Carnivore diet and anti-nutrients

[AutisticLegoLover]

I've just been reading the below article on the Manchester Evening News app. The MEN is not known for its stellar journalism at the best of times but I hadn't heard of this diet before. Raw meat, raw offal, raw eggs, raw dairy and no fruit and vegetables because they are apparently bad for you. Who knew?!

As a vegetarian this knocks me sick and even when I did eat meat there's no way I'd have eaten like this. I just wondered what other people thought about it. I'd love to know what a dietician thinks too. It goes against everything I've ever been taught about nutrition in my lifetime. Surely she's storing herself up for bowel cancer and other diseases despite her claims that it's cured all her ailments and mental health issues. I'm amazed she hasn't had food poisoning.

£150 a week on food for one person is a lot and I can't see families adopting this way of eating.

What do other posters think?

Woman ‘never felt better’ on diet of raw steak and offal www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/uk-news/woman-never-felt-better-after-27073167?utm_source=app

It was probably the avoidance of carbs that helped her feel better. You can't live like this long term though.

It would be good to catch up with people eating this kind of diet in 5/10/20 years. I'm interested to know how the lack of fibre and the amounts of red meat will affect them.

Oh she’s an influencer. I don’t believe for one minute she’s actually eating like this all day every day. It’s for publicity.

Raw offal sounds awful, but steak is usually only very lightly cooked and red meat is a really good source iron, protein and several B vitamins, that people (especially vegans and vegetarians) are often deficient in and can contribute to tiredness.

It's similar to that Atkins diet that was around a few years ago.

We're omnivores and excluding many main food group from your diet isn't a good idea.

I can't imagine many people will think oooh what a great idea to eat raw meat all day every day.

I’m also vegetarian and base my diet around eating large amounts of vegetables but I don’t think that dismissing out of hand the benefits people feel on this diet is sensible. For some reason there is a significant amount of people who start this diet and find that many chronic diseases which they had previously suffered for years have cleared up since following this diet. I’m not paying her food bills, so it doesn’t bother me at all how expensive it is.

It’s an expensive diet and one I think people will find difficult to maintain long term, but if I had struggled with health for years and found a diet that cleared everything up when following the nutrition guidelines didn’t, I’d probably stick with what my body was telling me. Especially given that the previous/still prevalent guidance of low fat, high carb diet seems to have been a public health disaster.

Maybe her diet was all ultra processed before. I just find it odd that a diet that omits major food groups would cure everything.

Have you seen the people who eat fermented meat? 🤢

God, this picture of her eating raw steak looks horrible. I'll pass and leave raw meat to my cats.

@stbrandonsboat no, what do they look like?

There are certain parts of the world, like the Arctic, where people traditionally ate mostly meat, fish, fat etc (including fermented) as there was obviously little available in the way of fresh vegetables.
The trick is to eat at least some of the meat raw, especially liver, so as not to become deficient in Vitamin C.

Everyone is different and some people can have digestive tracks that react very badly to some of the substances in plants so I could imagine that changing their diet to eat this way might be beneficial, although particularly for men there's a risk of haemochromatosis.

I wouldn't fancy it myself, at all, mind you.

Raw meat is eaten in certain parts of the world. Steak tartare anyone? The human body can eat raw meat, though generally prefers meat cooked for taste and perhaps easier to digest. Maybe vegetarians should educate themselves rather than use MN to preach - much less irritating too.

Yes some people do this for autoimmune conditions, it can apparently be very effective (I haven’t tried it!)

I think there is a lot to be said for if you are going to be not vegetarian, then we should be eating all the bits of an animal that can be eaten so as not to waste it - also offal is apparently super nutritious and used to be very common (steak and kidney pie, liver and onions, tripe, pigs brains). I mean I tell myself this but can’t quite get there yet.

There is SO much coming out about individualised diets and microbiomes and glucose responses etc. Some people do brilliantly on vegan/vegetarian diet, some people not so much. The next ten years are going to be very interesting.

When I did go low carb for a bit one of my auto immune conditions did go into complete remission (a form of psoriasis). I just can’t keep it up as my diet preference would be potatoes rice beans and veg!

@Inadvertentlyspring I agree it's very interesting the stuff coming out lately about gut biome. I used to work in gastroenterology and have worked with dieticians and am not seeing how raw meat and raw dairy but no fruit or veg would cure anything but if it works for her then it's her choice of course. I just can't see how a diet with no fibre or the nutrients from fruit and veg can be good long term but I'll read up on it.