Beef, butter, bacon and eggs – that is what some influencers swear by on “carnivore dietThe diet is meat-based and minimizes or completely eliminates fruits and vegetables.
On TikTok, you can see people eating bowls of steak and 12 scrambled eggs in one day – and some even snack on a stick of butterbiting off a piece like a carrot.
Similar in style to the Atkins diet and the keto diet, the diet has many names: the carnivore diet, the lion diet, the high-fat diet and the animal diet. Die-hard supporters of this lifestyle boast that their skin is clearer than ever, their gut is healthier and they are in the best shape of their lives.
“One of the best things that is happened to me since I quit the vegan weight loss program and went carnivorous is that my body odor just disappeared,” said TikToker @steakandbuttergal in one of her movies. “I don’t use soap, I don’t use deodorant and I smell amazing.”
Here’s what experts have to say about the safety and sustainability of the carnivore diet.
Carnivore diet ‘sounds basically like a terrible idea’
Weight loss is one of the huge benefits that people following a carnivore diet have been claiming since they added more animal products to their diet. This is probably because the diet also limits carbohydrate intake, he says Doctor Walter Willettprofessor of epidemiology and nutrition at Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health.
“It’s possible that some individuals who ate a whole lot of refined starch and sugar might see improvement in the short term,” Willett says. “But this sounds like a diet that will be very unhealthy in the long run.”
By eating a diet consisting only of beef, butter, bacon and eggs, people will not get enough fiber, carotenoids and polyphenols, which are rich in fruits and vegetables.
Getting fiber into your diet is essential for gut health and can reduce the risk of depression AND breast cancer. They have carotenoids anti-cancer propertiesAND polyphenols have properties which can protect against the development of diseases such as diabetes, heart disease and cancer.
The foods that dominate the diet of carnivores also contain large amounts of saturated fat and cholesterol, adds Willett.
In a 2012 study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, Harvard researchers found that for more than 100,000 men and women, “people in the study who ate the most beef died younger and at higher rates from heart problems and cancer.” ” According to Harvard Health Publishing.
Despite the plethora of research that connects beef consumption and heart diseasesome people simply disagree that eating beef incessantly is bad for the heart.
“This is the main message we hear about red meat. Basically, they are blamed for all kinds of human health disasters, from cardiovascular disease to colon cancer,” he says Dr. Georgia Edeboard-certified psychiatrist from Harvard, specializing in dietary psychiatry.
“They rely almost entirely on a research method called nutritional epidemiology, which are simply untested theories, basically guesses about how red meat may affect us, that have never been tested in clinical trials and have not been found to be supported – says Ed. “Then the rest of the very little additional evidence that actually comes from experimental studies, which comes from very strange animal studies.”
To higher understand how food consumption can result in disease, researchers asked study participants to write down down or complete surveys about what they ate. All surveys were self-reported.
Some consider it is a flawed approach to draw conclusions about the health effects of food, but experts have yet to seek out a greater alternative.
“When you eat a meal like this, you help bring down another tree.”
But even when individuals are truly uninterested in the way nutrition research is conducted, the climate impact of meat production can’t be denied.
In this regard, Ede says: “Industrialized food production, whether plants or animals, is really very harmful to the planet.”
And while that is true, there’s a transparent difference between the environmental impact of manufacturing plant-based food in comparison with the impact of animal products. Emissions of worldwide greenhouse gases, reminiscent of methane, from the production of food of animal origin has doubled related to the production of food of plant origin.
“Apart from the direct health effects, which will be quite adverse,” Willett says. “There is also the issue of justice, which basically concerns the Global North, Europe [and] The United States is causing and perpetuating most of the climate change problems we have today.”
“You can think [that] By eating such a meal, you help to fell another tree on the other side,” he adds. “Sounds basically like a terrible idea.”
