Chris Kresser: Justin is asking about my podcast with Mark Sisson, Paul Saladino and Sean Baker on the meat debate.
I think that’s the carnivore debate, right? Correct me if I’m wrong. Okay. Yes, Rogan asked me about this in one of the recent podcasts, it might not have been the debate with Joel Kahn, but it was one of them.
Here’s what I think in a nutshell. I think that the reason carnivore works when it works is because it’s a very low-residue diet, so it’s almost like fasting in terms of the way that affects the gut because meat is digested very high up in the gut and it’s basically almost an extremely low-fiber diet, so there’s no residue left over to feed the microbes in the gut. I think in a lot of cases with autoimmunity, fibromyalgia and all of these other conditions where people are benefiting, there is a significant disruption of the gut microbiome, SIBO, and things like that.
And so, we know from research that fasting is the most effective treatment, like, single treatment in medicine, and we’ve known this for many years. The problem is you can’t fast forever and oftentimes when people fast, they get a benefit. And then when they start eating again, the benefit goes away. It’s not necessarily permanent. Carnivore, one way I think about it is, like, it’s an approach that allows people to get some of the benefits of fasting, but for an extended period of time, maybe years, in some cases. However, just like fasting, carnivore, my take on carnivore is it can be a therapeutic approach, but that doesn’t mean that it’s safe and beneficial to do ongoing, just like fasting is not safe or beneficial to do forever. I don’t think carnivore is, and when you look at traditional cultures and their diets, you see that every culture that we’ve ever studied had some combination of animal and plant foods. There are different nutrients in plant foods that you can’t get from animal foods, and there are different nutrients in animal foods that you can’t get from plant foods.
I think for most people while it can be a useful therapeutic tool for a period of time, I don’t think it’s something that should be done forever.
And Jessica, a carnivore approach is different, protein sparing-modified fast and that carnivore people are literally just eating meat. Protein-sparing modified fast would be more lean meat and animal products and plenty of non-starchy low-carb vegetables would be included in that.