Did You Try the Carnivore Diet?
Did you try the carnivore in January? A month of red meat, eggs, and butter? If you did, you probably lost weight. If you lost weight, you felt better. The Carnivore crowd will point to weight loss as proof of superiority.
But did you worry that this might not be the healthiest diet for you long-term? Is it healthy? In short, the answer is no.
Perhaps you remember on a previous podcast, we talked about the beer and sausage diet. On that diet, Evo, the pod god who distributes this podcast, lost weight every month he was on the diet. In addition, his weekly lab work -sorry for all the jabs Evo - improved every week he was on the diet.
Could you argue that drinking beer and eating sausage is a good diet? You could, and that same logic is what the carnivore crowd uses to convince people the carnivore diet has merit.
Simplicity, is Thy Name Carnivore?
What could be simpler than eating a diet of just red meat? Who doesn't like a good steak? If you just eat steak or red meat, you will lose weight. When you lose weight, you will feel better. And your labs might improve. You might think it is paradoxical that your cholesterol level went down - it isn't; that is just a result of giving up junk food and weight loss.
Every diet has a honeymoon phase, where people think they can do the diet "forever."
Then reality comes home:
- The diet becomes boring, and one note
- There is an undeniable increased risk of heart disease and cancer
- Maybe you got hemorrhoids or developed diverticulitis
- Finally, in social situations, you become that person - the one who could only eat red meat - the reverse vegan
FORK U
Today, on Fork U, we will discuss the latest low-carb fad: the Carnivore diet, the denial that goes into those who make up the diet, and the risks of an all-meat diet.
I'm Dr. Terry Simpson, and this is Fork U.
Fork University
Where we make sense of the madness, bust a few myths, and teach you a little about food as medicine.
Carnivore Diet
The carnivore diet, which primarily consists of animal products like meat, fish, and eggs, has become the latest low-carb fad. It is a controversial and extreme dietary approach. Proponents of the carnivore diet claim numerous health benefits. To be clear, the scientific evidence supporting these benefits is limited, and that long-term studies on the effects of the carnivore diet are lacking.
Paul Saladino, Ken Berry, and Shawn Baker are a few doctors who advocate for this diet. And oddly, none of them see private patients, although Saladino and Baker love showing their abs, and spend a lot of time in the gym.
The Biotruth of Evolution
Some claim the natural diet of humans is meat. This is a biotruth.
When someone tells you that “man was meant to eat” this or that – it is part of a logical fallacy known as a biotruth. A biotruth is an argument presented by someone with misunderstood notions of human biology and/or evolution but uses those false arguments to justify their views. In this case, how they eat.
You can extend that logical fallacy out: man was not meant to fly, so we shouldn’t be in airplanes. Primitive man did not have laboratories, so we should not have antibiotics.
You will see biotruth arguments from people who practice carnivore diets, as well as those who practice vegetarian (and vegan) diets. Often with photographs of our jaws and those of our ancestors – or they will say how we have a long or short intestine, and on that basis, we “were meant” to eat in whatever their view is.
As we evolved, were we better...
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