We’ve all heard the phrase “An apple a day keeps the doctor away,” but what about a chicken? Recently, there’s been a lot of buzz around the carnivore diet, including endorsements from high-profile public figures like Joe Rogan, Shawn Baker, and Jordan Peterson.
For those not in the know, a carnivore diet restricts your food intake to animal products such as meat, fish, eggs, and dairy. It excludes plant-based foods like fruits, vegetables, legumes, and nuts. It is a low-carb diet, but unlike other popular ones such as keto, which limits carb intake, it aims to eliminate all carbs.
Proponents of the diet claim that humans are carnivores that evolved to hunt animals for food and that eating meat is the natural way for us. Whether their claims of the diet’s origins in human evolution are true, they extoll its numerous health benefits like treating anxiety, depression, arthritis, diabetes, and more. While this diet may seem like any meat lover’s dream, it has also been heavily criticized by nutritionists and other experts.
So are humans meant to be carnivores? Can eliminating all plant-based foods from your diet result in all these miraculous health benefits? Is there such a thing as too much meat? In this article, we’ll break down all the pros and cons so that you can decide if a carnivore diet is the way to go for you.
The Benefits
Weight Loss
The most popular upside people who adopt the carnivore diet mention is weight loss and improved body composition. Since it excludes all high-carb and heavily processed foods, which are often high in calories, adopting this diet could help you hit your weight loss goals.
Much of this benefit can be attributed to the fact that it is an all-protein diet. Since proteins take longer for the digestive system to break down, this diet could make you feel fuller for longer periods and keep you away from cookies and chips.
You already know what cutting out junk food can do if you are trying to lose weight. To support this claim by proponents of the carnivore diet, a study conducted by the National Library of Medicine in the US found that adults who adopted a carnivore diet experienced very few adverse effects and reported weight loss and high satisfaction.
Regulating Blood Sugar
This one might interest you if you suffer from diabetes. Going on a carnivore diet could help you regulate your blood sugar. Foods that are rich in carbohydrates have a heavy impact on blood sugar and insulin levels.
If you adopt this diet, your carbohydrate intake will be brought down to a minimum, if not completely eliminated. This could help reduce your dependence on insulin and other diabetes medications. That being said, if you suffer from diabetes, consult your doctor before you try a carnivore diet.
Energy and Focus
A carnivore diet could help you achieve higher energy levels and better mental focus. This could be due to the high protein and fat intake. Proteins provide you with energy that sustains you through the day and fat consumption is necessary for brain functioning.
Consuming both through this diet could improve your energy levels and mental clarity. Make sure you remember that this is mostly based on people’s individual experiences. More research is needed before we can safely say this diet will give you boundless energy and focus.
Preventing Inflammation
Some research suggests you could adopt a diet consisting solely of animal-based products to prevent inflammation and combat symptoms of autoimmune disorders like Crohn’s disease and rheumatoid arthritis. This is because the diet excludes all plant-based foods which can cause inflammation in some people. However, it is important to remember that a carnivore diet cannot cure these conditions and more research is needed to know the long-term effects. If you are suffering from one of these illnesses, consult your doctor before making changes to your diet.
The Risks
Nutritional Deficiency
There’s a reason your parents told you to eat all your vegetables. The real glaring issue with the carnivore diet is the nutrients not found in meat. The diet excludes foods like fruits, vegetables, nuts, and legumes. All of these are known to be very nutritious.
By cutting these out of your diet, you could be depriving your body of fiber and essential vitamins. A lack of fiber in your diet can result in constipation as well as more long-term problems. Insufficient intake of Vitamins A, B, and C can cause serious problems such as night blindness, hair loss, rashes, and even neurological disorders.
Some studies suggest that if you consume a large amount of protein, harmful byproducts are created in your gut, leading to gastrointestinal issues and even colon cancer.
Cancer and Heart Disease
According to the US National Library of Public Medicine, 80% of breast, bowel, and prostate cancers may be caused by dietary practices. Much of this risk is linked to high meat consumption. It’s also widely known that if you consume excessive quantities of red meat, you put yourself at risk of heart problems. Red meat contains large amounts of saturated fat, cholesterol, and sodium which could greatly impact your cardiovascular health.
Kidney Function
A solely protein-based diet could also put a lot of stress on your kidneys and affect their functioning in the long term. Meat also contains large amounts of sodium, which can cause kidney stones.
Environmental Factors
Besides the health risks of adopting a carnivore diet, you should also consider the load it puts on the planet. Industrial food production is linked to an increase in the emission of greenhouse gases globally and the production of meat results in double the emissions of plant-based foods. An increase in worldwide meat consumption will mean a greater threat of global warming.
Conclusion
It’s possible that adopting a carnivore diet could help you lose weight or gain more mental focus in the short term. That being said, we think that the risks far outweigh the benefits. There are ways to get to your goal weight that do not put you at risk of nutritional deficiency, cancers, and heart disease. A balanced nutritional plan, combined with an active lifestyle, is a much more sustainable way to overall health and fitness than a trendy diet that excludes key nutrients.
