Carnivore Diet

[bdan68]

 

[boomah21]

Another good video.

Personally I’m not 100% sure as I can only tell you how I currently feel doing carnivore which is great. No matter what diet you do someone will always say it’s bad for ya lol

 

[dutch_henry]

Dutch Henry-

You've bought into all the lies. There's nothing in plants that is required for the human body that we can't get from meat. Fiber is completely unnecessary and can be harmful. Grains are especially bad. How about you try quitting all corn, wheat, and any other grains for a month? I bet you'll see some improvements.

What lies have I bought into? Bonus points for actual peer-reviewed literature in reputable journals as opposed to high-budget influencer videos.

 

[bdan68]

What lies have I bought into? Bonus points for actual peer-reviewed literature in reputable journals as opposed to high-budget influencer videos.

That we need to eat plants. I've eaten nothing but meat for over two years and have never been healthier.

 

[boomah21]

What lies have I bought into? Bonus points for actual peer-reviewed literature in reputable journals as opposed to high-budget influencer videos.

Those same reputable journals that tell ya how good the ol boosters are?

Again no fight here but why be so defensive over something that is making people feel better and healthier. Great part is people got a choice to participate in carnivore or not just like they can go Whole Foods or vegan or IF bottom line is people are making a choice to try and better themselves and that’s awesome whichever way it is.

 

[ThorM465]

Really with the carnivore diet? Next will it be a Tide Pod challenge?

If you're feeling better on the carnivore diet, it's only a sign that the nutrition plan you left it for was a sad, sad piece of dogs**t. It's like a crack addict switching to cocaine because cocaine is, like, soooo much healthier. Stay on Carnivore for long and you're basically writing a blank check for cardiovascular disease and nutritional deficiencies. And the complete and total absence of fiber is just setting you up for colon cancer, digestive ailments, and other issues. There is zero evidence it is healthy...except perhaps anecdotal accounts from social media influencers. Never in the entire history of mankind, until Joe Rogan's podcast, have people lived on a meat-only diet. Even early man living in the Arctic relied heavily on plant-based nutrition and seasonal berries…

This diatribe is absurdly stupid and I mean that technically. The idea that early nomadic man lived on a plant based diet is ridiculous. Outside of berries and fruit there’s very little wild vegetation that we’re capable of digesting. Then berries and fruit are only available for a few months out of the year. I guess they fasted for months at a time?

Speaking of evidence. There’s zero evidence that a carnivore diet causes cancer.

At this point there’s no shortage of peoples whose life was changed for the better by this diet. Now I and most of the biggest proponents of this diet suspect that this is due to the fact that it has eliminated things that were harming them vs meat being magical. Whether it’s the former of the latter is irrelevant to whether this diet is good for many people.

 

[CMF]

Keto Flex is a book worth checking out if you're considering diet changes. Part of it is doing carnivore for a month or so, but it isn't a long-term strict carnivore, which I think is a little too strict for most people. It has a lot of fasting variations as well.

 

[khart_6882]

Sorry to interrupt the argument but I’ve got a question for the long term carnivore guys.
What do you do to get fat when eating deer or elk? No matter how much oil or tallow I cook my venison in I always feel hungry not long after dinner from lack of fat. The only conclusion I’ve come up with lately is I just eat a bunch of bacon with my deer/elk steaks. Seems kind of counter productive lol


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[dutch_henry]

Here's the thing. Nutrition is complex and human psychology even more so. That makes it really easy to embrace conspiracy theories and wacky diet ideas. Heck, back in 2015 millions of people fell for the chocolate diet--a hoax diet meant to uncover how easy it is to pass sham research into open access journals. Millions of people fell for it.

On top of that, the western diet/standard American diet is killing Americans. You should be skeptical of it. More than 42% of Americans are obese. Not overweight, obese. Sure, some of that is a lack of exercise. But most of it is diet.

But don't make the mistake of thinking that just because the standard American diet is bad, the Carnivore diet is therefore good. And do your research. There are peer-reviewed medical studies that have found that young males in their 20s and 30s who, after 12 months on Carnivore, developed hypercholesterolemia and early onset atherosclerosis. The risks are real and it took them only 12 months to get there. Cholesterol you can undo, but it's hard to undo the damage from atherosclerosis. So be careful.

 

[dutch_henry]

What might be better than diving right into Carnivore? First, give up all of the food that are the product of our post WWII industrial capacity and that were introduced into our food systems before we knew they were bad for us. For two to four weeks, try:

No Doritos, flamin hot cheetos, chips, pretzels.
No pasta. No refined grain products. No bread (unless it's 100% whole grain...most is not).
No high starch vegetables like white potatoes.
No soda. No fruit juice. No sugar sweetened beverages.
No candy. No cake. No donuts. No ice cream. No Clif bars.
No meats with fillers and preservatives, like most hot dogs, sausages, and bologna.
No beer. No highballs. Limited if any booze.

I can guarantee you you will experience mental clarity. You will drop extra lbs. You will feel a night and day difference. You will poop like friggin dinosaur. Want to take it farther? Try a modified keto diet. Try the Mediterranean diet. Try intermittent fasting. Or, if you're curious, try a short run at Carnivore as long as you intend to leave it.

Plants and fruits will give you things you need, like a lot of bioavailable Vitamin C (a potent antioxidant), multiple types of dietary fiber (does all sorts of good things including cancer prevention and blocking your liver from synthesisizing new LDL), flavonoids (another potent antioxidant that also reduces risk of heart disease), quercetin (which lowers BP), omega-6 fatty acids, and others.

 

[dutch_henry]

This diatribe is absurdly stupid and I mean that technically. The idea that early nomadic man lived on a plant based diet is ridiculous. Outside of berries and fruit there’s very little wild vegetation that we’re capable of digesting. Then berries and fruit are only available for a few months out of the year. I guess they fasted for months at a time?

It's not even a controversy. Look at literally any archaeological record at all and you will find ample, overwhelming evidence of plant-based diets. Read the genetic analysis of the intestinal contents of well-preserved prehistoric bodies (like Otzi the Iceman) and you will find they ate multiple varieties of grains, vegetables, fruits, and wild berries. Even Inuits, Yup'ik and Aleuts gathered and preserved crowberries, cloudberries, cranberries, fireweed, grasses, numerous tubers, and seaweed. They also ate the partially-digested contents from the rumen of caribou, moose, and game animals. One of the earliest technologies developed, alongside knapped points, were containers. Some were used for cooking, but many were used for storing plants and plant products for the winter.

Compared to the modern-day carnivore diet, their diets were different. And so were their gut biomes. They at raw fats and raw meats, so glycogen was more available. They ate brains, a great fat. And they ate livers, a great source of iron, riboflavin, B12, vit A, and copper.

Even so, the diet meant that inuits had more cerebrovascular strokes than us white dudes farther south. And they experienced the same rate of coronary artery disease we did.

 

[ThorM465]

What might be better than diving right into Carnivore? First, give up all of the food that are the product of our post WWII industrial capacity and that were introduced into our food systems before we knew they were bad for us. For two to four weeks, try:

No Doritos, flamin hot cheetos, chips, pretzels.
No pasta. No refined grain products. No bread (unless it's 100% whole grain...most is not).
No high starch vegetables like white potatoes.
No soda. No fruit juice. No sugar sweetened beverages.
No candy. No cake. No donuts. No ice cream. No Clif bars.
No meats with fillers and preservatives, like most hot dogs, sausages, and bologna.
No beer. No highballs. Limited if any booze.

I can guarantee you you will experience mental clarity. You will drop extra lbs. You will feel a night and day difference. You will poop like friggin dinosaur. Want to take it farther? Try a modified keto diet. Try the Mediterranean diet. Try intermittent fasting. Or, if you're curious, try a short run at Carnivore as long as you intend to leave it.

Plants and fruits will give you things you need, like a lot of bioavailable Vitamin C (a potent antioxidant), multiple types of dietary fiber (does all sorts of good things including cancer prevention and blocking your liver from synthesisizing new LDL), flavonoids (another potent antioxidant that also reduces risk of heart disease), quercetin (which lowers BP), omega-6 fatty acids, and others.

This is literally the thesis of the Carnivore diet. The idea isn't to eat only ribeye for the rest of your life, it's to cut out everything from your diet but 1 or 2 things and then add things back into your diet 1 at a time very slowly. Experimenting with what does or doesn't work for you. Red meat is simply the only good option for this experiment. Yes, some people find that they're best staying on only red meat, but that's rare. It's also not surprising that for some people a strict carnivore diet isn't the best option.

The biggest problem with studying diets is the lack of a controlled sample. To the instances you mentioned earlier there's no way of knowing how strict they were to a carnivore diet. That goes to anyone on any diet. The only way to study this is going to be mass sample sizes.

The one thing we do know, to your earlier point, it's in all likelihood much better for you than a diet of modern processed food.

 

[dutch_henry]

This is literally the thesis of the Carnivore diet. The idea isn't to eat only ribeye for the rest of your life, it's to cut out everything from your diet but 1 or 2 things and then add things back into your diet 1 at a time very slowly. Experimenting with what does or doesn't work for you. Red meat is simply the only good option for this experiment. Yes, some people find that they're best staying on only red meat, but that's rare. It's also not surprising that for some people a strict carnivore diet isn't the best option.

The biggest problem with studying diets is the lack of a controlled sample. To the instances you mentioned earlier there's no way of knowing how strict they were to a carnivore diet. That goes to anyone on any diet. The only way to study this is going to be mass sample sizes.

The one thing we do know, to your earlier point, it's in all likelihood much better for you than a diet of modern processed food.

I agree with you 100% on processed food. And on the difficulty presented by the lack of large sample sizes. (A challenge that impacts a lot of health studies.)

Most diets have some sort of elimination factor. With carnivore, my clinical and scientific objections are with cutting out important macronutrients and food groups like plants, fruits, legumes, grains, nuts, and seeds. By the same token, I think vegan diets are...unnatural.

 

[bdan68]

Sorry to interrupt the argument but I’ve got a question for the long term carnivore guys.
What do you do to get fat when eating deer or elk? No matter how much oil or tallow I cook my venison in I always feel hungry not long after dinner from lack of fat. The only conclusion I’ve come up with lately is I just eat a bunch of bacon with my deer/elk steaks. Seems kind of counter productive lol


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Good question. I've had the exact same issue. Well, not necessarily feeling hungry, but in keeping my fat ratio high enough when eating wild game. (I eat a carnivore diet but also keto, which for me means at least 75% of my calories from fat)

One thing I have had to change is to reduce the amount of steak I eat per meal. Otherwise it was impossible to get my fat to protein ratio high enough. So usually the most deer steak I'll eat at one time is 4 ounces.

For fat, bacon is a good option, but what I've found works really good for me is egg yolks. Especially if I make scrambled eggs along with a couple tablespoons of butter. I'll usually use 6 to 8 eggs yolks. I don't buy eggs at the store either, I get eggs from people in my local area who have backyard chickens.

 

[Patriot2]

Read the Carnivore Code by Dr Saladino. He is an ex-vegan and a medical doctor. Bdan68 is spot on.

 

[sacklunch]

I agree with you 100% on processed food. And on the difficulty presented by the lack of large sample sizes. (A challenge that impacts a lot of health studies.)

Most diets have some sort of elimination factor. With carnivore, my clinical and scientific objections are with cutting out important macronutrients and food groups like plants, fruits, legumes, grains, nuts, and seeds. By the same token, I think vegan diets are...unnatural.

Maybe I missed it, but what have you seen as far as instances in men's testosterone levels and specifically SHBG taking a nosedive on the carnivore diet. If true, It's contrary to what we've been lead to beleive as far as high protein/high fat diets. Any insight?

 

[dutch_henry]

Maybe I missed it, but what have you seen as far as instances in men's testosterone levels and specifically SHBG taking a nosedive on the carnivore diet. If true, It's contrary to what we've been lead to beleive as far as high protein/high fat diets. Any insight?

It's a good question. The quickest way I can think of explaining it is this: The common view of fat is that it's an inert substance whose job is to store energy. However, that's only part of the story. Fat/adipose tissue has properties that enable it to act like an endocrine organ (even if it isn't strictly a part of your endocrine system). In other words, fat synthesizes and secretes several hormones. In turn, these hormones end up mediating all sorts of metabolic processes, including how you respond to insulin, your inflammatory process, and even sex hormones. To your point, they appear to lower serum concentrations of sex-hormone binding globulin (SHBG). For our purposes here, there are three sources of fat: dietary fat, the subcutaneous fat under your skin, and visceral fat (belly fat) surrounding your abdominal organs/your core.

Here's where a diet like carnivore can cut both ways. Let's look at two scenarios:

1. You are overweight. You go on a diet, and you end up losing bodyfat as a result. You are effectively shrinking the size of this endocrine "organ." Therefore it ends up exerting a smaller influence, including on sex hormones. SHBG should go up. Note that of these three fat groups, visceral fat exerts most powerful effect on hormone secretion and metabolic processes. So if your diet helps you reduce the size of your gut, you're doing all sorts of great things for your body...including testosterone and SHBG. Doesn't matter what the diet is, it could be carnivore or fasting or portion control or whatever. In reducing your body fat, theory is SHBG should rise.
2. You are at a healthy weight. You switch to a diet that is high in animal fats relative to what you were eating. You will end up reducing your levels of testosterone and SHBG. The animal fats we consume contain naturally-occurring hormones (hormones introduced through 'industrial' agriculture are another story). These dietary sources of fat hormones likewise affect our metabolic processes. Eat more animal fats, the metabolic effect is higher. A number of studies have found that high fat diets are associated with lower SHBG. A few small studies have found that when these same individuals switch to low-fat diets, their SHBG increases.

 

[dutch_henry]

Nutrition is pretty cool this way. Testosterone levels, and those of many other hormones, fluctuate due to all sorts of responses. In fact, just eating a big meal can temporarily cause your testosterone levels to fall by as much as 30%. (Don't worry, it climbs back to baseline in 4-6 hours.)

Independent of this phenomenon, quite a few studies have found that high fat diets have an outsized effect on testosterone levels. That's because the animal fats we ingest suppress Leydig cell function. (These are the cells that play a role in synthesizing testosterone.) If you enjoy high fat meals now and then, fantastic. It's one of life's pleasures. But yeah, the research shows that all other things being equal, a high fat diet (vs meal) will most likely be associated with reduced testosterone. Is this clinically significant? Not necessarily. But if you're on a high fat diet and your testosterone SHBG, etc., is below normal, it's worth reconsidering your diet.

To be fair, other foods can act similarly. Aside from animal fats in meats and dairy, too much soy or refined flour can also play a role. As can smoking and booze.