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Meat Heals: The Carnivore Approach to Health
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Meat heals is more than a trending hashtag #meatheals🥓🍗🍖🥩✌🏻.
“Meat heals” is the rallying cry of tens of thousands of people who are reclaiming their health by practicing an animal-based or carnivore diet.
In this article, we’ll explore the “meat heals” approach to health by looking at the testimonials of carnivore dieters and the emerging science backing up their claims.
Where did Meat Heals Come from?
Since the dawn of humankind, meat has always been a healing food.
In fact, numerous lines of research suggest that humans evolved as hypercarnivorous apex predators consuming a diet of almost exclusively fatty meat for nearly 2 million years.
Only since the dawn of agriculture some 10,000 years ago have humans incorporated plant foods into our diets in any significance. 5
Researchers attribute our large brains–the part of us that makes us uniquely human–to our ability and skill at scavenging and hunting large fatty animals for most of our time on earth.
For most of human history, the fact that fatty meat not only healed but was the foundation of healthy human life had been nearly lost during the agricultural revolution. Outside the few remaining hunter gatherer societies, a grain-based view of nutrition took hold.
By villainizing meat and lionizing plant foods, human health has paid a heavy toll, evident in the rise of diseases of civilization, including heart disease, type 2 diabetes, various cancers, and countless inflammatory diseases and mental health epidemics.
Meat Heals Revival
Fast forward to the 21st century, and the idea that meat heals has been recovered and promoted by pioneering doctors, researchers, and daring science journalists, including Dr. Rober Kiltz, Dr. Shawn Baker, Amber O’Hearn, Dr. Paul Saladino, Gary Taubes, and Nina Tiecholz,
Perhaps the biggest popularizer of going carnivore is psychologist Jordan Peterson.
Carnivore caught fire after Peterson attested to how meat heals on the popular Joe Rogan podcast. He credited the all meat approach for resolving psoriasis, digestive issues, and intractable depression.
Peterson learned about the carnivore elimination diet, or Lion Diet, from his daughter Mikhaila, who credits it with healing her own recovery from depression, anxiety, and numerous physical ailments.
At this point, you might be wondering, ok, so how does meat heal?
5 Keys to How Meat Heals
The healing power of an all-meat diet can be attributed both to what you’re adding to your diet, and what you’re eliminating. This can be summed up in 5 factors.
- The removal of inflammatory and irritating foods, including carbs, plant toxins, antinutrients, nightshades, FODMAPS foods, and excess fiber.
- Gut reset. The removal of fermentable fibers and carbohydrates results in a drastic reduction of bad bacteria. Along with the removal of plant toxins, carnivore allows the gut lining to heal and for the restoration a healthy microbiome.
- Highly satiating animal products reduce food addictions, and support mindful eating. Cutting out hyper-palatable foods engineered to override satiation signals keep you eating even when you’re full, resulting in hormonal imbalances and chronic carb overloads that cause leptin resistance, obesity, and inflammatory diseases.
- Animal products are the most nutrient dense foods on earth. Consuming only animal products dramatically increases your micronutrient intake, providing your body with the essential nutrients it needs for vital functions like proper immune response, cognitive ability, emotional regulation, metabolism, and tissue growth.
- Animal products provide structure, plant foods provide stressors. Animal fats, muscle, and micronutrients provide the foundation of healthy cell structures and hormonal regulation. Plant products, on the other hand, come with a bevy of stressors like excess fiber, carbs, and naturally occurring antinutrients and toxins–all of which damage tissues and promote chronic inflammation–the roots of modern diseases.
Reported benefits of the “meat heals” approach include
- No carb cravings
- No energy troughs
- Improved cognition
- Improved mood
- Improved markers of heart health
- Overcoming fertility issues
- Better recovery after exercise
- Clearer skin
- Better digestion
- Reduced inflammation
Testimonials: How Meat Heals
Here’s a small selection of personal social media posts attesting to how #meatheals🥓🍗🍖🥩✌🏻
Research on Healing Power of a Carnivore Diet
Though an all-meat diet runs contrary to popular nutrition advice, mainstream nutritional science is taking notice.
In 2021 researchers at Harvard University undertook the first assessment of the healing potential of the all-meat carnivore diet.
The study concluded, “Contrary to common expectations, adults consuming a carnivore diet experienced few adverse effects and instead reported health benefits and high satisfaction.” 3
Drawing on data from 2,029 people practicing an all-meat diet for at least 6 months, the study revealed that
- 93% improved or resolved obesity and excess weight
- 93% improved hypertension
- 98% improved conditions related to diabetes
- 97% improved gastrointestinal symptoms
- 96% improved psychiatric symptoms
The Harvard study reflected findings from an earlier 2019 study by the carnivore diet coaching service Revero.
Data from 12,000 people practicing the carnivore elimination diet (lion diet) for at least three months revealed the following results.
How to Get Started on Your #Meatheals Journey
The key to getting started on meat heals journey of your own is to simply clean all the tempting non-carnivore foods out of your cupboard and replace them with nourishing animal products.
Dr. Kiltz developed the BEBBIIS plan as a straightforward rule of thumb.
B.E.B.B.I.I.S. stands for Bacon, Eggs, Butter, Beef, Ice Cream, Intermittent Fasting, Salt.
When you focus on these animal-based whole foods, you’re protecting yourself from inflammatory carbohydrates, eliminating plant toxins, and nourishing your cells with healthy fats and essential nutrients.
Combining carnivores with intermittent fasting amplifies these benefits while boosting the process of cellular renewal called autophagy.
This carnivore diet food pyramid can help you prioritize your animal products into delicious carnivore diet meal plans.
Watch Dr. Kiltz discuss his approach to carnivore with tips below
Meat Heals: The Bottom Line
Meat heals is a popular slogan of a growing community of people who use the carnivore diet as a treatment for various chronic diseases and disorders.
People who tag their stories #meatheals🥓🍗🍖🥩✌🏻on social media report losing weight, stopping neurodegenerative diseases in their tracks, reducing inflammation, dramatically improving skin conditions, healing their GI tract, kicking medications, and reclaiming their mental health.
The healing power of an all-meat diet is attributed to eliminating toxic stressors from carbs, excess fiber, and plant toxins and antinutrients while nourishing your body with nutrient-dense animal products that human physiology is evolved to thrive on.
