Carnivore claims about plant foods

(Rob Grantham) #82

I’m not sure humans would have maintained a purely carnivorous state for extended periods of time. Yes we have evolved to eat meat but we have also evolved to eat tubers. If we look at modern surviving tribes they dont eat meat every day in fact they often come back empty handed.
Vegetables are our evoltionary fall back food when we come back with no kill. It’s through the development of amylase enzyme which enables us to eat starches. If we weren’t supposed to do so why would we have evolved with this ability?

The question is as a species what do we do better eating… the answer is not black or white. Man would have eaten whatever he could to survive . We are hugely privileged to have the dilemma nowadys of to eat vegetables or not when In tthe third world there are still people starving… this is the reality. I’m really happy when people manage to become cured of overeating of the wrong type of foods… but to argue whether we can digest a salad or not is in my opinion possibly a step too far. Its fantastic that some are finding relief by eating this way. But to claim that this is the only way is misinformed

There is no research on this diet yet… simply because from the perspective of the world it’s extreme. The tribes which are simply meat were usually forced to do so through necessity. There were and still are many tribes who eat both plants and meat and do just fine…

(G Whistler) #83

What’s the difference? It has to be left on heat, right? That’s not something I can do as i sahre accomodation unforrtuantely. So if there’s an alternative that would be better.

(G Whistler) #84

There are repeated claims made that the likes of the Inuit and possibly the Masai (and others I’m sure) ate only meat/animal fat. Are these claims false?

(Robert C) #85

That is exactly my point - I do not know if you can “get by” on just muscle meat or not - but I do not think anyone else knows how far off just muscle meat vs. nose-to-tail really is in terms of our needs. I don’t think ancestral people’s diet of nose-to-tail (used everything from naturally fed animals) should be compared to grain-fed, antibiotic-filled modern inexpensive muscle meat.

Just muscle meat (to me) is a short term intervention diet - essentially an elimination diet - that may be very helpful for some people.

But (just my opinion, not a doctor) people might want to move from just muscle meat to nose-to-tail, or muscle meat with supplements or move back to Keto eventually.

(Chris) #86

Not at all. Even recent (20th century) interviews with Inuit they refer to eating plants as a way not to starve when there was no meat in the village, and didn’t even refer to them as food. The wikipedia entry has some great books as sources (found them thanks to @RobC).

(Robert C) #87

This you have to deal with on your own. Some people are motivated by price, some people by simplicity, some by taste - and they’ll justify anything that seems to work - and go past the level of accepted knowledge for that justification. This is the “Show me the Science” section and I am unaware of long-term studies done comparing nose-to-tail Carnivore vs. inexpensive industrially produced muscle-meat-only Carnivore.

  • Are the people telling you that pure muscle meat is okay also touting ancestral people’s diet? In the “Show me the Science” section - it does not follow logically that just muscle meat is okay.
  • Are the things they’re citing coming from people that are nose-to-tail industry experts? Know their sources and look for leaps in logic.
  • Do they recount examples of people that went Carnivore as a way out of a much worse situation - where pure muscle meat is helpful for them. Is that comparable your starting place? (One way to find out is to do an elimination diet of pure muscle meat to see if you are truly better off.)
(mole person) #88

They are electrical appliances that sit on a counter. The crock pot is actually meant to cook all day while you are away at work. It has about as much risk of causing a fire as you tv.

(charlie3) #89

I recently did a month of carnivore after a year of 30 net carbs keto at maintenance calories. The only problem I have with carnivore is it doesn’t fill me up, I’m ravenously hungry all the time. My easy and elegant time restricted eating fell apart. Carb cravings got silly AND, most important, I was gaining weight rapidly. On keto I eat a rather large dinner salad everyday. It fills me up. That makes everything else reletively easy but I’m not back to all my normal keto habits.

I don’t buy the scare stories about veggies but I’ll do without them when I figure out how.

(Rob Grantham) #90

It’s not that they are false but these are simply two outlying tribes who relied through necessity upon primarily animal products. There is no evidence to show that the health of these people was supperior. They also survived on whale blubber and carribou which is mostly fat.

It’s not that they didn’t eat plants through choice they just couldn’t access them for most of the year. The inuit due to extreme temperature and the massai due to the fact that they were and still are nomadic. The massai also spend most of their day on foot walking for huge distances to graze cattle

We cannot simply say it was diet that caused these people to have good health if they in fact did. There are too many variables. For one they were active most of the time. They lived in supportive small communities, this has also been shown to effect longevity.

Where plants are available and easily accessable it has been shown that humans have used them.

(Rob Grantham) #91

Yep tried carni twice now and I’m not feeling it. Felt wierd both times. Like my cortisol was kicking in big time. Sleeping difficulty and anxiety was through the roof.

Currently feeling like crap I believe due to hypos from all the protein. I’m not sure how healthy it is to be stimulating insulin to that degree… feel like I’m keto flu all over again

(mole person) #92

I do carnivore but was never convinced that I should give up keto when I did so. I try to keep fat in the 80% range but it’s fairly often a bit lower. On days where protein gets to 28% or higher I feel like absolute crap. On days like today where I’m 80% fat or higher I feel better than I ever did on keto alone.

(Karim Wassef) #93

Our bodies are designed to survive and we can do that on potatoes if we have to…

The question is (to me): where do we “thrive” with reduced disease, extended longevity and mental clarity?

This may be driven by genetics… their ancestry adapted to be optimal with particular foods…

some people may thrive on animal meats alone (I’ve seen this). Some may thrive on veggies alone (I have not seen evidence of this). Some may thrive of vegan + fish, milk and eggs… Many seem to thrive on carnivore + a few strategically selected plants, bacteria, fungi and byproducts (dairy, honey). I’m in the last category (except honey).

But if we go back to the biochemistry of the human body: plants are chemical factories. Animals are processing factories. Chemicals can be good and they can be bad. There are very few animals that are bad (maybe pufferfish :smiley:). So the bias is that eating meats is more error-proof.

If you look at the composition of essential amino acids and essential fatty acids, even with my limited scope of animal foods, you get them all. And I didn’t even include dairy.

Nose to tail is nice, but the essential elements are available (without supplementation) in muscle meat, fat, skin, liver, eggs, fish and roe.

(Karim Wassef) #94
(Omar) #95

I am mainly carnivore. I do not watch protein/ fat ratio.

every week or two I eat lettuce or lemon or half Orange. So that is not carnivore but I do not care about names .

some times I literally drink ghee and butter other days I eat too much turkey and lean meat. eliminated coffee and nuts from my diet.

I do extended three days fast without any rhythm. It could be twice a month or a couple of months without any fast. if I do not like my billy, I fast otherwise I eat as much as I can. zero calories during the fast. only water and salt. I do not kid my self with fat bomb or coffee with HWC or mct or nothing during the fast. fasting to me means zero caĺories.

I do not know what diet is this? but I do not care to give it a name as long as I keep the carbs below 10 most of the time and below 20 the remaining times.

about 4 kg overweight and stable there no matter how much I eat. I do not try to lose the last few kilos as such attempt I feel maybe more destructive than helpful.

(Rob Grantham) #96

So what about the hypothesis that elevated protein levels are not ideal? Dr Ron Rosedale claims that its actually more important to reduce protein than carbohydrates

it would seem from this talk that the most important variable in cellular health is Mtor and IGF signalling. " without question the most powerful variable in Mtor activation are amino acids"

" So the international group recommended that normal healthy people should get roughly 0.6g/kg/day. In order to make sure everybody was covered, the WHO added 25% (2 standard deviations) above the mean to get 0.75 g/kg/day which sometimes gets rounded up to 0.8 g/kg/day. In other words, 97.5% of the healthy general population loses less than this 0.75 g/kg/day of amino acids. This is not a low standard. This is a very, very high standard of protein intake."

taken from; https://idmprogram.com/how-much-protein-is-excessive/

Given the fact that there are multiple studies linking IGF 1 and Mtor to longievity cancer and increased disease signaling and really not much in the way of plant anti nutrients it would seem wise to restrict protein in favor of fat for overall health. I personally question whether eating so much meat is healthy

(Bunny) #97

The plant life that I think are more beneficial are powdered wheatgrass (baby wheat), chia seeds, nutritional yeast, brewers yeast, chlorella, flax seed, wild rice, digestive bitters (to help fully digest the meat) or plants rich in digestive enzymes is because they are extremely micronutrient dense enough to skip the recommended generalized plants/veggies.

Fiber and resistant starch in raw sweet potato or green banana which may be around few grams is all the fiber a human being needs in my opinion.

Animal organ meats and glandulars besides muscle meats, raw eggs, oysters, clams, caviars, sardines and other marine life are also extremely micronutrient dense that would be hard to get through plants.

I think being a strict vegetarian or vegan is much more difficult to maintain and far removed from being a ketogenic omnivore or carnivore.

All these varieties of meats and plants have hundreds or thousands of combination of different micronutrients that work together, if their is not enough or too much of one thing it’s not going to work the way we want it to.

It is not just the protein in the meat and the amino acid combinations their other things in that meat that work with all that stuff that your are not going to get from eating peanut butter and beans which will eventually lead to malnutrition if you do not get it just right, it would be like doing a balancing act on a tight rope long-term.

Some people tolerate vegetables more than meats so their must be a balance of the fats originating from those sources consumed.

(Randy) #98

My niece “identifies” as a male. “He” still has all female parts and hormones etc…

Who am I to argue. Call yourself whatever makes you happy. :smile:

(G Whistler) #99

All I can say is a great many carnivore people, jusging from internet discussion groups, seem to believe muscle meat alone is sufficient. I cannot disprove their claims nor deny their experiences

(G Whistler) #100

Wait, I’m confused. If they ate plants then they didn’t just eat meat/animal fat. So that claim is false.

(G Whistler) #101

Do you count fish/seafood as muscle meat?