I respect people’s dietary choices, whether they want to go carnivore or vegan. But trying to redefine fungi as acceptable on a carnivore diet strikes me as an attempt to find a technical way to rule a food into your particular diet.
Carnivore oughtn’t be a religion. If you want mushrooms, have mushrooms. And why not try reintroducing other vegetables, one every 3 days so you can see how each affects you? Unless you have some reaction to a food, why avoid them?
TL;DR eat the mushrooms!
absolutely agree. but if one wants the carnivore diet one won’t eat them 
anyone can be any plan they want but if one wants full carnivore then one will be just that.
many who try carnivore can leave the plan, add in some mushrooms or little veg and go into a keto type plan and do very well. more power to them for sure!
This is one of the reasons I don’t like labels, it gets people put into boxes of what they should or shouldn’t do based on the rules of said label. We should all just do whatever works for us and sod the tidy little boxes anyone wants to force us into.
Years back I never told anyone I was vegan, I just said I didn’t eat meat. Currently I just tell people I don’t eat starches or sugars. Technically the way I eat isn’t classed as keto because my protein is too high, it’s not zero carb because (shock horror) I use full fat milk in my coffees and mayo that contains the tiniest amount of sugar, can’t be carnivore because of the mayo and occasional nuts / nutritional yeast I use… but it works for me, so what anyone else defines it as is down to them and I really don’t care.
exactly as I do care about my lifestyle and how my plan is defined.
key being you join a motorcycle club. You show up with a boat.
ya think ya fit that club? of course that person thinks they do or they won’t have joined but in reality ya don’t
the boat can’t do mt. trails full speed and the motorcycles are gonna sink out on the lake…key being diff. plans can effect each of us in diff. ways. Carnivore is for those WHO NEED what the exact plan offers.
It is so simple. Plan is Carnivore with set guidelines. Eat meat. No plants. I proudly say my eating plan to others. I didn’t when not sure if I was gonna hold it but now, I am all in ZC and it doesn’t get any better for me. But I feel ya, everyone can pretend in any eating plan they want, no one is gonna control that. I also don’t care who lies to themselves. Not my monkey in that circus 
No one forces anyone into carnivore. but if you are here in this lifestyle then by george I will always tell someone a carnivore doesn’t eat plants. I have no issues doing just that cause the benefits of the plan are for new people to understand the plan and concepts behind it. So if one says I eat mushrooms, or broccoli or have honey and oatmeal every now and then and I am carnivore, I will always say no you are not for the simple fact that the same healing and repair benefits don’t come the same on this lifestyle if one is expecting xyz benefits from this lifestyle as promised. People come into carnivore for big personal reasons!! They put in the effort to find healing they should at least know and understand the plan as it works.
It is never wrong ever to back track out of zc into a low carb plan of any kind. If it works, it works for that person.
Carnivore works as it should if followed correctly. So I will always say when I see it is ok to eat this plant or that, nope
I always find it amazing that others who are not carnivore feel it is always ok to tell others they can eat what they want in carnivore…lol…hysterical actually. The people not doing the plan are the ones who always try to change the guidelines of it, I just don’t get that actually. Seen it alot out there but I sure don’t support it.
Now this is me only chatting carnivore plan and guidelines. After that all can do what they want but misinformation I will correct about the plan whenever I read it.
With the greatest respect though, you cannot speak for others and their reasons for choosing carnivore. I talk to plenty in the fitness world who choose carnivore for different reasons, not because they actually need to. Granted there are those who have no option but to follow it because they need the exclusivity it brings, but this certainly does not apply to every person who chooses to follow the ZC / carnivore lifestyle and it’s these people who should feel free to add this / that if it works for them without fear of being told they can’t because those items don’t fit in a particular checkbox.
oh I agree, I didn’t mean to imply ALL need it for specific reasons but those who ‘come to it’ want carnivore results, not eating low carb results or they wouldn’t walk into carnivore in the first place.
THEY COME for changes that only carnivore can maybe provide them.
If they want out of carnivore, then back out and eat plants, hence they go back to a low carb menu. Simple as that. Ain’t a big deal to go backward out of carnivore but those who eat carnivore do not add back for any reasons at all. They want the plan as is, they eat animal only, they are thriving on the plan and are staying on the plan. People who back out are doing what they need to do. Not a doubt about that ever.
I don’t actually understand your total point here at all.
They can add back easily but they will not be eating the carnivore lifestyle. Doesn’t get any simpler LOL Again, they say they are but they aren’t and that screws it up for others reading how to do the plan as it is with all animal only and then to learn the benefits it gives a person’s individual body. If it doesn’t suit them then get out…no one is holding anyone hostage in carnivore ever
Just don’t be eating plants and yelling I am on the Carnivore plan cause ya ain’t 
How many run around saying they are eating like 100-150g carbs per day and say they are on ‘the Keto Plan’. Hey they cut carbs. They might not be in ketosis but that doesn’t matter to them but if they run around saying the plan is just cut your carbs, all ya need to do, nothing more, doesn’t that screw up with ‘the Keto Plan’ lifestyle is all about…shouldn’t someone, somewhere explain what the ‘Keto Plan’ is really all about? Someone explain the correct way to target and then more expected healing will come as the plan boasts?
there has to be some guidelines that are set in stone to produce the expected hopefully healing one is searching for in diff. plans to suit them ya know. Sometimes labels are important.
That is my point, why do these things have to have labels? Why can’t it just be accepted that people can and should be able to do whatever works and make them feel good without needing it to fit into any checkbox?
Does that really matter if they feel good and are healthy?
well what I mean is if one eats animal only it is ok to label oneself Carnivore…if one is eating plants and are following a type ‘of set plan to lower carbs’ they are on low carb and/or ketogenic menu. If one is following zero carb intake from plant matter, and eating animal only and 0 plants, they are a zero carber or carnivore.
on ‘carnivore plan’ ya don’t eat plants.
so if one wants to say they are carnivore and eat plants, FINE BUT don’t say you are on the ‘carnivore plan lifestyle’ cause you are not LOL
I know we are babbling off what we know to be true ya know.
Agree with you. Any plan anyone feels good on they should do. Not one doubt about that but if one is 'asking questions specifically about ‘the carnivore lifestyle plan’ then they should ONLY get the correct information so they can expect different possible healing changes etc. that could happen for them IF THEY do the plan correctly.
So anyone asking can I eat plants on carnivore plan answer is NO.
But I know me and you are dancing around on it so all good!! anyone can call themselves anything they want but in the end we know that when one ‘says I am carnivore’ it usually means they are ‘eating the carnivore lifestyle plan’ as directed. Animal only. but hey if low carb people wanna run around and say they are carnivore cool…but when posts come up asking about the ‘carnivore lifestyle eating plan’ the guidelines of what the plan is about are key to me.
it is basic on a ‘food plan eating lifstyle change’ forum like this to ‘get it ya know’
one says I eat low carb (we ALL know it means this person is basically cutting down their carb intake…great for them.)
one says they are vegan…hey cool, we get ya. we get ya eat 0 animal.
one says they are carnivore. they eat meat only. No plants. Cool, we get it.
one says they are on ‘Keto Lifestyle’ it means they are lc to a very low guideline level of around 20g carbs basically…hey ALL OF US get this.
it is fun tho to chat up the diff. in how we come at labels on plans. I find it tho very important for correct info on plans ONLY help those to succeed as they want to try a new plan. No one ever says ya gotta stay there and again, people can call themselves purplepeopleeaters if they want, doesn’t make it correct sometimes.
I think too that if someone is proud of their lifestyle and want that label as in being a ‘Keto person’ or a ‘Carnivore person’ not a darn thing wrong with that. Some of us want labels but also we want correct info out there on the label of the plan we support and live.
Point taken, about labels. They do carry expectations that can be like strait-jackets. I call myself gay these days, because it’s a convenient tag that mostly conveys my reality, but every now and again I find the word gives certain people certain expectations of me that aren’t part of my reality.
But here the issue is not one so much about what people should or should not do, it’s more about keeping language coherent. Calling a diet “carnivore” when it includes whatever foods one wants makes about as much sense as eating a three-course meal and calling it a “fast.” It’s just not accurate.
How about saying, “I eat mostly meat”? Amber O’Hearn once suggested the term “carnivore-adjacent,” which I also like.
Yes, people proved one can live on meat alone. It’s the only one. I can imagine it wouldn’t work for everyone but several human beings did it… And indeed, meat has everything, one can merely wonder if it contains everything in the right amount but it depends on how much one eats too… RDAs are useless as skipping plants (and mushrooms) changes our needs. So I look at experiences and in my own case, I listen to my body. But I never plan to eat meat only anyway. I just wouldn’t worry if I had such a time for some miraculous reasons (breaking up with my darling eggs, that would be heartbreaking…).
My precious eggs are only complete amino acid profil wise (as every animal protein sources) but it lacks some essential stuff (zero vitamin C) and has little of some others (magnesium, calcium - okay one may use the shell)…
As far as I know, carnivore means animal only (with coffee, spices and the like being allowed for more relaxed folks but the items themselves are clearly not carnivore at all). Not “no plants”. Never saw the latter definition for it.
That’s about carnivore itself. Health wise, no idea, I am pretty sure the edible ones can’t harm me and they bring almost no net carbs into my life and that’s what I care about. Not like it matters much, carnivore turned my mushroom eating desires even more than my chocolate eating ones 
But both received a very serious blow.
And I am aware that some people are sensitive, my SO is one of them (very selectively, he is fine with most mushrooms), his Mom too just differently (she is sensitive to wild mushrooms, she eats cultivated mushroom quite often)… Some people surely should avoid them all. And it’s a little thing, mushrooms, not a big sacrifice to stop eatiung them except for some big mushroom lovers. And maybe me when I find a new species (I don’t even bat an eye when Alvaro eats up the tasty good old ones I collected. okay, sometimes a tiiiny taste but that’s it) or an edible Amanita. Eating Amanita is super fun to me because some of the most deadly ones belong to that group (like death cap, I love that too just don’t even touch it. I bring my camera, it’s a beautiful one!)… But I don’t find one every year. Not even ANY Amanita and that’s a sorry year. Once I find a lemon colored one, that was pretty (and only mildly toxic and bad tasting, oh some people were adventurous but we know people. they say death cap is tasty but I still wouldn’t try it before my planned execution as I am a huge optimist and what if I don’t die… just a bit later when my kidney fails, sounds bad, no thanks).
I try to moderate myself but MUSHROOMS!!! I am in a more active phase due to mushroom hunting, 2.5 hour walk is a minimum to search for them.
And if I am already here, look at these fun ones, I won’t bother the carnivore thread with them then despite I think it’s fine as they are for looking just like flowers, not for eating.
Not a good photo and poor common earthball ( I just looked it up, I so love a lot of English names… but Hungarian ones are often funny too) is blurry, oh well. That is toxic.
No idea what the middle one is, hopefully it was fine to get it out (once I found Ceasar’s mushroom, a few years after it became protected in this country. I didn’t hurt it, of course, I have honor! but it’s famously good)… The fun thing on the right is a “witch egg”, at least we say that in Hungarian. It’s a young Phallus hadriani and when I went back, I only found new babies, not the full grown ones which very well suit their Latin name. The babies are purplish PINK, the photo can’t show it well enough, it got muddy and even after cleaning it never got back that color. And anyway, it’s just a shot in my badly lit kitchen. But aren’t they super interesting? How lucky I was, finding THREE “abnormal” looking fungi?
By the way, the witch egg is allegedly edible. I mean, it is actually edible, I just can’t imagine a good reason for it except collecting a badge for eating a witch egg in our life. When it grows, it becomes bad smelling but the flies love it, well they are flies, they do such things.
But labels are exist for a reason, they make things more clear, we say a word and we say so much with that single one!
Except people use them wrong all the time and everyone gets confused. See meat eating self-proclaimed “vegans”, they totally exist… It appears to me that some people desperately want to belong to a group with a label, they WANT that label, they just aren’t willing to follow the rules. So they try to change the rules but it’s not how things work.
If you don’t want labels, don’t use them for you, I actually use some self-made ones for my own mind games, they are helpful but that’s me.
To me, carnivore seems unnecessarily restrictive and I would break it all the time anyway. So I am not carnivore ever. My own carnivore-ish is the strictest I can follow for more than 1-2 days unless I am super determined or just don’t want my extras, I surely will have purely carni times in winter just because eggs and meat and maybe a tiny dairy will be just perfectly satisfying for me. But it’s not my default. And if it’s still too strict for me, I go off, no problem, I did that with keto all the time. But I need a baseline, a target or else things get out of hand. So, mind games.
I actually consider it bad when someone forces themselves into some woe just to use the label even if their body screams for something else or their mind get overwhelmed.
I totally agree… But how could we know what works for us? In the beginning, it’s very fine and dandy doing pure carnivore to figure it out. If we encounter problems, we may tweak - or ask the veterans what is this as sometimes, sadly, the way to health goes through worse times first (I personally wouldn’t accept that unless I am sure it has to be done but I am a lucky, healthy hedonist)… It’s not simple, health and eating right.
But if we figure out that our body needs some tweaking, sure, do that even at the cost of losing labels and badges.
I like to say I pretty much avoid plants especially vegs because I am very health-conscious… But it’s so, so hard to shock people 
When one is a hermit and doesn’t know people. Oh well.
Not eating starches and sugars is simply not true in my case, I tend eat much sugar even on a proper carnivore day (animal sugar but still :D). And it’s weak, I could eat nuts, sweeteners, all the chocolate I want and I don’t do that normally… Nope, it’s a very poor description of my woe almost any day. Not like anyone understand “carnivore-ish” but I am a hermit, it’s just for me. Even if I use it all the time… But probably everyone understands it’s close to carnivore. They just don’t know the specifics.
I still couldn’t figure out what ketovore is but it sounds too far from carnivore and it doesn’t suit my mind games.
When I was a vegetarian (as vegans have their own name, vegetarians is used for ovo-lacto vegetarians), I said I was vegetarian. And people wanted to feed me chicken. Or any kind of meat soup without the meat. I think they would do it if I said I didn’t eat meat. Or maybe they would try fish (vegetarians NEVER eat fish as it’s meat, a body of an animal. not everyone knows it for some reason). Even cheeses aren’t vegetarian usually but I don’t expect even vegetarians understand so subtle things.
Many people don’t even know what “meat” means, very much not, I don’t even mean fish here… So it’s hard, no matter if we use labels or other people misuse them…
That’s totally keto in my books, I just don’t believe in high-protein becoming a ton of glucose in my body and so many people agrees… If I eat below 40-45g net carbs, it’s keto to me As this is the limit I found when I got fat adapted. But it’s not really important if I use a label for it, of course. Keto alone is worthless to me, without benefits.
Actually, this 40-45g is probably incorrect if I use other items…? I wondered if animal carbs matter at all… They should but they feel different, okay. By the way, my real target woe is “very low net carbs from non-animal sources” as it seems to work though I would need more experiments to be really sure. I am quite happy to go over 20g and even 45g carbs on carnivore to try things a few times To me, carnivore = almost exclusively animal food. I mean, a tiny spice or a tea (normal tea leaves, not my old wild cherry tea that is 50% raisins, poor thing, I never use it) is allowed, I must be realistic. But no stews or tinned fish in sauce and not even condiments, just pure spices but they are so unimportant that I probably will skip that too on those days.
Due to my higher carbs, I never ever say I do ZC. I wouldn’t say it on my meat and eggs only days either as eggs have a significant amount of carbs. Hence the almost total absence of <3g days in my life.
Let’s all use and do whatever works for us but without grossly mislabeling things if possible. Some differences are unavoidable, nothing is perfectly clear, apparently.
Is the difference between a ZC Carnivore and a Non ZC Carnivore to do with full fat milk? I’m totally confused but not about the mushrooms!
I’ve never heard there was a difference. Zero-carb and carnivore are equivalent terms, so far as I understand it.
There is no perfect nomenclature, alas! The problem with “zero-carb” is that meat contains some small amount of glycogen, so the carnivore diet isn’t, strictly speaking, entirely carb-free. So carnivores started using “carnivore” to indicate that the diet is animal-based and excludes plant foods, even though the technical definition of what constitutes an actual carnivore is under dispute among biologists.
As far as dairy on a carnivore diet is concerned, some people avoid it because it’s not flesh meat, but my impression is that the reason most of the people who avoid dairy do so is either because of lactose intolerance or because of a sensitivity to one or another of the milk proteins.
Thanks Paul. I think what confused was around dairy; it read as milk isn’t carnivore so I wondered why cheese is. Individual choice poss due to intolerance makes sense.
Don’t forget that whole milk contains a certain amount of galactose and lactose, which is why a carnivore (and even a ketonian) would avoid it. Cheese is a fermented product, and the longer the cheese has been aged, the less of the milk sugars it contains, because the fermenting bacteria eat it. That is good, both when lactose-intolerance is a concern, and from the standpoint of keeping carbs low. Interestingly, skim milk contains more lactose and galactose per ounce than whole milk does, because the absence of the fat drives the percentage of sugar up.
Lactose-intolerance is the human default; most mammals, in fact, lose the ability to make the enzyme lactase at some point between weaning and adulthood. There have been at least two independent mutations in the human race that allow people to make lactase into adulthood, and therefore to be able to consume dairy products. One of those mutations occurred among the Maasai of Africa, the other in northern Europe.
I use milk, always full fat and currently raw, as I figure my carbs are near zero anyway so I can afford a few carbs from milk. Though, it is on it’s way out as I’ve realised how much better I feel when I keep things dairy free.
Lots of animal food contains a significant amount of carbs. Eggs, liver and some other meats, most dairy. I almost never drink milk though it’s higher since some months but I regularly had 20g carb carnivore days (or almost carnivore but my plant carbs are negligible then), without any milk. 3-6g from eggs, sometimes the similar amount from chicken liver and a varied amount from dairy. I am usually careful with milk, yogurt or other things as it’s way too easy to get 20g sugar from them in half an hour (40g for milk but I don’t drink it like that normally. I just can and it’s very enjoyable. Better in hot weather than the beer I kind of quit, I realized this a few months ago) and what’s worse, they mess with my protein/energy ratio and they aren’t satiating. Good thing I prefer the fattier dairy items but what I wrote as problem is true for them as well. So I keep my dairy consumption low (except when I have quark as it does good to my protein/energy ratio. and it’s a good dessert and variety. it’s the only one with much protein and not very much fat). Still, carbs add up.
A few carbs may come from spices and condiments, it depends how relaxed one is with them… I don’t need them often or in bigger amounts, mine are usually not particularly carby either so it’s not significant in my case. But it’s probably a problem if one gets much carbs from condiments anyway… It’s a really tiny extra, not our food!
Though I have read about someone who basically ate meat complimented with garlic. Generously. The carbs came from garlic and it wasn’t just a few grams of carbs.
It’s animal food (unlike honey, that comes from plants… through bees) so it is to me.
It is very sugary (though nothing like honey I couldn’t care if honey would be animal, it’s 80% sugar. okay I don’t even care what is animal or not, 80% sugar isn’t for me. and I adored honey, I used more than table sugar. Hungary is full with beekeepers and good honey is the best tasting sweetener/sugar, hands down. still not carnivore or healthy for me) so I was unsure myself.
@Fangs said it’s okay and I like milk so it’s carnivore for me (And I am not a carnivore anyway, I am a hedonist and I eat whatever I want. Not fully accurate but can’t explain it better in a few words and it’s not the point now.)
But I actually think what I did before: a little bit here and there may be okay as the sugar from it will be very little then. But I wouldn’t drink glasses of milk all the time and call it carnivore. MUCH sugar and carnivore, they just don’t mix in my mind. Carnivore is about not eating much sugar/carbs IMO. It is to me.
But it’s lactose, a different thing… I don’t know how much it matters, honestly. Maybe it’s really too different and I shouldn’t worry (oh I don’t do it, I have other reasons to avoid much dairy)…
I am very sure my liver and egg sugars are nothing like plant sugars. I never feel I ate carbs when I only have them from these items. But the amount is small so maybe that’s why, partially… But lactose feels a tad different I think… It’s very subtle but it seems so to me.
