New Community, I’ve created some seed posts!
Carnivore - The ultimate elimination diet
Purpose
- lifestyle
- food
- Science
- problems
- Recipes
- Sustainability
- Regenerative lifestyle
Rules
- Be nice
- Stay on topic
- Don’t farm rage
- Be respectful of other diets, choices, lifestyles!!!
As far as I’m aware the studies that have shown this link are observational (i.e. the literature will say “linked”, “associated”, “correlated”), with significant healthy user bias. None of the papers have compared ketogenic omnivore, vs pure carnivore, vs pure vegan (not keto). But if your aware of a paper that has a stronger link, I’d love to read it - I genuinely mean that, I’ll read every word of it!
I fully admit a standard american diet (SAD) - is a recipe for cancer, and heart disease! Any diet that moves away from it is a improvement! So if the studies linking to heart issues in the context of insulin resistance really apply to a insulin sensitive carnivore diet?
Allow me to flip the coin as a illustration - We know high sugar intake, and high carbohydrate intake are incredibly linked with insulin resistance - which is the driver for diabetes, cardio vascular issues. Using the same logic you have used, I could say (since all sugar/carbs comes from plants), with full accuracy and confidence, ‘it still remains that plants are linked to heart disease and cancer’. Clearly this is absurd and reductive way to discuss things.
Here is a bonus fun read on the issues with observational data and cherry picking: https://www.diagnosisdiet.com/full-article/meat-and-cancer
If we agree that animal based foods are bioavailable and biocomplete, then a mixed diet would be for variety, or food availability. Can a insulin sensitive omnivore diet do as well as carnivore, probably. The markers I care about are all cause mortality, inflammation, gut health, and most importantly ease of compliance.
If someone has a chronic gut issue, like Chron’s or IBS… then carnivore is nearly a requirement to a decent quality of life. Most of carnivore food is fully digested before it gets to the intestines, which is why its such a boon for people with gut issues.
I respect your conclusions, and I thank you for sharing them with me.
Yes, with great enthusiasm, hence my creating this community. Though I do purchase my meat directly from a sustainable farm.
There are many, many, studies showing these links. I don’t think keto is relevant in assessing the risk of meat itself.
And no, meat is not biocomplete. You’ll eventually run into vitamin deficiencies if you don’t eat anything else. Although you can always supplement.
https://health.selfdecode.com/blog/carnivore-diet/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2840051/
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/fsn3.3300
https://www.myibsteam.com/resources/carnivore-diet-for-ibs-is-it-effective
Even if it’s relatively “sustainable” compared to other meat production, it still has an enormous environmental cost compared to plant foods.
I don’t expect to change your mind about this, and if this diet is the only thing that works for you personally to address your gut issues, so be it, I can’t really fault you for that.
But anyone else reading this should know that it’s neither healthy nor sustainable.
What is deficient?
Everything is in a context, I’m just going to discuss one in your first link (which isn’t research, just a blog) - Scurvy. The intuit eating their traditional diet did not get scurvy, famously… funnily enough - meat has vitamin C in it (among other things) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22063662/
Oh, I now realize the first site also lists Vitamin A as a carnivore deficiency, but also says Liver is the best source of Vitamin A… That is … some gymnastics there. Let me say, you can’t eat healthily by just eating muscle. You have to eat the whole animal - tip to tail. Liver too! Liver is the best thing you ever eat. The fat is necessary, the organs are necessary. That is why ground meat is probably the best food you can get at a grocery store (just behind liver)
The second paper - Food questionnaire applied to a high carbohydrate population (healthy user bias/observational study)
Third paper - They even use ‘MAY’ in the title, which also means MAY NOT.
The fourth - is a article by a lay person.
This is the poor quality science issue I was referring to in the previous post.
If your going to have a blanket statement like this isn’t sustainable - you have to address real counter examples - the intuit lived without plants, and without cancer on a all carnivore diet.
There are other nutrients than vitamin c and a, but If you’re eating a high seafood diet and lots of liver, great.
Low carb isn’t going to magically protect you from cancer and heart disease. Studies don’t have to be specifically on low carb diets to be valid. Also ‘may be a significant risk factor’ is normal scientific wording for finding a statistical correlation.
More importantly though, even the best farming practices, there is no sustainable or environmentally friendly way to produce meat. Again, I’m not sure what the Inuit have to do with that, given how different our modern meat industry is. But growing food, feeding it to animals (who produce greenhouse gasses), and eating those animals is an extremely inefficient and destructive way to get food. Not to mention the horrific treatment, enslavement, and killing of those animals.