The Carnivore Diet. Does it actually work?

[Ivan Koretskyy]

I wanted to create a thread discussing about the carnivore diet. I’m a personal trainer and nutritionist from NASM and while learning about eating right foods and avoiding others. I never knew about why the Carnivore diet exists until now.

One of the main selling point is this: vegetables and fruits can actually harm your autoimmune system.

You’re probably thinking, “Vegatables are bad for you?! I thought it’s staple of keeping our bodies healthy.” I thought the same thing too, until I did a bit of research and one thing perplexed me. A chemicals that plants produce to fight off bacteria is known as “phytoalexins” and is literally a toxin that can destroy our bodies DNA.

Many people who started this diet did this because they had some sort autoimmune disorder that came with many symptoms to their health. Once they started the all-meat diet, their symptoms vanish.

I’m curious to know from this forum if this carnivore diet could be the new keto diet trend that people will start doing. If so, this could be the potential for us entrepreneurs to create a product for the carnivores. I’m thinking of creating foods and vegetables that remove the toxins that is killing our auto immune system, which may be a very difficult, yet very profitable task to accomplish.

 

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[Mathuin]

There is already a long thread on this.

NOTABLE! - My Experience Eating Keto/Carnivore

Some perspective: Vegans don't find issue with the circle of life (as it pertains to lions/zebras or environmental/circumstantial killing for survival, say the Alaskan bush) but with normalization of meat as a primary dietary ration, a centerpiece in the first-world palette, despite...

www.thefastlaneforum.com

After the Juicing thread, MJ has also wished to keep dietary topics to a minimum. Better places to discuss this topic.

 

[Deleted74338]

I wanted to create a thread discussing about the carnivore diet. I’m a personal trainer and nutritionist from NASM and while learning about eating right foods and avoiding others. I never knew about why the Carnivore diet exists until now.

One of the main selling point is this: vegetables and fruits can actually harm your autoimmune system.

You’re probably thinking, “Vegatables are bad for you?! I thought it’s staple of keeping our bodies healthy.” I thought the same thing too, until I did a bit of research and one thing perplexed me. A chemicals that plants produce to fight off bacteria is known as “phytoalexins” and is literally a toxin that can destroy our bodies DNA.

Many people who started this diet did this because they had some sort autoimmune disorder that came with many symptoms to their health. Once they started the all-meat diet, their symptoms vanish.

I’m curious to know from this forum if this carnivore diet could be the new keto diet trend that people will start doing. If so, this could be the potential for us entrepreneurs to create a product for the carnivores. I’m thinking of creating foods and vegetables that remove the toxins that is killing our auto immune system, which may be a very difficult, yet very profitable task to accomplish.

The carnivore diet has been debunked so many times. It's actually incredibly bad for your health. You will experience joint pain, stomach pain and so much more. People who look into this diet are either vegan haters or people who think this will the cure for everything .

You can have a vegan diet and be healthy, but a carnivore diet is just plain stupid. Science does not really support the carnivore diet, and from the few people who have tried it, many of them had bad experiences. The "evidence" for this diet is just a bunch of cherry picked information put together to make somewhat good sounding arguments for people who don't know any better.

I don't think carnivore will become a trend, its just something that vegan-haters do. I know Joe Rogan tried it, but that's because he hates vegans. So just have a healthy omnivore diet, or a vegan/vegetarian diet that is actually backed by decades of studies.

There is no point in debating this, as believing the carnivore diet is good is the same as believing that the earth is flat.

 

[Dan_Cardone]

The carnivore diet has been debunked so many times. It's actually incredibly bad for your health. You will experience joint pain, stomach pain and so much more. People who look into this diet are either vegan haters or people who think this will the cure for everything .

You can have a vegan diet and be healthy, but a carnivore diet is just plain stupid. Science does not really support the carnivore diet, and from the few people who have tried it, many of them had bad experiences. The "evidence" for this diet is just a bunch of cherry picked information put together to make somewhat good sounding arguments for people who don't know any better.

I don't think carnivore will become a trend, its just something that vegan-haters do. I know Joe Rogan tried it, but that's because he hates vegans. So just have a healthy omnivore diet, or a vegan/vegetarian diet that is actually backed by decades of studies.

There is no point in debating this, as believing the carnivore diet is good is the same as believing that the earth is flat.

Completely disagree. I did that diet for a while and I felt amazing on it. My brother has been on it for a couple years and his health markers are better than ever.

 

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[Xeon]

The best way to eat is to eat as Nature intended humans to : a balance of fruit, vegetables and meat.

All these dietary fads and "trends", "ideologies" and "paradigms", are nothing more than marketing and branding, to segment and divide the population through identity politics, and then catering a product or service just for them, to make them feel like they're part of a special community, to fulfill the inherent human need for identity. That's why they've all these "names" like "Paleo diet", "Carnivore diet", "South Beach diet", a lot of others and including one that starts with a capital V.

Have you ever seen the whole "they/them" pronoun thing and think WTF? These diets are the equivalent of that. New ones coming out daily.

To make the "members" of these diets more closely knitted, give them an ethos and a mission (after all, humans all want to be part of something larger than themselves). Slogans, signs, what have you.

You can even start your own diet today, make it exotic and new (the more controversial WTF the better so that news will pick it up), name it something like The Medieval Diet or The Manhattan Way, get influencers to promote it etc.

 

[Raoul Duke]

 

[Antifragile]

Quite the opposite for me. Don’t need animal based foods.

I’ve never been or felt healthier than when eating all plant based foods.

 

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[Parks]

Livestream/video of two doctors who take blood tests before and after switching their diets. One on the Carnivore Diet switching to Plant Based and Plant Based switching to highly meat based.

Results skew in Plant Based favor.

Full Live Stream:

View: https://youtu.be/rCbuxpDmXX4


Summarized Video:

View: https://youtu.be/a9xHfGCGsIE


That guy who is the big proponent of the Carnivore Diet that OP is talking about has like a high cholesterol level of 700 lol. That's major scary to me but his rebuttal is that there is a certain mineral that aids and abetts it. Atleast that's what he said on his Joe Rogan Episode.

 

[S.Y.]

I wanted to create a thread discussing about the carnivore diet. I’m a personal trainer and nutritionist from NASM and while learning about eating right foods and avoiding others. I never knew about why the Carnivore diet exists until now.

One of the main selling point is this: vegetables and fruits can actually harm your autoimmune system.

You’re probably thinking, “Vegatables are bad for you?! I thought it’s staple of keeping our bodies healthy.” I thought the same thing too, until I did a bit of research and one thing perplexed me. A chemicals that plants produce to fight off bacteria is known as “phytoalexins” and is literally a toxin that can destroy our bodies DNA.

Many people who started this diet did this because they had some sort autoimmune disorder that came with many symptoms to their health. Once they started the all-meat diet, their symptoms vanish.

I’m curious to know from this forum if this carnivore diet could be the new keto diet trend that people will start doing. If so, this could be the potential for us entrepreneurs to create a product for the carnivores. I’m thinking of creating foods and vegetables that remove the toxins that is killing our auto immune system, which may be a very difficult, yet very profitable task to accomplish.

Things that harm but don't kill you are not automatically bad for you. Life has many examples of that:
- Take vaccine. You get injected with something that is harmful, and your body learn to fight it.
- Exercise: weight training boils down to harming your muscle. When your body repairs the tears, the muscle is stronger
- Fasting. At a micro-level it is harmful - the result is autophagy, which you can think of as destroying weak cells.
- stress: at some low-level dose, it makes you stronger. In fact, one of the ways to learn how to deal with stress is to slowly increase your threshold level by exposing yourself to stressful events.

The name of that phenomenon is hormesis.

I didn't try the carnivore diet. But I have tried many different diets in the past. With time, I came down to a couple of things to be healthy:
- Eat mainly plant-based with meat/fish occasionally. (of all the "diets" mine is closed to the Mediterranean one)
- Cut the processed and stay as close to possible to nature (including grains)
- Move regularly, full range of motion, mobility. Think nature and all the range of motions we have lost. (how many here can squat and maintain that position comfortably for 10+ mins? Not many. My grandmom passed in her 90s and could squat like nothing. She made a point to not use the chair and had a rug on her floor where she was sitting)
- Stay hydrated
- Listen to your body. If you don't tolerate a "healthy" food, don't take it.

That is if you don't have an immune condition that justifies cutting a specific group.


Anecdotal: My ancestors are a nomad tribe from Africa. Their calories were mainly coming from meat & milk. I came across two research papers on current descendants that kept that lifestyle. Both papers concluded that they were very healthy most likely because their bodies adapted to that way of eating. My whole family has very little intolerance to milk for example. So there probably is a genetic aspect to it as well. Mind you, those descendants are not sitting in front of a computer all day or spending their time on electronics.
And now, I have relatives all over. I am in Canada, some are in various places in Europe, some are in big cities in Africa and others decided to stay in remote areas. We have all various different ways of eating. The healthier members are the ones in remote areas... It is not even close. They grow their livestock and food, eat mainly plant-based and very low processed crap.

 

[PureA]

The carnivore diet has been debunked so many times. It's actually incredibly bad for your health. You will experience joint pain, stomach pain and so much more. People who look into this diet are either vegan haters or people who think this will the cure for everything .

You can have a vegan diet and be healthy, but a carnivore diet is just plain stupid. Science does not really support the carnivore diet, and from the few people who have tried it, many of them had bad experiences. The "evidence" for this diet is just a bunch of cherry picked information put together to make somewhat good sounding arguments for people who don't know any better.

I don't think carnivore will become a trend, its just something that vegan-haters do. I know Joe Rogan tried it, but that's because he hates vegans. So just have a healthy omnivore diet, or a vegan/vegetarian diet that is actually backed by decades of studies.

There is no point in debating this, as believing the carnivore diet is good is the same as believing that the earth is flat.

I don't have a horse in the race. That being said, how can you claim all these things so boldly?
Imagine you were suffering from ailment XYZ for decades, you ate carnivore, and that all went away and you could live life again. You'd make some noise about it, wouldn't you?

Same thing happens when people go vegan and they fix their decade-long problems, they're LOUD (and so they should be).

Be careful with your black and white thinking, and perhaps question your motives when you find yourself in such a situation.

Someone with 100,000 years of nordic ancestry is likely to thrive on a different diet than those with an African background, we are all different.

And as a quick example, if meat was as bad as you claim then why would the country with the highest meat consumption per capita have the longest life expectancy in the world? Not saying it's causative AT ALL, merely saying there is a lot of grey area here.

 

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[TonyStark]

The carnivore diet has been debunked so many times. It's actually incredibly bad for your health. You will experience joint pain, stomach pain and so much more. People who look into this diet are either vegan haters or people who think this will the cure for everything .

You can have a vegan diet and be healthy, but a carnivore diet is just plain stupid. Science does not really support the carnivore diet, and from the few people who have tried it, many of them had bad experiences. The "evidence" for this diet is just a bunch of cherry picked information put together to make somewhat good sounding arguments for people who don't know any better.

I don't think carnivore will become a trend, its just something that vegan-haters do. I know Joe Rogan tried it, but that's because he hates vegans. So just have a healthy omnivore diet, or a vegan/vegetarian diet that is actually backed by decades of studies.

There is no point in debating this, as believing the carnivore diet is good is the same as believing that the earth is flat.

I mostly agree with that this guy said, that most people doing it do so in the same energy as “vegan-haters”.

I for one would hate to have the shits all day and night. Can’t imagine the constipation & bloating that would bring.

I don’t want meat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. That’s just gross lol

 

[WillHurtDontCare]

I'll chime in as someone who has done keto / low carb.

Carnivore will help you lose weight, but you will be exhausted if you eat carnivore while doing certain forms of exercise like high rep weightlifting routines.

You can also get the runs if you do high fat carnivore.

The carnivore diet works, but it needs to be seen as a component of a larger strategy or it can hurt you.

 

[Guyfieri5]

I wanted to create a thread discussing about the carnivore diet. I’m a personal trainer and nutritionist from NASM and while learning about eating right foods and avoiding others. I never knew about why the Carnivore diet exists until now.

One of the main selling point is this: vegetables and fruits can actually harm your autoimmune system.

You’re probably thinking, “Vegatables are bad for you?! I thought it’s staple of keeping our bodies healthy.” I thought the same thing too, until I did a bit of research and one thing perplexed me. A chemicals that plants produce to fight off bacteria is known as “phytoalexins” and is literally a toxin that can destroy our bodies DNA.

Many people who started this diet did this because they had some sort autoimmune disorder that came with many symptoms to their health. Once they started the all-meat diet, their symptoms vanish.

I’m curious to know from this forum if this carnivore diet could be the new keto diet trend that people will start doing. If so, this could be the potential for us entrepreneurs to create a product for the carnivores. I’m thinking of creating foods and vegetables that remove the toxins that is killing our auto immune system, which may be a very difficult, yet very profitable task to accomplish.

A lot of people on this forum are plant-based but, aside from Joe Rogan, I haven't actually heard of anyone going carnivore. Certainly, no one I've actually met has done it. I'm interested in how this diet works for people. I imagine it would severely increase both cholesterol levels and blood pressure.

I am sure there is a profitable niche within the carnivore diet community. Forums like this one, but focused on people within health and wellness and particularly that diet category, could be a goldmine for ideas.

 

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[Guyfieri5]

Quite the opposite for me. Don’t need animal based foods.

I’ve never been or felt healthier than when eating all plant based foods.

I haven't gone vegan but I cut out dairy, processed foods, and processed meats. Tons of vegetables and a little bit of meat and I feel amazing. Dairy was a big one for me. I cut that out and a ton of problems went away.

 

[Guyfieri5]

I mostly agree with that this guy said, that most people doing it do so in the same energy as “vegan-haters”.

I for one would hate to have the shits all day and night. Can’t imagine the constipation & bloating that would bring.

I don’t want meat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. That’s just gross lol

I agree. The thought of going carnivore does not sound appealing lol.

 

[Guyfieri5]

Livestream/video of two doctors who take blood tests before and after switching their diets. One on the Carnivore Diet switching to Plant Based and Plant Based switching to highly meat based.

Results skew in Plant Based favor.

Full Live Stream:

View: https://youtu.be/rCbuxpDmXX4


Summarized Video:

View: https://youtu.be/a9xHfGCGsIE


That guy who is the big proponent of the Carnivore Diet that OP is talking about has like a high cholesterol level of 700 lol. That's major scary to me but his rebuttal is that there is a certain mineral that aids and abetts it. Atleast that's what he said on his Joe Rogan Episode.

I could imagine this is true lol. Having cholesterol levels that high would make me panic.

 

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[Ozankey]

I haven't gone vegan but I cut out dairy, processed foods, and processed meats. Tons of vegetables and a little bit of meat and I feel amazing. Dairy was a big one for me. I cut that out and a ton of problems went away.

I tried low-carb diet, and indeed feel that lightness in my body. The advantage is that it make me want to eat less. I now sometimes follow https://betterme.wоrld/articles/low-carb-intermittent-fasting/ diet when need to get in shape. However, I can't refuse dairy completely.

 

[Johnny boy]

choice is yours​

 

[tom3k93]

From my long experience with diets, it's the best diet for minimalising inflammation, focusing on work, curing gastric problems, and having stable-low blood sugar. Having relatively low protein, and high fat it's probably good for longevity.

It's not the best option if you want high performance in sports, high libido, high testosterone etc. For that I need carbs. Yes, I did labs and my testosterone level decreased on a carnivore diet.

I see lots of people, even if they care about diet, make mistakes like eating at night. It's the easiest and zero-cost way to make every diet better. The same is snacks, you don't need 10 snacks per day.

 

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[Angler]

Try it out for 90 days. Take blood work before you go on the diet and after. Take detail notes on how you feel, your energy level, and whatever other detail you may think is important TO YOU.

That last point is important.

Just know like anything else new and challenging, the first two weeks is utterly hell. Dropping carbs is like quitting drugs cold turkey. You will get the same withdrawal addicts go through. Sugar is a hard legal drug. You may also get diarrhea for the first two weeks until your body gets processing only protein & fat.

Then you may experience something you’ve never experience before, make sure to take notes.

The diet may not work for some, may work for others, and perhaps it may or may not work for you. You don’t know until you give it an honest try.

 

[Guest-5ty5s4]

It will help you lose weight.

Pure protein starves fat and feeds muscle. But you will feel horrible without other vitamins and nutrients like you’d get in fruits, vegetables, starches, and even dairy...

You need to get the entire picture of nutrients for your body.

But yeah if all you have is a steak and two eggs per day you’re going to be very low body fat in no time.

 

[mikecarlooch]

I'm on an Animal-Based diet (I follow paul saladino's diet) which is Meat, organs, fruit, honey and raw dairy and I have never felt better in my life.. Stomach/gut issues, gone. Energy almost all day. I see some people above saying it causes stomach pain - no it doesn't, for me at least, it reduced it incredibly.

It might be coincidental because of something else I was eating before hopping on this diet, but as soon as I dropped vegetables from my diet everything felt better. Could it be something else? Yes. But it was interesting to see

 

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[Simon Angel]

For most people who feel good on carnivore, there is a pretty simple explanation:

As the aforementioned group of people is limiting its diet to just meat and salt, carnivores/zerocarbers essentially go on an extremely-strict elimination diet that just so happens to get rid of ALL other foods that they possibly have an intolerance/allergy/inflammatory immune response to.

So yes, you can feel better and yes, your blood panels can improve as well.

Does this mean carnivore is good in the long term? Unless you're a genetic outlier, probably not.

Do you have to eat only meat to eliminate all of the foods that provoke an immune response? Nope.

Like @beswaax said, the carnivore space is full of cherry-picked information that is coming from many people who have a desperate need to belong so they make being a carnivore their whole identity. Unfortunately, this even includes doctors.

HOWEVER...

Are there people with chronic health conditions on the carnivore diet and having good results? Yes, many.

Could they have achieved those same - or better - results on a more balanced diet where they eliminate their food triggers? Yes.

...

Many people in the carnivore space also like to point to modern tribes or talk about the hunter-gatherer days as another way of "proving" that eating just meat is the way to go, but this couldn't be further from the truth.

There is one tribe that has relied almost entirely on meat for hundreds of years.. and it has the lowest average lifespan of all of the other ones we know about - the Maasai tribe:

"The Maasai are a pastoralist tribe living in Kenya and Northern Tanzania. Their traditional diet consists almost entirely of milk, meat, and blood. Most of the Maasai people have a dangerously low life expectancy. Evidently, this causes them to be the People with the lowest life expectancy in the whole world. The average male lives to the age of 42, whilst the women live until the age of just 44."

Interestingly, the Inuit - who are also known to eat a diet rich in meat - generally live a good 20-25 years longer than the Maasai, but this is a rather recent development as the life expectancy at birth for an Inuit had been only around 30 years in the 1940s, gradually grew to 66 in the 1980s, and is at around 70 today.

What changed? They started moving south and trading hides/pelts for food and other commodities in Canadian towns.

And today, most Inuits' diet just isn't what it was 100 or even 50 years ago.

 

[Mathuin]

Like @beswaax said, the carnivore space is full of cherry-picked information that is coming from many people who have a desperate need to belong so they make being a carnivore their whole identity. Unfortunately, this even includes doctors.

To be fair, this describes every "diet" or "way of eating".

Nutrition has replaced Religion for a lot of people.

 

[Simon Angel]

To be fair, this describes every "diet" or "way of eating".

Nutrition has replaced Religion for a lot of people.

Yeah, I think everyone should create and optimize their own diet by both feeling and running extensive blood panels until they get it right/have stable blood results for years.

 

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[Odysseus M Jones]

I'm on an Animal-Based diet (I follow paul saladino's diet)

Oh the irony!

 

[Hong_Kong]

Nothing from me, but the Cleveland Clinic (ranked #2 hospital in America) says:

- Carnivore diet lacks vitamins and nutrients provided from produce
- Not all carbs are bad
- Bad for your heart (cholesterol, blood pressure, etc.)

This makes sense. Eating only meat and 0% fruit or vegetables can't be good long term for your body. The best must be a healthy mix of foods made from fresh, whole ingredients.

The Carnivore Diet: Can You Have Too Much Meat?

Can you eat too much meat? There are many diets out there to help you lose weight, but is the carnivore diet too good to be true? A Cleveland Clinic dietitian weighs in.

health.clevelandclinic.org