The Carnivore Diet: What Is It?

October 24, 2019

The carnivore diet is an all-animal-food diet. It includes meat, fish, eggs and small amounts of low-lactose dairy such as butter and hard cheese. It cuts out every plant food, including fruits, vegetables, legumes, grains, nuts and seeds.

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Are you thinking about going carnivore? This all-meat diet is trending, and many people have reported significant benefits from it. However, totally dropping plant-based food off your plate could have a significant impact on your health. In this article, we’ll discuss what this popular diet is and what it does.

What Is the Carnivore Diet?

The Carnivore Diet is a restrictive diet. It only includes meat, fish, and other animal foods like eggs and certain dairy products. It excludes all other foods, including fruits, vegetables, legumes, grains, nuts, and seeds. Its fans also recommend cutting out dairy or limiting it to foods low in lactose — a sugar found in milk and dairy products — such as butter and hard cheeses.

The Carnivore Diet comes from a controversial belief. The belief is that human ancestral populations ate mostly meat and fish, and that high-carb diets are to blame for today’s high rates of chronic disease.

Many people on the carnivore diet report faster weight loss and clearer thinking. They also report healthier digestion, and even better athletic performance. Some have also reported remarkable relief from crippling chronic health problems where usual methods failed. With all this in mind, it is definitely worth thinking about.

Exactly which foods are on the Carnivore Diet List?

As the name suggests, the carnivore diet is made up mainly of meat. We will go over in more detail what it includes and what to avoid.

Foods that are okay on the carnivore diet, with an emphasis on fattier cuts of meat to take in enough calories:

Meat: beef, chicken, turkey, organ meats, lamb, pork, etc.
Fish: salmon, mackerel, sardines, crab, lobster, tilapia, herring, etc.
Other animal products: eggs, lard, bone marrow, bone broth, etc.
Low-lactose dairy (in small amounts): heavy cream, hard cheese, butter, etc.
Water

Generally, salt, pepper, and seasonings with no carbs are allowed.

Below is a list of what you should NOT be eating:

Vegetables: broccoli, cauliflower, potatoes, green beans, peppers, etc.
Fruits: apples, berries, bananas, kiwi, oranges, etc.
High-lactose dairy: milk, yogurt, soft cheese, etc.
Legumes: beans, lentils, etc.
Nuts and seeds: almonds, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, pistachios, etc.
Grains: rice, wheat, bread, quinoa, pasta, etc.
Alcohol: beer, wine, liquor, etc.
Sugars: table sugar, maple syrup, brown sugar, etc.
Beverages other than water: soda, coffee, tea, fruit juice, etc.

Some people include some of these foods, but a true Carnivore Diet does not allow them:

Milk
Yogurt
Cheese

Coffee and tea: These may be plant-based, but some people keep them in the diet.

The carnivore diet can be seen as a fad. Is there evidence that any traditional populations followed a carnivore way of life?

The ancestral link to the carnivore diet

Many ancestral groups thrived on large amounts of animal products. However, every single one of these groups also used plant foods when they were available. All of these communities ate mainly meat and fish as their core food: the Sioux of South Dakota, the Maasai, Rendille, and Samburu from East Africa, Gaucho Brazilians, the nomads of Mongolia, the Russian Arctic Chukotka and the Canadian Inuit. Even so, they all added vegetables, fruits, berries, lichen and other extras such as honey. They used whatever other non-meat foods they could get.

Carnivore Diet Benefits

The carnivore diet is not a new diet in a strict sense, but it has become famous in recent times. Let’s look at some of its benefits, both anecdotal (from personal stories) and backed by research.

Weight Loss

As with the ketogenic diet, failing to take in carbs keeps your blood sugar low at all times. You don’t get insulin spikes, so your body has no reason to store incoming calories as body fat. Also, the limits on what you can eat make it almost impossible to eat more calories than you burn without a real effort.

Better Heart Health

There is still no clear link between eating saturated fat and heart disease. There is also a solid pile of evidence that saturated fat can potentially improve heart health.

According to the Mayo Clinic, your cholesterol ratio predicts risk better than total cholesterol or LDL. To get it, divide your total cholesterol number by your HDL score.

Another important point about cholesterol: higher LDL numbers are seen as risky. But the type of LDL particles traveling through your arteries matters more. If they’re small and dense, they’re considered more dangerous than if they’re bigger and “fluffier.” So two people with the same LDL value could be at very different levels of risk.

According to the Cooper Institute, there is a good way to tell what kind of LDL particles you have. Find your ratio of triglycerides to HDL cholesterol. The lower the ratio, the less the risk.

Lower Inflammation

Simply cutting plant foods from your menu can lower inflammation by itself. “If you had a food sensitivity to some of the plants you were eating and had low-grade inflammation,” says Brian St. Pierre of Precision Nutrition, “then removing them will make you feel better.”

The liver makes C-reactive proteins (CRP) in response to inflammation. So measuring CRP levels can indicate how much inflammation is in your system. A level of 10mg/L or less is normal, and 1mg/L or less is good.

Lower inflammation means a lower risk for some chronic illnesses. These include Type 2 Diabetes, Cardiovascular issues and other conditions that arise as a result of inflammation. A certain kind of inflammation also causes achy joints. There’s some evidence that eating more gelatinous proteins improves cartilage health. You find these proteins in bone broth, collagen, and gelatin.

Higher Testosterone

Diets high in fat have been shown to boost testosterone levels. In fact, a study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition looked at men on a high-fat, low-fiber diet for 10 weeks. They had 13% higher total testosterone than subjects who ate low fat and high fiber.

Fewer Digestive Problems

Meat is made mainly of protein and fat. These are absorbed high up in the GI tract, so they leave little residue to irritate or inflame the gut. In other words, an all-meat diet is in effect a very low-residue diet, and it gives the gut a rest.

Increased Mental Clarity

Just as with the ketogenic diet, carnivore dieters report thinking more clearly and having better focus almost right away. Again, as with going keto, there is a break-in period. Your body has to figure out how to fuel your system without carbs, so you’ll probably feel sluggish and moody at first. You may have trouble sleeping and even get bad breath, an early sign that your body is making ketones. But you can ride it out. Within a few days, or just over a week, you could feel sharper than ever.

Simplified Dieting

The carnivore diet is the simplest you will ever come across. You eat animal foods when you’re hungry. Period. Maybe you get confused counting calories or macros. Maybe you are tired of weighing portions on a food scale, or you aren’t sure what’s gluten-free and what isn’t. A carnivore diet will all but free you from having to think.

A meat-rich diet may sound like it would break the bank. But the amounts you actually eat may not be high, since meat is so filling. That should keep costs down—especially if you literally aren’t buying any other food.

Is an all-meat, carnivore diet healthy?

Meat is an essential part of a healthy diet. But eating an all-meat diet is an entirely different subject. I think we need to be very careful about assuming that something that works well in the short term will also be safe and effective in the long term.

Different people are better suited for different diets, based on their bodies and conditions. The diet that best matches your own body could be higher or lower carb, high fat, or even high protein (though perhaps not as high as the carnivore diet). The right diet for any person depends on their health and their goals. It also depends on which diet and lifestyle would serve them best.

Frequently asked questions

What do you eat on a carnivore diet?

Animal foods only, with the fattier cuts favored so you take in enough calories. That means beef, chicken, turkey, lamb, pork and organ meats. It means fish and shellfish such as salmon, sardines, mackerel and crab. It means eggs, lard, bone marrow and bone broth. And it means small amounts of low-lactose dairy like butter, heavy cream and hard cheese. Water is the drink, and salt, pepper and carb-free seasonings are allowed.

What foods are not allowed on the carnivore diet?

Every plant food is out. That means vegetables such as broccoli and potatoes, fruits such as apples and berries, beans and lentils, and nuts and seeds. It also means grains, including rice, wheat, bread and pasta. Sugar, maple syrup and alcohol are out too, along with high-lactose dairy such as milk, yogurt and soft cheese. Strictly, the only drink is water, though some people keep coffee and tea.

What happens after one week on the carnivore diet?

Expect a break-in period first. With no carbs coming in, your body has to learn to fuel itself without them. So you will probably feel tired and moody, may sleep poorly and may notice bad breath, an early sign that you are making ketones. Ride it out: within a few days to just over a week, many people report thinking more clearly and feeling sharper than ever.

Why do people lose weight on the carnivore diet?

Because insulin stays low. As with a ketogenic diet, cutting out carbohydrates keeps blood sugar low all day. So there are no insulin spikes telling your body to store incoming calories as fat. The food list is also so narrow, and meat so filling, that eating more calories than you burn takes a deliberate effort. That is why people on the diet report faster weight loss.