Counter-Currents
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I have been on the Carnivore Diet for about six weeks now. In case you don’t know, this is the anti-vegan, all-meat diet. It is being touted for health reasons, but is far more interesting for the personalities and politics behind it. Really, this just ought to be called the Dissident Right Diet.
Carnivore is, hands down, the simplest diet there is. No calorie counting, no macro counting, no food weighing. There is one and only one rule: if it’s an animal product, you can eat it. The staple of the diet is meat, and many of its advocates eat beef almost exclusively, but any meat is acceptable so long as it is naturally raised. Other animal products are also permitted, but you are encouraged to focus on meat. Eggs are acceptable, as well as some dairy products like high-fat plain yogurt, cheese, and sour cream. It’s best to steer clear of milk if one of your objectives is to lose weight, as it has a lot of naturally occurring sugar in it.
No fruits and vegetables are permitted. I suppose that honey is arguably an animal product, but that’s out as well. The reason is that one of the objectives of the diet is to cause your body to go into ketosis, which means that you shift over to using fat for energy rather than carbs. Ingesting a high-carb source like honey would take your body out of ketosis. This means that the Carnivore diet is all about protein and fat. So, while theoretically, any meat is acceptable, you really want to go for fatty meats like ribeye steaks and pork chops.
Carnivore is sort of an extreme version of the ketogenic diet, which was initially developed in the 1920s as an effective treatment for epilepsy. The diet received some attention in the 1990s, but it was really Dave Asprey’s 2014 book The Bulletproof Diet that turned keto into a full-blown phenomenon, and a multi-billion-dollar industry. Keto allows you to eat fruits and vegetables, so long as they are not sugary and starchy. Green things like broccoli and spinach are in, and potatoes, carrots, and corn are out. This effectively eliminates virtually all fruits except the avocado (yes, that’s technically a fruit).
As part of my “stay in shape” program during the COVID-19 shutdown, I went on Asprey’s Bulletproof Diet back in March, pretty much as soon as my gym closed. I then transitioned to a stricter ketogenic protocol, aiming for the complete elimination of carbs (Asprey’s diet allows you some). I had tried keto two years earlier, and could not sustain it. But this time I did a lot more research and figured out what I had been doing wrong. Mainly, I had very seriously underestimated the amount of water and electrolytes I needed to supplement (keto causes you to lose both). I had also not been eating enough fat — in other words, I had deprived my body of one energy source (carbs) but had failed to provide it with sufficient quantities of the new source it was craving.
Everything went a lot better this time, but I found one element to be extremely difficult: I simply could not get in all the servings of non-starchy, non-sugary vegetables I was supposed to consume in a day. The main reason for this is simple: I hate vegetables. Sure, if presented to me on a plate in a good restaurant, appealingly prepared, I will try them. But when at home, about the best I can manage is to microwave some frozen broccoli or open a can of sauerkraut. I had heard about Carnivore, but thought it sounded insane. Without fiber, wouldn’t I get colon cancer?
For some reason, however, these interesting times we are living through have made me feel a bit reckless. One evening, I found myself staring intently at a package of “mixed field greens” I was about to spread onto a plate and force myself to eat, after splashing them with balsamic vinegar and olive oil. My body was screaming “no!” And then I did it; I made the leap. I just said no to vegetables. I tossed the greens into the trash and decided to go full Carnivore — as an experiment. And it is still an experiment, for my intention is just to see how this goes. I may not stay on the diet long term.
The next day I headed for the grocery store to begin my new, carnivorous lifestyle. My shopping list was considerably simplified: beef, pork, chicken, eggs, cheese, sour cream, Greek yogurt (I have since eliminated the yogurt). Breakfast is usually now a small steak with four scrambled eggs. Sometimes I make a cheeseburger. Hold the pickle, hold the lettuce. Hold the bun, the onions, and the ketchup (too sugary). Hold everything, in fact, apart from the meat and the cheese. I cook the burger medium rare, covering the pan for about four minutes to let the cheese melt, then I usually adorn the whole ensemble with two or three runny, fried eggs. At midday I usually pop three or four chicken breasts in the oven, sprinkling them with salt and seasoning, and topping each with a pat of butter. These breasts serve as snacks. I often consume one, sometimes two a day. Another favorite snack is hardboiled eggs.
Frequently, dinner is cheeseburgers (if I’ve not had one for breakfast), or a steak, or a couple of pork chops — or some combination of these. My beverage of choice is usually water. Mineral water is fantastic, because you need to take in more minerals on this diet. Sometimes I add some sugar-free electrolyte mix to the water. I also drink Dave Asprey’s “bulletproof coffee,” which is coffee blended with a tablespoon or so of butter. No sugar; I use stevia instead. Generally, I have two or three cups of this a day, regular or decaf. I had quit drinking alcohol in January, before our descent into complete, unhinged madness began. Now I consume a martini after dinner, for medicinal purposes. (This is breaking the rules of the diet, actually — a point to which I will return later.)
So what have been the results? Since starting the whole “diet arc,” which, as I’ve mentioned, began as “Bulletproof,” I have lost twelve pounds. All of it seems to be fat. Despite being gymless and reduced to doing almost nothing but bodyweight exercises, I do not seem to have lost any muscle mass. Based on other people’s experiences, I can expect to keep on losing fat. In fact, this diet is absolutely terrific for fat loss.
The trouble is that some people who try to go Carnivore (or Keto) cannot stick to it because their chief reason for being on the diet is weight loss. This means that they often wind up not eating enough. And it’s also hard to break through decades of conditioning about how fat will make you fat. All the Carnivore gurus advise people to eat more than they think they should, at least in the first few weeks. This can actually prove difficult, since protein and fat are so satiating. (One of the reasons normies get fat is because carbs are not very satiating, so they wind up eating more and more in order to feel full.) Even stuffing yourself, it’s pretty hard to gain fat if you are eating nothing but meat (which was correctly advertised in the 40s and 50s, incidentally, as “slimming”).
In addition to the fat loss, there have been some other interesting effects. For one thing, my mood has generally been much more positive. I have fewer “highs” and “lows” and just seem to be on an even keel. My thinking seems to be clearer. Words are coming easier and my productivity is up. I have also noticed that my mild OCD seems to have improved (I’m now only checking the stove a couple of times before leaving the house). It could be my imagination, but some of my senses seem to be heightened. For example, my sense of smell seems to be more acute, and olfactory experiences somehow more “vivid.” (“You’re becoming a werewolf,” a friend said to me.) I’ve also experienced vivid recall of old, long-forgotten memories, which has sometimes occasioned a mixture of emotions.
My vision, which has been steadily deteriorating for years, now seems to be a notch better. I’m also sleeping well, and I seem to need less sleep (something many people on Carnivore have reported). Alcohol seems to have a stronger effect on me, which is not always good. In general, I have the odd feeling that something is “shifting” inside me; that I am becoming more “myself.” Again, perhaps this could all be my imagination. Perhaps it is just the high hopes of an enthusiastic convert.
The first objection that everyone has to the Carnivore diet is constipation. People’s experiences vary, but in my case, it was not a problem.
There is a downside, however, and it is called “the adaptation phase.” This is supposed to last anywhere from two weeks to several months. It’s worse for people with really bad, normie diets. Now, I was already low-carb, but the adaptation phase has been pretty difficult for me. I have been working out about five or six days a week, but I have less energy. This is supposed to get better in time, as my body adapts to using fat as a fuel source. I fatigue rather easily, and I get headaches, always in the back, righthand side of my cranium. These are cured almost immediately by taking in more water and electrolytes (sometimes I sip beef bone broth, which also has an immediate effect).
As I mentioned earlier, you lose water and minerals on a no-carb diet. “They” say that this is supposed to get better, and that you can get all the minerals you need from animal products. But I see little sign of improvement on this score, and after six weeks I am still guzzling salty water or broth all day long. But it doesn’t matter to me that much. Unless something changes, I am going to stick this out and suffer through the adaptation phase, given that so many others have reported that things do get better. Setting aside the bad, the positive results I’ve had so far make me want to continue. And I also just enjoy finally feeling liberated from the tyranny of the vegetable kingdom.
If you want to explore the Carnivore diet, I recommend Dr. Shawn Baker’s The Carnivore Diet and Dr. Paul Saladino’s The Carnivore Code.
Also check out the YouTube channels of Shawn Baker, Paul Saladino, and Tristan Haggard.
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39 comments
This sounds extremely environmentally taxing. If you were to hunt and keep the animals yourself, I’d see a point to it but you’re getting these things from a supermarket. Is this a temporary diet or permanent? It sounds to me like you can’t go back.
I don’t think a good diet consists out of only meat, anyone who will you tell it does is a bad dietician. You should eat nuts and fruits, they contain vital vitamins and amino acids. You should also eat fish, preferably fish lower down in the food chain to prevent heavy metal build-up.
Vegetables are also very important to obtain a healthy stool and the insoluble fibres contained within vegetables are absolutely necessary for feeding the good bacteria in your intestines so that they may keep the bad ones in check. I’m not sure why your body would scream ‘no’ to vegetables, sounds more like a mental blockade. Maybe you should try eating them raw (where possible… ) as a snack instead of boiling them into oblivion like some people do. You might learn to appreciate the taste more that way. Carrots make for good snacks.
Or turn them into a zero-effort soup. Make large quantities if you dislike cooking and freeze it. You can easily keep soup for weeks on end in a fridge. Consider using glass containers at all times. Even BPA-free stuff isn’t exactly healthy.
The key is in finding a balanced diet, going from one extreme to another is just going to send you and your weight/health jo-jo-ing.
“I don’t think a good diet consists out of only meat, anyone who will you tell it does is a bad dietician. You should eat nuts and fruits, they contain vital vitamins and amino acids” – Yeah, that notion certainly comports with nutritional establishment standards. It’s what our nutritional dictocrats want us to believe (saturated fat is bad, eat plenty of vegetables, make sure to consume those “healthy grains,” use vegetable oils rather than real butter, etc.).
However, all these type of objections to the Carnivore Diet are answered in Paul Saladino’s excellent book, ‘The Carnivore Code.’ Dr. Barry, Dr. William Davis of ‘Wheat Belly,’ and Dr. Darren Schmidt on Youtube can also provide the science supporting a Carnivore way of eating.
Paul Saladino has an M.D. and has examined the subject extensively. He appeals to the science as well as to the evidence of changed lives and dramatically better health. His lectures and podcast can be found on Youtube. There are a host of M.D.s who have also come out in support of the Carnivore Diet, and there has been a major shift away from the lipid hypothesis (the notion that saturated fat causes heart disease and artery hardening) and the low fat craziness – both of which have been soundly debunked by a plethora of studies (see Gary Taubes, ‘Good Calories, Bad Calories’).
I ate low carb for several years, and tried briefly the Ketogenic Diet, and I now have been on the Carnivore Diet for about six months. Through each stage, I consumed a lot of animal products and always felt better the more saturated fat I ate. When I shifted to Carnivore my health radically improved. Here is what most people, including myself, have discovered:
Mental clarity. A feeling of just being alert. I’m able to focus on things better.
A generally good and positive mood.
I sleep like a rock at night, and I feel as if I sleep deeper and more rested when I awaken.
Anxiety is greatly reduced or even goes completely away.
No farting.
Skin and complexion improves.
Weight loss is much easier, and I am always satiated after I eat.
Your testosterone levels will increase.
Contrary to what one might think, the diet is not ‘boring.’ There are plenty of animal products to consume such fish, crab, lobster, beef, chicken, pork (bacon!), lamb, and various organ meats. I also eat lots of real organic butter, and I avoid vegetable oils like the plague.
One of the reasons the Carnivore Diet works so well is because one is not constantly spiking their insulin levels by consuming copious amounts of refined sugar and processed carbs. Also, vegetables often inflame the gut because plants releases chemicals and oxalates into the bloodstream (their natural defense system) which does not comport with many peoples’ digestion. It’s no wonder why so many vegans and vegetarians complain of digestion problems.
Plants are essentially a secondary or survival food when animal products are not available. Our great ancestors would not prefer vegetables when beef, chicken and pork were on the table. The Indians on the Great Plains would give the lean meat of the buffalo to the dogs while they treasured the fattiest portions of the animal. They instinctively knew that animal fat was both nutritious and delicious tasting.
So, if you’re going to have a steak, don’t get it lean. Get the fattest one you can buy, and watch your health improve!
So how do you get your fiber and the vitamins you can’t get from meats? Have you had any bloodwork done to confirm you’re not missing out on essentials?
You get fiber and other vitamins from the meat and other animal products that are consumed (yes, meat has fiber). Once you adapt to a Carnivore way of eating (for some who are not yet fat adapted, it generally takes about a week or so to make the change), you have no problems having regular bowel movements. If you’ve been accustomed for decades to eating the standard American diet, there is a transition period. In my case, I had already been regularly consuming meats and animal fat, so it did not take long at all.
I will try to make this as delicate as I can, but your bowel movements on a Carnivore diet will be much smaller and shorter. This is because your body will actually be using up the greater majority of the nutrient dense food you eat. When you eat the standard American diet, there is all sorts of processed food and junk your body will eliminate because it has no nutritional value. Thus, your bowel movements tend to be larger. With the Carnivore way of eating, you won’t be having to poop 3 to 4 times a day as recommended by some establishment nutritionists.
Some people eating Carnivore choose to supplement with vitamins, but you really don’t have to unless you have certain unique deficiencies.
Also, you really should not be consuming large or even moderate amounts of fiber. There are several lectures on Youtube from nutritionists who warn of the dangers of fiber. It can do some serious damage to the digestive system. I know this runs counter to the prevailing nutritional advice, but like so many things we’ve been taught by our Grand Wizards, it ain’t necessarily so. At best, it’s a half-truth.
These are the same nutritional ‘experts’ who told Americans for decades that saturated fat would clog their arteries, that ‘whole grains’ were healthy, that they should choose margarine over real butter, that raw milk was ‘dangerous,’ that salt was bad for them, and that we ought to cook our food with ‘heart healthy’ vegetable oils. It was all a massive lie. And what happened as a result? Americans experienced skyrocketing levels of heart disease, diabetes and cancer. Few realized that all of the ‘studies’ supporting the ‘lipid hypothesis’ were based on poorly researched ‘observational’ studies. Most people are content to let others do their thinking for them, rather than take charge of their own health.
I urge people to give the Carnivore diet a try for four weeks. If they don’t experience dramatic health changes for good (which they will), then they can try something else. Even if people choose to not go full Carnivore, they will still experience a good many of the beneficial results.
I know it sounds crazy, but meat heals!
Food for thought, thank you.
You get all the vitamins you need in meat and organs. Vegetables are not necessary as we have been evolutinary adapted to only eat meat (and maybe a small amount of berrys) during the ice age when there was no available vegetables to forage. I recommend looking into Weston Price’s work. He was a dentist who traveled the world to study the diets of indigenous people and compared them to western diets, he found out exactly the same thing we see today when people are switching to a meat based diet. It’s also interesting to see studies done to the eskimoes in the early 1900s where they noticed that a large number of eskimoes who worked for europeans and ate a western diet got sick and weak whilst their kin who stuck to their only seal based diet was healthy, happy and lived longer than white people.
Nice article, natural eating and dissident right intersecting.
You need to eat the meat raw. Cooking destroys the bacteria and vitamins. It also makes it carcinogenic and harder to digest. Offal is better than muscle meat, especially liver and brain as they are full of cholesterol and fat soluble vitamins. The best is blood. If you’re going to eat offal and drink blood, get organic. Milk doesn’t have that much sugar in it. Raw milk is best as vitamins, bacteria and enzymes have not been destroyed. Raw milk is better than water as it has been filtered through the cow (it’s 87% water) and it has cholesterol and fat soluble vitamins.
For more: YouTube: Sv3rige, Goatis.
Make sure to supplement with some vitamins.
I had to do a doubletake on the title of this piece. At first I thought it said “Becoming Coronavirus”
I’m quite familiar with these kinds of diets and the arguments behind them and have dabbled with them in the past.
What’s happened over the last 10-15 years is a world of self-improvement (fad) diets, workouts etc have become aggressively and slickly marketed through social media, modern web technologies and so on have caught the imagination of a lot of our people. Different diets are pushed, with advocates declaring their form the best, the ‘real authentic’ way of eating that modernity has stifled, or theirs is the healthiest, most conducive to longevity, most vital or moral.
There’s a rough split between chad right-leaning carnivores/paleos and virgin soy vegan/vegetarians. Yet history is not that simple on this question.
I can see no productive use of one’s time having these arguments or taking any zealous position on your diet other than what you like, what works for you and what is convenient.
It is entirely correct that the reason fat became the monster, and carbs good was more of a political rather than medical turn decades ago, but whether any of this stuff is better is hard to say, it depends by what yardstick one is measuring by. Some of it may be useful in one way and facilitate weight loss and different kinds of mental state, and hormonal effects – mostly on insulin, ghrelin, and some effect on GH.
But some of it just overlaps with bro science and feels, and there are grown men who really believe cold showers improve their life because some dude on youtube told them. Sorry I call bs on that.
Personal improvement fine, but none of this is going to change our situation, and the general rule with diet is the more exotic and esoteric the diet is the more unlikely one is stick to it.
Even if the Carnivore diet made normies 5% more based and 16% less cucked by soy or something, there’s only like 0.00000001% of the population doing it.
Our enemies are not winning because of their diet. They are winning because of their actions. It’s our actions that will win.
“What’s happened over the last 10-15 years is a world of self-improvement (fad) diets, workouts etc have become aggressively and slickly marketed through social media, modern web technologies and so on have caught the imagination of a lot of our people. Different diets are pushed, with advocates declaring their form the best, the ‘real authentic’ way of eating that modernity has stifled, or theirs is the healthiest, most conducive to longevity, most vital or moral” – There is some truth in your statement, but I attribute it more to people getting fed up with the standard American diet and the corresponding diseases and health problems that come from it. Each diet fad, it seems, has seen some of the truth, but not the whole of it. We are still in the process of discovering that. At each step, however, people are moving away from establishment nutritional wisdom which has, in large part, got us into this mess. This means healthier-conscious people are avoiding refined sugar, grains, and any processed food that comes in a box. They are turning to the ways of eating that was more customary among those of our ancient past.
“It is entirely correct that the reason fat became the monster, and carbs good was more of a political rather than medical turn decades ago, but whether any of this stuff is better is hard to say, it depends by what yardstick one is measuring by” – With all due respect, it’s not at all “hard to say.” The evidence is overwhelming that eliminating sugar and processed carbs from one’s diet significantly improves one’s health. Increasing saturated fat also contributes to greater health, robustness and mental health benefits.
Interestingly, vegans attribute so much of their weight loss and feeling better to their vegan way of eating. What many of them eventually discover is not that eating copious amounts of vegetables is really that healthy (most of them complain of gut issues), but that they simply eliminated sugar and much of the food that accompanies the standard American diet. Humans don’t have the digestive tracts of a cow or other animal to process such green/grains and this explains in part why even the most devout vegan/vegetarian have so many digestive problems. They usually only admit this after they come out from the vegan movement which borders on cultism.
I would urge CC readers to check out the award-winning science writer, Gary Taubes, in his work, ‘Good Calories, Bad Calories’ (2007). The book rocked the nutritional world because he reviewed 150 years of nutritional advice and its so-called ‘scientific basis,’ and found that most of it was grounded on outright lies and poorly researched ‘observational studies.’ The scientific approach that Taubes employed was spot on, and he demonstrated that the obesity epidemic had already been solved by German scientists before the outbreak of WW2. However, since everything German or ‘Nazi’ was discarded by the American Empire, so also was their research. Most people are not aware of this.
Things have not been quite the same since that book was published because it took conventional nutritional advice and turned it on its head. He showed, among other things, that saturated fat has been wrongly vilified, that ‘heart healthy’ grains and processed food are ruinous to human health, and that what effects our insulin/hormone levels greatly determines what our health will be like.
“Our enemies are not winning because of their diet. They are winning because of their actions. It’s our actions that will win” – Whoever said they were? Who has even suggested such a notion? Yes, of course, our actions are important. But so is our health. The healthier we are both in body and in mind, the greater will be our ability to combat current trends against us.
Your comments, as I understand them, are dismissive and along the lines of ‘been there, done that.’ That’s fine if you feel that way, but there are countless whites who are experiencing greater health because they’ve been set free from the establishment diet gurus who told them for decades that they needed to shove lots of vegetables down their throats, eats lots of grains, avoid salt, and to limit or not at all consume red meat. This nonsense only resulted in making Big Pharma richer than it already was.
I urge people to try the Carnivore diet. At the same time, each of us has to find their own way. Whatever works to improve your health should be pursued until something better comes along. Many whites have discovered that they’ve been lied to about how one should eat, and have learned that animal fat and animal products are not the enemy. Those very animals were designed for us to eat, and we ought to take full advantage of it if we want better health.
Sorry, a bit TL/DR dude, but it sounds like a pitch and I ain’t buyin’.
Honestly, I think the ‘Standard American Diet’ has become a low hanging fruit meme that’s thrown around the fitness and diet industry to look superior. It’s like the left saying look at those dumb white hillbillies who don’t get cosmopolitan diversity. But nobody seriously should be eating like that anyway. You shouldn’t really need endless gurus to tell you not to eat like that. It’s not an ‘achievement’ not to eat like that. After that there’s room for different dietary approaches.
“With all due respect, it’s not at all “hard to say.” The evidence is overwhelming that eliminating sugar and processed carbs from one’s diet significantly improves one’s health. “
Yes, what I was talking about was more performance and other trade offs, in that it may be useful in certain contexts and activities/sports and unhelpful for others.
These kinds of diet indeed seem helpful against a number of health markers as we understand them today for many people, but so what ? A number of other diets can make the same or similar claims. And after a certain point, diet gurus tend to handpick how they interpret these markers to advocate for their particular diet and what they mean.
Yeah I have been there and done that and watched how it’s been rehashed and remarketed again and again. I’m not against people trying different stuff as long as we are honest about what it actually is because ‘countless whites’ are feeling empowered over very little. Many of them might as well be wearing a magnetic wrist band that increases their IQ and filters out ZOG for a few months, they will get a similar ‘feeling’ of taking control of their lives.
Whatever the short term benefits, most people on diets like the carnivore diet won’t be on it a year later. They will be back to what they were eating prior, then they will jump to the next ‘cool’ diet.
“The healthier we are both in body and in mind, the greater will be our ability to combat current trends against us. “
Anyone can eat a steak.
“Anyone can eat a steak” – You betcha! And that’s what makes it so easy and healthy.
“Whatever the short term benefits, most people on diets like the carnivore diet won’t be on it a year later. They will be back to what they were eating prior, then they will jump to the next ‘cool’ diet” – Hate to tell you, but lots of people have been eating a Carnivore way for many years. They just didn’t say anything about it. They’ve been eating low-carb, Paleo and Keto too.
The point is, eating animal products has been the mainstay of their diet for much longer than you think, and they’re not quitting any time soon. While it works for most people, a good many will return to their old eating habits. Either way, eating Carnivore is here to stay.
If you don’t eat your meat you can’t have any pudding. If this ceases to be true we are doomed.
By eating meat in the UK, which is invariably halal, even if not advertised as such, one is sustaining the foul cruelty of ritual slaughter.
Some of our greatest thinkers have been vegetarian, from Pythagoras to Nietzsche, and for now at least I prefer to emulate them in that regard.
Funny you should mention Nietzsche. I read The Portable Nietzsche back in my teens, and one thing that struck me and stayed with me was his comment in, I think, Ecce Homo about fad diets (yes, they already had them!) and how the authors, claiming “personal experience” had the cart before the horse: it was their own unique physiology that made the diet “work” not the diet that produced their physiology; yet on this basis they were recommending the same diet for everyone. We see this today: Eat like the French! Eat like the Mediterraneans! Eat like cavemen! Eat like gorillas (frutarian, believe it or not), etc. Just eat whatever diet works for you. As for me, hey, I’m still alive, so I’ve got that working for me.
Dont forget Adolf H.
As if we needed another reason to avoid vegetarianism!
Amazing, I never thought I’d find mention of one of my fav YouTube clowns here: the diabetic, vitamin D deficient carnivore (ex) doc with the test levels of an eighty year old! Congrats for jumping on the most unhealthy, unethical and environmentally taxing diet in the world. Enjoy the ride while you can (seriously, you might want to check your bloodwork before you end up in a hospital ward…)
Eskimos do okay eating pretty much like this, and so did our caveman ancestors.
This is nowhere near true. Eskimos have too much melatonin for another thing and have a wide array of health problems! Where did you get your idea from?
“I never thought I’d find mention of one of my fav YouTube clowns here: the diabetic, vitamin D deficient carnivore (ex) doc with the test levels of an eighty year old!” – Good grief, you’d maintain a little more credibility if you accurately represented Shawn Baker.
“Congrats for jumping on the most unhealthy, unethical and environmentally taxing diet in the world” – That’s right, now put down your soy pipe and step away.
“Enjoy the ride while you can (seriously, you might want to check your bloodwork before you end up in a hospital ward…)” – Actually, most if not all of those who eat Carnivore see their blood work dramatically improve. Mine has, and the stricter I am in eating this way, the greater the improvement in my overall health and blood work.
My least favourite Jeff Costello article so far.
Observation:
There’s a type of Dissident Right opinion leader on Twitter, highly articulate, but doesn’t understand science or math. Unsurprisingly, most of them are flubros. But somewhat surprisingly, they also post about their paleo/keto/carnivore diet all the time. Actually, they fuss about their diet more than I do – or any girl that I know. I was wondering what could be behind this obsession.
One theory that I came up with is that they really have constant health and weight problems. Their shitty diet gives them quick but unsustainable results, and within a year they’re back where they started, plus 10 more pounds.
My other explanantion is that going on an extreme diet and tweeting about it is a quick and easy fix for their personal problems. No need to go back to your hometown and run for office, move off the grid and grow your own food, etc. You just go shopping, and instantly feel more edgy, masculine, in control.
I dread the upcoming Becoming Carnivorous, Part 2, and pray there won’t be a Part 3.
Holy Beelzebub! What made you think that stuff is for human consumption. The Lord created vegetables to be eaten in Hungarian-style főzelék (pottage) form.
1. Fatty base: olive oil, rapeseed oil, butter, melted smoked bacon cubes, roasted smoky sausage ringlets. My grandmothers make it with roasted goose fat. (You can buy it in Hungarian shops, usually placed near butter and margarine, in small plastic containers. Not as good as home made, but okay. It’s called “sült libazsír”.)
2. Add vegetables. Whatever you find at home. Great way to make use of old sad stuff that you no longer want to eat raw, which is most of the time. Slice them up, put them on the hot fat, add salt. Wait until they get a little soft.
3. Add potato cubes.
4. Add spices. Pepper, parsley, garlic, bay leaves, tarragorn are classics. The latest trend is to fuse with orientals: lime, coconut cream, ginger, chili, curry, go wild!
5. Add strong vegetable or chicken broth.
6. Cook until everything is soft, but still in one piece. Don’t overcook.
7. Take one third of the stuff out, smooth it with hand mixer. Add back to thicken the pottage. Old cookbooks recommend thickening with roux, that’s 1950s Communist era starvation cousine, forget it. Sweet fruity pottages are sometimes thickened with egg yolk & flour, and the whipped egg whites are added to create the fluffy texture.
8. Add cream, sour cream or thick yoghurt.
8. On weekdays, add 1-2 spoonful of leftover pork stew, roasted bacon cubes or similar topping for flavour. Eat with sourdough bread. (Forget the garbage sold in Hungarian supermarkets. Make sourdough at home, or get proper bread from good bakeries.) On Sunday the vegetable pottage can serve as side dish for the main meat course.
Now if you add it all up, a soup plate of pottage and a large-ish slice of bread comes in under 500 calories, and in terms of weight, 95 percent of it is vegetables and water. Hungary is a very fat country (Orbán!), but it’s because in the last 20 years or so factory farming was introduced and people started to gorge on meat and fat. The traditional főzelék + sourdough bread diet is very lean and healthy. Especially when combined with old-school Catholicism, which prescribed various levels of fasting for practically every other day in the calendar.
In short, weight problems, eating disorders, fad diets are all identity problems. No man with a real identity would sign up for a contrivance like this “Carnivore diet”.
“No man with a real identity would sign up for a contrivance like this “Carnivore diet”- Good Lord, what an incredibly stupid statement to make.
I’m sorry you didn’t like my article. I’m afraid you won’t like the sequel any more (though I actually do raise some objections to the Carnivore Diet). I have to admit your comment had my mouth watering — because I love Hungarian food! In any case, my experiment with Carnivore is just that. I may not continue it.
What is the cost of this diet anyway?
It’s relatively less expensive and less time is spent preparing one’s meal when eating Carnivore. I don’t buy my thick rib eye steaks that are grass fed (although it’s probably a little healthier). They’re a bit too pricey. If you buy your meat at the customary grocery store, it’s not going to be as good. But you can still purchase higher quality meat that are still somewhat affordable at places like Whole Foods and other stores.
In my case, I usually eat a few eggs with bacon and lots of butter around mid-afternoon (I try to give myself a 4 to 6 hour window to eat within a 24-hour period). For dinner, I eat a fatty rib eye each night sprinkled with Himalayan pink salt and butter. Twice a week I eat beef liver, and I also frequently eat a medium rare hamburger with cheddar cheese (no bun). I don’t drink coffee or alcohol, but every so often I’ll treat myself to some ice cream. I rarely eat any vegetables and when I do, it consists of asparagus. My body simply does not crave vegetables.
You’d think I would get bored with it, but I don’t. I fact, if I go a day without a steak, I’m craving it by the next morning.
Hope this helps in some way.
I myself delight in nicely roasted meat, of any kind – lamb, beef, pork, I love it all. But it is by no means more affordable eating only meat than throwing into the mix other sources of nutrition too. In fact, for the most part, I struggle to beat even the price of our local student bistros when preparing meat based meals, even chicken. I still do it though, because I know too much about how kitchens work.
This article just gave me an acid flashback.
The first time I ever heard of an all-meat diet was in learning about Owsley Stanley, a fanatical advocate of a carnivore diet.
Who he? Owsley was the soundman for the Grateful Dead but is best known for making more than five million doses of LSD. He gets a mention in Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test (1968) and Steely Dan’s song Kid Charlemagne is about him.
Feed your head, huh?
That much protein is bad for the kidneys. The Ketogenic diet’s got it all mapped out if you can handle it, and if you can that diet you could definitely eat the ketogenic diet. If you get a chance read The Big Fat Surprise. It is a history of diet fads in United States, the food industry generally and a very good book.
The whole ‘lots of protein is bad for the kidneys’ has been debunked by a series of relatively recent studies. I’ll refer you to Paul Saladino’s work, ‘The Carnivore Code’ for a review of them.
I will check that book out. Still fats are delicious and serve as source of energy too. If weight loss is the goal ketosis will take care of that while feeding your brain wonderful vibrant ketones.
Jef, 6 weeks isn’t long enough to judge any food regimen. If you are promoting your all-meat diet as simply a short-term healing-type diet, then congrats on your improved health. Please report back in 5 or 10 years. Same with anyone promoting any fad (all raw, all fruit, all vegan, no-fat-all-starch, etc.)
FWIW, except for abos, we’ve adapted to a mixed diet and just about eveyone who’s gotten well on some highly restricted diet ends up returning to a more standard issue way of eating as the cravings have just become too great and also because symptoms began to appear. (When you ignore symptoms, that’s called orthorexia.) Why do you think that every society in every corner of the world, going back to the dawn of time, has developed medicine? It is because diet alone can’t make you healthy for long. Too much other stuff going on, e.g., the “complete, unhinged madness” you mentioned. That is making us sicker than eating lots of carbohydrates.
Three supplements to take if yo ire doing keto:
> Green Vibrance
> Miracle Reds
> Alive Max3
> some generic multi-mineral
With those, you can basically do straight keto with less than 25g net carbs per day.
The food we eat today doesn’t have the same amount of nutrients in it as what our great grandparents ate, so you basically have to supplement
I wonder if the best diet for any individual person has to do with their race or sub-race and what that race has been surviving on for the thousands of years prior. So, this diet would be best for whites that have a higher percentage of steppe nomad blood (proto-Indo-European/Aryan) and Mongolian mongoloid types. Or maybe that doesn’t matter at all. Icelanders sure seem to have gotten huge by eating pretty much just meat and dairy. Have to wonder about the environmental costs if everyone on the planet started eating this way, though.
I have an article (from the now-ghastly Utne Reader dated July 2007) in which Ed Bauman, clinical nutritionist, stated that “we fare better when we eat according to our ethnicity.” Which, by the way, is why he said that westerners should minimize all nonfermented soy products (or maybe any and all soy all the time.)
And yet. I don’t buy the idea that the major thing to consider when choosing food is your ancestors’ diet, because this is open to interpretation. How far back do we count our ancestors? 5,000 years? 500 years? 100 years? During all those generations, they changed, and so we are not the same as they were. Also, there is the matter of mixed ethnicity. Some white people are a real Mulligan’s Stew.
Sorry to say, but I doubt that there is any cut and dried recipe for proper diet. Every one of us has to figure it out as an individual. We can’t even figure out what “healthy” means. Some would define it as the ability to somehow get up in the morning and make it to work and not much more than that. Other people seem to think you should be some kind of athlete. Some people think that if their kidney transplant took, they’re healthy. SMH.
Highly inadvisable to anyone with liver complications. That level of fat will seriously tax it.
Not really, in fact the opposite. I was diagnosed with ‘severe’ fatty liver in February this year and, by some coincidence, at the same time I went on ketogenic diet. It happened that at the same time I became interested in this low-carbohydrate diet.
Two days ago, thus after ~4 1/2 months, I did a check up (echography ultrasound) and my fatty liver is practically gone, the doc said that I need not worry, because he could barely see any ‘fatty liver’ at all. I have lost also a great deal of weight during this time and ate mostly meat and fat (lard and olive oil) and stayed away from carbohydrates.
It is not a fad-diet, it really has an strong impact. I do feel significantly better and I do so constantly. t is a general and permanent improvement. There are some issues that you have to keep in mind, as for instance increasing your intake of salt (sodium(Na), salt is NaCl) to avoid low blood pressure and weakness, and some inconvenience like – you have to add fiber for digestion, I have added chicory root.
It is a very interesting subject, great that somebody wrote about it here at CC.
Glad to hear you’ve lost weight, but if and when you’re done losing weight, you should switch to a moderate carb diet because low carb diets kill people 4 years sooner than moderate carb diets.
https://www.menshealth.com/nutrition/a22786890/low-carb-diet-early-death/.
White people are adapted to eating grain, having had agriculture for 7,000 years. Aborigines and to a lesser extent blacks get fat from eating grain because they’re not adapted to eating it due to having had agriculture for less time.
Eskimo used to eat mostly meat. Well, they ate a lot of fish, which isn’t as bad as if they ate only hamburgers, but regardless, their health traditionally wasn’t good. They didn’t have a long life expectancy either, and their average IQ according to Richard Lynn is 91, nine points below that of white people.
Now, milk drinking is a hell of a white thing. Of course, whites are more lactose tolerant than other races on average. Aryans colonized grasslands far away from river valleys by thinking outside the box and drinking cow’s milk, which gave a level of caloric intake not previously available deep in the steppe and away from rivers. They then went on to spread across Europe, giving people language and 10% to 50% of their genes depending on the region. Dairy also has less environmental impact than beef.
https://benjamins.com/catalog/z.215.13gar
Another white thing is to eat humanely raised meat if you can afford it. Empathy toward animals is a white thing.
If you want to enhance brain function, try lion’s mane and japanese knotweed. The former helps generate neurons and the latter increases blood flow.
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