Throughout the 2010s, eating less meat and embracing plant-based food was — to many Americans — aspirational.

Large swathes of the public told pollsters they were trying to cut back on meat, lots of schools and hospitals participated in Meatless Monday, A-list celebrities dabbled in veganism, and venture capital investors bet big that plant-based meat products, like those from Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat, were the next big trend in food.

And for good reason. People were concerned about what the more than 200 pounds of meat that Americans eat on average each year does to our health. Undercover investigations that exposed the cruelty of factory farms shocked us. And animal agriculture’s huge environmental footprint slowly gained attention in the news.

But now, America is “done pretending about meat,” as The Atlantic put it earlier this year. Plant-based meat sales are declining, some celebrities are backtracking on their plant-based diets, and the carnivore diet, while still fringe, is ascendant on social media.

I’m not going to suggest I have a neat theory that explains this shift, but I think a few cultural dynamics explain some of it.

The first is the increasingly pervasive, yet misguided, notion — especially popular on the political left — that our individual actions don’t matter and that all responsibility to fix social problems lies with corporations and governments. The second is the rightward, reactionary shift of the electorate and pop culture.

The third unites people of all political persuasions: Americans’ growing obsession with protein, and especially animal-based protein.

But these reasons don’t quite hold up under closer........

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