In reality, I don’t believe that any serious amount of effort should be spent on writing about the Carnivore diet, but unfortunately, too many people are being deceived about its health benefits so I have decided to write this post.

First of all, why has it become a trend to trust medical doctors for nutritional advice.  I am old enough to remember when it was the official line of medical doctors to claim that nutrition had nothing to do with peoples health. I am also old enough to remember when the official line was that exercise had nothing to do with health, and gut bacteria had nothing to do with health, and cigarette smoking had nothing to do with health (except maybe as a treatment for stress), but those are stories for another day.  OK, the cigarette smoking was before my time, just like treatments using mercury (great idea), but I snuck it in anyway.  Today, medical doctors may realize that nutrition does have a lot to do with peoples health, but have very little training in nutrition.  Of course there are some exceptions, but not because they are trained in medical school on this topic.  Orthopaedic surgeon are less inclined to know about nutrition than even your general practitioner.

I am not going to go through the physical problems we have that would exclude us from being carnivores throughout history, because I am sure that those promoting the carnivore diet are either ignoring this or skewing it in a way that will make sense to many people.

The real test is in the research.  We have known (this is a collective we, or anyone that has looked at the research on the topic) that the higher the fruit and vegetable intake, the less risk of cancer and heart disease.  This relationship is linear, and clear.  Those that have been promoting the Carnivore diet completely ignore this fact.  I guess you can ignore this fact when your diet (the carnivore diet) has only been a fad for 4 years or so. and  cancer and heart disease may take a little longer than 4 years to develop.  I am sure that many on the Carnivore diet may have already started to developed cancer and/or heart disease, but those promoting this diet will conveniently exclude them from any discussion, and those with these diseased may be convinced that something else was to blame, but the research is clear.

Now I am not saying that people starting the carnivore diet don’t feel better at the beginning.  Most that will start this diet will have to cut out sugar, alcohol, and simple carbohydrates (the key to most fad diets).  This fact, in itself, will be responsible for many people feeling better when they start the carnivore diet, as they did in the past with the keto diet.  People are also swayed by the convincing arguments of the carnivore diet proponents, and ride the high of the placebo affect, at the beginning. The proponents say ‘listen to me only for the truth and don’t listen to anyone else because they are all liars’.  This self censoring is rampant since the beginning of Covid.

And what’s this about fruits and vegetables being toxic?  This is the biggest bunch of garbage that I have every heard.  You do sometimes get toxic substances from fruits and vegetables (this is the material for many pharmaceutical drugs), along with vitamins and minerals that are essential for life and health.  These small amounts of ‘potentially’ toxic substances come packaged with many other things that balance or remove their ability to be toxic.  Therefore, on their own, in large amounts, these substances may become toxic, but when contained within the fruit and vegetable they are not.  The seeds themself are more likely to contain toxins for the survival of the species, or be non-digestible for animals and humans so they pass through in the feces, now surrounded by fertilizer, but the plant or fruit of the plant is usually only protected by the impenetrability of its outer layer.  Remember that almost anything can be ‘toxic’ at a large enough dose, even water.  Remember too that the research has shown, beginning at least 50 years, increased fruit and vegetable intake has shown to decrease the risk of cancer and heart disease, probably due to the components that we don’t fully understand in the fruits and vegetables.

My advice for health; cut out sugar, alcohol (derived from sugar), and simple carbohydrates (mostly grain derived carbohydrates), and to have a large portion of vegetables, smaller amounts of fruit (some fruit has a large amount of sugar), and moderate amounts of meat and fats.  Meat and fats can certainly be part of a healthy diet, but for long term health these should not be exclusive or be the majority of your diet.  Vegetables should.  Vegetable heavy diets have never been a fad, just a research backed, sensible way to eat.

The oldest human in recorded history was a French woman who lived to be 120.  She was diagnosed with heart failure at 111 but before that was relatively free from any major diseases.  She had coffee, milk, and bread for breakfast, fruit salad every day, some meat, some chocolate and a small amount of wine.  She also smoked a cigarette after lunch and before bedtime.  No mention of her evening meal or what she had with her meat at lunch.

The longest life span in a land mammal (as a species), along with being the largest, is the elephant  Their diet is exclusively plant based.  The longest living mammal (as a species) is the bowhead whale, which eat zooplankton.  Hard to compare this to any human diet  The longest living individual land animal is a tortoise, which also has an exclusively plant based diet.  No carnivores are close to being the longest lived.  Maybe this tells you something.

So, what about naturopathic doctor’s credentials in talking about nutrition .  Well, if any one would take the time to look at a naturopathic doctor curriculum in (naturopathic) medical school you would would see that we have nutritional training in almost every semester, especially the first 2 years.  This was true at least when I went to school around 20 years ago.  We looked at the research on many types of diets (most don’ rely on research) and their variations.  There are, of course, some medical professionals that have more nutritional training than naturopathic doctors, such as wholistic nutritionists, but the list does not include medical doctors.