Carnivore vs. Vegetarian Diets

Recently, you may have heard about the latest craze, the carnivore diet, sparked by a book written by Shawn Baker.

As you probably figured out, this diet goes way beyond the ketogenic mode and focuses squarely on various meats, along with eggs, butter, lard and bone broths.

But is this very narrow focus really good for your health?

Here’s my take based on a recent question I received on my YouTube channel.

Jeffrey Dotulong: What do you think about this newest carnivore diet? Why do people do so well on it, even ex-vegans? It doesn’t seem like our natural diet to me at all.

Making changes

There are two reasons why people generally do better initially on most any diet.

For one, they are making a change in their lives, usually because something or many things in their bodies are not working or feeling ideal. Therefore, there is an “intention to heal and change.”

Whenever we have a genuine intention to change, we use our minds to put potential (which is neutral in polarity and correlates to the zero-point field in quantum physics) in-tension. This means we tip the probability scale in the direction of our intention.

Often, this is referred to as the placebo effect in medical research. There is what is referred to as the 55 percent rule in medical drug research, in which about 55 percent of the time, a placebo will perform as well or better than the actual drug it is being tested against or compared to, even in double-blind clinical trials. (You can read more about this in Dr. Gabor Mate’s book, When The Body Says No).

When we decide to make a purposeful change to eat differently in order to get a specific result, we unleash the power of our mind, which reigns supreme over all bodily and physiological processes.

You can see clear evidence of the mind’s power to alter or control physiology when people do incredible things like walking on fire, enduring extreme cold for periods of time that would generally kill someone (think Wim Hoff), starving for extensive periods or generating enough chi to set paper on fire.

A limited diet profile

Secondly, most people eat the same diet for extensive periods of time before making a change, so their nutrient profile is often very limited.

I’ve read research showing that the average person only eats 10-12 foods throughout their life. Therefore, when someone changes their diet, it generally means they are eating different vegetables they haven’t been consuming for some time.

And, for vegans and vegetarians, they are now bringing in things like eggs, dairy products, fish and, possibly, some meats.

Now, most are getting proteins that are more capable of being digested, assimilated and supportive of their metabolism based on their genetic needs. When a person has a genetic profile that requires flesh foods — this is the case for anyone who has at least one parent who comes from a region where the ground freezes in the winter — and they try to live on a diet composed largely of produce, the proteins in such foods are tied up in “fiber.”

Cows have five stomachs to ferment proteins out of the fibrous grass they eat. On the other hand, humans have one stomach and a relatively short digestive tract, suggesting that we need protein sources that can be broken down through a faster rotting process within the gut.

Because all hormones are derivatives of amino acids, if one isn’t getting bioavailable proteins that they can break down effectively, their anabolic hormone profile becomes deficient.

This is why you see a lot of very skinny vegetarians, and why many of them suffer a lot of chronic musculoskeletal challenges as athletes. (The exceptions are people who have genes that are designed to consume largely plant-based diets, such as those whose parents come from regions where there isn’t a lot of flesh foods like inland Aboriginals and people from some regions of India.)

A very large percentage of people who eat vegetarian diets or variations then switch to flesh foods have a beautiful awakening of their physiology. Now, they have adequate bio-availability of amino acids to generate anabolic hormones, so they begin to heal and respond much more favorably to the stress of exercise.

How your body responds to a new diet

Lastly, many going from eating a standard diet with meat in it have just as miraculous a response when switching to vegan and vegetarian approaches. Why?

Only 4-6 percent of all the food eaten worldwide is organic, so most people making this switch have spent their lives eating commercially farmed animals and fish. Considering all animals bio-accumulate toxins, they probably have very high levels of toxicity in their bodies, triggering all sorts of health challenges.

When someone switches to a plant-based diet, the intake of soluble and insoluble fiber goes way up, resulting in the enhanced detoxification of his/her body. So, there are all sorts of improvements in their physiology and regulatory systems that were previously hampered by toxic influences.

Also, with removal of flesh foods, one learns very quickly that it takes a lot more variety in plant foods, legumes, beans and fruits to gain satiety. This change automatically results in a much broader spectrum of nutritional factors, which usually greatly improves all aspects of their physiology (people often notice their cognitive functions improve very quickly).

This approach is commonly used in natural cancer treatment centers around the world, and works until the body starts becoming deficient in proteins/amino acids. Later on, these people begin to show signs of hormonal dis-regulation and protein deficiency (generally within 1-3 years, sometimes as long as 5 years depending on their genetic profile and other lifestyle factors).

Colds, flus, chronic fatigue and an inability to recover from physical stress (hard work and exercise) are all common findings among such people, and I’ve rehabilitated a very long string of people with these challenges.

If you have not read Nutrition and Physical Degeneration by Weston A. Price, I highly recommend you do so if you want to see the pioneering research in this area. The evidence is crystal clear in his research.

I could cite many other books and research papers backing what I’m sharing here, but Weston A. Price’s book is the magnum opus on the topic and reading it encapsulates what a long string of other books and research papers merely verify.

I hope this gives you the clarity you seek.

Love and chi,

Paul