It's funny how well the "seed oils bad" myth infected every diet camp. You see it in every HN thread on diet even though seed oils like canola oil improve health outcomes in humans, especially when compared to saturated fat.

Even my dad randomly started railing against seed oils once the nonsense started popping up on his youtube recommendations.

Fortunately, it's pretty easy to redpill yourself by looking at outcome data: https://www.the-nutrivore.com/post/a-comprehensive-rebuttal-...

I wonder how much of it is "grassroots diet fad" and how much is the meat lobby throwing out FUD to confuse the issue. Having lived through several diet fads already, neither would surprise me.

What other apes are obligate carnivores? What carnivores have our dental structure? And what separates a "obligate carnivores with a beneficial tolerance for a tiny number of plants" from a facultative carnivore?

I think you're making a logical flaw in saying that "excess {blah} is bad, therefore any {blah} is bad" which is untrue.

Once I went carnivore, my dental and gum health became perfect. The reason other carnivores don't have our dental structure is that other carnivores don't use fire, and other carnivores use their teeth to kill their prey.

I am not a carnivore, my dental health is perfect - never had a cavity. What does that mean for our two anecdotes?

Regarding your second point - our dental structure is roughly the same as the great apes (who are NOT obligate carnivores), but with less emphasis on canine teeth (which are used for display in the apes) - so when did we develop the carnivore teeth then develop teeth that match our fellow great apes? Our dental structure is not suited for a carnivorous lifestyle, but somehow the rest of our digestive track is?

Edit: Sorry, should specify, I meant "I am not an OBLIGATE carnivore". I still eat meat.

Neither means anything. I'm not inclined to believe that humans should be obligate carnivores, given vegans seem to live more or less fine. Though I wouldn't exclude the possibility of some essential or highly beneficial nutrients that are only abundant in meat.

> Neither means anything.

100% agree.

There's clearly nutrients that have better sources in meat and can be vital - if one suffers from heavy menstruation sometimes the only solution to prevent anemia is heme iron, which is found in animal flesh.

Vegans literally need to take supplements, or else they die. Vegan women lose their menstrual cycles without supplementation.

Did your dental health improve when going from carnivore to non carnivore?

Sorry - I was unclear - I still eat meat. I meant "I am not an obligate carnivore".

I suggest you do some further reading. Here is a passage from Not By Bread Alone by Vilhjalmur Stefanson, written in 1946:

> "A clean tooth never decays. Brush your teeth after every meal, and visit your dentist twice a year. These slogans carry the faith of our people. It is said and believed that we have the best dentists in the world, that we have more tooth brushes, and use them more, than any other people. Many agencies, from kindergarten to university, from town council to and through the governments of city, state, and nation, strive for the spread of dental knowledge and the enforcement of its discipline... During the same time the ether was filled and the magazine pages were crowded with advertising which told that mouth chemistry is altered by a paste, a powder, or a gargle so as to prevent decay; that a special kind of toothbrush reaches all the crevices; that a particular brand of fruit, milk, or bread is rich in elements for tooth health. There were toothbrush drills in the schools. Mothers throughout the land were scolding, coaxing, and bribing to get children to use the preparations, eat the foods, and follow the rules that were said to guarantee perfect oral hygiene. There was endless repetition of the slogan: A clean tooth never decays. Meantime there appeared a statement from Dr. Adelbert Fernald, Curator of the Museum of the Dental School, Harvard University, that he had been collecting mouth casts of living North Americans of all racial derivations from blond to black, from the most northerly Eskimos through Canada and the States south to Yucatan. The best teeth and the healthiest mouths were found among people who never drank milk since they ceased to be suckling babes and who never in their lives tasted or tested any of the other things which we usually recommend for sound teeth. These people, Eskimos not as yet influenced by white men, never used tooth paste, tooth powder, toothbrushes, mouth wash, or gargle. They never took any pains to cleanse their teeth or mouths. They did not visit their dentists twice a year or even once in a lifetime. Their food was exclusively meat. Meat, be it noted, is not mentioned as good for the teeth in the advertisement sponsored by the Commissioner of Health of the City of New York. Teeth superior on the average to those of the presidents of our largest tooth paste companies are found in the world today, and have existed during past ages, among people who violate every precept of current dentifrice advertising."

Yes, our increased exposure to carbohydrates increases the rate of cavities without preventative cleaning. This is like saying "yeah, but now that you have a job where you need to devote time to exercise means that hunting and gathering is a superior lifestyle" - sure, in one facet it would be better but in others it's a lot worse. And there's an easy solution - just brush your teeth. It's also falling for the same fallacy as the other user - "excess {blah} is bad, therefore any {blah} is bad". It's all or nothing, black and white, thinking.

But I'm not just talking about whether we have cavities or not. I'm talking tooth structure itself. Humans have teeth and digestive tracks that are built to consume plants alongside meat. There are no other apes that are obligate carnivores and our teeth haven't (substantially) changed since before we mastered fire.

I'm curious now, did we develop our dental structure after mastering fire?

Some of the carnivore stuff approached flat eartherism in terms of its denial of reality. Anyone can look into their own mouth in the mirror and see that it's half full or flattened molars, similar to other omnivores. But no, we're "obligate carnivores".

And not only that, we can see the same molars in our ancestors going back millions of years, long before we have evidence of using fire.

You're absolutely correct. I preach the carnivore diet as well, and people on Hacker News constantly spew contempt at me for doing that, but the carnivore diet really works. It is practically a panacea.

So do I... There is a (literally) visceral feeling you get when eliminating plants (and frankly, even most supplements except minerals) that the gut is finally at rest / not disturbed, it becomes impossible to ignore that our digestive apparatus is primarily adapted for eating meat. Judging from the many anecdotes I've come across, breakdown of the gut barrier brought about / contributed by most plants is at the root of many diseases. Not the sole cause, I think gut microbiome disruption plays a big part in the bad effects from plants, but that's another story and there doesn't seem to be a solution for that yet (not enough to just chug copious amounts of probiotics).

Would you say that cows are adapted for eating plants? Because boy do those animals fart, even just standing there in a field eating grass. I don't know what a gut "at rest" means, but I would suggest that it's not necessarily indicative of a diet that you're adapted to. In fact it seems like it's more of a psychological thing than anything else.

Why would you dismiss it as "psychological" while admitting that you don't know what it means? Have you ever fasted? It feels like that.

Re: cows. They have a rumen. And they are aided by bacteria to convert the plant matter into usable energy.

Because it seems like the sort of thing something would say when they want to observe a change to justify a choice.

And yes, cows are specifically adapted to consume plants and their guts are noisy. I'm using this as an example that just because you sensed a quieting in your intestines it doesn't mean it's positive. I'm admitting I don't know what it means and provided an example where a loud gut is indicative of adaptation, but you seem to be under the impression a quiet gut is a good thing. If you're using fasting as the comparison that seems to indicate you aren't digesting much at all, and I don't know how that's positive if your intestines are full.

I'm doing this for health reasons (as are hundreds of thousands of others, see "carnivore diet" or "zerocarb"). I was just sharing an observation I had because prior to eating this way I always had gut issues.

In that case I honestly hope that you have luck with this diet. But keep in mind that millions of people in the 90's would have used health reasons as the reason they are cutting out animal fats and switching to margarine. It's hard to tell what's a harmful diet fad until it's over.

It's the only thing that seems to work for certain autoimmune conditions. It's not a fad.

In that case it's not, that's a specialized diet, much like cutting out peanut butter for someone allergic to peanuts is a specialized diet. It doesn't mean it's generally biologically advantageous and that everyone should cut out peanut butter, it means it's what your body needs, and in that case it makes perfect sense.

One thing you'll notice if you adopt a carnivore diet is that you completely stop farting.

If you explain to my why it is somehow biologically advantageous that we don't fart I'll consider that as a pro of some sort. Because, as I've been pointing out, cows are super specialized to consume plants and they fart, so farting isn't indicative of them eating something incorrect, but simply part of the biological process of them consuming plant matter. It doesn't mean they should switch to a meat diet.

This is a common response that I get. People will just tell me that they enjoy farting and that, in fact, farting is wonderful.

Also, they have an attitude that indicates they are absolutely certain that they are correct.

They'll probably tell me next that they enjoy having diabetes.

Anyone can try this diet for 90 days and transform their health for the better (even if they think they are already in top shape), yet almost everyone has a massive mental block and can't even conceive of trying it. It's a bizarre situation.

But keep farting and living with joint pain for all I care.

The guy whose comment this is in response to is arguing that he should fart because cows fart without considering the fact that he is not a cow. It is not worth my time to engage any further, but I will leave this comment here in case there are some genuinely curious onlookers.

Well, you've now gone to ad hominem, even though you're arguing that not only do your farts not stink, they don't exist. The arbitrary decision that farting is bad (though we know that isn't the case as other animals eating their native diet fart), which you need to prove, somehow means that because you claim you don't fart your diet must be good. Ultimately you're making the argument we are obligate carnivores when you have no proof of that outside of anecdotes of "joint pain" and "farts".

I don't have time to convince you. Enjoy farting.

> breakdown of the gut barrier brought about / contributed by most plants is at the root of many diseases

And yet we have a unending amount of evidence that consuming plants results in better health outcomes...

This is discussing a strict carnivore (meat ONLY) diet. I'm not aware of such a comparison.

what comparison? If what you are saying is true - that eating plants = bad gut health = bad health outcomes - then we would see that in the data but instead we see the opposite.

>It is practically a panacea

Biggest diet dogma red flag. It sounds like you might be spending too much time in an echo chamber.

inb4 << a bunch of anecdotes >>

You realize that you're basically the stereotype of a vegan - preaching the ethical/health benefits of their diet - just with a different dietary preference?

What’s the ethic he’s preaching? Save the plants?

Isn't this a strike against the carnivore diet? Not only do I have to restrict myself to a narrow range of foods, but there's not even an ethical benefit to doing so. Why would one "preach" something like this?

So it's worse than stereotypical veganism?

The difference is that I have better arguments on my side, both from a health and from an environmental perspective, than the vegans do.

I get that some people think Trump won the 2020 election and some people think he lost the 2020 election, and so faux-sophisticates will just throw up their hands and say “who knows who is right?”, but I am of the camp that believes in reason and evidence.

If you think the vegans have the better argument then you are free to eat that way and further the destruction of the planet while rationalizing away your ill health, of course. Bummer for you, but it’s a free country.

but the article kind of contradicts you in regards to plants. Vegetables, fruits and nuts are the base of a mediterranean diet with a small portion of meat