7 predictions for how MAHA will change how Americans eat

Uncle Sam thinks you’re probably eating wrong, and he’s got some advice.

Out: processed carbohydrates and added sugar.

In: fat and protein, especially the animal-flesh kind.

While the Make America Healthy Again movement is one of the biggest drivers of change in how we eat now, it’s not the only one. Today, Explained recently spoke with Liz Dunn, author of the newsletter Consumed, about her predictions for how we will eat in 2026. Some trends are MAHA-approved (more supplements) while others would give RFK Jr. a conniption (sugar-laden drinks are going to get even sweeter).

Below is an excerpt of the conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.

The question that I get more than any other as the year came to a close is: What’s next after protein? What’s the next protein? And I really feel like we’re not ready for what’s next yet for a few reasons.

One is that the supermarket has sort of reinvented itself for protein delivery. So, whether it’s zero sugar yogurts, or meat sticks, or protein boosted waffles, the protein is out there, and it’s everywhere calling to us, people really continue to associate protein with fitness and with strength and power — all great, positive things.

And maybe, most importantly, the new federal dietary guidelines up the recommended allowance of protein. So this is just going to add fuel to the fire.

This one does seem a little paradoxical, because there is a lot of sugar hating out there, but the country is not a monolith. And so, there are a really sizable number of people who are drinking and enjoying soup or sugary fast food and coffee chain beverages.

Drinks like this have been around since the Frappuccino, but I think, probably, the best example of how they’ve really grown is a chain called Dutch Brothers. It’s a coffee chain. It’s one of the fastest growing restaurant chains in America. And its growth is being driven not by coffee, but by these big, sweet, cold coffee drinks. And at the same time, we’re seeing the dirty soda trend. I don’t know if you’re familiar with dirty sodas.

Everybody from Taco Bell to McDonald’s is experimenting with what they call beverage innovation — how to add more of these drinks to their menus — and that is for two reasons.

One is consumers are really tightening their wallets, and they’re looking for ways to have an indulgence without maybe ordering an entire fast food meal. So a sweet soda, a sweet coffee drink is a great way to get that kind of fun pick me up without spending a ton of money. And then, on the business end, these drinks are really, really profitable.

They’re cheap to make. You can charge a fair amount for them, and especially at a time when coffee and beef are two commodities that are more expensive than they’ve ever been. These drinks make really good business sense for fast food chains. And so, I expect to see fast food chains to continue to really push them.

So, supplements are a $70 billion market in the US.

There’s a few reasons why this market has been exploding, and again, why I think it will really continue to explode in 2026. One is the Make America Healthy Again movement, which really buys into supplements as a concept.

I like to say that it’s pharma, big wellness. So there’s a lot of faith in the idea that the right mix of supplements in your diet could cure really anything. I mean, you may remember Robert F. Kennedy suggesting that Vitamin A was a good alternative to vaccination for measles. So, this is an example of this kind of thinking.

And then, social media has just been a real accelerant for this industry. If an influencer that you follow says that she swears by magnesium to help her sleep, that’s probably really going to encourage you to give it a try.

When I grew up, my family shopped at Stop and Shop; we went once a week. It was something for everyone — grocery store carried all the big packaged food brands. The prices are good, but they’re not great. But they’re kind of your main-street grocer.

Now, those mid-price grocers like Kroger, or Stop and Shop, or Albertsons, they’re really losing share to discounters. So Walmart sells about a quarter of the groceries in America today. Costco, Aldi, Dollar General, all of those discounters are really growing as people are willing to sacrifice name brand groceries or having a deli counter or maybe a larger selection for really, really deep value. And then, the other end of the V is the very premium end of the market. I’m thinking about places like Erewhon.

And Erewhon says it’s going to be expanding into as many as 20 cities in the coming years. And not quite as high end as Erewhon, but also in the more premium space, there’s brands like Sprouts, which is a natural fruits grocer, which is also really expanding rapidly. And so, that’s sort of the other end of this V where you see people seeking really deep discounts on one end, then, on the other end of the spectrum, splurging on sort of high-end premium grocery categories.

Listen: It’s not new that people choose where they eat in part based on the Instagramability or they’re taking pictures of their food or pictures of the interiors.

But I was really shocked to see a recent trend report released by the online bookings platform, OpenTable, which had a little tidbit that I just thought was staggering. 77 percent of Gen Zers and 79 percent of millennials said that they consider a restaurant’s Instagram or TikTok worthiness when deciding whether to eat there.

That’s a lot, and I think that it will likely be reflected in the types of decisions that restaurants make if a person is choosing where they dine based on what kind of content they can make out of it. I mean, I would expect to see really sort of viral appealing menu items and, I guess, decor touches that really lend themselves to photography.

So this is going to continue to be a really important factor in how people think about where they’re dining.

The latest estimates are that about one in eight Americans has tried a GLP-1 drug, and we’d expect to see that number grow, because they’re going to be some pill based versions of these drugs coming out in the coming months. So we think that this will probably spread adoption.

Now, if you’re a restaurant, and something like one in 10 or one in five, potentially, diners are on a drug that cuts their desire for big portions, that’s something that will have to really influence how you design your menu, because restaurants need to continue to try to make the same amount of revenue — even if people want smaller portions.

Over the years, the big packaged food companies have really been able to reformulate their way out of pretty much any diet trend — low fat, low carb, gluten-free. There’s a way to make a very profitable packaged food that fits all of those trends.

What we’re seeing now in terms of how people are thinking about the food they’re eating is that they’re really skeptical of highly processed foods. And again, on the GLP-1 front, they also are just potentially eating less or, at least, a sizable share of the population is eating less.

So that’s a really new and different challenge. If you’re a packaged food company, how do you continue to make profitable products that are not processed, which is sort of the whole engine of how you made them profitable to begin with. I think that there’s going to have to be a real reckoning at these companies to figure out how they continue to perform for shareholders and remain profitable as these eating habits are changing dramatically.