This is a very bad time to be on a carnivore diet – The Irish Times

Have you recently woken up and wondered what life would be like if all you ate was meat and eggs, all day, every day? Probably not. But if you need more evidence that a carnivore diet might not be the brightest dietary choice, new data from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) might just be it.

The idea behind the diet is that by cutting all carbs, you will lose weight as your body will burn fat for energy. Well, if the CSO’s agricultural output price data is anything to go by, the diet will certainly burn a hole in your pocket.

The full-year figures for 2025 show the price of cattle rose 40.6 per cent, a rise so significant it helped to drive the overall annual output price index 14.2 per cent higher.

The increases to cattle prices are being widely linked to reduced livestock supply and increasing costs.

A report from Gira Consultancy and Research, presented at the recent Teagasc National Beef Conference, show that while cattle prices have spiked in the latter half of the year, the consumer has yet to feel the full price increase, as competition has limited the price pass-on. Meaning, we haven’t seen the last of the increases.

If that isn’t enough to get you into a bad mood, the figures are no better for sheep (up 5.1 per cent) and poultry prices (up 3.1 per cent), though pig products are down 4.9 per cent year on year.

Much of the growth in prices has been driven over the last year or so by fertiliser prices, the CSO said, which are now almost 14 per cent higher than they were in December 2024.

Still, there could be some hope yet. Prices may have been 2.7 per cent higher at the end of December compared to a year earlier, but they had dropped 0.1 per cent month-on-month. It isn’t clear, though, if this is the start of a trend or just a hiccup in the data.

Either way, if someone is on a protein-heavy diet, all those steaks, chicken fillets and eggs are unlikely to be getting much cheaper any time soon.

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