The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy of Food Trends

How collective belief shapes reality

Over the past year, I kept hearing the same refrain—on conference panels, on Zoom calls, over coffee with colleagues, and across LinkedIn feeds: “fiber is going to be the next protein.” All from different voices, but all with the same posture of inevitability.

The repetition itself became impossible to ignore. Not because fiber’s health benefits are news—we’ve known for decades that it’s important and most people don’t eat enough of it. But because the conversation felt like it was building on itself, creating its own gravity. I couldn’t quite tell whether fiber was actually trending, or if people talking about fiber trending was the trend itself.

Each public claim that “fiber is trending” nudges the world to make it so. This essay is probably contributing to that. Others like me hear fiber popping up in more conversations, so at least one of them includes it in a trend report. A big food company buys that report, reads it, decides to act. R&D gets briefed to reformulate products with added fiber. Maybe they invest in or acquire a promising fiber-centric startup.

In March 2025, PepsiCo acquired Poppi—a prebiotic soda containing inulin fiber—for $1.95 billion. The company was only five years old. A class-action lawsuit had been filed the year before, claiming the product’s 2 grams of fiber were too low to deliver meaningful gut health benefits. It settled for $8.9 million. PepsiCo still paid nearly two billion dollars to enter the fiber space. Was this acquisition why I started hearing “fiber is the next protein” everywhere this year?

The Big Fiber acquisition becomes news. Trade headlines write themselves. More startups launch around fiber, sensing opportunity. Influencers talk about it. Trend consultants talk about it. It begins to look conspicuous if you don’t mention fiber. Big Food competitors can’t ignore peers making moves at that scale, so they queue up their own product refreshes and scout their own acquisition targets. Conference organizers add more prebiotic panels to their agendas. Retailers start requesting category insights on digestive health. The cycle accelerates, feeding on itself.

There’s a name for this: the Thomas theorem, which states that if people define situations as real, they become real in their consequences. The classic example is a bank run—an institution can be solvent on Monday and empty on Friday if enough depositors believe collapse is imminent. In food culture, the mechanism is gentler but structurally similar. A cascade of micro-decisions—R&D budgets, line extensions, planograms, PR calendars—turns forecast into fact.

The Trend Machine

Winter is coming. And trend report season is coming too. It arrives like clockwork every November-ish to January-ish, as predictable as the holidays. For people in the forecasting business, this is the Super Bowl. Retailers publish forecasts. Consultancies release white papers. Editors compile their top-ten lists. Creators flood feeds with “what’s next” content. I am part of this machine too.

These packages present themselves as observation. In practice, they function as instructions. They tell the industry what to build, what to pitch, what to stock, and what to say. A major grocer can detect genuine movement—that’s data. But the moment it publishes a list of what will be big next year, it becomes an actor in the play. Brands retool to fit the brief. The forecast becomes a directive—and then a self-fulfilling scorecard.

If you want a barometer beyond vibes, follow the money. Across multiple independent market reports, the dietary fiber category is projected to grow at roughly 9.5% annually into the early 2030s—a rare consensus that usually appears only when commercial momentum and narrative momentum move together.

But what breaks through all that noise is rarely the moderate version. The attention economy rewards extremes. Most Americans get roughly 10 to 15 grams of fiber a day; the target is 25 grams for women and 38 for men. The public-health message should be boring: eat more plants, more often. But “eat more beans” doesn’t trend as well as “fibermaxxing”—turning intake into a metric, a challenge, a public identity.

Reductive prescriptions spread because simplicity scales. “Maximize fiber for gut health” offers one knob to twist. “Build a varied, plant-forward pattern over time” is better advice but milquetoast content. Social platforms have crushed the timeline of trend formation. What once took years can ignite in months. A few visible accounts showcase a product. Algorithms amplify it. Brands sprint a line extension to market. Speed itself is now a variable. Fast feedback loops reward clarity and narrative coherence. They punish nuance.

Signal vs. Intent

When someone declares a trend, is that person reporting a signal, promoting an interest, or both?

Incentives matter. A brand with a fiber-forward portfolio needs fiber to be a thing. Preferably a big thing. An investor backing gut-health startups benefits if gut health is declared the next frontier. None of this makes their claims false. But it skews their read. The cleanest read of a trend begins with who stands to gain—and whether their evidence rests on actual purchasing behavior or just sentiment.

The noise is easier to generate than signal. Search spikes and social chatter are easily gamed and often reflect a small number of creators with outsized reach. Even “sales” can mislead: promotional lift and one-and-done trial can look like traction until the repeat rate tells the truth. A 300% jump on a tiny base is still tiny.

This is how self-fulfilling prophecies masquerade as confirmation. A retailer anoints a trend; brands pile in; PR amplifies; search rises; early sales blip on promo; dashboards glow. The machine interprets its own outputs as external validation. By the time the signal fades, capital is already deployed, shelf space is committed, and everyone involved has an incentive to keep insisting the trend is real.

Who Decides What’s Next?

As someone who works writing, speaking, and advising on the future of food, I’m often asked what the next big thing will be. I’ve learned what answering does. Naming a trend creates the path of least resistance for capital, media, and entrepreneurial energy. Companies hire people like me to identify what’s coming and help build the narrative that brings it to life. Prediction and promotion occupy the same real estate. Every time I point at something and say “this matters,” I’m participating in making it matter.

When the 2025 lists arrive, read them with both eyes open. They are not neutral mirrors. They tell entrepreneurs where to hunt, buyers what to try, investors where to place chips, and consumers what to notice. They will be right more often than not—not because they divined inevitability, but because the industry complies.

The machine will keep humming. New SKUs will launch. Creators will evangelize. Retailers will experiment. Some of this will benefit people. Some will burn out by Q3. The feedback loop doesn’t care.

Through all of it, remember the difference between vehicle and destination. Trends are vehicles. The destination should be durable health. For fiber, the advice remains simple: increase intake gradually, mostly via whole foods. Move from the mid-teens toward the recommended range. Let your gut adjust. Translate momentum into habit, not identity.

So when you hear that fiber is the next protein, feel free to nod. Not because the claim uncovers an inevitability, but because saying it—loudly, repeatedly, from the right podiums—helps make it true. The only interesting question is what you do with that power: observe responsibly, or orchestrate without saying so.

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