Monitor: Medicine challenges 'carnivore' diet social media hype

The 20-something woman in the Instagram video holds aloft a plate of what she describes as her lunch. An entire stick of butter, cold—she chomps it like a candy bar. Seven eggs fried in beef fat. Two huge hamburger patties. And what she calls “jiggly bone broth.” It looks like about a quart of beige-gray Jell-O.

This “meatfluencer” attributes her 30-pound weight loss, clear skin, mental clarity and healthy digestion to eating like this for five years.

“Cheers to thriving on a carnivore diet!” she chirps at the end of the video.

Could she clink glasses through the screen, hers would likely hold water rather than Pinot Noir or, horror of a carnivore dieter’s horrors, a carbohydrate-laden India Pale Ale.

“Meatfluencers” fueling carnivore diet

The mounting legion of meatfluencers championing the carnivore diet on social media channels fuel its rise. Podcaster celebrity Joe Rogan routinely parades meat-only evangelists on his show "The Joe Rogan Experience," the No. 1 podcast in the world.

Eating the carnivore way isn’t much different from the other low-carb diets of yore: Atkins, keto, paleo, and so on. It’s just more extreme in its ribeye advocacy.

For those among us familiar with the counsel of mysterious soothsayers known as cardiologists, it’s awfully tempting to dismiss the meat-first movement as nonsensical madness. But some research does suggest it brings benefits.

A team of Harvard University researchers in 2021 published a paper, for example, finding that participants in a survey of 200 carnivore dieters reported improvements in overall health, well-being and some chronic medical conditions. The all-meat cadre routinely touts the study. Meanwhile, many medical experts will attest to the diet’s ability to, if nothing else, reduce weight and body fat—at least in the short-term.

Most medical research questions carnivore diet

But few old-school health influencers, known as physicians and medical researchers, trumpet health benefits associated with eating like lions (it’s also known as the “lion” diet). Instead, they caution that it represents a recipe for poor health, especially if consumed for a long period of time.

By rejecting nearly all food other than animal products, the diet offers little in the way of essential vitamins, minerals, fiber, polyphenols, carotenoids and other antioxidants. Plants, rather pork chops, supply most of that. Pursuit of #carnivorelife also floods the body with saturated fat, which can lead to elevated LDL or “bad” cholesterol levels. In addition, many processed meats like bacon and lunch meats come packed with sodium and have been linked to cancers.

Blue Zone diet gets praise

The diet the balance of the medical community extols as a model for health? The Blue Zone diet. It consists of lots of vegetables, whole grains and legumes. Meat, sure—but not much.

It’s called the Blue Zone, after all, due to the blue lines that researchers traced around five communities around the world, like Sardinia, Italy, that enjoy enviable longevity among their residents. Studies have shown that people who eat Blue Zone-like diets, regardless of where they live, experience a 20% lower risk of early mortality.

Blue Zone, as stipulated, doesn’t reject meat. It just welcomes it as a supporting actor among a broad cast of characters. In the carnivore diet, however, meat swans on stage as a solo performer.

Natural products industry champions diversity of diets

Both diets find purchase in the natural and organic products industry, which supports a diversity of meat products designed for low-carb, high-protein (if not carnivore) eating. On the Blue Zone front, there’s even a brand called Blue Zones Kitchen, founded by Dan Buettner, who popularized the Blue Zone diet through books and documentaries. He also is a keynote speaker at Newtopia Now at 12:30-1:30 p.m. on Aug. 27 in Denver.

Products aligning with both approaches toward eating offer much in the way of culinary and nutritional excellence on their own—that includes the carnivore products, some of which New Hope Network has awarded NEXTY Awards for their craftsmanship and innovation. But scarfing down nothing but meat sticks and jerky probably doesn’t make much sense. Instead, most experts would urge people to incorporate those delicious hickory smoked, grass-feed beef treats into a diet that also includes vegetables, grains, legumes and fruit.

And they would discourage eating an entire stick of cold butter as part of a well-balanced lunch.