Coffey, Brian K.

Economic research has not assessed the relationship between physical exercise and protein consumption, which is frequently discussed across media platforms. This study uses news articles related to physical exercise to construct fitness-related media indices. Incorporating these indices and national prices and disappearance for meat from 1993 to 2022, a Rotterdam demand model was used to estimate news media elasticities. We find little evidence that news media attention to physical exercise has direct or spillover effects on beef, pork, or chicken consumption. Further, news media information does not shift demand for food into or out of the aggregate meat complex.