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After more than ten years of treating patients with a carnivore diet and studying the relationship between diet and chronic disease, I have learned that most of what we are told about healthy eating is not only wrong but is actively making people sicker.
summerizer
Core protocol
- The carnivore diet is simple: water, fatty meat, and nothing else.
- Simple execution keeps results from breaking down through added complexity.
- "Everything in moderation" is poor guidance because some things are harmful at any dose.
- Junk food, sugar, alcohol, drugs, and cyanide do not become good because the amount is small.
- Most failure happens in the margins, not from one obvious week of eating cake all day.
Margins and re-exposure
- People often miss results because they eat too little meat, eat too little fat, or fear fat.
- The body can only absorb so much fat before excess fat leaves through stools.
- Soft stools without loose stools are the practical sign that fat intake is high enough.
- Meat is not magic; the major benefit is removal of substances that cause harm.
- Small returns to stevia, pop-tarts, salad, asparagus, grains, broccoli, sugar, or alcohol can matter.
- Sensitive people can relapse from a small trigger, especially with Crohn's disease or other autoimmune issues.
- A relapse after re-exposure is like lead poisoning returning after drinking from lead pipes again.
Why the diet works
- Fatty meat gives the vitamins, minerals, proteins, and fats needed in bioavailable forms and useful proportions.
- Supplements, powders, pills, and fortified junk cannot make Coca-Cola, dirt, or cereal into proper food.
- The issue is not only missing nutrients; harmful compounds also arrive with the wrong foods.
- Plants use defensive chemicals, and those compounds can be a problem for humans.
- Meat supplies needed nutrients, while plants do not supply anything necessary that meat cannot supply.
Disease mechanisms and examples
- Chronic disease comes from toxic exposure plus malnutrition caused by a species-inappropriate diet.
- Low B12 can damage neurological development and neurodegeneration even when values sit near common ranges.
- High blood sugar glycation damages arteries and blood supply, which drives diabetes complications called carbohydrate poisoning.
- Ketosis and ketones can improve cardiac output and heart contraction in heart failure.
- Lean mass hyperresponders challenge the cholesterol model because some high-LDL ketogenic patients do not progress and some reverse plaque.
- Saturated fat is not the heart-risk story taught in medical school; the JACC work supports that point.
- Autoimmune conditions fit plant-toxin and lectin mechanisms better than the idea that the body simply attacks itself.
- Crohn's disease can improve when diet removes suspected triggers, including through elemental or exclusion-style diets.
Species-specific diet logic
- Every other animal has a species-appropriate diet and gets sick when fed inappropriate food.
- Zoos and parks warn people not to feed animals because wrong food makes animals sick.
- Humans also have specific nutrient needs and specific things that harm us.
- The modern rise of diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and obesity followed major dietary changes in recent decades.
- A sick lion is not fixed with carbs, processed food, vegetables, or broccoli, and humans are not fixed by reducing nutrient quality.
Practical finish
- Plants can work as medicine because medicine is a toxin that can bring more benefit than harm under the right circumstance.
- Outside that circumstance, those toxins still cause harm.
- Poor results require checks on strictness, enough food, enough fat, sleep, stress, and fresh air.
- Some autoimmune cases need only red meat and water, and some need grass-fed and finished red meat and water.
- The answer is not adding toxins or lowering nutrition; the answer is fixing what remains in the margins.
References
- [03:00] Dietary Linoleic Acid and Its Oxidized Metabolites Exacerbate Liver Injury Caused by Ethanol via Induction of Hepatic Proinflammatory Response in Mice — https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajpath.2017.06.008
- [03:00] Saturated and Unsaturated Dietary Fats Differentially Modulate Ethanol-Induced Changes in Gut Microbiome and Metabolome in a Mouse Model of Alcoholic Liver Disease — https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajpath.2015.11.017
- [13:00] Carnivore Diet: A Scoping Review of the Current Evidence, Potential Benefits and Risks — https://doi.org/10.3390/nu18020348
- [13:00] The evolution of the human trophic level during the Pleistocene — https://doi.org/10.1002/ajpa.24247
- [13:00] Controversy and debate: Memory-Based Methods Paper 1: the fatal flaws of food frequency questionnaires and other memory-based dietary assessment methods — https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclinepi.2018.08.003
- [14:00] Can a carnivore diet provide all essential nutrients? — https://doi.org/10.1097/MED.0000000000000576
- [14:00] Assessing the Nutrient Composition of a Carnivore Diet: A Case Study Model — https://doi.org/10.3390/nu17010140
- [14:00] Comparative bioavailability of vitamins in human foods sourced from animals and plants — https://doi.org/10.1080/10408398.2023.2241541
- [15:00] Seventy percent of U.S. calories consumed in 2010 were from plant-based foods — https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/charts-of-note/chart-detail?chartId=81864
- [15:00] Evolution of hypercarnivory: the effect of specialization on morphological and taxonomic diversity — https://doi.org/10.1666/0094-8373%282004%29030%3C0108%3AEOHTEO%3E2.0.CO%3B2
- [15:00] The impact of nutritional vitamin B12, folate and hemoglobin deficiency on school performance of elementary school children — https://doi.org/10.1055/s-0035-1557461
- [15:00] Maternal prenatal vitamin B12 intake is associated with speech development and mathematical abilities in childhood — https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nutres.2020.12.005
- [16:00] The pathobiology of diabetic complications: a unifying mechanism — https://doi.org/10.2337/diabetes.54.6.1615
- [16:00] Cardiovascular Effects of Treatment With the Ketone Body 3-Hydroxybutyrate in Chronic Heart Failure Patients — https://doi.org/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.118.036459
- [16:00] Ketone body 3-hydroxybutyrate elevates cardiac output through peripheral vasorelaxation and enhanced cardiac contractility — https://doi.org/10.1007/s00395-023-01008-y
- [17:00] Carbohydrate Restriction-Induced Elevations in LDL-Cholesterol and Atherosclerosis: The KETO Trial — https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jacadv.2024.101109
- [17:00] Plaque Begets Plaque, ApoB Does Not: Longitudinal Data From the KETO-CTA Trial — https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jacadv.2025.101686
- [17:00] The Impact of Sustained LDL-C Elevation on Plaque Changes: Primary Coronary Plaque Progression Results from the Keto CTA Study — https://doi.org/10.64898/2026.01.15.26343955
- [18:00] Saturated Fats and Health: A Reassessment and Proposal for Food-Based Recommendations — https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jacc.2020.05.077
- [18:00] Lectins in Food: Their Importance in Health and Disease — https://doi.org/10.3109/13590849109084100
- [18:00] Do dietary lectins cause disease? — https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.318.7190.1023
- [18:00] Rheumatoid Arthritis in Agricultural Health Study Spouses: Associations with Pesticides and Other Farm Exposures — https://doi.org/10.1289/EHP129
- [19:00] The Relation of Alimentation and Disease — https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Relation_of_Alimentation_and_Disease.html?id=pZ0UAAAAYAAJ
- [19:00] Controlled trial comparing an elemental diet with prednisolone in the treatment of active Crohn's disease — https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2179093/
- [20:00] Crohn's disease: maintenance of remission by diet — https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(85)91497-7
- [24:00] Trends in Intake of Energy and Macronutrients — United States, 1971–2000 — https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5304a3.htm
Why? If you knew something was bad for you, would you take it in moderation?
Dr. Chaffee is showing how "everything in moderation" is a meaningless statement.
If I enjoy it, yes.
I drink wine and beer in moderation because it tastes good or interesting (I've tried to like hard liquor, but its just not as appealing to me). Its a ritual implement to unwind with. A human art that's been practiced for thousands of years. Its bad for me, we know that, but its enjoyable.
The point of "everything in moderation" is to show that foods we consume for pleasure don't generally cause problems unless consumed regularly or excessively. Obviously when you extend the phrase ad absurdum it will fall apart because its now being applied to absurd things. Hell, it could be applied to healthy things.
A soda a day is not good for you but that's such a low amount of sugar and acid that the body can generally handle it. In fact, ive known a great many hills folk well into their 80's -90's who drink zero sugar mountain dew daily who i can only hope I will be as active as them at that age.
Fifty sodas a day is obviously not good for you because that's more than what the body can adjust for and will probably damage livers and kidneys over time.
I could do the same about carnivore since the reasonable assumption from his attack on moderation is that I should never do things in moderation. So if carnivore is healthy, more carnivore is more healthy. Instead of one steak a day, I should eat two Tomahawk steaks and I can't forget my fat so I drink a gallon of bone broth mixed with 50% beef tallow every day. Surely that's healthy.
Exercise is good for me so why do it in moderation? I should work out as hard as I can every single day until I pass out from exhaustion.
Water is good for me? I should drink 3 gallons as quickly as I can, get water poisoning, and die.
What's the threshold?
You are inadvertently correct, although I understand that you are being facetious and coming off once again as being condescending. Why don't you give this a try? You'll find that in fact your body knows exactly how many steaks you can eat a day, and you'll find it impossible to over eat steaks.
The rest of your points are irrelevant to the discussion at hand. I'll explain this just once for your understanding, so that you won't do it again.
"Everything in moderation" being a falsehood isn't the same as "good things should not be done in moderation."
Do you once again see how the two statements are different? For someone who's purportedly against this kind of flawed reasoning, you do seem rather fond of doing it yourself.
Consider this a gentle warning.
Everyone's different. A Diabetic can have less soda than a non-diabetic. Your body will tell you if you've had too much because you'll feel sick, just like with the steaks. It also depends on caffeinated versus non-caffeinated and regular versus sugar free. It very much is a "listen to your body" situation.
Yes I'm being facetious. I'm using a logical fallacy called "Reductio ad absurdum" it's what the guy in the video did. The point isn't to be a logical disproof it's to push a logical premise to an extreme example to make the base premise seem absurd. He did a worse job at it since he stopped comparing apples to apples and started comparing apples to genocide, which was crazy. I was still listening at Heroin, but boy did that escalate.
I wanted to stay within the realm of things considered treatment of the self for which the saying applies. People don't eat genocide. We don't do genocide in a way it only affects our selves. That's a completely different philosophical discussion we can have. It would be weird if you want to, but, hell I'm weird too. That said, this was clearly a move done to shock and upset the viewer. a Reductio ad absurdum ad absurdum if you will. It was not an argument against moderation, it was emotional manipulation (I can't be too mad about this, all rhetoric is that his was just tactless).
It's impossible to over eat steaks? If you're not paying attention to your body or flat ignoring it then yes you can. I've eaten several thousand calories of steak in a single sitting and felt terrible afterwards. I don't do that regularly so it's fine, but that's in moderation.
What do you mean by this? I haven't seen anything that proves or is convincing that EIM is a falsehood and I don't why it wouldn't apply to the second premise there since it hasn't been disproven in the realm of human food.
Anything in excess is bad is almost a fundamental truth for me and this applies to more than just food. So, why shouldn't I be moderate in even good things since there is also no such thing as a completely good thing. There's nothing in this world that we can have in excess that doesn't come with a drawback. Getting an education is good, but you lose time to yourself and your family. Working out is good, but too much and you can permanently injure yourself. Eating steak is good, but eating too many too regularly will make you fat.