Just when you thought you had heard everything about dieting, along comes the newest form of diet, The Carnivore Diet. Let’s see, we’ve had the KETO, Paleo, Atkins, Whole 30, Pritikin, Ornish, South Beach, etc, each with it’s own characteristics, dietary principles, nutrient focus, products and supplements.
This article is not an endorsement of the Carnivore Diet. I happen to enjoy many fruits and vegetables, and for those I don’t, I add enough herbs and spices to make them tolerable. I also like seeds, and love nuts. The concept of a mostly meat diet is interesting enough to look at, and sometimes even the most controversial thinking has it’s positive attributes.
In it’s simplest form, you eat only animals, no plants. No nuts, and no seeds. A main thrust is organ meat, particularly liver. It seems there are a ton of nutrients in liver. In a slightly lighter version, you can eat some plants (disguised as vegetables) such as avocados, olives and squashes, plus a few with strange sounding names. No broccoli, no lettuce, no spinach. Honey is part of the diet and some dairy seems to be OK.
According to it’s proponents, eating a primarily meat diet fulfills all “real” dietary requirements, including enough Vitamin C to prevent scurvy.
Eat the animal “nose to tail” to get all the benefits. Most people aren’t really interested in eating animal cartilage, so the main proponent of the diet, Dr. Paul Saladino, MD has his own supplement company (of course) and sells ground up and otherwise rendered, inedible animal parts. Dr. Saladino is also the author of The Carnivore Code, which you can find on Amazon.
It’s hard to say who are the major beneficiaries of this form of diet other than “everybody”. Apparently, Dr. Saladino believes that metabolic efficiency and immune system improvement are the keys to good health and that anyone who wants good health will benefit from the Carnivore Diet. That’s pretty much all of us.
What does the research/science say? I am not a scientist and have my own problems interpreting research studies. But Mark Sisson, one of the people whom I trust in the Fitness and Nutrition business, does well at interpreting these studies.He published an article on his own blog, Mark’s Daily Apple, where he discusses the the research involved in The Carnivore Diet in detail. It makes interesting reading, so here is the link: https://www.marksdailyapple.com/carnivore-diet-research-science/
Sisson’s article is very interesting but fairly lengthy. I recommend following the link and reading it. I must point out that Sisson wrote the forward to Dr. Saladino’s book.
Dr. Saladino has also been on many of he major health and fitness podcasts, including the Joe Rogan Experience and is gaining a following in the field.
So is an all meat and some fruit diet with no veggies good for us? Will it provide the dietary needs of all of us, particularly seniors? Or is it just another Fad Diet promoted by another supplement salesman? Will it play out after a few short years like most FAD Diets, or will it be around long term. As always, an open mind is needed when absorbing something like this, and as I said above, sometimes the most controversial thinking can provide the most positive results.
Will it work for you? Should you try it? I must admit that I loved beef liver and onions when I was growing up and asked for it for my birthday dinners when I was in my teens. I still love fried chicken livers to this day. But I did like some sort of veggie to go with them. I still consider vegetables of all sorts to be necessary for good health.
So, what’s the takeaway here. There is another diet on the scene that is gaining a following. My goal in writing this is simply to make you aware of it and to provide some useful information about it. I get my “ground up animal parts” from gelatin and a Collagen supplement which I wrote about last week. I’m not prepared to give up veggies quite yet.
So I encourage you investigate further if you want to be primarily a meat eater. If you are vegan or vegetarian, I hope you got a chance to see another “new” choice on the diet spectrum.
Thank you for reading.