"Popular" Science, on Medium; "Please Do Not Try to Survive on an All-Meat Diet"

(less is more, more or less) #1

This came across in my Medium notifications.

https://link.medium.com/TMfLacGhYU

Cherry-picked, and the same old drum-beat about red meat and colon cancer and “heart health.”

Or at least, so say the proponents of the carnivore diet, including Shawn Baker, a former orthopedic surgeon who has been one of the biggest public advocates for consuming only meat. Other high-profile members of the carnivore club (or “tribe” as they call themselves) include Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson and his daughter Mikhaila. You can read about all the miraculous, really-too-good-to-be-true benefits of gorging yourself daily on pork chops on any number of pro-meat websites, but it’s also spreading out to other areas of media. Instagram. Medium. Facebook. The internet is even more of a sausage fest than usual.

I’m not carnivore, but, c’mon, “popular” science.

(Consensus is Politics) #2

I noticed the first thing they used as evidence was the Dr Baker had his license revoked. But didnt say hiw or why. The link the evidence diesnt say much, other than “not reporting” something. I’d like to know why.

I’d also like to see Doctors get their Licenses pulled for suggesting diabetic patients eat a high carb diet. Or simply refusing to mention a low carb approach as treatment.

This is the thing the bothers me the most. It is blatantly obvious that they either don’t care, or are intentionally leading their patients further down the diabetic road. After all, I’m an electronics technician. I have very little education in the health/nutrition fields. So… IF I CAN FIGURE THIS OUT… why haven’t they? Willful ignorance or reckless practices. The science is there. If they don’t agree with the science, show us why!

I was told point blank not to talk to other diabetics in the VA hospital when i mentioned the ketogenic diet in my “welcome to Diabetes class” held by a Nutritionist. I would only confuse everyone. I’m seriously thinking of printing a bunch of flyers and mixing them in the rack with the rest of the diabetes “take one” pamphlets.
:face_with_symbols_over_mouth::face_with_symbols_over_mouth::face_with_symbols_over_mouth::face_with_symbols_over_mouth::face_with_symbols_over_mouth:

Keto Vitae!

(bulkbiker) #3

I’m guessing they don’t mention that his license was re-instated last week either?

(Gabe “No Dogma, Only Science Please!” ) #4

Rhonda Patrick isn’t a fan of carnivore either. She’s sanguine about ketogenic diets, but this carnivore trend is… faddish. There’s no scientific evidence for carnivore, according to Patrick, and if they’re getting benefits, the mechanism of action is likely to be little different from ketogenic dieting, fasting, or fasting-mimicking diets (per Patrick.)

(Chris) #5

I’ve found her to be great at making claims and posting paywall abstracts but almost never providing any data.

Not only that but her biggest concern on this podcast was that there’s no data yet. Broccoli sprouts sprouting from her ears.

The same epidemiological beginnings of science we shoot down all the time - they are great as ways to ask questions but rarely ever provide anything other than correlation. Goes for both sides of any diet argument. This stuff is hard as hell to study, hard as hell to fund, and carnivore especially is extremely new to the mainstream (though not new).

(Ken) #7

Lean meat does not mean carnivore. I love meat, but whenever I’ve eaten a lot of just lean meat I’ve made myself sick. There are no problems when I eat two thirds meat to one third fat.

(Chris) #8

He voluntarily surrendered his license in lieu of a very expensive legal battle. He was recently reinvited to apply and now has his license to practice reinstated in New Mexico where he was practicing at the time.

(Carl Keller) #9

I’m not carnivore either but this article is indistinguishable from the many dozens of anti-meat articles I’ve read before. It’s based on arguments that are based on biased studies and its sole purpose is to glorify plant-based diets. I can nearly smell the quinoa on the author’s breath as I imagine her copy/pasting content for her next article.

(less is more, more or less) #10

I’m sure there’s a dearth of studies since it is relatively new. I lack your conviction that there’s “no scientific evidence,” but I am open to proof. None of which is a scientific metric, btw, merely a sociological or demographic observation. Which is also to say there’s no refuting evidence as well. I’m not defending carnivore, not at all. I’m stridently ambivalent about it but we have a few carnivores around. However, the article follows the classic FUD against carnivore. This merely tickles my inner skeptic.

More importantly, Patrick who? Oops. I went back to re-read the story, and now it’s behind a paywall. If it mentions Patrick <insert last name> my apologies.

(less is more, more or less) #11

(Chris) #12

He means Rhonda Patrick, so you had the surname already. :smiley:

One correction: Carnivore is not new - I’d argue it’s most likely hundreds of millions of years old - it’s the last 10,000 or so when we decided it was somehow better to feed our growing population with plants, and simply forgot.

(less is more, more or less) #13

Where’s that damn keto clarity™ when I need it! :astonished: Thanks for the correction.

(bulkbiker) #14

If, of course, you were carnivore…

(bulkbiker) #15

In my eyes that’s a major plus for carnivore…

(Stickin' with mammoth) #16

Claps along with them.

(Stickin' with mammoth) #17

Straight from the horse’s mouth:

(Gabe “No Dogma, Only Science Please!” ) #18

I mean, we have plenty of evidence for ketogenic and other low carbohydrate diets. (Pretty much) nobody, however, has studied all-meat diets, probably because, until recently, virtually everyone considered such a diet fairly daft to begin with – because why deprive yourself of brussels sprouts and eggplants when they’re readily available? The only reason the Innuit (inter alia) ate so much blubber and bear meat was because there weren’t any plants growing in the ice. I bet they’d have eaten carrots and potatoes if these things were readily available in their environment.

Having said that, if you’re eating an all-meat diet, good luck with it and enjoy. But don’t pretend there’s evidence for its efficacy or safety at a population level like there is for other low carb diets. As yet, there isn’t.

I put this in the category of the sorts of people who think fasting for a few days a week is a good idea, as if there was ever a time in our species’s history where we had regular fasts and then feasted on leopard meat or whatever for several days, followed neatly by another prolonged fast.

The idea that these kinds of radical measures concord with our evolution is specious at best.

#19

That basically boils down to ancestry. I’m descended from vast majority Northern European. Up until basically colonialism a few hundred years ago, the diets from that region would have been majority meat, poultry, fish, and dairy, with little fruit and (root) veggies (and most of those fermented). Cookbooks before the 18th century had very few recipes centered around veggies. Raw veggies would have been rare to the diet, which probably helps to explain my Oral Allergy Syndrome. Ergo, it would make sense why I take easily to the Carnivore diet.

So does it make a difference if I’m 95% Carnivore most of the year and then gorge myself on some blackberries for a couple weeks once they’re peak ripe?

Plant-based diets are the new “fad” for the majority of cultures.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #20

It’s pretty clear, from carbon analysis, archaeological digs, and skeletal evidence, what people ate throughout human history. Dr. Michael Eades, for example, has a fascinating lecture about what is known of the changes in human health with the advent of agriculture. One of the most interesting observations is the abrupt decline in stature when a culture moved from a meat-based diet to a plant-based one. Nina Teicholz’ lecture on the role of meat in the U.S. diet is also pretty indicative, as is the stunning good health of peoples all over the world before they switched from their traditional meat-based diet to the Western diet, with its consequent illnesses.

In sum, I’d say there is actually plenty of evidence of the efficacy and safety of an all-meat diet. I also suspect that if there were significant drawbacks to ZC/carnivore, people would have been reporting them long since.

(Chris) #21

I deprive myself of those things because they make me feel like shit and bind me up. They also lack bioavailable nutrients and calories.

The Inuit didn’t eat plants because they didn’t consider them food. When they did gather the scarce seaweed and berries, it was usually because they were starving.

Don’t forget 10 years ago many said the same about keto. Which isn’t a diet so much as a macronutrient guideline which as one can see reading through the newbie forum, can be interpreted in any number of unhealthy ways.