Functional health and low carb: Overview
- Low-carb claims remained stable despite booming functional food growth
- Thirty-one percent of low-carb launches carried functional health claims in Q1 2026
- High-protein positioning increasingly drives low-carb product development strategies today
- Fewer consumers follow keto diets as protein demand rises
- Functional health reframes low carb as supporting metabolic wellness
The functional boom has seen a radical transformation of the food sector. Consumers are clamouring for food that boasts ingredients like protein and fibre, and health benefits like gut health, immunity and even sleep.
Old trends such as low carb may be out of the spotlight, but this does not mean that they are gone.
Is low carb declining?
Low carb has not seen enormous growth, but neither has it seen substantial decline.
“With GLP-1s, high protein and gut health now dominating the health and wellness conversation, low carb has slipped out of the headlines; and that’s easily mistaken for decline,” says Karine Dussimon, global insight manager for health and wellness at Euromonitor International. “But low carb hasn’t gone away: it has gone quieter, and that’s a different thing.”
In Q2 2026, the share of F&B launches with a low-carb claim was 0.44%, compared with 0.51% in Q2 2025, according to data from analytics company Innova Market Insights. However, claims were slightly higher in Q1 2026 compared with Q1 2025.
Demand for low carb has remained relatively steady from year-to-year, says Michele Scott, director of insights at Innova Market Insights. Around a third of low-carb launches are connected to sports nutrition.
While low-carb claims are not growing numerically, says Euromonitor’s Dussimon, the share of products they are found on is.
Meanwhile, low-carb diets declined slightly between 2025 and 2026, she explains, with retail volume sales of carbohydrates per capita growing by 1% in the same period. At the same time, the average carbohydrate content of food has declined consistently since 2020, with consumers attracted to “lighter, better built options” when it comes to carbs.
Low carb and functional health
“Low carb has held steady while functional claims grew, and the two are now often combined,” explains Innova’s Scott.
Functional health claims have been far more substantial than low carb. Claims such as gut health, energy, hydration, probiotics, prebiotics and brain health went from being on 5.9% of launches in Q1 2024 to 8.4% in Q1 2026, according to Innova. Meanwhile, product launches making the low-carb claim have stayed within the range of 0.41% and 0.62% in the same period.
Interestingly, in the first quarter of 2026, 31% of low-carb launches also carried a functional health claim, compared with just 24% in Q1 2025, and 58% of low-carb launches in Q2 2026 also carried a high protein claim.
“If anything, functional food has given low carb a second life. Looking ahead, I’d expect low carb to keep its place less as a headline and more as a supporting credential.”
Karine Dussimon, global insight manager for health and wellness at Euromonitor International
Low carb is being folded into a broader ‘metabolic health’ positioning, says Euromonitor’s Dussimon. Consumers are more interested in what a product does for them, rather than what ingredients are being taken out. Therefore, the overlap between low-carb claims and functional health claims is increasing. Low carb is now part of a “nutritional architecture”, rather than the whole story.
“If anything, functional food has given low carb a second life,” says Dussimon. “Looking ahead, I’d expect low carb to keep its place less as a headline and more as a supporting credential; sitting behind blood-glucose management, satiety and ‘metabolic health’ positioning. The brands that win will treat it as part of the formulation brief, not the front-of-pack slogan.”
Consumers want more protein rather than fewer carbs
Protein is now the “organising principle” with carbs being “managed through it” rather than counted on their own, says Dussimon.
“When protein takes priority on the plate ... carbohydrates are displaced almost by default.”
However, fewer consumers are following low-carb diets such as keto and paleo, and Dussimon predicts this trend will continue. According to Innova, around 11% of consumers follow a low-carb diet such as keto or Atkins in 2026, compared with 12% in 2025.
As the prominence of these diets declines, the need for protein itself increases, says Dussimon, due to the rise of GLP-1 weight-loss drugs and the protein requirement that comes along with them.
The number of consumers that follow a high-protein diet has increased, explains Innova’s Scott.
Nevertheless, says Dussimon, even protein is changing. “Looking ahead ... protein alone is commoditising as private label moves in. The next frontier is ‘smart protein’, paired with fibre, biotics and satiety, positioned against the need state.”
A new face for an old trend
The low-carb trend is not radically declining. Consumers have not suddenly rediscovered their love of bread, pasta and bakery products en masse.
Yet the old low-carb trends – the restrictive eating, the low-carb diets like keto and paleo – are giving way to general, widespread protein demand.
Low carb is becoming another claim among many, and one strongly associated with functional health, and especially with high protein.
