Carnivore Diet: What It Is, What It Involves, Risks and Benefits

Javier Colomer 6 min. of reading Diets Leave a comment

Today we’re talking about the latest diet everyone’s buzzing about: the Carnivore Diet.

What it is;
What it’s all about;
What benefits it offers; and
most importantly, what risks it carries.

Every now and then a new diet trend pops up that seems like it could fix all our problems.

In recent years, we’ve seen the rise of the paleo diet: its evolutionary logic captivated many and has built a solid following.

Alongside it, the ketogenic diet, the low-carb diet, and more recently, intermittent fasting are still going strong today.

With so many different ways to eat or diets invading the scene, we might ask ourselves: are they all healthy? We’ll tell you here.

Index

1 What is the Carnivore Diet
2 Does it work?
3 What are its Benefits?
4 What are its Risks?
5 Related Posts

What is the Carnivore Diet

The carnivore diet is super easy to get…

It’s all about cutting out absolutely every food that isn’t animal-based.

This way, you’ll be excluding all kinds of fruits, veggies, seeds, and legumes from your diet.

So what can you eat? Meat, fish, eggs, some dairy products like cheese, and organ meats (offal).

It’s therefore a highly restrictive diet due to the number of food groups left out.

Zero Carb Diet

It also goes by another name: Zero Carb Diet, since if you follow its rules, the carb content will be minimal.

Does it work?

The diet has gained momentum and popularity in various ways.

One of its biggest advocates is Doctor Shawn Baker, who’s been following it for over two years.

On his website meatheals.com, you can find hundreds of testimonials from people who’ve had good results with the carnivore diet.

From weight loss stories to improvements in depressive symptoms or autoimmune diseases.

Another figure who’s made this diet popular is psychologist Jordan Peterson, claiming among other things that his anxiety levels dropped drastically after starting a carnivore diet, as you can see in this Joe Rogan podcast.

But what really matters to us is analyzing the supposed benefits and potential risks of this diet, so let’s dive in!

What are its Benefits?

It cuts out foods that shouldn’t be in your diet

The exclusive nature of the diet has a positive side: you’ll be ditching all sources of sugar, refined flours, vegetable oils, and ultra-processed foods in one fell swoop.

That is, the core of the Western diet that’s clearly linked to higher rates of chronic disease.

It’s super easy to lose weight

The carnivore diet is a very high-protein diet and, even if it’s not mentioned, it’s also ketogenic due to the very low intake of exogenous glucose.

This means you’ll stay full most of the time and your food cravings will drop, which is one of the benefits most followers mention.

If you want to dive deeper into the High-Protein Diet, click on this link.

It’s easy to keep muscle

If the calorie deficit isn’t too big, getting plenty of high-quality protein

Especially if you do strength training, it’ll help you maintain lean mass.

Reduced anxiety

This isn’t new…

As I said before, a diet based only on meat, fish, and eggs, even if not known as such, is a ketogenic diet in the sense that it will raise ketone bodies in the blood.

Ketone bodies have a proven neurodepressive effect that seems directly linked to improving anxiety symptoms and mood in patients following a ketogenic diet.

Review the principles of the Ketogenic Diet now by visiting this article.

It may improve certain conditions

Especially metabolic conditions like type 2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome, or obesity.

However, many users report improvements in some autoimmune diseases like Crohn’s disease or rheumatoid arthritis.

Although science still needs to back up this anecdotal evidence, from a pathophysiology perspective it’s not crazy to think that such a restrictive antigen diet could improve autoimmune conditions.

On the other hand, the strongly anti-inflammatory nature of ketone bodies will improve symptoms of many of these conditions.

Now let’s talk about the (quite a few) risks this diet carries.

What are its Risks?

Unjustified exclusion of healthy food groups

Carnivore diet supporters argue that humans, evolutionarily, aren’t built to eat and process large amounts of plants.

They also talk about the presence of antinutrients like phytates in plant foods and their supposed harmful effects on health.

But honestly, these arguments seem really weak to me.

From an evolutionary standpoint, the vast majority of hunter-gatherer populations, past and present, included some proportion of plant-based foods in their diets.

Even the Hadza, who prioritize animal foods, include some veggies daily.

Yes, the exception is the Inuit, who eat a diet based exclusively on animal products.

But thinking the Inuit lifestyle and diet can be applied to the rest of the world’s population is just crazy.

From an epidemiological view, nearly all blue zones follow a plant-based diet minimizing animal products.

And from the available studies, ignoring the many publications linking fruit, vegetable, nut, and legume consumption to better health is, at best, reckless.

Processed meat

It’s striking that the carnivore diet doesn’t regulate processed meat consumption.

Sure, there’s no unanimous scientific consensus about red meat and health impact.

Bacon, for example, is very common in the diet.

But processed meat isn’t the same, and it should be avoided in any healthy diet because, among other things, it increases the risk of various cancers like colorectal cancer.