Carnivore Diet

[Praveen55]

Here is a 30 minute long video presentation by Amber O'Hearn who has been on carnovore diet for over nine years. This post should not be taken as an endorsement to carnivore diet. it is just that I keep an open mind to dietary approaches.

youtu.be/0WJBHEhmXqc(Not working as expected?)

[TheAwfulToad Ambassador]

I skipped through some of it because it's stuff I know about, but some interesting factoids there nonetheless.

I have to say, she doesn't look particularly healthy, and I suspect she's misunderstood what low-carb is all about; protein is mentioned a lot, but fat isn't. I wonder if she's aware that protein provokes an insulin response and is really just an expensive way of obtaining glucose in the absence of dietary carbs (amino acids are converted either to glucose or ketones so they can be used for fuel).

Her descriptions of carnivore-vs-omnivore-vs-herbivore are overly complex IMO. All animals have a certain range of diets that they can cope with, with a gradual fade-to-black at the extremes rather than a hard switch-off. So cats can theoretically cope with high-carb kibbles but don't thrive particularly well on it; dogs will get ill if they're fed on human table-scraps rather than a meat-based diet; and humans ... well, humans have a flat-and-wide tolerance curve compared to many animals, so they can survive on pretty much anything from pure vegan to pure carnivore, but I suspect meat-based human diets can be improved with the addition of plant material for the same reason vegan diets can be improved with animal protein.

I've suggested before that perhaps humans thrive best not on one particular diet, but on a diet that varies seasonally. We have a lot of adaptive control loops that tend to get "stuck" in one particular position if we eat the same things, day in day out, over and over. It's unnatural. In every place that humans have settled, the food supply varies throughout the year. To take a random example, in both the wet-dry tropics and in arid climates with seasonal rains there are certain times of year where eating mostly meat is economically and ecologically sensible, whereas at other times there will be much more plant matter available (for both humans and animals).

I don't have any scientific basis for this view, but OTOH it does accord with certain observations (eg., O'Hearn getting slowly fatter on a low-carb diet, and Westerners facing a diabetes epidemic).

[Praveen55 in reply to TheAwfulToad]

Thank you very much for a comprehensive analysis. At best this kind of extreme diet may be considered for special need perhaps. It will not be practical to get all the micronutrients even if high protein issue is taken care of. LCHF offers much more balanced approach.