scientists, carnivore-diet promoting doctors, health influencers, and pro-meat journalists and authors. Through this, we show a tightly coordinated network mobilised to discredit the EAT-Lancet report’s findings. We trace how this period cemented critical relationships among mis-influencers, examine how some of their influence and narratives have evolved, and identify the potential risks of efforts to discredit EAT-Lancet 2.0.

Our research includes analysis of the genesis and influence of the industry-led hashtags #Yes2Meat (the ‘official opposition’) and #ClimateFoodFacts, showing how pro-meat health influencers and industry scientists amplified them in the lead-up to the report’s launch to pre-emptively discredit its findings. Our investigation also corroborates earlier evidence that the PR agency Red Flag, likely acting on behalf of the Animal Agriculture Alliance (AAA), was behind some of these efforts.

In addition to analysis of Twitter posts, our analysis revisits leaked documents and those received under freedom of information requests to draw out specific examples showing industry influence specifically targeting EAT-Lancet. We show for the first time unpublished documents which reveal the extent to which the 2024 Denver conference on the ‘societal role of meat and livestock’ was intended to ‘plan an ‘urgent’ communications drive’ to help maintain the social licence of the meat industry.

We provide profiles of some of the most prominent mis-influencers, showing how many of them benefit from their promotion of high meat diets, including through selling books, advice and products or from direct industry funding for research and funding for their involvement in conferences and events.

The initial backlash: cementing a closely coordinated network

Our analysis of the initial backlash period identifies 100 mis-influencers responsible for nearly 50% of posts that formed the backlash on Twitter, and over 90% of total engagement. None appear to be bot accounts, but real and very committed people. There were also a few industry accounts, with the (North American) Meat Institute and the AAA ranking 28th and 31st by engagement, while the libertarian think tank the Institute of Economic Affairs ranked 44th.

Within the top 100 accounts, we identified a subset of 33 accounts which appear to be working as part of a coordinated network. Our analysis reveals a clear pattern in which these mis-influencers consistently tagged and shared each other’s content, using similar or identical wording and hashtags. More than 60% of the links shared within the network were written by people within it. The tagging and amplification repeated throughout the dataset, leading to five different peaks in our timeline (see below). These are the hallmarks of a coordinated campaign; in this instance these tactics were used to push misinformation and pro-industry messages, framing EAT-Lancet diet as nutritionally deficient and scientifically problematic proposition.

Overall, we found that the top 20 mis-influencers made up 19% of the posts and 69% of the total engagement. Of the top 20, we identified 13 as part of the coordinated network and thus included them in our mis-influencer profiles. We break the profiles down into three categories: scientists and academics, doctors and health influencers and pro-meat journalists and authors. Overall, doctors and health experts were among those with the highest engagement, playing pivotal roles in driving #Yes2Meat and amplifying the pushback against EAT-Lancet. The most influential was pro-meat doctor, Shawn Baker, closely followed by food influencer, Nina Teicholz, and another doctor Ken Berry, who is promoting paleo diets, coming in third.

Pro-meat industry scientist Frédéric Leroy, the most central figure in the mis-influencer network, was the fourth most influential. He pre-emptively attacked the EAT-Lancet report to lay the foundations for others and promoted various posts of others in the network. Following the EAT-Lancet report he continued to play a critical role in creating scientific conferences and narratives for the industry to use to undermine the findings of the report.

New analysis of previously released and new documents

In light of these findings, we re-analysed documents released to Unearthed for an investigation showing the extent of meat industry funding in establishing the UC Davis Clarity and Leadership for Environmental Awareness and Research (CLEAR) Center. The CLEAR Center is led by Frank Mitloehner, a central pro-industry scientific figure and 6th mis-influencer in our dataset. Mitloehner is credited with a key role in the online backlash to the EAT-Lancet report, with documents revealing how he ‘launched an academic opposition composed of 40 scientists … coinciding with the official opposition, named yes2meat’ to discredit its findings. Mitloehner used this ‘success’ to fundraise from industry sponsors, while industry positioned him as an ‘independent academic expert’ to grow his reach online.

We also reanalysed a leaked document appearing to show how the PR agency Red Flag helped AAA with a campaign to proactively undermine the EAT-Lancet launch, including the creation of #ClimateFoodFacts. It states that Red Flag, or its client, briefed ‘experts’ with ‘substantive engagement’ and our analysis of the mis-influencer network reveals who these experts may be.

Additionally, we analysed documents and extensive audio recordings obtained by Changing Markets about the so-called Denver summit and its subsequent ‘Call For Action’ in 2024. While the conference was promoted as having ‘scientific’ output, our additional evidence reveals the extent to which the conference was a public relations exercise, intended to hone arguments and identity-driven influencer campaigns to help maintain the meat industry’s social licence. We also summarise existing evidence of the industry links to the so-called Dublin declaration in 2022, a precursor to Denver, and highlight how pro-industry scientists including one of the key mis-influencers in our dataset, Frédéric Leroy, have been central to both.

Going forward

Since 2019, the level of online mis- and disinformation related to food systems has grown exponentially with new narratives gaining prominence, many of them anchored in conspiracy theories and in part fuelled by far-right politicians and opinion leaders. We look at how, alongside the continued messaging development and coordination of the meat industry and mis-influencers at events such as Dublin and Denver, pro-meat messaging continues to be spread through social media. The #Yes2Meat hashtag was used over 2,000 times in the period between June 2024 and May 2025, while #MeatHeals, another hashtag used to promote pro-meat narratives, was used over 8,000 times. We review the landscape in 2025, including the impact of the loss of social media content moderation and the rise of AI. We also look at the overlap with the rise in popularity of carnivore and keto diets, pushed by doctors and influencers from the ‘manosphere’, such as Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson.

As the EAT-Lancet 2.0 report prepares to launch in October 2025, the need to address the devastating climate, environmental and health impacts of our diets is urgent. The impacts on health are clear, with 2021 study finding that a quarter of all deaths among adults globally are attributable to poor diets.

The science is also clear that cutting meat and dairy consumption is critical to tackling climate change. A comprehensive survey of climate experts in 2024 concluded that global greenhouse gas emissions from livestock must be cut by 50% by 2030 to align with the Paris Agreement.

The meat industry understands the power of online backlash against climate and health science to successfully distract, delay and derail action which may affect its profits. The industry has led these attacks before and is preparing to do it again – in an environment where science and facts are already under attack. This makes it even more urgent for media, politicians and the public to look at who is really behind the social media headlines and what their affiliations are. Without doing this, we risk missing the significant opportunity to transform our food systems and create a healthier and climate safe future for us all.