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Comment by jononomo | Hacker News Reader

There is a simple solution to the obesity epidemic: levy a heavy tax on any kind of sugar or grain that enters the food system and use the money to subsidize red meat.

A carnivore diet that avoids plant-based foods altogether is ideal for human health and is almost impossible to remain obese on.

For faster or more thorough weight loss cut out dairy as well. Find more information at https://MeatRx.com/

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In other words: "tax anyone who doesn't follow my fad diet"

Whole grains, fruits, vegetables (and sure meat too) are time and time again show to be healthy components of the human diet. Just cutting out the sugar, white flour, and trans fats will take you a long ways.

Whole grains and white grains both just turn to glucose in your system -- so you're kidding yourself if you think whole grains area healthy in any respect, but especially if you think they are healthy in comparison to white grains.

And I'm not sure why you think whole grains have "time and time again" been shown to be healthy components of the human diet. In fact, we have known for hundreds of years that grain-based human societies have suffered shorter stature, more disease, and more dental cavities than hunter-gatherer societies.

The ancient Egyptians, for instance, had lots of heart disease, as we can detect from their mummies, and they had an agricultural civilization based on grains grown in the Nile delta.

The same is true for the ancient pre-contact inuit which is probably the closest example we have to a carnivorous population.

https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/surprise-ancient-inu...

And the Masai, another population eating an animal-heavy diet.

https://academic.oup.com/aje/article-abstract/95/1/26/167903

All the examples of exceptionally long-lived populations we have (the so-called blue zones) have a plant heavy (but not vegan/vegetarian) diet.

That must be why India, with one of the lowest meat consumption rates in the world, tops the obesity charts.

It seems it has more to do with the "empty calories" that are in processed foods. Sugar (in its many names: corn syrup, etc.) is put in everything, even in things that do not need it such as bread and yogurt. I would be in favor of taxing producers that put sugar in everything just to get people hooked. It's immoral and corrupt to say the least.

Not to mention that of the "blue-zones", the most long-lived populations in the world, none are following a carnivore diet.

In fact India does have a lot of obesity. The rates are not yet as high as they are in the US because they are even more oppressed by poverty, meaning that 1. even inexpensive food is in limited supply, and 2. many Indians still rely on manual labor which keeps obesity rates down.

It is noteworthy that India has a massive problem with diabetes and also has the lowest life expectancy in the world.

>> India: lowest life expectancy

India is 145th out of 201 nations measured [1]. Not great, but it's not the lowest as claimed.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expe...

> A diet that avoids plant-based foods altogether is ideal for human health

> MeatRx.com

Those are some bold claims. Curious if there's any actual science supporting not eating plants.

Yes, there is a ton of science supporting not eating plants.

In fact, entire human societies have survived for generations on entirely animal-based diets but a human being cannot even survive on a diet devoid of animal-based foods (vegans have to supplement or else they die).

There is a list of books here: https://meatrx.com/resources/books/

I personally find the writing and lectures of Nina Teicholz to be especially compelling.

Can you provided any peer reviewed studies on the benefits of the carnivore diet?

Find resources here:

https://meatrx.com/category/research-articles/

https://meatrx.com/resources/books/

See but those articles are about ketogenic diets, not "Carnivore". Ketogenic diets don't have to be meat centric.

You're right that ketogenic diets don't have to be meat-centric. This is why I promote the carnivore diet and not the ketogenic diet.

Not all of the resources I pointed you to are about ketogenic diets, though -- some are about carnivore diets. For instance, there are the books of Vilhjalmur Stefansson who lived for years on a meat-only diet and was monitored at Harvard while on this diet.

Nina Teicholz also provides a phenomenal tour of the literature and demonstrates that a lot of the science does in fact support a carnivore diet. You should look up some of her phenomenal lectures on YouTube, or read her book The Big Fat Surprise: https://www.amazon.com/Big-Fat-Surprise-Butter-Healthy/dp/14...

If you would like to contribute to getting more research done on the carnivore diet, then you can donate here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/carnivore-research

I appreciate your desire to evangelize a thing you believe in. I am not really asking about the benefit of a ketogenic diet, I am asking specifically about the ways in which a Carnivore diet increases the benefits of ketosis as opposed to just a normal Ketogenic diet. The book you linked seemed to be in advocacy of dietary fat, which both Ketogenic and Carnivore diets both agree with. That is again not really what I'm asking.

I'm also not really sure why I would donate money to a cause I do not believe in/that is not backed by science.

The carnivore diet is not necessarily a ketogenic diet, although it is an extremely low-carb diet. However, the carnivore diet gives you all the benefits of ketosis and a lot more.

The problem with plant-based foods is that they contain fiber and a bunch of anti-nutrients but the ketogenic diet permits this. Once you cut out all plant-based food then you experience the wonders of an elimination diet -- because you have eliminated anything in your food that you might have a mild allergy or reaction to.

Things I noticed when I went carnivore were: improved skin, improved nasal breathing, cessation of heartburn, improved bowel movements, dramatically fewer bowel movements, weight loss and muscle growth, a complete cessation of farting/gas, more ear wax, less joint pain, less water weight (because no carbohydrates), more stable energy and mood, and probably a couple more things I've forgotten.

It is true that there are not a lot of studies that have been performed on the carnivore diet. But beware that human nutrition is almost impossibly difficult to do large randomized controlled trials on. This is simply an extraordinarily difficult area in which to get the science right, which is why the US dietary guidelines are such a bunch of crap and we've ended up with an obesity epidemic and chronic diseases such as diabetes and heart disease absolutely rampant.

There is one way in which you can perform elite nutrition science, however -- you can experiment on yourself. I urge you to try a carnivore diet for six weeks and just observe the results. Stick to steak, eggs, sardines, fish, bone broth, beef liver, and ground beef. Avoid dairy and don't drink any calories. This is an extraordinarily difficult diet for people to follow for some reason (because they are carb addicts) but it is nutritionally overflowing and you will see dramatic effects if you stick to it.

> The carnivore diet is not necessarily a ketogenic diet, although it is an extremely low-carb diet. However, the carnivore diet gives you all the benefits of ketosis and a lot more.

I am asking you to support this claim with science-based research, that explicitly studies the differences. The rest of your post is mostly just noise if that research isn't readily available.

I am more than aware of the troubles of doing legitimate scientific research at scale on diet. And yet, you yourself were able to provide scholarly articles on the benefits of a Ketogenic diet.

I have done both carnivore and generalized ketogenic diets in the past. I am also an extreme skeptic at fad diets like the Carnivore diet. I've yet to see a single piece of legitimate evidence to suggest that the Carnivore diet is anything more than a Joe Rogan-backed ketogenic diet.

Can't you just try the diet and see for yourself? That would be a lot more reliable way to determine the effects of the diet on your health than waiting around for decades for research that may not ever be properly conducted and which in any case would have been conducted on someone else. If you try the carnivore diet then you can just see the results for yourself in yourself. What's the downside to eating nothing but eggs, sardines, and ground beef for six weeks?

From my post:

> I have done both carnivore and generalized ketogenic diets in the past.

> What's the downside to eating nothing but eggs, sardines, and ground beef for six weeks?

Probably wasting six weeks of my life eating an unnecessary and suboptimal diet, for starters.

It does keep you full and likely will help you avoid eating too much. But don't go tricking yourself into believing it's "ideal" for your body with that as your only data point.

I feel like a week of all meat bowel movements would let you know that maybe this isn't the best approach.

When I go to a meat-heavy diet, I do not have bowel movements for 10-14 days. And I don't feel constipated. Your mileage may vary. I don't recommend it though.

This is one of the best things about the carnivore diet, in fact. Once your digestion adjusts you have the smoothest digestion and most efficient bowel movements imaginable.

When you eat a steak almost the entire steak is absorbed into the body -- there is no indigestible fiber and other gunk that needs to be pooped out.

If you quit plants cold turkey and immediately switch over to a high-fat meat diet then you will have to prepare yourself for about a week of runny stool as your digestion adjusts. It's not a big deal and once you're in the clear it is smoother sailing than you knew was possible.

Given the important role that dietary fibre plays in regulating healthy poops, I'm going to have to say I don't believe you. You seem to be advocating that meat is magic.

Dietary fiber plays no role other than making you poop. If you want to poop more, eat more fiber.

What if, and bear with me, there are second order benefits to pooping?

There aren't

That's utterly unfeasible as a mass strategy for weight loss. Have everyone replace the cheap and easy grains with high carbon emission and expensive meat? How does that work even on a supermarket infrastructure level? Cheap and easy cereals get replaced with jerky?

I get it, you're trying to sell individuals on a red meat fad, but as a national strategy it's senseless.

I disagree entirely. 200 years ago we had herds of Bison roaming the great American plains that were so large it would take the herd five days to pass a camp site. We can go back to that kind of herding if we want to. It is agriculture that is destroying our environment with pesticides and destroying human health with carbohydrates. Meat is also not as big an impact of global warming as people think it is -- the health care industry has a far greater carbon emission problem and the health care industry would be decimated if our society turned to eating red meat in massive quantities and avoided sugar and grains entirely.

200 years ago we weren't trying to feed hundreds of millions of people, and the small population that was there managed to kill them all off. That would a massive scale up of animals and they couldn't just roam - if you want to work at industrial levels you need to use industrial methods - to be viable they'd need to continue to be factory farmed, which requires a larger supporting infrastructure of grain.

I say that we start by adding 60 million bison to our national capacity and then solve problems as they arise. I'm okay with feeding the cattle some grain toward the end in feed lots. I wouldn't describe this as "factory farming", though, which is a term more appropriately used to describe how pigs and chickens are often raised and which I do think is cruel. But we don't have this problem with larger ruminants.

Have you considered the environmental impact of increased red meat consumption?

Yes -- it is massively over-stated by ideologues.

It is a bit strange to critique "ideologies" while advocating for a fad diet, no?

Do you eat your meat raw? Studies I've done show that's even better for you.

I've gone pretty rare on my steaks, and I've eaten raw eggs (100% safe if you wash them since any salmonella danger is from contamination on the outside of the shell) but I have not yet eaten 100% raw red meat.

Is that the one that looks like a gateway site to grindr?

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