In the interest of science I would like defend the claim that humans should eat only rare red meat. Would anyone like to take the opposite position?

Maybe I should rephrase. Is a carnivorous diet optimal?

Some think so. I think prehistoric man probably ate more red and other meat than he did veggies or fruit? Although fruit in the autumn is easy to find and would have helped to give him fat reserves to help him make it through the winter.

also the meat he ate would have been "grass fed" and therefore may have nutrients that our modern meat doesnt have??

Jo xxx

I think there is some evidence that undercooking red meat might make it a better health option.

Thank you for putting this in the War Zone, where it belongs.

What would you like to discuss? TMAO? Neu5gc? Acid/Alkaline balance and bone mass? AGES in cooked meat (maybe we should eat our red meat, rare. ). Cow farts causing global-warming? Antibiotic-resistant bacteria?

Can I suggest a ground rule?

No within-population epidemiology, where what people ate is determined by dietary recall, and where the difference between dietary groups is marginal at best. Any study that says that each serving of any substance-sugar, fat, meat, javex--increases risk of diabetes, heart disease, cancer, by ten, fifteen, thirty percent. If only people who drink from a certain well get cholera, or 27 times as many smokers get lung cancer as non-smokers--now that's epidemiology worth looking at.

As is between-population epidemiology. Low heart disease in a whole population with a fairly homogenous diet, compared to people in the culture who have gone through a dietary transition often makes enough of a difference that you can say yes, the difference between what these guys eat and what those guys eat is probably making a difference in disease rates. The classic example of this is the difference in dental health observed by Weston Price in people eating country vs. "town" diets. Or what has happened in slightly more recent history when you look at first and third generation Japanese Hawaiians.

I think it is reasonable to assume that diet is important in a situation like that. And you can say--the first generation, with a diet high in starchy carbohydrate, low in fat, low in sugar, moderate in animal products, had less of the so-called "diseases of civilization" than the third generation. Yes, people and Big Mac's and chocolate milk-shakes and french fries to their diets, and become less health. When you put it that way, almost nobody will disagree with you.

John McDougall would say, the problem is the meat, and the fat. After all, the Rice Diet was shown to be therapeutic for some very sick people. So, the starch and the sugar that were added to people's diets were harmless. But no, they were only harmless in the context of the Rice Diet. Give somebody the Atkins Diet, or further, a zero-carb diet, or a strict ketogenic diet, all of these have had therapeutic effects every bit as striking as those claimed for the rice diet or McDougall's starch-based plan. So a low-carber might say, see? Red meat and fat are harmless. Again, no--all that's shown is that the overall dietary scheme was healthful, not that any of the individual elements of the diet are intrinsically healthful in and of themselves.


For me, the question isn't "is fructose safe?" It's "Under what conditions is fructose safe?" Conditions being, who is it safe for, what genetic or epigenetic factors are there? What can it safely be eaten with? If it's safe as long as calories are below a certain level, then--how can I eat it without the fructose encouraging me to overeat?

Same with saturated fat. There are diets where, say, adding 100 grams of butter a day would unquestionably make them worse. Start with an extremely high carbohydrate diet that consists mostly of potato. Protein is marginal on this diet, weaned children might sometimes develop kwaskiokr. This is an extreme--but odds are, there's a diet where you've probably crapped things up quite a bit, if you've added that much butter. Protein as a percent would go from marginal to sub-marginal. Send some butter to some 17th century Inuit, have them eat a little less caribou or seal fat in place of the butter, and in that context, this rise in saturated fat from butter is far less likely to have a harmful effect. Context matters.

Looking at other threads you've contributed to--I thought your wording was a little ambiguous in the first post. It could have meant eating rare steak or eating steak rarely. Then your second post--is a carnivorous diet optimal? took a neutral stance, but I ended up thinking you wanted to defend not eating meat, rather than eating just meat. But I guess my point in my first post is still one I'd make--context matters. Is a carnivorous diet optimal? I would answer not necessarily to that question. Can a carnivorous diet be optimal? No question there are people who've found it the best for them. Although even then, given the wide variety of edible plants on the planet, unless somebody has tried all of them, it's hard to say absolutely that there isn't some green herb or whatever that might make a particular carnivore healthier.

And then there's the question of how much fat, how much organ meat. I know I do worse on a heavy meat diet where the protein:fat ratio is too high.

And by the way, don't go to war with teaser unless you're extremely well-armed.

To give some background I have adopted a carnivorous diet for around a month or so with some positive results thus far. The purpose of this thread is so that through debate I can be directed towards the research which will indicate whether or not rare red meat is a 'complete food' although of course supporting posts from my fellow carnivores are completely welcome. Hazlitt said that debate is the most potent source of prejudice but I feel that by testing my ideas through fiery discourse the merits or demerits of this course of action which I have taken will be revealed.

I'm sure that you will soon discover some of the "merits or demerits of this course of action" in the feelings of health and well-being (or not) in your own person. I hope you have established a health baseline by gathering some essential information, such as lipid levels, blood glucose, blood pressure, and a few other common measures. After a few weeks or months, you can find out what's going on to help or hinder your health.

Meanwhile, this is a good forum to pursue some discussion about the science of strictly carnivorous eating among human beings. It doesn't have to be war. Other people's opinions and justifications have nothing to do with your personal dietary choices. It seems to be information you're looking for.

Meistro1 - do you want to debate or do you simply want to be directed to related information, pro and con? If you want to debate, what is your initial premise here? One must take a stand in order to have proper discourse.

If you really want to strike up a debate, a neutral site like longecity's nutrition forum would probably be a better place. Their members are anything from vegan to paleo to keto.

MY initial premise is that through the consumption of primarily very rare red meat, and more broadly a carnivorous diet eating only of the animal kingdom (and some animal byproducts) one can obtain all the macro / micro nutrients which the body needs. I am also interested in simply being directed towards additional research.

Red raw meat... whether it's sufficient might depend on definition. Most of it's fairly low in calcium and other minerals. If bone meal is allowed, or chewing on bones, that might help. I find it easier to eat bones if they've been cooked for a long time (pork ribs, ends of chicken bones), but admittedly I've never eaten raw bones. I suppose if fermentation is thrown into the picture, that could make bones easier to eat. Maybe that's what dogs are up to when they bury them. I think the recommendations for calcium intake are ridiculous, they're just throwing calcium at osteoporosis etc., it really has nothing to do with requirements. There are places where people eat a third of the recommended intake of calcium, without having these sorts of problems. But still, muscle meat by itself is a bit low in calcium for my liking, nutritiondata gives me 90 mg for 2 pounds of ribeye.

Complicating things is, how do you arrive at requirements for various nutrients? Some were established by how much of a nutrient a person eating a mixed diet needs to get to avoid deficiency 95 percent of the time. Some nutrients come in more bioavailable forms in meat than they would coming from plants.

http://www.cricketflours.com/cricket-nutritional-value/

Expand raw meat to include some other stuff, it gets a little easier, an all cricket diet would have more than enough calcium. Or various shellfish could round things out.

I tried eating a couple of ants the other day, to see what they were like. I was splitting wood for firewood, one log had a colony. So of course they tasted like pine. I bet if you split some sugar maple in spring, you'd get some yummy ants, but maybe not so low-carb.

The more broadly makes me capitulate entirely. It's all in there, somewhere. You can even get fiber from some bugs, if you think it's necessary.

Perhaps we shouldn't be so quick to dismiss a calcium deficiency, since I do not view myself consuming any insects in the immediate future. I have heard that milk is a decent source of calcium, and I tolerate lactose decently AFAIK, but it is also high in carbs. Perhaps you can get your calcium in cheese? Or minerals from mineral water?

Perhaps salmon bones might be an alternative source, I'm sure I've ingested a few by accident before.