Pod Insights Science Vs The Carnivore Diet: Can We Live On Meat Alone? About this episode A lot of influencers are going on all-meat diets, saying that all this meat is clearing up inflammation, healing their guts, and sharpening their focus. But others say, hold up — this diet is sure to lead to heart disease, cancer, and even scurvy. So we’re asking: Is it possible to live on meat alone? Is there any benefit to the carnivore diet? And what are the risks? We talk to nutritionist Prof. Caryn Zinn and internist Dr. Adrian Soto-Mota.
Find our transcript here: https://tinyurl.com/ScienceVsCarnivoreDiet
In this episode, we cover:
(00:00) Carnivores Bring the Meat
(04:28) They’re Gonna Get Scurvy, Right?
(13:09) Fiber? Cholesterol? Heart Disease? Cancer?
(20:11) A Miracle Diet?
(22:31) Are Plants the Enemy?
(25:57) Is it Just Keto?
(27:50) Weight Loss
(28:50) Should You Go Carnivore?
This episode was produced by Rose Rimler, with help from Wendy Zukerman, Ekedi Fausther-Keeys, Michelle Dang, and Meryl Horn. We’re edited by Blythe Terrell. Fact checking by Erica Akiko Howard. Mix and sound design by Bobby Lord. Music written by Emma Munger, So Wylie, Peter Leonard, Bumi Hidaka and Bobby Lord. A special thanks to the researchers we reached out to including Dr. Lawrence David, Dr. Andrija Karačić and others.
Science Vs is a Spotify Studios Original. Listen for free on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Follow us and tap the bell for episode notifications.
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Transcript 6,421 words · 19 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Wendy Zukerman? Hi, I'm Wendy Zukerman and you're listening to Science Verses.
0:05 Wendy Zukerman? This is the show that pits facts against flesh. Today on the show, the carnivore diet.
0:17 Wendy Zukerman? Fancy eating meat? A lot of meat?
0:22 Speaker 01 This is day 312, eating nothing but meat, eggs and seafood. 18 ounces of the chuck eye portion of the chuck roast. Beef, chicken, lamb, pork.
0:31 Speaker 02 Burgers, beef tallow.
0:33 Speaker 01 So good.
0:34 Wendy Zukerman? Some say this diet is so good because it's...
0:40 Wendy Zukerman? Others say it's the best thing they've ever done for their health. They feel more vital, their brain seems to work better, and their chronic illnesses seem to have disappeared. One big influencer here is Michaela Peterson. She's the daughter of the controversial author Jordan Peterson. And Michaela says that the carnivore diet cured her rheumatoid arthritis. Here she is giving a talk about it.
1:04 Speaker 03 And I cut everything out except for beef. And two weeks after doing that, thinking, I'm nuts. Hopefully I don't get vitamin deficiencies. The itch went away and my joints started to feel better. Four weeks after that, I stopped crying in the morning. And five months after that, the anxiety lifted and I was back in what I felt was heaven compared to how I'd been living. All beef, all lamb, salt and water.
1:24 Wendy Zukerman? Her dad went on the diet too. Here he is telling Joe Rogan about it a couple of months ago.
1:29 Speaker 04 I eat steak. And when I deviate from that, things start to fall apart around me pretty quick.
1:34 Wendy Zukerman? This diet is blowing up right now. People cannot get enough.
1:40 Speaker 02 Y'all, I have never felt better. My energy has been amazing. I have been sleeping so much better than I normally do. I don't get any bloating, gas, like my stomach issues are completely gone.
1:51 Speaker 01 I was able to lose 90 pounds. My knee pain of over a decade went away. My mental health is the best it's ever been.
1:56 Wendy Zukerman? In fact, researchers did a big survey of people who have been on the carnivore diet for at least six months, asking them about their mood, hunger levels, weight and health. And tons of people reported that they loved this diet and it improved their health. But to a lot of us listening to this right now, the carnivore diet feels plain wrong. There's the environment to think about. Plus, we've been told our whole lives that eating vegetables is good and eating loads of meat puts us on a fast track to crappy health, stuff like heart disease and cancer.
2:31 Speaker 05 The carnivore diet is going to kill you.
2:33 Wendy Zukerman? What is so terrible about this diet is the insanely high amounts of saturated fats people are consuming.
2:39 Speaker 06 Do not embark on the carnivore diet unless you would like to get scurvy.
2:42 Wendy Zukerman? Scurvy.
2:46 Wendy Zukerman? So who's right here? Can a carnivore diet really make you mean and lean? Or is this diet a big mistake? Because when it comes to the carnivore diet, it makes a lot of people feel... Cr-no! But then, there's science. Science versus the carnivore diet is coming up just after the break.
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5:23 Wendy Zukerman? Welcome back. Today on the show, meat, meat, meat, meat. I'm here with senior producer, Meathead, Rose Rimla.
5:31 Speaker 09 Hi, Wendy.
5:32 Wendy Zukerman? So, on this diet, people just eat meat, right? You can't eat any vegetables.
5:39 Speaker 09 Yeah, some people eat eggs and dairy, too, but definitely no vegetables, certainly no carbs or bread or anything, but also like no broccoli, no spinach, no oranges.
5:50 Wendy Zukerman? Yeah, because when it comes to this diet, I have seen people proudly taking photos of a plate of food that's like two steaks, two eggs, a sausage on the side. And then just for garnish, three blueberries. And they're like, carnivore diet. And all the comments will say, um, get that blueberry off your plate. Blueberries, no.
6:10 Speaker 09 Yeah, no, if you're, I guess if you're a true carnivore, you're not eating any blueberries, according to the diehards. For some reason, they always showcase their food on cutting boards. Have you noticed that?
6:21 Wendy Zukerman? Yeah.
6:22 Speaker 09 It's like a cutting board.
6:23 Wendy Zukerman? Because that's how T-Rex ate.
6:24 Speaker 09 Yeah.
6:25 Wendy Zukerman? Ate her food, right?
6:26 Speaker 09 Yeah.
6:28 Speaker 09 I mean, your instinct would be this would wreak havoc on your body, right? Because it seems like you'd be missing out some very important vitamins, minerals, stuff like fiber. If you get rid of all that from your diet, my question is, like, will you be OK? You know, just basically, are these people OK? That's my question.
6:48 Wendy Zukerman? Are these people OK? Yes, yes.
6:51 Speaker 09 Well, I talked to Karen Zinn about that. She's a professor at Auckland University of Technology in New Zealand.
6:58 Speaker 10 And I'm also a registered dietitian. So nutrition is my game, if you like.
7:06 Speaker 09 Karen, like us, has been hearing more and more about people going on the carnivore diet. And she wanted to know, if you go full meat, what are you potentially missing? So she and some colleagues analyzed the nutritional value of an all-meat diet. Was there any glaring deficiency that could pop up?
7:25 Speaker 10 Well, well, yes. Vitamin C, that would be the natural one. Where's, you know, where's the vitamin C? It's not, it's not there.
7:35 Speaker 09 We need vitamin C to make collagen. And so without it, your skin and mucous membranes and blood vessels start to break down.
7:42 Wendy Zukerman? That's why your gums can bleed? That's all I know about scurvy.
7:46 Speaker 09 Yeah, so we're talking about scurvy here, right? And your gums can bleed and it can get really serious. People can die. And that wasn't the only nutritional deficiency that Karen was worried about. It looked like some other nutrients might be kind of low in this diet.
8:01 Speaker 10 Folate, potassium, where these, where these things? Folate you get from green leafy vegetables. Fruit and veg give you lots of potassium. So you ordinarily go, well, those things potentially do jump out.
8:14 Speaker 09 We need folate to make red blood cells and to keep our brains running smoothly. And we need potassium and other electrolytes for all our cells to make them, you know, just work. So not having enough of those things is a big deal.
8:28 Wendy Zukerman? Right.
8:30 Speaker 09 But this idea that you will not get them and will be deficient in these things on the carnivore diet, like, from what we've just talked about, that's all theoretical, just like written down on paper.
8:41 Speaker 10 It feels pretty non-theoretical, I'll say.
8:45 Speaker 09 Well, I mean, well, here's why I say it's theoretical. We don't have many studies on the carnivore diet. It's pretty new, it's very specific. It's not like the Atkins diet or the paleo diet where you're restricted, but you're not that restricted, like, you can still eat lots of fruits and vegetables. So, I kind of had to go digging, and I did find this amazing study that I am delighted to tell you about.
9:10 Speaker 10 Okay.
9:11 Speaker 09 It's a study of two Arctic explorers. Their names were Stephenson and Anderson. Stephenson claimed that he had lived in the Arctic for months, eating nothing but meat. And he said that it had gone just fine. Back then, people were as skeptical as today about this, and they were saying, like, "You can't do that, you're gonna have some kind of nutritional deficit, or something terrible will happen to you." And so, he and this other guy, they offered to be guinea pigs.
9:36 Speaker 10 Mmm.
9:37 Speaker 09 So, in the late 1920s, while they were in New York City, they started eating an all-meat diet. It was a lot like what you see people on TikTok showing us that they're eating.
9:48 Speaker 10 It was literally just meat, fish, chicken. And I think, was it, one of them didn't eat eggs either for the year. So, it's literally, literally just meat.
10:01 Speaker 09 And at first, it didn't actually go so well. And that was because the researchers wanted to know what would happen if these guys ate only very lean meat, so, so very little fat. And one of them, Stephenson, he agreed to do that. And when he ate that diet...
10:17 Speaker 10 He developed a lot of diarrhea.
10:19 Speaker 09 Yeah, I was reading about this, he felt awful.
10:21 Speaker 10 Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
10:26 Wendy Zukerman? Interesting. What was going on?
10:28 Speaker 09 Well, it's interesting because Stephenson actually knew in advance. He was pretty sure this was going to happen to him. He told the researchers about it, but he was like, "All right, I'll try it anyway." Because he knew about something that's sometimes called rabbit starvation. It's also called protein poisoning.
10:43 Speaker 09 And that's basically when your diet is made up primarily of lean meat, like rabbit, you can actually get really sick. And we think that's because when someone is eating mostly protein, their body may not be able to convert that much protein into urine fast enough. So you get ammonia built up in your body, which is toxic. So, yeah, so after a few days of this, the researchers eased up on Stephenson.
11:11 Speaker 10 So what they did was they added fat to the meat. So they changed the type of the meat and they added more fat to it. He came right within a few days.
11:23 Speaker 09 So adding more fat to the diet brought down the protein, you know, just because the percentage of protein got lower, because the percentage of something else got higher. And so he got a lot better. And then, in the end, both of these guys stayed on the diet for a full year.
11:37 Speaker 10 If these guys were going to get scurvy, they would have got it. I mean, they had 12 months of doing this. They would have got neurological issues from not having the folate. They would have got all sorts of deficiency states, rickets, that you get from not having some of these nutrients.
11:55 Speaker 09 But at the end of the year...
11:56 Speaker 10 Everything was just normal. It was, there was nothing there that was a little bit untoward. All intense, they were healthy, two healthy individuals who had good vitality. They, all their organs, all their systems, all their, everything, was in good working order and, you know, totally good as gold.
12:20 Speaker 09 And no, yeah, so no deficiencies? No vitamin deficiencies? Not as far as anyone could tell, which is interesting.
12:27 Wendy Zukerman? Hmm, it is interesting. So why not?
12:30 Speaker 09 Well, for scurvy. So one hypothesis is that if you eat a lot of meat, you get a lot of this nutrient called carnitine. And maybe carnitine does some of the same stuff in our bodies that vitamin C does. And so that would mean we would need less vitamin C. That's a hypothesis. It has not been tested, as far as I can tell. And we also know that fresh meat actually does have a bit of vitamin C in it. In fact, studies have found that some of the traditional meat foods that are eaten up north by people native to that region, like whale skin, they're surprisingly good sources of vitamin C.
13:02 Wendy Zukerman? But most people on the carnivore diet, I mean, including this Stephenson and Anderson, right, they weren't eating whale skin, were they?
13:11 Speaker 09 No, they were probably eating organ meats, though, like liver, which does have a little vitamin C in it, and it has other micronutrients like folate. But another explanation for why these people were OK is that maybe if you don't eat any carbs at all, your body can adjust in these really interesting ways.
13:33 Wendy Zukerman? Like how?
13:34 Speaker 09 So, for example, with folate, even if you are a carnivore dieter who's like, ew, I don't want to eat liver, what we have seen is that people on really low carb diets, their gut bugs start pumping out more folate. So in some ways, the body can kind of adjust in certain circumstances.
13:50 Wendy Zukerman? Oh, that's cool. So you think people on the carnivore diet, maybe they won't get these deficiencies?
13:57 Speaker 09 Um, well, I mean, I realize the evidence I presented is maybe not the most convincing. It's a 100-year-old study of two people. It does tell us something, and another thing to consider is that we know for thousands of years, there have been people living in high latitude places where not much grows, eating an animal-based diet without glaring deficiencies.
14:20 Wendy Zukerman? Uh huh.
14:21 Speaker 09 On the other hand, people eating these traditional diets would also have eaten non-meat stuff when they could. They would eat berries, other plants, they would eat kelp.
14:29 Wendy Zukerman? Right. No one was [BLEEP] on them on Instagram for eating some berries.
14:32 Speaker 09 Yeah, I think so. I think if everyone who went on the carnivore diet got scurvy, it would not be getting more and more popular. We wouldn't be hearing about it as much. So I think it's possible to live on a meat-only diet and avoid glaring deficiencies. But Karen says, like, look, we don't really know what's going on here. If you want to do this, please take a multivitamin.
14:55 Wendy Zukerman? I really don't want to say, well, let's see if you manifested deficiency, and then we can patch it up with some, you know, vitamin C.
15:02 Speaker 09 You don't want to be like, well, if your gums start to bleed in a few weeks, come back.
15:06 Wendy Zukerman? Yeah, give me a call. Yeah, exactly, exactly.
15:09 Speaker 09 The other thing that seems obviously missing here is fiber, and you'd expect people eating no fiber would be constipated. But Stephenson and Anderson said that their bowel movements were fine. In fact, the scientists actually collected their stool and said, not only were they fine, they were great.
15:27 Wendy Zukerman? It was like it had no odor and...
15:31 Speaker 09 That's kind of funny because like there's that expression like, oh, he thinks his shit don't stink. I'm like, wow, their shit really don't stink.
15:38 Wendy Zukerman? Totally.
15:39 Speaker 09 The paper does say that their poops were actually smaller than average, which does make sense if there's no fiber to bulk it up.
15:46 Wendy Zukerman? Yes, that's right. You start veering towards the little kangaroo poos.
15:52 Wendy Zukerman? But it's not just about poop because fiber is very important for a bunch of other things. It can lower your risk of heart disease, lower your risk of colorectal cancer. I mean, what...
16:03 Speaker 09 Well, that, this all brings me to my next question, which is, okay, maybe these people are okay, surprisingly okay in the short term, a year, whatever.
16:10 Wendy Zukerman? Yeah.
16:11 Speaker 09 But what about long term? What are the long term risks?
16:14 Wendy Zukerman? Yes.
16:15 Speaker 09 So let's start with heart disease.
16:17 Wendy Zukerman? Yeah, right.
16:19 Speaker 09 I think this is like a really visceral fear people have of this kind of diet of eating so much meat because when you're eating a lot of meat, you're probably eating a lot of saturated fat and cholesterol. And a lot of us just have this like bleh feeling about that, like, ooh, so much grease building up in your body.
16:35 Wendy Zukerman? Mmm.
16:36 Speaker 09 Uh, I think that's why this particular case report went viral recently.
16:40 Speaker 11 Man on a carnivore diet starts oozing cholesterol from his skin.
16:44 Speaker 05 Can we please just talk about how unhinged it is that people on the carnivore diet are eating so much fat and cholesterol that it is leading to a visible buildup of fatty deposits under the skin?
16:55 Speaker 09 Yeah, this guy had been on the carnivore diet for eight months. He showed up to the doctor because he noticed something interesting. I'll show you some pictures, Wendy.
17:03 Wendy Zukerman? Oh, was he turning yellow? Like an egg yolk? Because an egg yolk's full of cholesterol, right?
17:09 Speaker 09 Pretty much, yeah. Look, scroll down, look at the pictures of his hands.
17:14 Speaker 06 Ah, oh wow.
17:18 Speaker 06 Oh, yeah. It's like if you imagine the sort of creases on your palm, and all those creases are basically the color of an egg yolk. Ooh.
17:31 Speaker 09 It wasn't actually oozing out of his skin. It was just built up under it.
17:33 Speaker 06 Okay. That's fine then.
17:36 Speaker 09 Well, this got reported as like, look at what the carnivore diet will do to you. But I think that's unfair. In addition to the not oozing, it was also probably a genetic condition this guy had, where his body couldn't clear out cholesterol very efficiently. So this is kind of, we expect this to be rare. This is not going to happen to most people on the carnivore diet.
17:59 Speaker 06 Okay, so all right, well, that's good news. But will they eventually get heart disease?
18:04 Speaker 09 Right, that's a more reasonable thing to worry about. And, and the reason that the idea is out there is because a lot of us have heard that when you eat a lot of saturated fat, cholesterol, it'll clog your arteries and that will kill you. Now, these days, we know that that old story is not quite true. It's actually a lot more nuanced than that.
18:22 Speaker 06 Mm hmm.
18:23 Speaker 09 But some people on the carnivore diet will take this a step further. And they'll say, not only will it not increase your risk of heart disease, it should actually protect you from getting heart disease.
18:33 Speaker 06 Oh, how, how?
18:37 Speaker 09 Well, they say that this diet is really good for your blood sugar. And so you're not going to end up getting diabetes, type 2 diabetes. And therefore, you're not going to get heart disease, which comes with type 2 diabetes.
18:48 Speaker 06 Is that true? Does the carnivore diet protect you from diabetes and getting heart attacks?
18:57 Speaker 09 Well, okay, it's true that diabetes increases your risk of heart disease. It actually doubles that risk, according to the CDC.
19:05 Speaker 09 But as far as, does the carnivore diet have a protective effect on your diabetes risk? The thinking here comes from the fact that this is a low carb diet, right? I mean, it's actually a zero carb diet. So as I mentioned, we don't have much in terms of studies on the carnivore diet specifically. But we can look at studies of other low carb diets to get some clues here. And those studies do find that cutting out carbs can improve people's insulin sensitivity and have even been shown to reverse diabetes in people who already have it.
19:38 Speaker 06 Hmm.
19:40 Wendy Zukerman? That's cool. But that's just part of what this diet is about, right? You cut out the carbs. But what about eating all that meat? I mean, what happens to your heart disease risk when you eat all that meat?
19:58 Speaker 09 Well, that's the thing. When researchers have compared people on a low carb diet who eat a lot of meat versus people on a low carb diet who eat a lot of plants, guess who does better?
20:08 Wendy Zukerman? Plant eaters.
20:09 Speaker 09 Yeah, the plant, the plant eaters.
20:11 Wendy Zukerman? OK.
20:12 Speaker 09 They do better.
20:16 Speaker 09 So that led a group of heart health nerds who looked at that study and they put a lot of other evidence together. They concluded that it's OK for people to follow low carb diets for their hearts. But if they do, their doctors should, quote, "encourage the consumption of vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, legumes, and whole grains."
20:36 Wendy Zukerman? Repartined, repartined. Do you know how much they're gonna [BLEEP] on you on that carnivore diet subreddit? If you stop increasing your consumption of vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, legumes, and whole grains?
20:50 Speaker 09 Maybe they'll ease off. I have some good news here for the carnivores. It's about cancer. So when I looked at the link between red meat and cancer, that's squishier than I expected it to be. The best evidence that meat is linked to cancer is for processed meats.
21:09 Wendy Zukerman? Mm-hmm.
21:09 Speaker 09 To these influencers' credit, they seem to be promoting eating freshly prepared meat. And that is probably less risky when it comes to cancer.
21:20 Wendy Zukerman? OK, so here's where we're at. These risks that people are concerned about with the diet around vitamin deficiency and heart disease and cancer, it's not as if these risks are total garbage and this diet is 100% safe. There still could be risks here. We're just not entirely sure. Which means that the benefits... It's all about how good the benefits are.
21:48 Speaker 09 Yeah, to outweigh these unknowns.
21:50 Wendy Zukerman? It's potent... Exactly. So after the break, the benefits.
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25:21 Wendy Zukerman? Welcome back. Rose Rimla. People say they feel amazing on this diet. Tell me about it. I want to hear the good stuff.
25:31 Speaker 09 Yeah, I want to start with people who say this diet has healed their guts. Because some people who decide to do this diet are doing it because they're in really bad shape, like in terms of their GI stuff.
25:43 Wendy Zukerman? Uh huh.
25:43 Speaker 09 I talked about this with Adrian Sotomota. He is a doctor and a researcher at Tecnologico de Monterrey in Mexico City. He sees a lot of patients with inflammatory bowel disease. That is a group of conditions that includes Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis. And it's just, it's just awful.
26:04 Speaker 11 It's among the most, you know, incapacitating diseases. Makes everything harder. It makes going to work harder. Makes, of course, eating harder. Even mild forms of IBD are still, you know.
26:21 Speaker 09 Really suck?
26:21 Speaker 11 No joke. Not a walk in the park.
26:26 Speaker 09 People's guts are inflamed in these conditions, or they get ulcers on their intestinal walls. And it can cause a lot of pain, cramping, bloating, diarrhea. Adrian's heard about people who get diarrhea 12 times a day, often with blood in it. And sometimes people get anemic and they need blood transfusions.
26:45 Speaker 03 Oh, gosh.
26:46 Speaker 09 I know. And while there are medicines for it, they don't always work for everybody. Adrian says IBD is-
26:55 Speaker 11 Stubbornly persistent.
26:58 Speaker 09 But then Adrian started hearing about people going on the carnivore diet for their IBD.
27:03 Speaker 11 The first thing I felt was curiosity. The second thing I thought was, I mean, of course, it did work.
27:11 Speaker 09 So he and a colleague started collecting stories from these people. And they ended up with 10 case reports from people whose IBD had been stubbornly persistent. And?
27:23 Speaker 11 Many of them used, still use the term life-changing, which is something people don't throw away, you know, easily.
27:35 Speaker 09 Besides life-changing, another patient called it a miracle.
27:38 Wendy Zukerman? Miracle. Wow. So how is this diet helping them?
27:41 Speaker 09 Well, one explanation that I heard again and again online about why this diet might be so good for you is basically because plants are toxic.
27:52 Speaker 15 Plants are loaded with things that are designed to hurt us.
27:55 Speaker 16 Plants do not want to be eaten. They're going to defend their leaves, their stems, their roots, and their seeds. Lectins, phytic acid, oxalates.
28:03 Speaker 17 When you put that oxalate, those vegetables, into your body, your body then recognizes it as something that it needs to fight against.
28:11 Speaker 09 The thinking here is that plants make chemicals to defend themselves against diseases or getting eaten by bugs. They'll use stuff like tannins, oxalates, et cetera, and that those chemicals are bad for us. And frankly, Wendy, this is the most irritating part of the whole carnivore diet spiel that I see online. Because I think it irritates me because it's like plants are being framed for a crime that they didn't commit.
28:37 Wendy Zukerman? Oh, so what's happening here?
28:41 Speaker 09 I mean, as always, these influencers are taking little grains of truth and blowing them up. So like, yes, there is some stuff that can be toxic in plant foods. Including some stuff that some might call anti-nutrients in plants, that they can interfere with us absorbing certain nutrients. But most of these things either break down when they're cooked, or they're there in very small doses, or they just don't matter that much as long as we're eating a generally healthy, varied diet.
29:09 Speaker 06 That, I mean, that makes sense, right? Like spinach, carrots, then they're not toxic. They're not toxic, right?
29:16 Speaker 09 No, they're not toxic. Yeah. I mean, just throw the carnivores a bone. Maybe some people are uniquely sensitive to these chemicals. And like going back to our IBD people we just heard about. Maybe their guts were really reactive to stuff that's in plant foods. But that doesn't mean that everybody should throw out our vegetables and like call them the enemy. Because, I mean, I also found a case series where people with IBD switched to a vegan diet. Literally the opposite, all plants, and their IBD cleared up too.
29:49 Speaker 06 Oh, okay. Despite all the tannins and oxalates and less, less than that they were eating.
29:58 Speaker 09 Right.
29:58 Speaker 06 What's, what's the thinking here? That these bowel conditions are caused by an array of different things potentially? And if, if you personally, maybe you are a little sensitive to some of the stuff in vegetables, and then cutting them out of your diet actually might help. But on the other hand, you might be someone who's sensitive to the stuff in meat, and then a vegan diet is going to help you out. Is that the idea? So there's no miracle IBD diet?
30:28 Speaker 09 Yeah, there's probably no one IBD diet to heal them all. Although the typical Western diet full of ultra-processed foods is best avoided. But beyond that, we really don't know. Actually, one review paper I found said that it basically comes down to, if it hurts, don't eat it.
30:46 Wendy Zukerman? Okay. All right, but I guess if you are really suffering and have tried a bunch of things, heck, maybe give it a go, I guess. Um, with the risks that we talked about at the beginning of the show in mind.
31:00 Speaker 09 Yeah, I mean, if I, if I was shitting blood every day, yes, I would try this. If, and everything else hadn't worked, sure.
31:05 Wendy Zukerman? All right, so from not shitting blood to other benefits.
31:09 Speaker 09 Yeah, people talk about stuff like the carnivore diet curing arthritis, psoriasis, a lot of autoimmune stuff, actually. And people will also say it helps them with brain fog, and that could also be an autoimmune issue.
31:23 Wendy Zukerman? Uh huh.
31:24 Speaker 09 And maybe, like I said, some people are uniquely sensitive to something in various plants, and this diet functions basically as an elimination diet for these issues. But there may be another explanation. The carnivore diet is also a ketogenic diet. You know, on a ketogenic diet, you might have a steak and a side of broccoli. On this diet, you're just having the steak. Either way, you're gonna wind up in ketosis.
31:48 Wendy Zukerman? Yes, yes, yes, yes. Which is where your, your brain and your body starts using this chemical called ketones for energy, rather than using sugars, which is what it mostly runs on.
32:02 Speaker 09 And there is some evidence that for some people, going into ketosis tamps down their inflammation. Uh, it might have to do with one of the ketones that your body makes, BHB. It's thought to be an anti-inflammatory agent. So I don't think there's anything special about the bucket loads of meat for people who are seeing a benefit with this diet. I think it's, could be that they're just in ketosis, which for some people, they feel really good in ketosis.
32:34 Wendy Zukerman? Right, and so that's very helpful news that if you are going all the way on the carnivore diet, you can have some vegetables and probably still stay in ketosis.
32:44 Speaker 09 Yeah, experts told me that if ketosis is the thing that's making you feel good, you don't have to go on such a restrictive diet to get there. Bottom line, you don't have to be this hardcore.
32:54 Wendy Zukerman? The whole hog.
32:56 Speaker 09 Right, you don't have to go whole hog. Also, Wendy, a lot of people lose weight on this diet, and that could be why they feel better, because, you know, weight loss can sometimes help with chronic diseases.
33:06 Wendy Zukerman? That makes sense. And then as far as why you might lose weight on this diet.
33:13 Speaker 06 You know what? Let me guess, Rose. If you are restricting what you eat in such an extreme way that not only are you not eating muffins and cakes, but you've cut so many things out of your diet. Chances are you will lose weight because you're eating less calories. Is that right?
33:35 Speaker 09 That's what I would expect. That's what experts told me. There's no studies of weight loss on people on the carnivore diet. We could look at studies of people on the keto diet if we want. That's probably the closest we can get. And there's a meta-analysis that found that on the keto diet, people lost on average about 11 pounds over at least a year. But um, yeah, Wendy, I think it's as simple as that.
34:00 Speaker 06 So we've talked about people with specific conditions giving this a go. But I guess for the rest of us who are just trying to live our best, healthiest lives. Do you think the carnivore diet is a good idea?
34:15 Speaker 09 No, I think it is a very stupid idea.
34:18 Speaker 06 Okay.
34:19 Speaker 09 That's because studies have shown over and over again, thousands and thousands of people, that eating plants is good for you. Uh, my favorite of these studies is the Seventh Day Adventist studies. They followed people who were either vegan or vegetarian or vegetarian, except they ate a little fish, or they were meat eaters. And it turned out that everyone who avoided meat, even if they ate a little fish or a little dairy, they had better health and they lived longer than the meat eaters. So the more veg, the better, essentially.
34:50 Speaker 06 Yeah, and those studies are huge, right?
34:52 Speaker 09 Yeah, this one, um, this one in particular was like 70,000 people.
34:57 Speaker 06 And we compare that to two art explorers who just didn't get scurvy, you know?
35:03 Speaker 09 Yeah.
35:04 Speaker 06 All right, not to mention the environmental issues around eating a lot of meat, right?
35:10 Speaker 09 Yes, and in, and some people in this space, they argue against this. They say, eating meat isn't actually that bad for the environment. That's a myth. Or they'll say like, it's okay as long as you eat grass-fed meat or you get meat that's farmed via regenerative agriculture. We looked into this and you know, Wendy, um, I just want to pull something out of the science versus storage closet that we haven't used in a while. It's, it's a little dusty. Um, hopefully it, it still works.
35:42 Speaker 09 No, that's not true. Meat eating is bad for the environment, full stop. Meat and dairy account for at least 12% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions. Wow. Grass-fed beef, this surprised me. It might actually be worse for emissions than feedlot-raised beef. And that's basically because grass is a less efficient feed. And then when it comes to regenerative agriculture, it's not anywhere near ready to offset the emissions caused by feeding and raising livestock.
36:15 Wendy Zukerman? All right. There you go. The risks to the environment are known. And for that alone, for me, anyway. You got that sound effect again. I'm gonna give the carnivore diet A.
36:31 Wendy Zukerman? Thanks, Rose.
36:31 Speaker 09 Thanks, Wendy.
36:33 Wendy Zukerman? How many citations are in this week's episode?
36:36 Speaker 09 This week, there are 100 citations.
36:38 Wendy Zukerman? Uh huh. And if people want to see these citations read more about meat, meat, meat, meat, where should they go?
36:46 Speaker 09 They can check the link to the transcript and they'll find that in our show notes.
36:50 Wendy Zukerman? Excellent. All right. I'm hungry. Let's eat, Rose. Bye.
36:54 Speaker 09 Okay, bye.
37:03 Wendy Zukerman? This episode was produced by Rose Rimler with help from me, Wendy Zukerman, Akety Foster-Keeys, Michelle Dang, and Merrill Horne. We're edited by Bligh Terrell. Fact checking by Erica Akiko Howard. Mix and sound design by Bobby Lord. Music written by Emma Munger, So Wiley, Peter Leonard, Bumi Hidaka, and Bobby Lord. A special thanks to the researchers we reached out to, including Dr. Lawrence David, Dr. Andrea Koricik, and others. Science vs. is a Spotify Studios original. Listen to us for free on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. And wherever you do listen to us, give us a five-star review if you like what we're doing. It helps others find the show. But if you are listening on Spotify, then to follow us,
37:44 Wendy Zukerman? tap the bell icon so you get notifications when new episodes come out. I am Wendy Zukerman, and I'll back you next time.
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