Broscience is a Public Health Risk
In a digital age where algorithms reward confidence over credibility, a new breed of influencer has emerged: the health super-spreader. They’re not doctors. They’re not scientists. They’re marketers in lab coats, selling supplements, steak, and snake oil.
A new report from Rooted Research Collective and the Freedom Food Alliance has named 53 of these social media “super-spreaders,” responsible for bombarding up to 24 million users with dietary misinformation. Most have no relevant qualifications. Some outright fake them. 96% profit from the misinformation they peddle.
It’s not just a quirky fad or an online rabbit hole. It’s a multi-million-dollar industry built on fear, fantasy, and flesh. These influencers aren’t just misinformed. They’re dangerous. And they’re shaping how people eat, vote, and think about health, animals, and the planet.
Meat, Money, and Make-Believe
What do these “experts” promote? Mostly extreme, unsustainable diets built on the systematic rejection of plant foods, carnivore diets, keto cults, and raw milk fantasies. Red meat is glorified. Organs are worshipped. Fibre is vilified. Plants are framed as poison. It's nutritional nihilism wrapped in pseudo-scientific jargon.
This isn’t about health. It’s about branding. Many of these influencers style themselves as renegades: anti-establishment rebels “exposing the truth” about Big Pharma, plant foods, and dietary guidelines. They throw around terms like “seed oil shill” and “toxin detox” to create a binary worldview, follow them and live forever, or eat broccoli and die.
Their tactics are textbook: fabricate medical credentials, invent enemies, and promise salvation through meat. A few even rake in over $100,000 a month selling access to their delusions as coaching sessions, supplements, retreats, and courses. Some charge thousands for consultation despite zero medical training.
Their followers are often young, disillusioned, and desperate for certainty. And that’s exactly what the super-spreaders sell.
Strip away the branding and the carnivore diet is just a modern reboot of medieval medicine: purge, restrict, repeat. Eliminate all plant foods and carbohydrates, survive solely on the flesh, fluids, and secretions of other animals, and you’ll supposedly be reborn shredded, clear-skinned, “in ketosis.”
It's epidemiological suicide.
This isn’t up for debate. The long-term risks of meat-heavy diets are well-established: heart disease, cancer, type 2 diabetes, scurvy, gout. If you removed every excuse and simply tracked the health outcomes of carnivore influencers and their followers for a decade, the results would read like a textbook on preventable chronic disease.
Yes, people sometimes feel better at first. That’s true of any elimination diet. You could live off boiled potatoes for a week and say it cured your acne. But feeling good for a few weeks doesn't mean you're on a sustainable or logical path. Elimination diets are diagnostic tools, not permanent blueprints for survival.
While flesh-flogging influencers demonise plant-based meats as “ultra-processed,” science tells a different story. According to a report by PAN International and the Good Food Institute Europe, not all processed foods are equal. Unlike processed meat, which is repeatedly linked to cardiovascular disease, plant-based meat tends to have lower saturated fat, higher fibre, and similar protein levels.
Most studies that demonise ultra-processed foods don’t even include plant-based meat, or lump it in with sugary drinks and fried snacks. Strip those out, and the link between ultra-processing and disease vanishes.
The nuance matters. Because if we let anti-vegan grifters shape public perception, people will end up rejecting the very foods that could help them live longer, reduce suffering, and mitigate climate collapse.
Meat, Masculinity, and Misogyny
There’s also a gendered undercurrent running through the meat-based misinformation machine. Studies show men consistently have higher carbon footprints than women, mostly due to red meat and car use, both behaviour patterns linked to traditional masculinity.
Men also face greater social pressure to avoid plant-based diets. They’re told eating plants is feminine, weak, unnatural. That meat equals muscle. That quinoa is for quitters.
This makes them prime targets for carnivore influencers who market meat as rebellion. Red meat becomes a political statement. A steak becomes a stand against cancel culture.
It’s absurd, but it works. The Grantham Institute found that women emit 26% less carbon than men in food and transport combined. Eating like a man, apparently, is a climate disaster.
The Real Cost of “Biohacking”
What’s most disturbing isn’t just the health misinformation or the carbon cost. It’s the ethical erasure.
Carnivore influencers aren’t just selling false hope, they’re selling exploitation. Every organ, egg, and secretion they praise comes from someone. A sentient being. Someone who didn’t consent to being turned into a “biohack.”
Promoting diets that require the forced breeding, confinement, mutilation, and slaughter of animals isn't just unhealthy. It’s supremacist. It’s the glorification of domination wrapped in a wellness wrapper.
And these influencers never talk about that. They’ll post selfies with steaks, but never footage from a slaughterhouse. They'll rave about raw milk but never show the separation of a calf from their mother. The violence is hidden behind hashtags and health claims.
Call It What It Is
Carnivore diets aren’t cutting-edge. They’re regressive. They’re exploitative. And they’re dangerous to humans, animals, and the planet.
This is more than a fad. It’s a backlash. Against evidence. Against empathy. Against progress.
We don’t need a diet that pretends to mimic cavemen. We need a mindset that reflects compassion, critical thinking, and collective wellbeing. One that embraces credible nutrition, not conspiracy. One that feeds people without feeding disinformation.
The era of the influencer-doctor-hustler hybrid needs to end. Because lives, human and non-human, are on the line.
Call out these frauds wherever they peddle their scams.
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