Since February, I have been eating basically zero carb, although not total carnivore. Although I don’t eat any veggies, I may have some occasional cheese, heavy cream in my coffee, ghee, eggs, bacon grease, etc., but not every day. I am very interested now in exploring what is carnivore.
Anyway, should I be taking a multivitamin or supplements if all I am eating is basically meat?
Hi, sounds like you have been doing carnevore all along.
Im kinda new at it, but i dont think any special supplementation is required. Unless there should be issues popping up. So thats individual i guess.
Track what you eat with crononmeter and see what micronutients you’re coming up deficient in. Your body needs what it needs regardless of your WOE, if you’re not eating organs I’d think you’re probably deficient in some stuff.
Other than eggs there’s nothing in there. Bacon grease isn’t a food, I just threw all that stuff in cronometer together, aside from the protein aminos that gives you some B vitamins and Selenium, that’s pretty much it aside from trace amounts of a few others.
That is relaxed carnivore and you are fine doing just that.
Dairy is personal. Do you do well on it and can keep it or must ditch it?
ANY NON-food item like a spice to meat, or a tad of fresh garlic on chicken is fine as long as it ain’t ‘your meal’ as in a few cups of broccoli with that chicken, so any spice you do well on, any herb taste you do well on with your meal IS FINE to help us ‘keep carnivore’ and change.
No supps are required ever. Fresh meat contains ALL you need…but this goes iffy if you are a handling medical issues and more then we can’t comment…but when in doubt, get a test. A simple vitamin/mineral test from the Dr is like $250 and request it when you need to go and find out what might be ‘super’ deficient but also remember, you could be deficient thru other food choices, so some time on carnivore all in—before that test—is a good way to roll
Hope some of that helps you
not true on carnivore.
your body heals hormones, adapts and changes cause fresh meat gives all we need ever and many carnivores, like me, 4 yrs in with no supps and no organs are thriving…key being who are we coming into this plan? If someone has med issues we don’t know or ‘whatever’ then it is best to get a simple Dr test for vits/mins and see where you land and then tackle it…with more meat to heal the issue…then to willy nilly think you need supps on carnivore plan.
Eliminate all but carnivore into this plan and it shows us a path and thru Dr tests we learn more but to ‘guess is useless’ per individual truly. To many guess and lose ground thru that guessing and overthinking what this plan is all about…ugh.
So when carnivore your body doesn’t need the nutrients that it needs?..we’ll have to agree to disagree on that one.
meat/seafood and fish and fowl offers ALL we need for survival point blank. It offers every nutrient and vit and mineral we need! that is why we, and predators like lions and more can live a carnivorous lifestyle thru the ages.
If it is science fact that your body requires NOT one carb from plants ever to function and thrive, then it is concluded and proven fact meat and all gives us all we need. There is no disagree truly but if one makes that statement of ‘oh you have to drink blood and eat organs’ for ALL vits/mins etc the body requires to function, isn’t true cause fresh meat/seafood/ fish and fowl provide it all truly so we don’t have to be hounding down livers and hearts for survival at all truly. But one must understand carnivore to understand all it entails for all it gives for us to thrive. Carnivores who take the time to research and learn and ‘get it’…well just get it --research real the truths about it
always remember while this is fact, we can’t factor in ‘those people who have med issues’ and need tweaks or meds etc that will sway a lifestyle on this way of eating for life
This is a non sequitur. In response to the OP question re supplements, Fangs claims none required because meat contains everything you need in the amounts you need it. In support of her claim is the fact that our Pleistocene ancestors survived and thrived on a ‘carnivore’ diet for a couple milliion plus years.
Of course, your body needs the nutrients that it needs. She did not say you did not. Just that you don’t have to supplement to get it on carnivore. In the absence of specific medical and/or nutritional problems I agree.
thanks Michael!
in general…
key to it all is KNOW if one is lacking thru simple bloodwork analysis test that is cheap when one goes to the Doc like I did and I was SO LOW in Vit C and she said, take more vit C and I thought, heck no I don’t need it cause I now a carnivore body can function on lower C intake with no plant intake/crap food chemical today food intake…and been doing fine ever since Again, this is me…another carnivore I know has folate issues, that is a medical issue and that person still takes folate thru bloodwork labs to show they need assistance so…do you but know truths about you before jumping in on ‘extras ya don’t need and can do more damage than the great ya might guess’ in taking supps on carnivore plan is what I am trying to get across.
There are data to support the notion that the most bioavailable forms of certain micronutrients are found in meat. Plant forms are often different and less absorbable, not to mention the fact that plants often contain anti-nutrients that interfere with the absorption of key minerals and vitamins. We also know that there are some B vitamins that are available only in meat.
One case that interests me in particular is vitamin C. The Royal Navy discovered that scurvy only occurs in the absence of fresh meat. When all the shipboard animals had been slaughtered and ships’ crews were subsisting only on salt beef and ship’s biscuit, only then did scurvy become a problem. The reason the British Admiralty settled on limes and lemons as a treatment for scurvy was simply that the fruits were far more easily transported than live animals. (Remember, this was back in the days of sailing ships, where storage space was at a premium, and the long voyages away from port made supplying fresh food a challenge. Naval vessels today are much larger and have refrigerators, so naval provisioning is a lot easier now than it was during the Napoleonic Wars.)
We also know, quite apart from the foregoing, that the β-hydroxybutyrate restores the endogenous protection from anti-oxidants that the high insulin level from a high-carb diet turns off, which in itself greatly reduces the body’s need for exogenous anti-oxidants, such as vitamin C. I would not be surprised if we were to discover that a similar situation applies where other micronutrients are concerned.
I can agree with that, but like everything else that’s 100% dependent on each persons diet. You can eat a nutrient rich or nutrient deficient diet whether SAD, Keto, Carnivore or anything else. No doubt people eating all meat and organs can get in everything… but how many are? I just threw a ton of stuff into cronometer I ate when I was doing carnivore, eggs, bacon, sausage, beef, pork, etc and the micronutriet content wasn’t impressive at all. No doubt if organs were in there it would have been great, but I don’t like them and it seems most people don’t.
I always try to get as much real stuff in as possible, but where the shortfalls are I supplement in. I give near zero credit to the argument that our ancestors thrived that way, because we don’t know that. Survived sure. I can survive on a lot of stuff, but surviving and being optimal aren’t the same thing, not to me at least. They also probably didn’t live as long as we did, didn’t contend with the diseases we do whether self induced or otherwise.
Another element is whether you personally believe the vitamin recommendations are accurate and/or applicable to a non-SAD way of eating.
Given this is a keto space and most believe that the general dietary guidance is inaccurate, it’s not too surprising that some people might also feel that way about the vitamin recommendations.
Personally, I’m carnivore and I do supplement a few things (such as magnesium) - but I see the logic as to why others choose not to.
The issue is that we evolved on that diet, so anyone who didn’t thrive, at least long enough to reproduce, was weeded out of the gene pool. “Optimal” is a fairly fuzzy concept, if you dig into it. Americans were their tallest, healthiest, and longest-lived when their diet was almost exclusively meat, as Nina Teicholz has documented. The nutritional guidelines, with their emphasis on grains, starches, and sugars, seem to have coincided with the rise of chronic disease and a shortening of the lifespan. This is backed up by archaeological and anthropological evidence showing that agricultural societies were markedly less healthy than hunter-gatherers.
You are probably fine. I recently added a vitamin B supplement and I take vitamin C sometimes. Surely we can survive on just meat. I think it is hard to say. I probably just pee out most of the vitamins. My doctor seems very reluctant to order tests so it can be hard to know.
They never do, if you’re in the US just order it yourself. Only way you really get the answers you want.
I’m under Dr Cywes he tests alot of everything last blood lab was 10 tubes…
My vitamin D was low but he said he would still rather I got it from the sun I live in florida so plenty of sun here…
But he clearly stated he really doesn’t like to prescribe vitamins unless absolutely necessary because as with anything it has consequences so he prefer we get them naturally…I do eat calves liver and I love it…so far all my tests come back looking good on my vitamins except D and it was low before carnivore…funny enough that is the one test my insurance looks sideways at but because I have a history with a vitamin D diagnosis they pay lol…
Never tried them, but those are really one of the very few things I just can’t bring myself to eat. I watch Chopped all of the time and those are basket items frequently. Fascinating but not tempting to me.
It always intrigues me, what learning we manage to hang on to and what we lose track of. The medical term is the “anti-scorbutic” property of fresh meat, which was well-known at least two centuries ago, if not earlier.
“Scorbutic” is derived from the mediaeval Latin term for scurvy, and “ascorbic” acid is so named because it, like fresh meat, has anti-scorbutic properties.