I could argue against this, but let’s just let it slide.
Elimination diets seem to raise a lot of unecessary emotions though, I agree you on that. Just look the amount of hate carnivores or vegans get in social media.
I think it’s partly because people have strong sense that people should live excactly the way what they consider ”normal” (which is usually same as how they live their lives).
Of course there are politics and values involved too, not to mention the almost religious approach to nutrition some people have.
Of those 4, Dr. Baker literally wrote the book “The Carnivore Diet”, so if we wanted to talk “the creator of the diet”, I feel we have a strong argument for him…except he has NOT added more food back in due to deficiencies, so there goes that narrative.
Although I would say there is really a strong call to say that Vilhjalmur Stefansson was “the creator”, and he definitely didn’t need to add foods back in, haha.
It’s what humans thrived on as opposed to just survived on is what I was getting at. We don’t need plants, fruits….especially in their current iteration. We do need proteins and fats.
Make more sense ?
Humans can be insufferably uninformed, stupid and stubborn so I learned to just laugh and move on.
I would argue humans have thrived with various diets. Mental image of hunter-gatherers being carnivores or low carb is not supported with empirical evidence. Arkeological findings show that there was no single ”paleo-diet”. People ate what they found, and it varied a lot depending on where they lived.
And for the last 5000 years or so there had been practically no carnivores. Eating huge amounts of animal proteins and fats is actually a modern phenomenom, and tied to the economic growth/increase of welfare. For the last 50 years or so the daily meat consumption is actually higher than it ever has been (within western population).
I don’t buy the counter -argument that meat or animal fats is the culprit to our modern health problems either. I don’t blame fruits, gluten, sugar or any single factor either. It’s just plainly the problem of constant supply of tasty excess calories and low physical activity. I could maybe toss also in the ultra-prosessed food and other chemicals we’re having, but the simple equation of too much yum-stuff holds.
Ps. ”Thriving” is also an interesting word. Not sure if I thrive, but I have no problems with my energy levels, gut health, libido or sleep. I’ve actually done short experiments with different diets (vegetarian and low carb for example), but I’ve found no notable differences how I feel. I just feel irritated that my eating options are more limited.
one thing I’ve noticed that quality matters, if I eat eggs and oatmeal at breakfast I feel significantly better than if I would have had roughly the same macros from cereal and sausages for example.
If somebody has problems, and they find that changing their diet helped them, I’m happy for them. Just be careful not to make them universal facts instantly.
I don’t know it in detail, but the study don’t mean that you can’t eat fats and carbs at the same meal. It’s a cellular thing and can’t be applied straight to a whole living organism, as far as I understand.
Carnivore diet - great or not? I don’t know. I don’t even know the specifics the carnivore diet entails. But I believe that I found the great diet for me, which perfected over the three decades of competitive bodybuilding. I don’t know if it has a label, just that it worked effectively every time. Whenever someone asked what diet i was on, I told them, “the idiot’s diet.”
My off season diet:
Protein: meat, chicken, fish, and eggs (no milk products)
Fibrous carbohydrates
Starchy carbohydrates
Fruit
My on season diet;
The same as off season diet, but I stop all fruit. And starchy carbohydrates are adjusted based on feedback from the mirror and a strength metric. It is a diet application of (Shewhart’s) PDCA
I’ve considered a carnivore experiment. Now would be a convenient time to try because my wife is on a PSMF, but I cannot bring myself to do it.
In the past two years I’ve become less neurotic with food, alcohol, and bodyfat. I’d sometimes go for weeks or months without a cheat meal in the past. Now I’m somewhat liberal. Same goes for alcohol. I never drink to drunkenness, but if there’s alcohol in my house (there usually is) and I get the idea to have it, I do.
I’ve settled in on the middle-aged four-pack-spare-tire-veiny-limbs look and I feel awesome!
I had no idea what “in significant amounts” modified. Avocados have “significant amounts” of both carbs and fats. There are “significant amounts” of avocados on the earth. But it seems you were qualifying a significant number of plant varieties that have both carbs and fats. It would have helped if you had expressed it similar to that. And I would not have responded.
For me, diets like carnivore are less about tapping into some sort of “evolutionary pattern” in humans and more about strategies for living in an increasingly obsengenic culture/society.
