Nutritional Controversies You Have To Hear by Dr. Anthony Chaffee

[Music] I'm so thrilled to have you here in person. Welcome to the Chief Life podcast. >> Oh, thank you very much for having me. It's a pleasure. >> Thank you so much for coming all the way from Perth. So, we spoke already before and I've already asked you all the basic carnivore questions and now I would like to clarify some of the controversies. Sure. some of the things I'm going to ask uh they're not my opinion but that's what's out there what I'm being asked and what I'm hearing. >> Mhm. >> So when I look at your Instagram and this is going to be like a long long intro to these questions. When I look at your Instagram the first two things that pop up it's um we don't need fiber and plants want to kill you. >> So let's start with the fiber. Um there is a lot of evidence that fiber can be beneficial to the human health because uh the gut bacteria fermentss the fiber and produces short chain fatty acids such as butyrate which can be anti-inflammatory and help to improve our gut lining or heal our gut lining. So although fiber is not essential for us to survive, it can be beneficial to the human health. Do you agree with this or what would you say about this? You >> usually not the the thing with butyrate is that these are these short the short- chain fatty acids that that get released when if you have certain gut bacteria um then they can eat the fiber. This is these are the the gut bacteria that are in actual herbivores that ferment completely the fiber or near completely the fiber and produce a lot of short- chain fatty acids which are 100% saturated and then those bacteria die off and then they get absorbed as protein. So the majority of of animals that are herbivores that eat fibrous plants, they get the majority of their nutrition from that degradation fermentation of fiber and they absorb well they eat the fiber but they absorb fat and protein. We can't do that. So there just because there are some bacteria that can still do that in our guts doesn't mean we can do this in this large scale process. We don't have a very large colon. We don't have an extremely elongated seat gum. We just have an appendix. It's very small. So any animal that predominantly eats fiber is capable of breaking down large quantities of that fiber and getting the majority of their nutrition from it. We are not in that category. We get a very small amount of those short- chain fatty acids. And I say, well, this is, you know, this is an this has anti-inflammatory effects. I agree. This can be beneficial for your intercites. I agree. But that doesn't mean that that's the only place that you get them from. When you're in a state of ketosis, one of the main ketone bodies is hydroxybutyrate, which is the same thing. And that that can feed your interosytes. It also feeds your brain. It also feeds your heart. And so, in fact, it's not just your intestines that like these short- chain fatty acids and ketones. The majority of your body uh prefers these ketones. And um you know, people say, "Well, you need glucose for your brain." But if you have enough ketones and enough glucose, your brain, well, twothirds of your brain, the neoortex included, will only run on ketones. And it's only when those ketones get low that you start using glucose. So the the idea that we, you know, need ketones. Well, you don't necessarily do either because there are a lot of people on a zero fiber carbohydrate-rich non- ketogenic diet and their intestines don't die, do they? Right? So just because it's better fuel doesn't mean it's the only fuel and that you'll die because of it. So it's not essential. And the only the only reason that you would need those short- chain fatty acids for your interosites is if you were eating a carbohydrate rich diet and not eating your natural diet of meat and water and you'd be making copious amounts of these things. And you know there are other arguments as well for why fiber is beneficial. But every time one of those gets put down, they sort of shift the goalpost and say, "Well, it's because you'll get constipated." Like, okay, what? No one was getting constipated before the 1980s and they weren't eating much fiber. And actually, you do random you do um experimental data and they actually find that people are more symptomatic with more fiber and less symptomatic with less fiber. When you eliminate fiber, at least in this one study, they uh the only study that's experimental in design that's that can show a cause and effect relationship showed that eliminating all fiber actually alleviated all symptoms of constipation and improved motility and trans um uh transfer through your intestines. So couldn't really say that anymore. And then like, well, well, you know, it's uh the microbiome, and we we know next to nothing about the microbiome. And so, you can just say, well, you need it for your microbiome, and it's sort of it's sort of a of a sort of a scapegoat, you know, sort of thing. You just ah microbiome. And we since we know nothing about the microbiome really. Um, you can sort of get away with that for a while. Uh, but no, you certainly don't need it. Certainly not for for the short chain fatty acids. >> Yeah, great. That's a great explanation. Thank you. So, now to the second controversy. plants are trying to kill us. >> So if plants are trying to kill us, how do you explain that? There are some people on this planet, they eat vegetables, fruits, they also eat meat. >> Um they have like just an omnivorous diet with everything in it and they live very healthy life and they live until they're 100 plus years old. >> And there's people that smoke and drink and do the same. It doesn't mean that that's the the best way that they could live. It doesn't mean that those are the best things that they could ever possibly do. Slow poison is still poison. Just because it doesn't kill you right away doesn't mean that it's not causing some sort of harm and delletterious effect. The chronic diseases that we're treating nowadays, heart failure, heart disease, cancer, diabetes, autoimmunity, osteoporosis, arthritis, all these sorts of things, dementia, most of these are a byproduct of eating an inappropriate diet for our species. And we see this in other animal species that when fed an inappropriate diet, plants and other kibble and nonsense that they're not supposed to eat, they're not doesn't exist in nature that they get these same diseases that we get. And you remove those foods, you put them back on their natural diet, and those problems go away. And then now we're seeing people with these extremely severe illnesses reverse them. Yeah, I have I'm we're seeing more and more of this. We're we're looking to put together a case series and possibly even a a study looking at this, like a randomized control trial looking at congestive heart failure, people that have extremely low ejection fraction where their heart just really can't pump blood anymore and uh eventually once medications fail you and your heart keeps getting worse and worse, different surgeries can possibly help. Eventually, you need a heart transplant. So, it's a major major major issue and it's a it's a big killer. People die from this and then you get a heart transplant, you're on imunosuppressants and you're going to get infections and cancers and it only lasts a certain period of time and you sort of have you get more years out of your life, but it's you have a extremely truncated survival after that. And now they go on a carnivore diet. They eat what they what we humans have been eating for millions of years. Then all of a sudden in months, not even years, months, they have normal injection fractions for normal the normal population. So that's amazing. And and so you're removing something what toxins. You're removing things that are that are harmful for you. The fact that plants don't want you to eat them is a hard biological and botanical fact. I mean, that isn't really up for debate debate. I've seen uh people that have tried to uh debunk what I'm saying by putting on different um evolutionary biologists and saying that oh well people ate a mixed diet and they even say themselves and and you know the icy places up north they were really only eating meat. Other places maybe they ate a mixed diet. Well the thing is we evolved during the ice ages and much of the planet was covered in ice and the fossil record is very clear. when the ice shelves came down, humans went up into the ice. And so, what else was there to eat? They were eating meat. And um the funny thing is is that this this lady that uh did a did a talk on um like a TED talk about basically debunking the Paleo diet. They're saying, "Well, this isn't really a P." No, she's not talking about the carnivore diet. She's talking about the Paleo diet movement. And the Paleo diet movement isn't really what Paleolithic men ate because people ate different things in different areas. But really what it was, it was a carnivore diet, especially in those icy places. And she even said that. So that they're these paleo people, they're eating all these plants and roots and tubers. These things didn't even exist back then. And there's all these new changes that we've had genetically. Like breaking down starches from these starchy root vegetables is a very recent genetic adaptation. That's not something we were doing for millions of years, only thousands or tens of thousands of years. And the vegetables we were eating in, you know, 50,000 years ago were, you know, well, the foods that we're eating now, the vegetables we're eating now didn't exist 50,000 years ago, I should say. And that's one thing that she actually said as well completely independently. I don't know her from Adam, but on on her talk on the the TED talk and some of her other talks, she shows this this field out in Mexico, and she says, "Oh, look at this. There's all this food every everywhere and this looks like you could, you know, eat whatever you wanted, but you really can't because plants are trying to kill you. They're toxic. They make toxins to defend themselves. All living. So, it was funny because this lady who they tried to debunk what I was saying. They used her, but they, you know, carefully omitted anything valid that she said to the argument. And she herself said my line, which is plants are trying to kill you. And uh because they are because all living things have a defense. Animals can run away or fight back. Plants can't. They're stationary. So they they involve themselves in chemical warfare. They make over a million different defensive chemicals designed to kill, disable, or sterilize the animals and insects trying to eat them. They have a lot of hormonal disruptors that will just stop you from being able to reproduce. So that even if you eat these plants, you're not going to have kids that you can teach to go eat those plants anymore. Uh they can be directly toxic. Most plants on Earth will kill most animals and certainly us. And this is why herbivores that eat plants, they eat very specific plants. They can't go outside of that or they can get very sick. In fact, in veterary medicine, we know that um especially in livestock medicine, we know that when an animal's in a pasture and they get locked down for a while and they they run out of their normal forage and they maybe not not getting as much feed, they're sort of maybe maybe um not getting as much care and attention as they need. They they can start eating other plants sort of because they need to and they can get very sick. And so there's names for these diseases, so-called diseases like we have diabetes and cancer and autoimmunity. They have big tongue, big head, limp neck, crazy cow syndrome. And we we see these diseases and these pathologies that make these animals very sick and can eventually even kill them. And but people have figured out that these are from plant toxins. And so we just haven't recognized that the chronic diseases that we're treating now are a consequence of these plant toxins or other toxins. There's a lot of toxins in the world, but plants definitely make them. They are they're one of the great uh chemists of the world. And that that is from a professor of botany from Cambridge University who's head of their um uh botanical gardens at Cambridge, Dr. uh John Parker. And he specifically said that that plants are the great chemists of the world. They make all these noxious chemicals to try to stop you from eating them, to make you very sick or to kill you, and that they're not safe to eat. And he said himself in 2011 on that video that's still up on the Cambridge University uh YouTube channel that you should become a carnivore. Just don't eat this stuff. Just eat meat. That's what's safe. So, it's not just me saying this. Uh, that's a botanical fact. Most people don't study botney because they find it boring, but it's not. It's actually very interesting. And if they just open up any textbook on botney, they would see all the different toxins and chemicals that are in there. And then people say, "Well, but the the plants that we eat, obviously those are those are safe." Well, they're safer and we call them edible plants. The vast there's 400,000 plant species in the world. Most of them will kill you. Most of them will kill most animals. And so the ones that are edible, that doesn't mean that they're completely safe. That just means that they're not going to kill us on that day. And so that's a very important distinction. And just like if you smoke cigarettes and you drink alcohol and you don't die that day, but over the years and over the decades, these issues and these poisons build up in your system, they disrupt your normal physiology and your normal biology and you manifest these diseases like diabetes, like autoimmunity, and so on. And so we're finding that when you just take those away that those problems go away. And it's not just the processed food that they're going away from. These are from people that are doing a clean, healthy, omnivorous diet with whole fruits and vegetables, whole grains, whole meats, or even a clean keto diet where they they cut out all these other things as well as just nice new veggies and nice meat. and or even vegetarian vegan diets where it's just whole food everything. It's not until people are getting rid of the plants that their health issues are completely going away. Now, they can get improvements all along the way. As as the more you clean up your diet, you get away from processed foods, seed oils, sugars, processed and refined carbohydrates, you're going to get better. Absolutely. And so, you you're sort of in this spectrum of of health. But what is at the far end of optimal health, I would argue, is just our natural evolved diet, which is the carnivore diet. We've been apex predators for over 2 million years. Apex predators by definition are carnivores and plants have toxins. And so if you eat them, you will get toxicity to greater or lesser extents. But a lot of these people, they'll improve when they get off processed food garbage diet, no matter what direction they go in. and then they might still have other problems, autoimmunity. And sometimes people go plant-based and then years later autoimmunity starts building up and they start getting diabetes and they start getting neurological dysfunction. They start getting kidney failure and I've had patients that fit all those descriptions. I have patients that that have every single one of those issues plaguing them on a clean whole food plant-based diet. And it's not until they dump the plants and only eat meat that they alleviate all their symptoms. So I think it's very clear that these plants are toxic. We know they're toxic. We've known for thousands of years they're toxic. They're in every botney or horiculture book in the world. And this is something that we've known for thousands of years. We've known that plants can cause certain diseases. Adele Davis was a nutritionist from 100 years ago, very smart lady, well ahead of her time, and she talked about oxalates and how toxic they were and how you needed to if you you don't just eat raw spinach, you needed to poach it in milk because the oxalates would bind to the calcium. They would chilate it out. So, you had to neutralize the oxalates before you ate them. This is something that people knew for thousands and thousands and thousands of years. That's why they ferment things. That's why they cooked things and mixed them with with ash or clay to lower the toxic load. Um corn was then called maze was only um only eaten if it was prepared in a certain process called nishtomalization which is a seven sevenstep process of chemical heat and um uh processing soaking it in lie for 24 hours mixing other chemicals with it doing all these other sorts of things to lower the toxic load and increase the bioavailability of the nutrients because that's another way that plants defend themselves is by just not being as nutritious. They bind up their nutrients in ways that we can't access because we don't have the enzymes to break them down. So, we through technology, we figured out how to break those bonds and release those nutrients and to lower the toxic load. And that's why we've prepared plants in very specific ways for thousands of years. And because they're poisonous, because they're toxic and we knew that. And in the last century, we've we've been told to forget it. And that's something just we need to rediscover. I'm not I'm not inventing the wheel here. The wheel's been invented. We just forgotten about it. And so I all I'm trying to do is just, you know, reawaken that large body of understanding that plants have toxins and you need to prepare them in certain ways to lower the toxic load if you're going to eat them. But if you don't have to eat them, if you're not starving and you know you're not in that position or you don't want to eat them, just eating meat is is a perfect way to avoid those toxins. You get everything you need just by eating that. >> That's super fascinating. I actually wanted to ask you one of my questions that I had ready for you was is there any study that compared people going from healthy omnivorous diet that's doesn't have any ultrarocessed foods just organic veggies and fruits and meat >> to carnivorous diet and and then having better results? >> No, we don't we don't really have those studies out yet. Um, you know, before this when I was talking um on the phone before when we were on our way here, I was talking to my friend Dr. Paul Mason. We're actually looking into doing those studies and we're sort and we're and we're going to be publishing our case reports and case studies and case series because we have a large number of patients that have massively improved their health from a clean omnivorous diet or a vegetarian diet or uh a standard processed food garbage diet. And they all improve by going on exclusively meat and they reverse diseases that are not supposed to be reversed. I had a patient the other day that had for congestive heart failure his ejective infection fraction was 14. It's extremely low and in 3 months it was up over 55%. So that's normal. And so we're going to start publishing these and we're looking at doing randomized control trials to really show once and for all like look this this uh either works or it doesn't. I mean, we're not we're not going in with we have an idea of what they're going to show because we see it in clinical practice. And when you have a patient who's who's going about the standard of care and they're just getting progressively worse and progressively worse and progressively worse and then you change their diet and everything else stays the same and they just recover in a matter of months, you it would be unethical to not suggest that to your other patients as well because you see it work and then it works again and again and again and again. And so that's something that we're seeing now as clinicians. And there are thousands of studies and randomized control trials on highfat meat-based ketogenic diet. So maybe still have some vegetables, but a carnivore diet is a ketogenic diet. And so that falls in that category. And so you can you can extrapolate a lot of of of good data from that or what you would expect from someone doing a ketogenic carnivore diet from what you would expect um the outcomes of those studies to be. And when you actually do a ketogenic diet where the carbohydrates are below 20 grams or even better yet below 10 grams or zero grams, then uh and you're eating a lot of animal fats, you're not eating a lot of seed oils and Crisco and all that sort of stuff because there are studies using those vegetable oils and not people not having very good outcomes or animals not having very good outcomes. But when using actual highfat meat-based ketogenic carnivore diets, people improve dramatically in all these different health outcomes. is the most rigorously studied diet in human history. Is the only diet that's been studied with this much rigor with this these amounts of high quality randomized control trials and in humans. And so we just see benefit after benefit after benefit. So now the shift is starting to move. Okay. Well, well, we know carbohydrates can damage your metabolism and your physiology in certain ways due to insulin and blood glucose levels. seed oils can cause insulin resistance and you damage your cell's ability to bring in uh glucose and energy. And so we we understand that, but now people are starting to understand, well, actually there are toxins in plants. That's a thing. And it's like, oh yeah, that's right. I forgot about that. Well, we know thousands of years of of data on the fact that plants are toxic. Um and so they used to kill people, poison people. They used to slip hemlock, night shades, all these sorts of things in their food, then that's how they would kill them. So now people are starting to figure that out and they want to do specifically carnivore diets. And so now more are starting to are are starting to get out there now and and that's what we're looking to do. Um, but that's actually what we were talking about was specifically not doing just okay, you eat whatever and have this randomized control. I was just eating garbage whatever and then carnivore because of course that's going to be better. And people are already saying, "Well, yes, people are getting better, but it's because they're just getting rid of processed food." Great. So, why don't we not do the standard diet? Why don't we have carnivore diet and the Mediterranean diet, which most people say that's the best way to go? This also is um a bit of a of an absurdity anyway because there is no Mediterranean diet. Mediterranean is a big place with a lot of countries and cultures. And so the Italian diet, the French diet, the Spanish diet, the Portuguese diet, the unique Syrian diet, Algerian diet, >> see, you know, diet made from organic fruits and veggies and meat and then compare it to carnival. >> Yeah, like a a healthy omnivorous diet. You could call it Mediterranean diet. >> It might be subject. That's so super interesting. And there study needs to be done on that. That would be interesting because I think also it's a difference. You can be on Meditaran and diet but what if the fruits and veggies are not organic and therefore pesticide and herbicide then of course you'll be better being carnivore that doesn't have the pesticide and >> and that's and that's a difficulty too because one of the one of the thoughts was well what about a vegetarian diet or a vegan diet and compare those two. It's just like, okay, well, can you ethically put someone on a vegan or vegetarian diet without supplements because we know that there are nutrients that are that cannot be obtained on a vegan diet and is that but but you know, but putting them on a vegan diet and a and a carnivore is like, okay, well, let's see what happens. Well, we know that they're going to get >> would be better. I think the the diff the interesting would be having healthy omnivorous diet that's organic and comparing to carnivor. >> Yeah. the healthy balanced diet should do. I'll be subject I'll be happy to try. I love experimenting as you know I've done all my testing and experiments. But I want to quickly just ask one question about the genetics because there's lot of um experts out there saying that not everyone is genetically predisposed to being on a strict carnivore diet because of the area where they grew up. And also because even if we were a full carnivore thousands millions years ago, which is unclear if we were, even if we were, our genes would have changed because of the environmental influences, which means that today now our genes probably would not be fully accustomed to be on the pure carnivore diet. That's what some experts out there say. What do you have to say about that? >> Well, the thing is is that you don't need special adaptations to eat meat. Meat is the most bioavailable and nutritious food that exists because animal doesn't have to be poisonous in order to protect itself. It needs to run away. It needs to have hooves, you know, and and people think that um you know that that herbivores are you know um uh you know don't have any defenses and and and everything like that. But the the out of the five killers, five top killers in Africa called the big five, four of those are herbivores. Elephants, rhinos, hippos, cape buffalo, and then lions is is the fifth one on there. Um I don't know which what order they are in, but um for those herbivores, they're not trying to kill you to eat you and hunt you. They are trying to kill you so you don't kill and eat them. And so that that is their defense is that they will stomp you out and kill you before you kill it or they'll run away, right? And so they have defenses and so their meat doesn't need to be toxic in order to defend them. I mean, they have some things have stingers and poisons and venoms and things like that, but the meat itself is typically not toxic. Um, a plant a plant is. So you don't need special adaptations to eat meat. In fact, herbivores will opportunistically eat meat as well. And sometimes, you know, they're they're given blood and bone meal and things like that as part of the feed in feed lots because it's so nutritious. And so they give that to these animals because the grain is not nutritious. Um, so we don't need special genetics to eat meat. You don't need to be specially adapted to eat meat. You need to be specially adapted to eat plants. And the agricultural revolution was about 8 to 10,000 years ago. That is not enough time to get fully adapted to those plants and those plant toxins and be able to extract all those nutrients. You can't just turn into an herbivore in 10,000 years. You can't. And in fact, if people had and they've diverged so much that they were now herbivores and they weren't adapted to eat meat and they were optimized by eating plants, they would be a different species of animal. they would be completely different because that that's a major hallmark of species when we're looking at well what is a different species and sub species of a certain genus. One of the major things is what do they eat? Good example of orchid whales. There's there's two kinds of orca whales. Ones are very much smaller ones are much bigger. The smaller ones eat more fish. Those are typically the ones we see in you know aquariums and things like that at you know SeaWorld and things. And then then there are much larger ones. And these are the ones that go after seals and larger and whales, other whales and things like that. And they don't interact. They don't have similar communications. They don't socialize. They don't interbreed. And they eat different things. And so they're considered different species. And so people say, "Well, these two orcas, they eat different diets." Well, first of all, they're both carnivores. Second of all, so they're not adapted to different plants, but they also are considered a different species. So you will never find two members of the same species that have a different optimal diet. Now you may have two individuals in of a specific species that eat different things due to opportunity but that doesn't mean that's what's optimal for them. And where whereas there are some people that have been exposed to plants uh like I said you know starches that was that was a very new adaptation but it it grew very well. it was a it was beneficial for survival. Um but that's it's very recent that that happened. But those populations that have been exposed to agriculture uh more recently they or or more distantly they have more adaptations and so they can potentially tolerate these toxins more and get a bit more out of them. But that doesn't mean it's optimal. It just means it's less harmful. So if I was got more sick from uh lead poisoning than you did, it doesn't mean that lead's good for you. It just means it's less bad for you. And then you have populations like the native Australians, Native Americans, the Annette, the Messiah, all these sorts of people that when they're introduced to a post post agricultural um way of eating, they get very sick and they get a far higher rate of the so-called chronic diseases that we were just talking about that I think are caused by plant toxicities and malnutrition. And they get them. They don't get them when the pre-aggricultural society when they're eating in a pre-aggricultural fashion. Then they eat post-aggricultural food, not even junk food, but just, you know, grains and plants and things like that. And then they get all those so-called diseases of civilization, which is what anthropologists call that transition. They go from huntergatherer issues like infectious disease and injuries to then uh diseases of civilization, which are all the chronic diseases that we get. So obviously that has something to do with their environment and specifically their food. So the food is causing the disease. So they say, "Well, well, people from the Middle East or Northern Africa and Europe and things like that, they've had agriculture longer, but they all get the diseases as well. They just get it at lower rates. And so they have some ability to defend themselves a bit better, but they still get these problems. They still get heart disease. They still get diabetes. They still get cancer. They still get autoimmunity. They still get all of these heart failure. all these things that that these these um more native populations get that are more recent additions to post agricultural societies, but they all get it. It's the same diseases. And so people from Australia and and North America, you know, the here originally were um they get far more sick far more quickly, but it's the same diseases. They don't get different diseases. So it's not like they're getting, oh my god, they're getting poison from these plants and they get something we've never seen before. They get the exact same things that everybody else gets. They just get it at a higher rate. So that's clear that we're not fully adapted to them. >> Okay. Well, that's that's a really good explanation, but let's move away from the chronic disease and talk about athletes. So >> especially endurance athletes. Um, you know, taking glucose for endurance performance is very prevalent. And I can tell from my own experience when you try to run a marathon on the road really fast, having the glucose gel does give you really quick uh energy hit. >> I tried the carnivore diet on ultramarathon run on the trail which is not as fast and that felt amazing, but I think that if I ran a road marathon, the glucose would probably work better. And that's one of my questions. Do you know any athletes that run actually marathon really fast without carbohydrates? And the second thing, um, as a woman and ultramarathon runner, I've spoken to a few doctors. Two of them are proponents of the carnivore diet, and they both told me that I should not be on a full strict carnivore diet all year round because of my hormones and because of the running performance. >> Yeah. Well, the thing is you could always try, you know, doing a street marathon and and see how you perform. you know, that's the simple test. Um, but uh there are certainly are, you know, top athletes and and marathoners. The a world champion uh in the Iron Man is Pete Jacobs, and he doesn't just do keto. He specifically does and did carnivore. Um, and there's uh, you know, Chris Froom, who is a three or four time tour to France winner, a very grueling endurance sort of you have to be going fast as hell for a long time. Um, and he he's been on ketogenic diets. And um, there's another gentleman as well. I I'm I'm struggling to remember his name, but he's like a world champion, just absolutely legend in Iron Man competitions. And he says very clearly, if you want to do the Iron Man, you want to do these big endurance competitions, do not eat carbohydrates. They they work against you. Um, the reason being is that when you eat carbohydrates, it raises your insulin. Insulin forces energy into cells. It doesn't allow it to come out of cells. And so your insulin gets up to a certain point. Your your fat cells are locked down. You can't access those cells as energy. But that is your body's normal uh nutrition and energy source. That's your your gas tank. And now it's shut off. You have for a 65 kilo person, you have uh the capability to maximally store when you're, you know, carb loading and things like that, your glycogen stores about 2300 kilo calories of energy in your liver and your muscles of of glycogen. But in that same 65 kilo person who's only 6% body fat. So like a top athlete just shredded, they have over 35,000 kilo calories of energy in that 6% body fat. So if you are eating carbs, then you need to keep eating carbs because you'll run out of that glycogen and you need to keep taking in glucose in order to to ramp you up. But if you're not eating carbs and you're fully keto adapted, you actually find that you can tap into your 35,000 plus kilo calories of energy, you're not going to run out of that. And >> it's going to be harder for the body to convert it first. >> No, actually it's it's uh it's um uh actually easier. So your body's body's doing this on its own. So there was a study um in 2018 that uh showed that looked at high intensity in fact endurance athletes world class uh distance athletes are doing like ultramarathons and things like that. So specifically in the ultramarathon class of people that people that had already been doing keto for a long period of time other people that were just doing the carb approach with all the gels and sugars and things like that. So in the keto group that had a a group of people that had been on a ketogenic diet, so keto adapted for at least 9 months. The average was 20 months, so they've been on it for a significant period of time. And they did three sets of tests. They did a 100 mile run and they did a short burst sprint and then and another maximal uh sort of exertion test. And they found that the keto group actually outperformed the carb group in all three uh of those trials. The 100mile run didn't come to statistical significance, but that is what the data showed that these guys did better. And uh but for the for the other two, the the keto group absolutely to statistical significance absolutely outperformed them. The interesting part to your point is that they did muscle biopsies and they checked the glycogen levels uh of all the athletes and in fact they found pre-workout they both both groups had the same amount of glycogen. Post-workout they had the same amount of glycogen. Actually the the keto group actually had slightly more glycogen. And then three hours post-workout when the carb group was sucking down gels and drinking, you know, sugary drinks and things like that, they both had the exact same glycogen as well. And so your body will naturally replenish your glycogen. And in fact, you don't need it as much as as people say because the thought was is that high performance athletes have to have carbohydrates because above like 60% V2 max, you're working your body really hard, your body switches to burning carbs. And that's why they say it's like, oh, you in this zone two sort of exercise, you're burning fat, but you go above that and you're only burning carbs. Well, that's only if you're eating carbs. If that is that the case. So in that group as well, they found that the the keto adapted group at like 90 plus uh% V3 max, they were still uh largely uh burning fat. And so they're going they're getting energy through fat oxidization. So your muscles in your body actually run on fat. >> Yeah. >> And you can run on fat and you and any glycogen or glucose that you need, your body makes. Uh they did this in wolves. They found wolves are in ketosis. Found that lions are in ketosis. And they looked at wolves and it was a study in 1981 and they said well you know do you know wolves you know and that was at the time where everyone was just like you have to eat carbs you have to eat carbs as an athlete and they said well you know wolves don't carb blow before they chase caribou for 10 hours okay so you know what is you know do they have blood sugar they have glycogen um and I found yes they do and it's rock solid it does not shift their body's constantly replenishing it so they they check them at different times they rest. They're in the middle of a hunt. They've just got their kill. They've eaten their kill. All these sorts of things. They just electric just here the whole time. And so that happens to us too. Um and so especially for athletes, I think it is is vitally important and advantageous to do this. I experienced this as an athlete myself. I never felt better. I never had more energy. I never crashed ever. And um it was it was a massive advantage for me as an athlete. it was night and day. As far as hormones are concerned, I would sort of push back a bit and say, well, why would a why would the female of this species need a different diet to the male of the species? And how would you figure that out in the wild? Because it has to be it has to be something that would make sense 50,000 years ago on an ice shelf. You know, something would have to tell you, well, because of your hormones, you know, two, you know, for a week preceding your period, you know, you need more carbohydrates. you need carbohydrates because that helps with hormonal whatever. >> I think maybe they're saying it to interrupt you because back in that time women didn't run ultramarathons. They were sitting in a cave looking after kids. So maybe >> they trying to say that women's body is not accustomed to that kind of physical activity and if you choose to do that you need maybe different diet. That's just what I've heard >> maybe. But the thing is is that you know gazelle they run just as much as as the men. Lions run more than the men. >> We're animals. >> We're animals. >> Yeah. >> I know. >> But we are though, you know, and it's important to remember that. And you know, female whales swim thousands and thousands and thousands of miles >> without eating the entire time to go to to breeding grounds and have their babies and nurse them and then swim thousands of miles back to their feeding grounds. Right. and so do the males, >> right? So you you shouldn't be able to see that difference in disparity. So, you know, because biologically, you know, we have the same nutritional demands. We may may need more or less of certain things at certain times, but we're still humans and lions are still lions. And you know, when when lions are going through estrus, they don't start digging up root tubers and eating berries off trees or anything like that. They just eat meat. They eat the same things. And that's what you see all the way through um you know the animal kingdom. And so also 50,000 years ago, people were moving and migrating under harsh conditions. Women were also still working. You know, men maybe were doing more of the hunting and all that sort of stuff, but you know, women were still doing a lot of hard work because it was a hard life. Um and either way, you know, that that's what we'd have to sort of think. How would how would they just figure like I need I mean, we didn't have chocolate then. they didn't have like, you know, a bakery that they could just go to. Um, they just had what was available to them. So, something would have to be naturally figured out like, oo, I need to pick up a tuber now or something like that. Um, but, you know, then you have the Eskimos, the Inuit, um, those sorts of, you know, Native Alaskans that they're in areas that are just iced over 247, you know, uh, 365. Um, especially during the ice ages. I mean, what were people eating when they crossed the land bridge from Asia to North America when it was just a block of ice, 2500 miles of north of what is now Seattle, which was under a mile high block of ice, right? There were no plants to eat. There was no carbs to eat. And so, if that disrupted their hormones, and they're migrating, they're walking hundreds of miles, thousands of miles. And so, if they're if they needed that for their hormones or they became hormonally deficient and defunct, they wouldn't have been able to procreate. you wouldn't have made it past a few generations. People would have died out. They wouldn't have made it across that bridge. So, I don't see that making sense. And I don't see the argument now because I I do hear that argument. Well, women need carbohydrates. Well, good news. You make carbohydrates. And so, all the carbohydrates you need, your body makes on its own. You make and and you will never not have normal blood sugar. So, what do we need? We need to be hypoglycemic. So, we need we need to be diabetic two months out, two weeks out of the month. and that that helps our hormones. That doesn't make any sense. >> That would that would harm you. And in fact, um you know, you you check your blood sugar all the time. You check your glycogen levels all the time. They will be perfect spoton all the time on just a meat only diet. And in fact, that was one of the things Professor Tim No found when he was looking at athletes was that yes, you could get similar performance when people were eating carbs. You could get similar or even better performance when people were not eating carbs. But one of the things in the carb groups is that they were all deranging their bloods and their metabolic health was getting worse. Even though these people were top athletes, they were all becoming pre-diabetic. >> I agree. >> You know, so it's it's harmful, I would say. >> Um, okay. So, just few questions. We don't have to go into too much detail. I just want to know your opinion. >> Yeah. >> Children, I know that you think that children also should be on carnivore diet. But some experts have a problem with the psychological side of the thing. They say that if children are on such a restrictive diet growing up, they can develop eating disorders and other like unhealthy relationships with food. >> The the opposite is true because the thing is when we started vilifying fat and meat, uh that's when the eating disorders started becoming much more prevalent. Hey guys, just want to take a second to thank our sponsor at Carnivore Bar. I don't promote many products because honestly all you need to be healthy is to just eat meat. for those times that you're out hiking, road tripping, or stuck at work and you want nutritious snack that is just meat, fat, and salt if you want it. The Carnivore Bar is a great option. So, I like this product not because it's just pure meat, but also because I want the carnivore market to thrive as well. And the more we support meatonly products, the more meatonly products there will be available in the mainstream. So, if this sounds like something you'd like to get behind, check it out using my discount code, Anthony, to get 10% off, which also applies to subscriptions, giving you 25% off total. All right, thanks, guys. And we started saying, "Oo, meat's bad. Fat's bad. Ooh, stay away from it." That's when the eating disorder started. And um so I I see the exact opposite. The thing is is that why would eating our natural diet cause an eating disorder? I mean, do lions have an eating disorder? I mean, koalas only eat eucalyptus. Obviously, they're orthorexic and they're just crazed about their about their diet. You're supposed to food is nutrition. And so, if you teach your kids that food is about nutrition, it's not about entertainment. It's not about fun. It's it's just food, then they'll have a much healthier relationship with food. >> That's what my parents told me. They always said, "You eat to live. You don't live to eat." >> That's it. >> Every single day, my mom was telling that food is not an entertainment. It's your nourishment. Yeah, >> I grew up very heavily meat based diet because herb. So yeah, that's great. I agree. But the next question then, >> if everyone on this whole planet ate meat, would that be sustainable? >> Yes. >> Oh. >> So the thing is that animals make the environment better. They make the land better. They make the soil better. They they reintroduce um nutrients. I mean, that's what manure and and urine is. It's fertilizer. They drink water out of a stream or a creek and they go into a field and they irrigate that field not only with water but with all these nutrients, nitrogens and and uh and and vitamins and minerals and things like that that are good for the plants. Um so animals and plants are in an ecosystem that's part of the the very complex structures of the ecosystem. When people start screwing with that, everything goes wrong. When you take animals off of a piece of land, that land turns to desert. And that's because the animals are unable to eat down the old grasses and plants. And so the new grasses are trying to come up and they they get starved for light and they die or the just the fact that these big animals with their hooves are sort of digging up the ground a bit or making a bit uneven. Now rain doesn't just wash wash off all the top soil and all the seeds and um wash away. it actually pulls up and actually sinks down in and you improve the groundwater and those seeds actually take instead of being washed away. They also um you know when you look at the you know the great plains in North America when there were over 100 million bison and hundreds of millions of other deer and analopee and other large game bunched and moving because they had predators looking after them. So they weren't just spread out over grazing. and they were bunched in and they had to keep moving. Had to keep moving. Uh that was extremely beneficial. The the grasslands evolved with the big ruminant animals and you take the ruminant animals away the grasslands die and they have this problem in Africa now because they they they don't have enough ruminants and enough grazing animals and so they have to to burn this old gr the the old grasses down so to make way for the new grasses or else it all turns to desert and all dies out. And so they um burn this one hectare of grasslands burn like this puts out more pollution and worse pollution than um than uh 6,000 automobiles and just in Africa and this happens all over the world but just in Africa they are burning over a billion hectares of grasslands every year. So that's the equivalent of six trillion cars every year that that they're pumping out there. So >> if you have ruminance in there, that would take care of that. It would actually improve the environment. And you have the entire globe, including the oceans. 4% of the Earth's surface is arable land that you can grow crops on. Most of Australia is not arable land. Most of it is range land. Um and it's not suitable for plants. It's only suitable for animals. twothirds of the um agricultural land is called marginal land and that's these hilly rocky sort of places that you cannot grow crops. You can only put animals on and you can put animals on it and they make the the the ground better. And 25% of the earth's surface is actually rangeand or forest land that you can run animals through. So the vast majority of the land you can actually run animals on, only a small minority can you grow crops on. And the crops actually destroy the planet because to make a big monocrop or any plant, any crop, you have to necessarily destroy an entire ecosystem. You kill all the plants and animals that live there. You kill all the animals that are trying to eat the plants using pesticides and fertilizers. You're poisoning the water. The wa rain washes it away. Okay. It gets into the uh water supply, kills all the fish. The birds get killed and poisoned. Um the bugs were killing one quadrillion insects a year just in America as we're having less and less insects. That's the base of the food chain. So now you're having less and less birds and lizards and all these other life that depend on those insects. And then other life above them that depend on those smaller animals eating those insects. They're all now dying out and we're getting less and less and less of them. This is an ecological disaster and we're even destroying the earth too. People estimate that we only have about 50 growing cycles left until the earth is done. We can't grow anything more on our farmland. Um and uh so that's serious. We're losing top soil. Top soil is a very valuable resource. Only half an inch. So 1 centimeter uh grows every 500 years. And yet we're losing 27.5 billion tons of top soil every year from our farming practices, from our crop farming practices. That's an area the size of the state of Kentucky, which is the size of European countries every single year. So in fact, not only is it sustainable to go to mostly meat, if not only meat, it's vital. We're actually going to destroy the planet if we don't. >> That's an excellent explanation. Thank you so much. So one last question before we move on to the practical tips. >> Do you believe in herbal medicine? And if you were ill, I hope you'll never become ill, but if you were, would you do herbal medicine? >> Well, I I you know, using things medically is perfectly fine. We've used u herbal medicines for thousands of years and but what is a medicine? It's a poison that confers benefit, more benefit than harm in certain circumstances, but outside that circumstance, it's just conferring harm. And so this is just like any medicine. This is just like antibiotics or you know blood pressure medication or or deoxin for heart failure. You wouldn't take that if you didn't have the problem because it would just cause harm. And dejoxin can stop your heart if you're taking too much of it because that's a plant toxin. It's made in fox club and that wasn't designed by plants to say like oh in in a couple million years these little shaved monkeys are going to have heart failure and I just want to help them, you know, so I'm going to be ready for it. No, they did that to kill and stop the heart of animals trying to eat them. So, it's a poison. And so, you can use that poison carefully because we have we have the intelligence to figure out how these things can help in certain circumstances and even why which is really interesting. But if you don't have those problems, you shouldn't eat them. So, you don't just say, "Oh, well, you should eat a bunch of plants because they have all these medicinal properties." Like, okay, we'll just take a handful of pharmaceuticals because they have all these medicinal properties then. It's the same argument. it's a bad one and you know you shouldn't do it. So you know we we have used u herbal remedies but we've also looked and said okay well what's the active ingredient there? Why is this doing that? Why is it that willow bark helps bring down a fever and and reduce pain and inflammation. Okay, because there's this thing called aspirin in it. Okay, well, let's take it out of there. And so you're not just chewing on tea bar on on willow bark all the time and you get the other things with it because there's other thousands of other chemicals that are in there that you don't necessarily want. So using things medically is great. I do still think that actually using like pharmaceutical. I'm I'm not completely off, you know, normal um alipathic medicine. I still prescribe medications when and as they are required but nutrition covers so much that uh you don't need it as much but uh I do absolutely think that you know you should use medicines as and when you need them. I don't get sick as much if I was very very sick of course I would use that uh something but I I haven't been sick enough to to necessitate that but yes I would uh but I wouldn't I wouldn't use anything for like something small anyway. >> Okay, great. All right, that was excellent. Let's move on to some practical tips, just a few. So, you already mentioned it before, but I ask again, should the carnivore diet be should be ketogenic or doesn't it really does it really matter? Because I've read one thing and I want to point this out that if a diet is too high in protein, it actually has detrimental effect on our bodies, especially on male testosterone. So I just wanted to ask you how to do it right like what should be the ratio of fat and protein. >> You do want you do want more calories derived from fat than protein. When pe when you do get too many calories like the majority of your calories coming from protein. You actually can get a bit of harm. It it's important to distinguish that from just protein is harmful because people say well if you eat more protein then it can damage your kidneys. You can get sick. not in the in the amounts that we're talking about. Um, in fact, higher protein diets have been shown to improve kidney function and get and reverse kidney uh disease. Um, it's when you're when you're talking about getting 60 70 80% of calories from protein, that's when you start getting problems. Uh, and that's called protein poisoning, protein sickness. And a rabbit starvation is something what it was called as well. People get voraciously hungry and they would just be and they would start getting sick and they could die. Um, but you know, your body tracks nutrients. It doesn't track calories. And so, you know, when you're just getting protein, you're missing all these nutrients that come in the fat. And you can just, your body's just like, "No, we need more. We need more. We need more." And there's a little bit in rabbits. And so, you're getting more. You have to eat more. You have to eat more. But then you're not getting enough and you can die. Um, so you want usually about at least one gram of fat to one gram of protein or 1 to two grams of fat to one gram of protein. That's usually about the range. And so that ends up being about 70 to 80% calories from fat, which is what we we often see in the wild. That's what what most animals are getting as well, carnivores and herbivores, because carnivores are eating animals with fat and they go for the fat first, but also herbivores because again, they break down fiber into saturated fat and protein. And so they get about a similar ratio, one to two grams of fat to one gram of protein. And that's what what I aim for as well. um carbohydrates. Uh look, if you're if you're not able to get enough fat and and and you're getting like 80% calories from protein, I'd say it's better to get, you know, some some cal, you know, another 40% calories from carbs to just offset that because it's not uh it can build up and cause harm. But no, I think you should definitely avoid carbohydrates. I think a carnivore diet, it is a ketogenic diet. I think it should remain a ketogenic diet. Um because being in ketosis, that's our natural metabolic state. That's the natural metabolic state of nearly every animal on Earth, carnivores and herbivores. We already talked about lions and wolves, but every carnivore. 70% of all animal species are carnivores. They just eat meat. And there so they're getting fat and protein. They're not getting carb. They're in ketosis. And also herbivores that just eat fibrous plants or predominantly fibrous plants. Again, they're just getting fat and protein. They're breaking down that glucose. actually the mic microbes in their gut are eating the glucose and then as a byproduct they're making saturated fat and dying off and being used as protein. So they're all in that sort of keto state, that ketogenic starvation state. And so I think that's that's very much our benefit our beneficial uh state. Um and there are longerterm studies on people on in ketosis. They don't find their testosterone dropping. They don't find their thyroid dropping. they don't find their cortisol rising. Um they find that every everybody's actually improving their health in a lot of ways. So I think it is actually very good to be uh in ke you know a ketogenic carnivore diet. >> Yeah. Yeah. So to clarify it. Okay. Another thing you say that we can eat dairy as a condiment but is there any dairy we should never eat and why? >> Well if someone has autoimmunity you need to just avoid dairy because it can be pro-inflammatory and it can often cause a flare up. And if someone is sensitive to it, more some people are more or less sensitive to dairy should just avoid it. When I talk about dairy, I'm mostly talking about milk dairy. And I think milk is probably best to be avoided on a carnivore diet. Milk is very nutritious, especially raw milk. It's extremely nutritious. Has a lot of very good solid nutrients in it, but it has a lot of carbs and it has casein which can be pro-inflammatory. It has quomorphines which can cause compulsive eating. you tells the baby mammal to keep eating, keep eating, keep eating, so it grows big and strong and uh it's less vulnerable to predators and that's fine, but when you're an adult and you're trying to maintain your weight, you don't necessarily need those hunger signals coming after you. Um, so I think that avoiding milk is a good idea. Uh, it does have enough carbohydrates. It will raise your insulin. It can, uh, kick you out of ketosis. Um, it's very nutritious and if you're eating a mixed diet, probably not a bad idea to include some milk and even raw milk if that's available in your area. Um, but for a carnivore diet, it's not necessary. You get all the nutrients you need from fatty meat and bit of organs if you if you really want to do it um that way too. Uh, so you don't need it. Um, I typically tell people to still try to stay ketogenic. maybe add some cheese, but again, like you said, as a condiment, melt it onto meat and just have it as a as um occasionally and as a condiment and still avoid the carbs. >> Yeah, great great advice. Okay. Should we fast when we're on carnivore diet? I know that you only eat once or twice a day. Sometimes you said you don't eat all day and like you fast, but do you do it on purpose? Does it have any purpose or does it really matter if you fast or not while you're on the ketogenic diet? So you you if you're eating fatty meat until it stops tasting good and so you're eating listening to your body's signals and it's important to do the taste thing because it will taste amazing at first and then every bite will taste slightly less good as your body needs less and less of those nutrients until finally it doesn't taste good at all. So you want to get to the point where you sort of taste like cardboard and you just don't want to eat it anymore like every other animal on earth has that off switch on when they stop eating. Uh if you do that and you're getting enough fat, then you will find that you typically don't need to eat more than once a day or twice a day. And um and that's completely normal. I mean, we're certainly adapted and capable of fasting. I mean even in recent history we look at the Genghaskhan the Mongol horde and you look at histories of them they talk about how they would ravage the countryside for five days in a row and then they'd eat 10 pounds of horse meat and do it again and obviously as hunters as predators we and other predators may not get a kill every day. It may be once every few days or once a week or maybe it's you get a dry spell. So we have to be capable of dealing with with uh with that sort of uh scenario. Um, is there a specific advantage to having unsuccessful hunts and starving yourself? Probably not. I think the vast majority of benefit that you get from fasting is just not eating the wrong things and you're already doing that on a carnivore diet. There are ketogenic uh du studies looking at what's called fasting mimicking diets, which is just a ketogenic diet. You say fasting is hard. We have all and and we have thousands of studies showing that fasting is very beneficial. of fasting. >> Yeah. But what part of fasting is is the beneficial part? So I say, "Okay, well fasting's hard. What about a diet that mimics fasting, which is a ketogenic diet, does that confer the same benefits?" They find yes, it does. Um sometimes even more benefits. And so it it seems to be that just being in that ketogenic state and not eating certain plant toxins are are really what's what's beneficial to you. Um you'll naturally end up eating like once a day. So people say, "Well, that's fasting." Well, compared to other people, but fasting is the deliberate and intentional withholding of food when you're hungry. And I'm not doing that. I eat fatty meat until it stops tasting good. I do that as many times a day as I need to. Most often that's once. When I'm working out, I'm being more active. It's usually twice. Um, another argument is that you do want to eat in a smaller window uh and less often because anytime you eat, your body's basically preparing, you might be getting a large bacterial load because, you know, when you're eating out in the wild and you're eating, scavenging or taking down, you know, animal without refrigeration, all these sorts of things, you could be experiencing a high bacterial load, which is why we have a very low pH. So, it's very acidic. And um and so the argument is is that anytime you eat, your body ramps up this inflammatory sort of response to get ready for this bacterial rush so you don't get sick and get food poisoning. And uh you know that's that's a stressed state. And so the less often you eat, you know, the the less often you'll be in that inflamed state. So that's an argument too. Um and it could very well be, but that's an argument for intermittent fasting as opposed to like not eating for multiple days. So, I think the majority of benefit you get is just from not eating the wrong thing and you just naturally go into sort of a a shorter eating window anyway. >> Great. Thank you. Well, that was amazing. Oh, thank you for answering all the questions. I have one last question. Sure. >> What is your favorite book? >> Oh, >> doesn't have to be nutrition book, just your favorite book. I'm just gathering like a book tips. I love reading. So, I ask every guest for their favorite book and it's my reading. Um, probably one of my favorite favorite books ever would be Thomas Sul. Every book that I've ever read from that guy is amazing. Um, the one I I one of the ones I enjoyed the most was wealth, poverty, and politics. And um, there's one called Black Rednecks and White Liberals. That's brilliant. It's very eye opening. It was very shocking reading that. Uh, but anything by him is amazing. >> Lots of reading from Thank you so much. >> Yeah. You're welcome. Thanks for coming on and I'll see you in the future hope. >> Yeah. Thank you very much for having me.