> For millions of years, humans ate ruminant animals who’s herds they followed around, and almost nothing else.

This is just wrong. Nearly all archeological evidence suggests humans were hunter-gatherers. They hunted (meat) and they gathered (fruit, vegetables, nuts, etc). Hunter gathering represents about 90% of human history prior to the invention of agriculture.

> And couples who do it get pregnant immediately after failing for years. It’s all documented on meatrx success stories section.

Ah yes, because the company selling the diet plan has no incentive not to mislead you with highly selective research.

It’s not wrong at all. The amount of edible carbohydrates we ate then was basically nothing compared to the astounding amount of carbohydrates we eat now. We eat almost nothing else. Our bodies aren’t meant to be flooded with carbohydrates all the time, and chronic disease and diabetes is the result. Our ancestors didn’t have diabetes and it’s becoming clear that exercise doesn’t fill the gap.

There is no diet plan. They don’t sell you anything that you need in order to do the diet. And it’s just video testimony, long interviews from all kinds of people who experience things like sudden pregnancy. I have looked through all of this and practically everything else out there about this and it’s not a scam. I have never believed in or practiced a diet before in my life. I have never fallen for a scam in my entire life. It’s real.

> humans ate ruminant animals who’s herds they followed around, and almost nothing else.

This is the incorrect part. Meat was never the sole part of human or any human ancestors diet, for starters we don't have the teeth for it. The rest of the diet may have been lower carb than what we eat now but it was not meat only.

Fair enough. We strip fat out of everything now. Fat free this and fat free that. Red meat is demonized.it’s a part of our evolutionarily consistent diet…

Fat is really good for you, as long as it's fat you can find in nature. For example, the fat below the skin on a cut of salmon. Utterly delicious, super healthy, and will make your brain work better.

Some scientists seem to disagree [1] They theory is basically that for the first few millions years of evolution we were eating mostly meat, and switched to more plant-based diet when we ran out of big animals to hunt, which was quite recently.

[1] https://www.livescience.com/humans-were-super-predators.html

I'd recommend reading at least the the abstract of the paper linked therein, rather than the popsci summary. The authors are arguing that H. Erectus in particular was highly carnivorous (though not exclusively). That's about 1M years, not plural, and it's ignoring all the Australopithecines and H. habilis besides. The authors explicitly state that middle Pleistocene archaic humans moved back the other way and incorporated far more plants into their diet. By the time anatomically modern humans arrived, we had quite significant plant intake. Besides, the GP comment doesn't make sense archaeologically. We have shell middens from H. erectus and know that many archaic humans lived in near-coastal environments. There was no period in which we were purely pursuing ruminants even when archaic humans were more carnivorous.

It's one of those things we'll probably never have a conclusive answer to and even if we do it'll depend on when you decide to look at the diet to decide what we are 'evolved' to handle. At some times we may have been more meat heavy and others more grain/berry/etc heavy.

> I have never believed in or practiced a diet before in my life. I have never fallen for a scam in my entire life.

That second sentence alone is a bright red flag with sequins and bells on. But in this context... if you don't believe in this red meat diet, why are you pitching it so hard?

> I have never fallen for a scam in my entire life

Your username...

I’ve never subscribed to any religion of any kind. I was watching a documentary about Scientology right before I made this account. Im surprised anyone at all has even noticed the connection.

I noticed, and enjoyed the irony of the username-statement combination.

Isn't that a bit like survivor bias though? People who are on meatrx (not familiar with the site at all) are already predisposed to thinking that this is the best thing to do, so all the positive things that occur they are attributing to their meat diet. What about the people that didn't get pregnant or who didn't regain their hair? I assume they are not posting about this outcome.

I think some sort of peer reviewed study would be a better source of truth than anecdotal evidence on a site that (I am assuming) promotes meat eating.

I am an omnivore, so I am not disagreeing because I am against meat.

Who would fund such a study? There’s no money in it.

Food politics is awful and leads people to make terrible decisions. People develop health problems due to pursuing plant only diets (stuff like vitamin B deficiency, anemia, etc).

Many overall health issues can be helped by teaching people to eat smaller, balanced meals and less focus on extreme diets.

1-year vegan here, no new health issues to report. I supplement vitamins D and B12 and omega-3 fats.

There are people for whom a vegan diet works. You seem to be one of them. I tried it a few times, and no matter what I supplemented, I would lose weight rapidly. I understand that it can turn into a moral argument as well, except that I kill fewer animals than you to eat. Responsibly-grown meat is less detrimental to local ecosystems than vegetables.

It isn’t survivor bias when the giant red rashes all over your body go away after nothing else has worked your entire life and your doctor says that for that to happen is impossible. It’s overlooked science.

But there could still be survivor bias in there to some degree. We need proper interventional studies.

My wife has psoriasis, she has recently (ish) switched to a plant based diet, her psoriasis has cleared up too. She isn't making claims that her change in diet fixed it.

Maybe it's a change in the diet that helped? Not a change to a specific, but rather a change in general.

Very possible, but diet changes usually go hand in hand with other lifestyle changes too. It could be any one of them or a combination, and it can also be person specific.

If she is plant based now, she could have only been SAD before? This is the reason why vegans and vegetarians think their diets are good, because literally anything besides the SAD is an improvement. She is a reduction in symptoms because of a reduction of sugar and other things. Put her on carnivore for a month and if she doesn’t experience anything I’ve described then I’ll eat my hat.

SAD? She has always had a good diet with low sugar intake, her change was literally to cut out meat from her existing diet.

> Two doctors have now ate nothing but meat, animal fat and organs for two years and posted their test results

I see your n=2 "study" and raise the risk of colorectal cancer; an n=900 study with plausible causative link.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27655186

Your proof that I’m wrong is some garbage epidemiology study about colon cancer?

No, I did not prove you wrong. I highlighted a risk that's implicated for the diet you're hawking. Maybe you'd enjoy living with a colostomy bag; no judgements here.

What about that study makes you say that it's "garbage?"

It's garbage when you disagree with it and solid science when 2 people who claim to be doctors post something on a web forum?

Most of the B12 from cow flesh is from supplements given to the cows.

Grass fed liver is high in that and many other things and they aren’t given any supplement as far as I know.

I can't say nice things about carnivore diets but Keto has worked out very well for me. You couldn't pay me to resume "normal" or "typical" carb consumption guidelines. Blood work for multiple factors, weight and many other metrics are all steadily going into their correct ranges for me now.

The entire "food pyramid" is irrelevant and, based on my experience, utterly wrong. When you're bored just dig into the science behind it. Its a mess. So is the whole "saturated fat is bad for your heart" thing. The science behind that is even worse.

Get baseline medical tests done. Do your intervention and track the results. Get regular tests from a doctor. The difference can be significant.

I whole heartedly agree. I have also had life changing results with keto. Any carnivore diet I do is ketogenic.

You’re not wrong at all, and animals are an important part of the ecosystem. It’s kind of implied that the reason vegetables are less nutritious now is because we don’t use manure for fertilizer as often.

Also they often don't do crop rotation to balance out the soil. Part of that is to run animals over the land for that all important fertilizer. Also don't let the soil rest.

Without commenting on the veracity of your claims (which I don't really believe, and because they aren't sourced, it would require a ton of effort), your writing style is very compelling.

Do you purchase a lot of products you see advertised?

GP's comment reads as a cheesy infomercial sales pitch, full of confidently stated BS.

The incredible thing is that there is no way for me to not make it seem like a scam. I try. It’s not a scam. Just eat a cow.

I can't comment on parent due to flag, I'm studying this for my wife and the relationship to autoimmune issues.

It's not just ruminant, but ruminant meat eating appropriate food. Grass fed beef versus grain fed is fascinating. Furthermore, how we raise ruminants is important for the ecosystem. When I tried carnivore diet, I can attest that the benefits are real but so is the hungering addiction from processed foods. I'm currently detaching myself from sugar which is... hard.

I can't wait for properly controlled studies on this subject. There is great anecdotal evidence https://benjamindavidsteele.wordpress.com/2020/01/10/multipl... which warrants proper studies.

I don’t see a flag… people flag my comments because they are offended by eating meat. It’s fucking unbelievable. Especially if I’m right and it’s an important medical advancement.

Yes, grass fed is necessary because of the omega 3 to 6 ratio. This is even more important if you are targeting autoimmune. And don’t sleep on the organs, I have found that those are important to immune-tangential things as well.

Another note: you don’t get dehydrated because of ketosis and glycolysis. You get dehydrated because you stop making insulin, insulin tells your body to hold on to water. The only other thing that does that is sodium. Not potassium, sodium. On this diet you are replacing insulin with sodium. Make sure to have very high fat and at least 5 grams of sodium chloride per day.

The advice you are giving is interesting but irresponsible considering how different peoples' digestive systems are. I would downvote your original comment for that and for being off topic, but I view the downvote as a way of organizing comments. Again, this is interesting, but you are pitching a foot-gun to people.

> The advice you are giving is interesting but irresponsible considering how different peoples' digestive systems are

This is fair, but you have to admit the same statement applies to evangelical vegans.

Definitely. Osteoporosis is no joke. I just didn't see any of those comments. And gah, no one likes hearing someone yell murderer at a dude eating a sandwhich. It just isn't nice. The animal is already dead, let it become sustenance. But anyways, take your gut health seriously. It affects your personality, like some other commenters have mentioned.

It isn’t irresponsible. Nobody is going to hurt themselves with a carnivore diet. I have tested it on myself so how could I be irresponsible for getting the word out about something I have done to my own body?

Thanks for testing it first. Using an analogy, your gut may be an apple and while some other people have oranges.

My hunch is that you could push that analogy further with something more hyperbolic - the gut is fascinating.

Grass fed is not necessary. Please check out "Sacred Cow" (https://www.sacredcow.info/book) for the latest research.

I (and many others) agree with your recommendation on sodium.

Can you give a quick summary of why grass fed is not necessary. I can imagine a spectrum from grass fed pasture all the way to specialized diets with hay and grain, but this feels like an in-between to all corn fed beef.

There are a handful of factors involved, so I will just share the conclusion, which also admits that "more research is needed":

"We looked for _any_ way to spin the nutrition argument in favor of grass-fed meat, but the actual data are fairly easy to verify. If we whitewashed this for a more palatable narrative, the obvious flaw in that position might cast doubt on everything else we are suggesting.

We realize that this is a remarkably unpopular position. But, [...], an ethical clinician would never tell a patient that they should eat only organic vegetables or no vegetables at all. We have the same position on meat. For those who simply don’t have access to grass-fed beef, we still feel red meat in general is an important, nutrient-dense food for humans."

Hey carbo. I’m trying to make progress in biochemistry and pathology in a timely manner so that I have more to offer in these threads. And sometime soon I’m going to have references to mechanistic justifications. It’s just a lot for one guy. Can you imagine if you were convinced that you had the formula for snake oil and then everybody dismissed you for promoting snake oil? It’s like a bad dream.

Doctor Paul Saladino has been very public about his test results, including CAC score of zero, and I consider that a source. Same with doctor Shawn Baker.

And I made reference to Meatrx which is indeed a source. It contains hundreds of video testimonies that will provide any discerning viewer with enough evidence to motivate a proper interventional study. This topic is blacklisted in academia and there aren’t any good studies on it.

And if you investigate the mechanistic underpinnings of all of this yourself, crack open a biochemistry book, you will see very clearly that something is going on. We need proper interventional studies.

Definitely going to need to source some of those claims.

The sad truth is that I don’t have an interventional, randomized study to show you. I could tell you to do your own research but that’s not very convincing either. All I can say is that if you or someone you know has symptoms that could be improved by a carnivore diet, just try it for a month. That’s the best proof I can offer.

As soon as academia gets around to conducting a study, I will make sure it’s posted.

Thanks for sharing - this would be easier to read if you didn't make it sound like everyone should be doing this all of the time. Yes, a carnivore diet will probably bring lots of benefits to many people. At the same time I want to remain open to other lifestyles and tweaks which maybe don't fit into just one category. I want to eat out of choice, not out of habit.

If you don’t have health problems or your health problems don’t bother you then there’s no reason to eat this way. Eating nothing but meat sucks. It’s a medical treatment, not really a diet. Only to be used if it’s necessary.

> For millions of years, humans ate ruminant animals who’s herds they followed around, and almost nothing else.

This is not supported by the historical evidence. Please see https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691160535/ev... for a popular-press telling.