Dietary Diversity or Carnivore: Which Fuels Better Health, Longevity, and Performance? Dr. Shawn Baker & Joel Greene Debate

Diversity in the diet actually allows us to enjoy the benefits of animal foods and completely nerfs any potential liabilities. And it doesn't even have to be a ton. It's just some, some diversity in the diet. So that's what I would offer.

Yeah, that's interesting. Shall you guys start dipping your steak in oatmeal?

Well, probably not oatmeal. I mean, as I said before, you know, and certainly I appreciate Joel's perspective on this.

All right, it is, uh, it's debate time. I've got two guys who I really respect on the show today. Two guys who are not only very well-versed in the realm of nutrition but also physical beasts in their own rights. One of my guests, Dr. Shawn Baker, absolutely humiliated me with the overhead double kettlebell press competition at the last health event that I was at. I think you hit 40 reps, Shawn. And then I came back and hit 41, and then you had to show me up. So like right before the conference ended, uh, you dropped in and did 42, and my shoulders were already toast. So good job.

I did. I ended up doing like 54.

Oh geez.

I mean, it was even worse. Yeah, but I mean, you know, I outweigh you by, what is it, 60 pounds or something like that?

So it's not quite fair, but it was a little, uh, yeah, it was a little—

yeah.

And then you have a background as a pretty competitive, uh, rower. I mean, that, that's, that's the, the main sport that you're known for being really successful in, right?

Well, yeah, I mean, I've got some more workers on the rowing machine, but I mean, I, like I said, I used to do powerlifting, I did strongman, I did professional rugby, I did Highland Games, world champion at that. So I mean, yeah, I mean, I've got a lot of strength background. So I mean, yeah, I mean, even though I'm— I think Joel and I are close to similar age, I turn 58 next month. And so, you know, yeah, I mean, I've been, you know, strength is definitely something that I've cultivated over the damn near 50 years I've been training.

Yeah, and not, not just a, uh, not just a meathead. You're an orthopedic surgeon, you're world-leading authority in treating disease with medical nutritional therapy. You're a bestselling author on Amazon. And so, you're definitely somebody who is both physically and mentally crushing it in the fitness and health game. And then, I've also got Joel. Joel, I don't know how much you row or how much you overhead kettlebell press, but you're pretty fit yourself. I know you have your own approach to staying in shape, but what's your primary mode of fitness these days?

Uh, right now it's track and field, so I'm training for a Masters this year and, uh, just doing a lot of time on the track.

Okay, cool. What's that mean, Masters?

That means you're old.

Yeah, well, I mean, well, I know what it means. What, what event is that?

Uh, 200 meters.

Okay, all right, 200. Wow, cool. And, and, uh, Joel's been on the podcast a few times. You guys might have heard me interview him about his book The Immunity Code. Uh, we've talked a lot about dietary diversity.

He does a lot of work in the nutrition world.

He's the creator of The Immunity Code and his book, The Immunity Code and The Way. You can find anywhere fine books are found. And Sean, remind me the name of your book. I'm blanking now.

My book is very simple. It's called The Carnivore Diet. It was obviously a bunch of meathead stuff, but I just had a joke because as I turn 60, one of my goals is to do some running and some sprinting and stuff like that. And so, I looked at 100-meter, 400-meter, and sub-6-minute mile. And, I'm just curious, what is your target for the 200 meter? What age class are you going to be in? Are you going to— obviously you're going to be what, mid-20s or something like that, I'm guessing, on times, but I don't know where you're going to be.

Yeah, I mean, I have a goal.

I don't even want to say it, but you got to say it so you can manifest, so you can hold you accountable when you don't get there.

That's what I've done.

I said I'm going sub-13 in the 100 and sub-60 in the 400. So I either got to put up or shut up now.

Yeah, I, I think I'm shooting for sub-24, so that's nice. Yeah, we'll see, we'll see.

What age group would that be in?

At 60.

At 60? Okay, that's, that's because a world record is not far from that at 60, if I'm not mistaken. Is that correct? What is that?

Is the word— no, that is a world record.

Yeah, it is a world record. What body weight are you going to be at when you do that?

Um, I don't know, that's a big question. So I've run my best times historically like under 200 pounds, and I'm about 220 right now, so I got to come down about 20 pounds to do I was gonna say, like, Noah Lyles weighs 154, you know.

I'm just, yeah, you know, it's not, it's not a big man's sport. And I'm, I'm coming down from 260. I'm, I'm, I woke up this morning at 244, and so I probably, I, I suspect I'll be in the 230s when I'm able to capable to do some of these things.

Just, you know, you know, you mentioned your book, by the way, Sean, The Carnivore Diet. That's what, that's actually why I wanted to get you guys on together, because, sure, you know, when I've talked with, when I've talked with Joel in the past, uh, he's very much been into the idea of dietary diversity. The carnivore diet, I would say, is not— is less diverse than many diets. And I wanted to have a little discussion here about your guys' approach and why you approach things the way that you do. Now, of course, the awkward part about a three-way like this is somebody gets to go first and describe what they eat or what they recommend folks eat and why. So, I don't know if you guys just want to shoot a hand up, arm wrestle, run, or we just pick, flip a coin?

Well, mine's simpler, so I'll, I'll go.

No, go for it, John. Fill us in.

Physician, my goal is to get people healthy, right? I, I generally— I'm not necessarily out here saying that every human needs to be a carnivore or going on a carnivore diet. I've never said that, I'll never say that. What I say is I get people that have autoimmune conditions, they might have depression, they might have, you know, some gut issues, and just out of experience, out of practical results, we see pretty good results with that, you know. And I tell people, do this for 3 months, 6 months, and then, and then where you go from there. If you want to get a tattoo and say you call yourself Carnivore Carl, whatever, that's, that's, that's whatever, if you want to do that. Um, I think that, um, my personal diet, I've been doing it for about 8 years. I mean, I eat pretty much a carnivore diet. I mean, I eat steak every day. I've got a ribeye steak that I'll eat after this meeting here in a little bit.

Definitely get into the details of what the carnivore diet looks like for you, because now it's, you know, So it's— I see different versions of it from different people, so I want to hear what yours is.

Yeah, I mean, it's mostly red meat. I mean, that's just the reality of what, you know, because obviously if you're not having carbs, you need fat, and red meat is just as high fat than, you know, white meat does in many cases. So I eat a lot of red meat. I'll do some eggs from time to time. I'll do a little bit of dairy products here and there, um, seafood, things like that. It's mostly animal products, and that's probably legitimately 90 99% of my diet. Every once in a while, and I mean every once in a while, we're talking like a couple times a year, I'll just have something off the, you know, this is not, I mean, like I was in Ecuador a couple weeks ago. My son had his birthday party. We were on a boat. They cooked a cake. I had a piece of birthday cake, you know, but you know, it's, you know, it's, it's not a normal feature of my diet. You know, I pretty much legitimately eating meat every day, pretty much all the time. And for me, it works well. And I, like I said, it's not that I necessarily think that plants are trying to kill you like some of the other folks in this community. It's not that necessarily I think that everybody needs to do that, but as an older guy, I just know when I don't eat like this, I don't feel as good. And I mean, I've tried it over and over again and I don't think meat is killing people. I don't think it's causing heart disease. I don't think it's causing cancer.. So that's what I do personally, what I recommend for people. And we have a company, as you mentioned, I'm the chief medical officer and co-founder of a company, Robero Health, digital healthcare company. We got a bunch of physicians that put people on various diets. Sometimes it's carnivore, sometimes it's not. A lot of times it's generally more lower carb. We have to eliminate things that people have issues. We've collected data on thousands of patients to see what affects people with different conditions, and we kind of tailor it to that particular need. And then we adjust based on the patient's sort of outcome. And so, but yeah, I mean, I've been one of the largest champions of the carnivore diet. In fact, this diet was not called carnivore until I wrote the book. It was called like zero carbs.

Yeah, yeah. I don't think it got that popular until you were on the Rogan Show talking about it.

Yeah, sure. I mean, you know, where we have access to the internet and social media, and I mean, I'm by far not the first doctor that ever talked about this. I mean, you can look at James Rollo in the 1700s talking about all meat diets for diabetes and James Salisbury in the 1800s and, you know, what's his name, Blake Donaldson in the 1930s. I mean, this has gone over and over again. This is not new. So I think it is a therapeutic diet. I think it is something that used as an intervention tool. Now, again, the controversy I'm sure Joel will talk about is what happens if you do it long term? Are there some significant detriments or potential things? And I'm interested at what he has to say, and I've got some my own perspective on that. And I think Like I said, um, you know, I don't want to say all humans are different. I mean, we all are, but I mean, we're all— we all basically share the same physiology and biology. It's not like some of us can eat grass and some of us can eat, you know, wood chips. I mean, we all get to eat basically from the same, same, uh, you know, selection of food. But yeah, that's what I do. So it's basically—

okay, yeah. And before I ask Joel about his dietary approach, Sean, you mentioned that, that your diet works for you. And that's worked for many of your patients, how would you describe the reason why? You know what I'm saying? Like, in terms of any underlying medical or biological reasons why you would feel better on a carnivore diet versus others. What do you suspect is going on there?

Ben Greenfield: Well, I mean, I think there's some commonalities all that. I mean, I think most of us, I'm sure Joel will agree that the American diet, standard American diet is garbage. I mean, we have 70% ultra-processed food for our kids somewhere similar for the, for the adults. So you clearly get all that crap out of there, so you're not poisoning yourself as much. So that's helpful. Um, high-quality bioavailable nutrition, I mean, protein is obviously better. I mean, there's, there's, there's— it's not a coincidence that the essential amino acids we need as humans are found in the exact ratios we need them in meat. I mean, it's, it's not a coincidence. There's a reason for that. Um, I think that meat is generally tolerated pretty well by the gut, and I know Joel will have some, you know, input on the gut particularly, but That's what I see. I think when we talk about gut dysfunction, whether it's dysbiosis or gut hyperpermeability or however you want to describe that, the diet seems to be helpful. I mean, there's a lot of data that comes outta Europe that supports that. They've done a lot of testing on this where they showed that gut permeability is improved on this diet. I think a lot of people, even though we got a lot of fat people in this country, they're malnourished. I mean, they're undernourished, malnourished in many things. And if we look at why do we eat as human beings, I mean, what is the whole purpose of eating? We have to obtain essential amino acids, essential fatty acids. We have to have an energy supply. So that's carbs or fat as far as I'm concerned, vitamins, minerals, and then arguably water. I mean, those are the essentials for life. And if we don't have those things, we eventually get sick and die. Now, how you decide to get that, there's a lot of opinions on that. I mean, carbs taste good. They're an easy source of nutrition or energy. I think the main benefit of carbohydrates carbohydrate specifically, we're talking about the glucose, monosaccharides, disaccharides, glycogens and things like that, or starches rather, is energy, right? And then you can argue around fiber or not. And I know this is probably where we'll have some level of contention here. I would argue that fiber is not an essential nutrient. If it were, I would long be dead. It could be conditionally beneficial. I don't know. I don't disagree with that. But I mean, that's kind of why I think, I mean, it is what it is. I mean, and again, I'm not so, I don't believe I know everything. I don't think anybody does. And I still think of the body as largely a black box. I mean, we have inputs and we have outputs and there's a lot of things we know about the human body, but what we know probably would fit in a thimbleful of what we don't know. And we're always discovering new things. And the things we think that are accurate in 1990 are not accurate in 2010, and so on and so forth. And so we have this incredibly complex machine, and all I do is I like, what are the results? You know, and, and again, you know, I tend to say, well, I don't know what's going to make me live longer. I don't think anybody really knows. I do know I can get people that are sick and make them healthy, which is pretty cool. I mean, I think that's— as a physician, that's a high bar. I mean, we, you know, that's a, that's a, that's a good thing. And, you know, worrying about, am I going to live to 100, or am I going to get this disease at 80 or not, I don't know. I don't know if we— I don't know if we can really know that.

Yeah, yeah, it certainly reduces a lot of dietary confusion for people who are trying to shift from a standard American diet to say, hey, this is a one food group, or they're just a couple of food groups that you can eat. And I know that certainly helps people out mentally as well.

It provides a highly high degree of satiety for many people. And this is a problem. If you tell me, hey, don't eat cookies and cake all day long, okay, great, what do you want me to eat instead? Well, eat some, eat some cardboard. And, uh, you know, low-fat cardboard doesn't work very well. A lot of people are hungry and they're like, F that, man, I can't do this. I can do it for 3 or 4 days and I'm, then I'm, you know, I'm face down in a bowl full of Ben Jerry's, you know. 3 days later.

So yeah, so yeah, so, so Sean, you're eating, uh, a lot of meat, uh, occasional dairy and eggs, very, very occasional slice of birthday cake. Uh, Joel, what's your diet look like?

Um, yeah, so first of all, I think we're, we're in, we're probably more on page with each other than not, uh, for the most part. Um, I've been an early, long-time advocate of animal foods. Uh, I wrote some articles back in 2007, uh, referencing like the Chico studies on the benefits of grass-fed beef. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I would venture to say we probably both agree that meat's essential in the diet. Like, you have to have meat in the diet. When you look at what happens when people don't have meat in the diet long-term, you see problems you can't fix typically. I mean, you see, you see a lot of problems. So I think we would agree on that. I've also been a big advocate of dairy over the years. I've taken a lot of heat for that, actually. A lot of people are like, you're in the back pocket of the dairy industry. And it's like, no, I've just read the research, man. It's just—

and I've seen it in person, um, you know, I wish I could get in the back pocket of one of these places, man. Me too. The meat industry owes me a lot of money.

Yeah, I wish, I wish I was in the back pocket. Um, so I've been, uh, in fact, I was in— I was an early guy back in the mid-2000s going into nutritionfacts.org and, you know, arguing with, uh, Dr. Michael there about eggs and things like that. So, so I, I think we're on the same page in that animal foods are essential. In the diet. And I would think we probably also would agree that keto diet— what— and also I want to kind of just mention that, in my opinion, the way that the carnivore diet is executed for most people is, is really a keto diet. It's a keto diet based on animal foods. And under that umbrella, you can also make the assertion that it's also an elimination diet. So it's a keto diet that's an elimination diet based on that. And I think there's a lot of utility to it. I think that keto diets are very, very useful. Um, I think carnivore diets are extremely useful. So in fact, I was on Mark Bell's podcast in 2018, and he asked me what I thought about them, and I said, I think they're very useful. I just, I don't think that they are the way for life, but I think they're, um, intervention-based diets that can be extremely useful. So, so I think we would agree on all that. Um, I think, I think we're on the same page with all that stuff.

And by the way, Joel, just real quick before you move on, when you say the, the carnivore diet is kind of animal-based keto diet, I assume you're saying that there are not appreciable amounts of glucose that one can metabolize from an all meat diet?

You're going to see the same endpoints, I think, the way that it's executed with most people, which is that you're going to get into ketosis, you're going to see, you know, very similar effects to keto diet. And I don't know, maybe you disagree, Dr. Shawn, but that's kind of how I would see it.

Yeah. I mean, I think many people can and do. It doesn't always have Because, you know, again, it depends on pretty much how much protein you're consuming in many ways. And, you know, like for me, I mean, there's a lot of days where I'm consuming 300-400 grams of protein, which is a shit ton of protein. You know, again, big guy, but that doesn't necessarily lend itself so much to ketosis as somebody who's pushing the envelope and now they're 80% fat by calorie and they're consuming, you know, a more moderate amount of protein. So it does depend a little bit on your goals and most people that come to this diet are doing it for some health reason or perhaps to lose weight. And, and, and that, that often holds true what you're saying.

Yeah. So, and so just, so just, yeah, I think they can be very useful. I'm not, this isn't the classic like, you know, meat is bad, plants are good, plants are good. This isn't that. This is, this is more, I think where we differ and the way that I eat is I basically try, I have seen that there's a, there's a, we're in this era of aligning with nature. So that's light and dark, heat and cold, biohacking, all that stuff. And I've just looked at this enough to see that there's a rhythm of eating that takes place in nature, and the constraint is scarcity. And scarcity drives you to eat foods out of your preference, even though you're always in the process of seeking animal foods. And you watch these survival shows like Alone or Naked and Afraid, or in fact, I'm doing some survival courses this year, and I'll probably film it just so you see. But food. So in the process of looking for nutrient-dense animal food, you tend to eat anything that's edible. And so you eat out of your preferences, forced by scarcity. And so scarcity has this very unique effect— it drives diversity into the diet. And I'm of the belief that diversity actually is a protective mechanism. So opposed to these sort of like— and I don't think you've really been one of these guys, but other people have been sort of in this— well, you know, plants are bad and here's all the reasons why, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Um, I actually think there's synergies between the two. I think that, um, either done too much creates— and again, to your point, we don't have perfect knowledge. We, we don't 100% know anything really. So we're talking about something that doesn't have 30, 40 years of, you know, meta-review studies to say, you know, oh, well, beyond any doubt we can see this, this, and this. So We're projecting into the future all with the same goal. We all want lasting health. We all want what's sustainable and real. And I would just argue that too much of either side of that debate creates probabilities of outcomes that we don't want, and that the synergy between plant and animal foods actually protects you from both. So my diet is really pretty simple. I lean more towards foraging kind of looking foods one, on one day, and then the next day I'll do feasting foods. Looks very keto, carnivore. Carnivorous, and there's overlap between the two. So it's never rarely exclusively, you know, vegan one day and plants the other. It never really looks like that. There's overlap. But I would just say that it's nutrient-dense, diverse, and balanced. That's how I would describe it. And I think that's the difference between where we're at. And when it comes to the carnivore diet, again, I think it's very useful short-term. And, you know, in a bell curve, not everybody's going to respond the same. So But long-term, I would say there are potential liabilities that are worth going over, worth looking at, worth enumerating, which have to do with the impact on the gut. Should we be really running beta oxidation as a way of life?

And a number of oxidation, meaning fat burning.

Yeah, yeah, ketosis. Yeah, beta oxidation, all that. Yeah, I would offer it's that, that I would offer that Bobbitt's probably not designed to try and do that. When you, when you look at what happens when you try and do that, it's not 100%, but I think there's things that are worth looking at in terms of what happens when you try and run beta-ox as a weight, when you try and rely on the liver to make glucose forever. I would say there's concerns, just things to look at, things to kind of run down the list of, and you know, it's up to each person what they want to do. But I think, I think there's potentially some long-term liabilities that are worth looking at.

So So, when you say there's some long-term liabilities, particularly with oxidation or beta oxidation, are you talking about, like, you know, because I've seen some people like Jay Feldman who champions this idea of the— he has an energy hypothesis in which he argues that excess fat oxidation can somehow inhibit, I believe, NAD recycling enzymes. Is that what you're referring to, Joel?

Not, not specifically, but just to lay it out briefly, it's this. So in order to be sustainable, you would have to have a sort of an even 1-to-1 input between beta oxidation and the TCA cycle. Okay, so that's not what you tend to see over time. What happens over time is that the ability of beta oxidation to produce acetyl-CoA outstrips the power of the TCA cycle to metabolize that for a number of different reasons converging from several different angles. And again, you know, this isn't like 100%, we don't 100% understand this stuff, but, but just as a, as a point of discussion, it's worth talking about, which would be the first problem you get into is that when you have high protein diets in the presence of high fat, the issue you're gonna get into is when amino acids get catabolized, they are going to, you're gonna get an accrual of intermediates in the Krebs cycle. So you're gonna get an accrual of succinyl-CoA, you're gonna get an accrual of other intermediates. And what can happen from that is that inhibits citrate synthase, which inhibits citrate production. In the TCA cycle. So the net of it is an incomplete oxidation. You get a mismatch between beta oxidation and the TCA cycle. And so what happens is intermediates accrue. The ones that we need to concern ourselves with are acyl carnitines. So acyl carnitines are your energy intermediates from the TCA, from beta-ox going into TCA cycle, and they tend to accrue in the mitochondria. It's stressful. So the body has tons of backup mechanisms that kicks them out into the serum, and then in the serum number one, it's measurable. So you can measure for specific types of acyl carnitine. So this is something that you can actually take a look at. But the issues you see from that, number one is that, that breaks the glucose transport chain. So it spins up tumor necrosis factor alpha, breaks IRS-1 in the glucose transport chain. But there's other problems. So you have very specific acyl carnitines. So you have 2-hydroxymethyl carnitine, That's a thrombosis promoter, so it promotes blood clots and its effects are far-reaching. It takes a long time to see anything from that. So that's just one angle that's coming at the TCA cycle, but then you have the liver to take into account. So what happens is the longer you're running beta oxidation, you need oxaloacetate to metabolize all that, all of the, acetyl-CoA that's coming out of beta-ox. And normally you get that from glycolysis and you get it from a salvage pathway, um, from citrate. But what happens is you're seeing an overall dampening of the TCA cycle, which is necessarily not necessarily a good thing. And so what happens is the liver kicks in and then starts making ketones and makes oxaloacetate. And so for a while everything's good, but over time what tends to happen is that the longer the liver's asked to, to be in gluconeogenesis, a couple things happen. Number one, you start to cannibalize oxaloacetate in the liver, and you also begin to see peripheral insulin resistance in the muscle. And so you have this sort of multi-pronged attack on the TCA cycle where over time, what, what seems to be the case, or at least is worth considering, is that you get incomplete oxidation of fatty acids. Ketosis seems to make up for that for a time, But then long-term you start to see the accumulation of intermediates, propionyl-CoA, succinyl-CoA, inhibition of citrate, um, accumulation of acyl carnitines. And all of these things combined just kind of bring us to, to looking at this like quite possibly it, it could be that the body's a flex fuel system and it's meant to run on both. And when you try and run it on too much of either, it's probably not good. And so yeah, that's something worth discussing.

What do you, what do you think about that, that metabolic theory, Sean? Sorry, you, you were probably jumping in already.

What's that? I mean, I, you know, I, I learned the Krebs cycle like 6 times through my medical career and you always forget it cuz there's, it's just, but I mean, I, I guess I would say, okay, so we have this sort of speculative mechanistic sort of belief that this might happen and then it should show up with some sort of clinical outcome.. And so what, what, what would be, what would be the predictive negative clinical outcome? And are we actually seeing this? I mean, Ben Bikman just post-published a paper the other day, interestingly enough, about uric acid. And we know that high levels of uric acid certainly are associated with gout, but it also has cardiovascular implications. And so we see that uric acid would rise and somebody say, well, you're eating all this meat, uric acid might go up. And, and in some cases it does. But the other thing he, he demonstrated, now this is in vitro, is that if you add ketones to uric acid, to, to cultured cells, instead of the normal uric acid-associated increase in things like tumor necrosis factor alpha and IL-6 and some of the other inflammatory cytokines, it was blunted. It was basically negated. So again, you have to put this mechanistic theoretical concern into the context that we're talking about. And again, without long-term randomized, you know, prospective studies on human beings, To me, it just becomes speculative. And I would like to say, how do we demonstrate these concerns are actually going on? And we just don't know. I mean, I can't even get a damn carnivore study. I mean, I've had, I've had several case reports. We've had inflammatory bowel disease, we've had case reports on anorexia, we've had case reports on mental health disorders. We've got one coming out, coming out on multiple sclerosis. I'm working with the South Dakota Cattlemen's Group to get something on diabetes. So Again, I would say any criticisms, good or bad, or supposed benefits of the carnivore diet, we just don't have studies on. And I mean, again, I get the mechanistic speculation. Does it actually hold up? I don't know. Maybe you'll be 100% right and we'll find this out. I just think it's too premature to sort of really say that. And again, I tell people, hey, if the diet ain't working for you, don't do it. I'm not religious about it. I'm like, Hey, if your results are not what they need to be, go do something. I'll go do Joel's diet, go do a vegan diet, do Mediterranean diet, whatever. So that's kind of been my approach. And there's a lot of people out there, there's these longevity gurus, and I'm like, well, show me the money. Where's the results? I mean, you can speculate all you want, but because we saw this thing with rapamycin and metformin, everybody's taking this, and then all of a sudden everybody's ditching it 5 years later. Like, well, that didn't really work out. All the mice are getting skinny and dying. Maybe that rapamycin wasn't the best thing. So again, I don't, I don't doubt that what the facts that you're saying are true, and that's a potential concern. Are there other mitigating factors? Is it showing up? I mean, one of the concerns like I see around like, um, carnivore diets, yeah, maybe TMAO is going to be a big issue. It's like, well, what drives TMAO? Well, gut dysbiosis and kidney failure definitely cause high levels of TMAO. Is that the same thing as you get from eating carnitine and choline, which clearly have benefits in the body. And so it's like, what is the reason for the elevation? You know, is it, is it physiologically appropriate or is it physiologically inappropriate? And so you have to say, you know, maybe, you know, maybe the metabolites are, are accru— accumulating. Maybe that's an issue. Maybe ketosis is protective. Maybe some other component, maybe the carnitine and meat has some effect on the, you know, the, the TCA cycle. I don't know. So we'll have to see what happens in the long term. So, I'm never going to be the guy saying carnivore is going to make you live longer or prevent you from getting heart disease. I just don't know. I think it's premature to speculate.

Yeah. I think two points that Shawn raises real quick, Joel, I would love to hear your take on are potential mitigating factors of this constancy of beta oxidation that you would be concerned about with the carnivore diet. With one of the primary mitigating factors Shawn brought up was elevated ketone bodies. And then, probably an even kind of bigger elephant in the room is, do these mechanistic scenarios that you describe actually have any fleshing out in epidemiological studies or actual manifestation of any type of chronic disease in humans?

Yeah. So, to your second question, and by the way, Dr. Shawn, welcome. Well put. What, what I would offer is you're right, we don't have perfect knowledge. This is something that I bring up sort of as a, as a concern. It's something to look at. I would offer it's measurable. So you can, you can actually measure 2-methylbutyryl carnitine and it's a marker of metabolic distress. They test kids for it for metabolic disease. You see it with prolonged fasting. There's some evidence that you can see it with prolonged keto diets. And so it's something that actually you can, if you're on a carnivore diet and you have a concern, concern, you could probably go, go just test for 2-methylbutylcarotene, test for that acylcarotene. In terms of Ben's question, is there any data? Actually, yeah, there, there's, there's a, there's a handful of, and probably what I'll do is just make this available in the post-show notes for anybody that wants to look at it.

Ben, just, just email me anything you got for me to include in the show notes.

I'll do it. There are, there's a number of studies that have been published looking at kind of this time inversion effect with related to protein intake where scientists have speculated that In fact, there's a paper entitled High Protein Intake Elucidating Insulin Resistance, or, or Inducing Insulin Resistance. And the mechanisms that they're speculating in there have to do with this. They're looking at why do we see these profound improvements short-term with insulin sensitivity and all this stuff on keto carnivore diets, but then long-term there does seem to be evidence that we're seeing the exact opposite happen. And it really has to do with some, a framework that I would offer is missing, which is the impact of time and the basic forces that take place over time, which is the accumulation of something, the degradation of something, the attenuation of something, the compensation of something. And so over time, things can begin to accrue that sort of U-shaped curve the benefits into the negative zone. And so, so when it comes to looking at protein, excessive protein intake or high protein intake and insulin resistance, that's exactly where this stuff comes out of, and I'll make it available.

Yeah, well, you know, like I said, I know we've seen things like, uh, for instance, like, uh, branched-chain aminoacidemia as being concerning. You know, where are we getting these branched-chain amino acids? Well, the assumption would be, hey, well, you know, obviously dietary protein would be a good place for that, but it turns out it was— it's kind of a reverse causation thing that we see that cells are actually being damaged and break down, leak these, these, uh, branched-chain amino acids into the bloodstream, so we get this aminoacidemia. It's not exactly what you're talking about, but we often see these, you know, again, I hesitate to put too much value into any kind of serum marker and whether it's LDL cholesterol or many other things, just because I know there's so much, one, there's so much dynamic variability in measurement. You know, like I said, for instance, I did a little experiment back in February this year where I, you know, I had a total cholesterol meter, which is considered very accurate. It's supposed to be within 95% accuracy. And I tested my total cholesterol on a Sunday. It was 154. Yay, good. It's all perfect. No one would complain about that. Most doctors would be happy with that. And then I basically didn't eat for 18 hours and I worked out, tested the next day, it was 345. Went up 200 points in 18 hours. That's my total cholesterol. And then the question was, which measurement is valid for me?

That's the opposite of what you want to do, by the way, if you're giving blood for an insurance evaluation.

Yeah, you can have those things. I mean, you, you can— yeah, I mean, there's— I mean, you know, Dave Feldman has shown, you know, and many others have supplements showing that you can, you can kind of play with your cholesterol, make it go where you want. And so whether these, you know, these carnitine metabolites in the blood are problematic, and they probably are in certain populations, but then you got to say, you got to specify to the population of, of interest. And I would say, I mean, you might be able to show that's associated with some negative outcome, cardiovascular disease, mortality, whatever it might be in the general population. But until you actually test it in the population with concern, I kind of have to say, is it really relevant? You know, and I, and I know we're all human beings, but I do think that when you're running a ketogenic metabolism, it's kind of different. I think a lot of the reference ranges may not apply. A lot of the RDA requirements are, are clearly, they're different. I mean, we know that, you know, people eating a lot of phytic acid grains and legumes their zinc requirement goes up. And when you're not consuming that, it's down. So I mean, I just caution making generalizations about individual populations when that individual population is not being tested. Hopefully we'll get some of that. But at the end of the day, like I said, I'm very much— how do you define health in the first place? And I think Joel and I are both on the same page. Let's be able to function, right? And Ben, you would agree. If I can run and jump and sprint and do things in my 50s and 60s, well, shit, I'm better than 99% of the people and probably not definitely, but probably I'm going to have a longer healthspan than these other folks. But whether my, you know, whatever level you want to put in the blood is this or that, it may be predictive, but I'm somewhat skeptical.

Yeah. Joel, one thing I didn't hear you talk too much about was this idea of ketones being potentially protective against this, you know, traffic jam in the Krebs cycle. That Shawn brought up. Do you think there's anything to that idea?

Um, I, I don't know.

Um, I'm just saying speculatively, there are lots of likely compensatory mechanisms. You know, it's just like, like just meat in general. I mean, look at all these supplements we get from meat that are great. Carnitine, creatine, carnosine, all of them have had tremendous mitigating effects for any— like, if you say like Well, you know, meats are associated with cardiovascular disease because of saturated fat, which I think is quite honestly false. But then you say, well, what about the carnitine in meat? What about the creatine in meat? What about the carnosine in meat? All of which have been shown to have net positive effects. And so does it mitigate this? And you know, when the average American gets most of their saturated fat from baked goods and processed foods and only 3% of it comes from unprocessed red meat, it's like, well, wait a minute, what, what are we talking about here?

You know, I think it's worth mentioning, because what we're talking about here, very often you hear sort of couched in these definitive, um, like good or bad sort of scenarios. And in my experience, what I've seen is that, um, the same diet can work very differently on the same person at different points in time. And so I think it's very important to point out that a given thing at a given point in time can work wildly different at different points in your life. Um, so, and saturated fats kind of come under that, where when you look saturated fat intake, and you, you know, there's all this research on people in their 20s, 30s, whatever, and absolutely no effect whatsoever. Um, but that same person, push them forward 30 years and they're facing the inevitable decline of the cardiovascular system everybody goes through, where the glycocalyx is destroyed, the, uh, the NOX enzymes are hyperactivated, and there's an accumulation of things that we really don't want, um, noxysterols, things like that. Saturated fats can have a very different effect on the same person. So, um, I just think it's important to kind of introduce that reality, which is that time changes the equation for just about everything.

Yeah, I don't disagree with that. I mean, and I think, you know, the longer you can preserve the function of what you had when you're younger, when you say you're 20— let's say 20 is the peak of human physical health, and it very well may be, it may be a different number, but, you know, and as we have, you know, we eventually slow down, as you know. I mean, it's harder to run a sub-24 at 60 than it was at 20. I mean, that's just a reality of things.

Significantly.

Yeah. But I mean, and again, I'm not here to talk about— my approach is not diet in isolation. I tell people, hey, you got to sleep well. You got to not be sedentary. You got to get out there and exercise. You got to get some sunshine, all those types of things that I think all of us would probably agree upon. So it's like, how do you mitigate? And again, there is a lot of relativism here. It's like, well, compared to what? If you compare to the average person's diet at 50, either of our diets likely to be far superior to that, quite honestly. And so it's kind of like, well, which one's the best?

I don't know.

Who knows? I mean, obviously we could stick some twins and lock 'em up in a metabolic ward for 30 years and see what the outcome is. It's not, no one's gonna fund that. It's never gonna get done. But so it's almost like, well, it's speculative. And fun to talk about. And, and, you know, I'm sure, um, you know, I, I don't think Joel is going to go come away from this eating a carnivore diet, and I probably am not going to eat whatever diet he's promoting. But at the same time, um, it's, it's interesting to talk about. And I think it's, you know, but, but at the end of the day, I think we have to, we have to be able to, um, sort of back up whatever claims we're making with some hard clinical endpoints. And I just don't make the claims because I'm like, I don't know. I really just don't know. I mean, I, and I tell people going in, I don't know if carnivore is going to make you live any longer or shorter, and I don't think I'll ever know that. But again, I'll go back to, as a physician, if you got Crohn's disease, I think I can get you— I think I can significantly improve your quality of life with this. And that's, that's what I come from, basically.

Well, you know, Joel, being a self-professed guinea pig, I believe, may indeed try carnivore diet after this. Yeah, I interviewed Paul Saladino. I did for 12 weeks and I had a carnivore diet. I included blueberries and honey. I don't know if that totally breaks it, but I've felt great. I just got bored after 12 weeks. Yeah, I've done carnivore. However, you did bring up one thing, Shawn, when you were describing your diet, you mentioned the relative lack of fiber and you said that you thought Joel might disagree with you on your take on fiber. Joel, do you have any thoughts on the fiber piece?

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Pretty significant. Yeah, sure. We, we'd probably wildly differ on this one. I think it's, and I think it's fun to talk about. I think fiber's essential. I think that when you look at the, the, the 4 main mechanisms, which without which no one, no one is gonna have lasting health, that would be the cardiovascular system, that would be the immune system, that would be insulin function and the microbiome. You got anything wrong with any one of those, you're not gonna be healthy, period. End of story. So when you, when you And I've come at this problem just looking at it to reverse engineer it. When you begin to look at that problem, there, there are some very prominent suspects in there. Number one is the gut-immune axis and the central role of Bifidobacteria in there. So we don't have to speculate. We know that children, when the immune system is being developed, have mostly Bifidobacteria in there. We know that it's Bifidobacteria that really, for the most part, takes the lead role in setting the human immune system, which is important. We also know that old people in poor health have very different profiles of species of Bifidobacteria in there versus super healthy people who live— sanitarians who live very long, they have different profiles of Bifido, and it's pretty consistent. So I would, I would offer there's no real and lasting health without optimal Bifidobacteria for most humans. And mechanistically, it's pretty easy to see. It's involved with dendritic function, antigen sampling, T-cell ratios, all kinds of stuff. And when you reverse engineer how do you feed that, there's 5 ways. There's resistant starch, there's dairy, there's, uh, berry phenols, there's cruciferous vegetables, inulins. So that's how you feed Bifidobacteria. So just based on that alone, just that alone, there seems to be a really good case for those things to be in the diet of most humans. Um, and, and when you look at epidemiology and when you look at disease states like checking every box down the line, you see, wow, yeah, Parkinson's, low bifido, asthma, low bifido, on down the line, obesity, low bifido, all one after another, numerous, numerous different pathologies all related to low bifido. In fact, my friend Dr. Christine Bashara published a study post-COVID looking at Bifidobacteria level in the backs. And there's another doctor who's done this. And consistently what you see is Bifidobacteria is wiped out and it, it correlates to long COVID. So there's a very good case that optimal levels of Bifidobacteria are, are essential for most humans. And when you break down how you feed that, it makes a really good case that you need to have those types of foods in the diet just, just to accomplish just that. But I would take it a step further and I would offer that when you look at what the colon needs— so let me also back up a little bit and talk about the gut as a complete system. So I believe that just looking at the gut, you can see nature's design. So when you look at the small intestine, it's perfectly fed by animal foods. It's perfectly fed by aminos. It's perfectly fed by those. And then when you look at the large intestine, at the colon, it seems to be best fed by saccharolytic fibers. That seems to be the thing that gives you the highest percent probability of getting where you want to go. And so it seems that just looking at the structure that nature has provided, kind of a template to see, wow, diversity really is kind of the, the way this is set up to feed. And And when you try and make the reverse argument, you go, now you can feed the colon perfectly from amino acids and protein.

You have—

you run into 6, 7 massive problems. Okay, the first problem you run into is you're gonna alkalize the colon. So we've been under this deluded belief that cancer cannot grow in an alkaline environment. That's just complete rubbish. You will get cancer with an alkaline colon. You're gonna drive alkylated carbonals. Not coincidentally, so the pH in the colon needs to be roughly 6.7. When you feed high, very high protein diets with no fiber, you alkalize alkalize the colon. This is borne out by lots of carnivore adherents who've published their stuff, their, their stool results, and their co— and their stools are alkaline. So that's a major cancer promoter, and it is so easily solved. It's so ridiculously easy to solve that you just add a little bit of fiber in the diet, you push the pH back down. What you find with colon cancers is that the pH of the proximal colon is, is different from the distal colon. The distal colon is where the pH goes higher, and that's where all your colon cancers So that's a massive problem. You can alkalize the colon. That's, that's non-trivial. But the bigger problem really gets down to when you begin to trace your butyrate pathways down and you look at the bacteria that make butyrate from amino acids, and then you look at the bacteria that make butyrate from saccharolytic fibers.

Sorry, sorry, Joe, just real quick, saccharolytic fiber, quick definition for people who might not know what that is?

Just plant stuff. Plant stuff. Yeah. So when you look at the end products, they're radically different. Radically different. And that's, that's important. So what you see when you ferment— and keep in mind, the way you make butyrate is bacteria eat those things and ferment metabolites. So it's the bacteria doing the heavy lifting. The bacteria that ferment fibers Generally speaking, you're gonna get two things. You're gonna get antioxidants and you're gonna get propionate, butyrate, acetate, and you're gonna get them in the right ratios. And that's what you get. Now, the antioxidants is no small thing because the inner lining of the colon is highly oxidizing and it's very easy to push it over the edge. So you need a steady supply of antioxidants in there to keep that from happening. What you see with a lot of gut dysbiosis is this just completely inflamed lining and and it's because you lose the reductive potential. What you find with bacteria— there's a word for when bacteria ferment protein, it's called putrefaction. And you can prove it, you don't need to take my word. Just take a steak, leave it out for 4 days, and then come back. And what you're smelling is called putrefaction.

Or smell a fart on an elevator at a bodybuilding show.

So what you find is that the end products from the fermentation of aminos, and it's been shown for a number of years now that roughly 12 to 18 grams of aminos reach the colon every day. Okay. And when they ferment, there's two things to keep in mind. Number one, the bacteria that ferment those tend to be pathogenic, things like Fusobacteria. Like there's been studies showing that very high meat consumption will drive Fusobacteria And if you have Fusobacteria, you're going to get cancer. It's like literally guaranteed. When I was at Quest working with some of the really great minds they had there, one of the brightest guys of all, Dr. Steven Witherly, we were looking at some microbiome assays and he goes, oh yeah, yeah, Fusobacteria, man, that guy's going to get cancer every single time. So there have been studies showing this because what you're doing is you're competitively disadvantaging bacteria that otherwise solve that problem. So your end products from the bacterial fermentation of amino acids, you're gonna get propionate, acetate, butyrate, but you get them in much smaller amounts. So keep in mind, the amount of substrate you have to work with is much smaller. You're only getting about roughly 12 to 18 grams a day to work with, so your overall levels are decreased. But then on top of that, instead of antioxidants, you get ammonia. And then on top of that, you get branched-chain fatty acids. So that's a problem. Branched-chain fatty acids, you don't really see too much with fiber fermentation, but you see them increase over time with amino fermentation. The problem with that is they have both beneficial and negative effects, and you tend to see the beneficial effects up front and the negative effects long-term. Branched-chain fatty acids are a very poor source of food for the colonocytes. They can use them for energy, but it's not ideal. And they tend to be— generally speaking, you can look at, you can measure this, you can measure branched-chain fatty acids in the stools, and they tend to correlate with gut dysbiosis. So the end products from one versus the other are wildly different, and they accrue over time. So you begin to see this accrual over time of ammonia, you begin to see the accrual of toxic metabolites from fermenting, and you know, it's fair to say there's a ton of benefits with the carnivore diet, but there's a ton of pathology that I've seen, which is I have pages of testimonials of people and it's always the same story. It's, and it's, and by the way, it's not just limited to the carnivore diet, it's every diet done to an extreme. So I wanna make that clear up front, but it's, but particularly the carnivore diet, same story, which is, yeah, I did that for a number of years, worked really well, but then this went wrong and now I've got, insulin resistance or dysbiosis, and I can't fix it. Can you help me? And that story is pretty consistent. And what this again speaks to is that the same diet works differently at different points in time, and the mechanisms involved are the mechanisms of time accumulation, degradation of the gut lining, all this stuff. So I would just say that trying to, trying to run the colon off of amino acid fermentation is not a long-term solution. It's really best meant to run off fibers. That's what I would offer from.

Yeah, interesting. Yeah, you know, and it's interesting when we look at like comparative anatomy, um, you know, different species, animals, you know, we look at, you know, our fermentation capacity as a human. It's— I think generally, you know, the amount of hardware we have dedicated, the amount, the amount of anatomy that's dedicated to that for fermentation, around 17-18% of our gut, total gut surface area. Chimpanzees 45%, gorillas 60%. Obviously they have a much higher their plant-based diet, and that makes sense for them. And then you compare that, and it's very similar, like cats and dogs. Cats and dogs are around 15%. So we have this kind of small capacity to ferment, ferment fiber, to, and certainly to obtain any kind of energy from that. It's estimated between 4 and 10% of our calories could come from fiber fermentation, which is, you know, maybe up to 200 calories if you're eating a 2,000-calorie diet today. Interestingly, Say people with, say, like, conditions like familial polyposis, where they have these adenomatous polyps, which if not treated ends up in an average life expectancy of about 42 years of age as they get all these polyps in their colon. So they often end up with a colectomy. And those people that undergo colectomies live basically as long as everybody else. They have a normal lifespan without their colon, without really the microbiome, really. So you— we talk about the essentiality of the microbiome. I would point you to colectomy patients that live long, normal life expectancy. So you got to say, okay, it's an important thing while it's there. How effective is it? If you say, well, you're more likely to develop colorectal cancer because you have a particular bacteria species, 100%, I would call into question the validity of that particular claim saying everybody with this bacteria is going to get colon cancer because I don't know that that would be borne out. The other thing I would say is that they just published a study out of Europe on carnivore diets and gut diversity, microbiome diversity, and they found really no difference. I mean, it's pretty much same alpha diversity, same beta diversity. Now, I don't know if the specific metrics you're talking about with regard to bifido were looked at, but generalized diversity is not that much of an issue. I see a lot of people with gut issues going carnivore, and to your point, it might be a short-term solution for a long-term long-term problem. And maybe down the road people are developing issues. I don't know. I see a lot of people doing it long-term. I don't necessarily see that, you know, all the time. There's a lot of things that affect our gut microbiome outside of what we just eat. I mean, God, the temperature, the time of the year, the, the, you know, what are the, what are the things we're exposed to, whether we have a cold or not. Our microbiome is very, it's very, uh, plastic in a way. And as you know, I mean, you can take an antibiotic and whole thing's changed. And so I don't know, I mean, it could be, it could be that stuff. Again, I still think maybe it's speculative. I, I, I will certainly be the first one to admit there are people that do carnivore for a period of time and it stops working for them for whatever reason. And it could be that, it could be one of a thousand other reasons, quite honestly. And my response is, you know, maybe make some adjustments, doesn't work, go do something else. I mean, again, I'm not religious about this type of thing. I'm Again, I just don't have the confidence, and maybe it's because I lack understanding or knowledge in this, but I just don't have the confidence to make big proclamations that this or that is either unsustainable or sustainable. We'll see. We'll see where it goes. But I think it's good to discuss this and bring this up because if there's something you can do to mitigate a problem, I don't care if somebody adds a fiber supplement to their diet. If it helps them, good for them. I would still argue that it is not essential in the sense that if I don't have it, I'm going to die. Now, you might say it's conditionally beneficial. It might decrease your risk for this or that negative outcome, which may be true, but it's not essential. I mean, to me, an essential thing is if I don't eat protein, how long can I go without eating protein before I drop dead? How long can I go without oxygen without dropping dead? Those things to me are essential. I think is conditionally beneficial. And clearly most of the epidemiologic research out there shows a clear association between fiber consumption and every good outcome— mortality, cardiovascular disease, cancer risk, and all that type of thing. And some of that says, well, there's clear studies that show that a high fiber diet is clearly associated with better socioeconomic status, general overall better health outcomes. And like Tommy Wood, Lucy Meiling's paper from from, you know, 2021, looking at the metabolic flexibility of the gut. Maybe you've read that paper. Again, talks about what you said. Proteins can seem to serve as an adequate source of short-chain fatty acids, whether it's propionate or acid, you know, acetate or things like that. Butyrate can certainly come from ketone bodies. We know that beta-hydroxybutyrate is very easily reversed into butyrate, which is considered beneficial for the gut, the energy for the gut, perhaps maintaining the gut mucosa. So Yeah, I mean, I would say certainly I think that concern is valid. Does it play out for 10% of the population, 90% of the population? I don't know. I'm still, like I said, we're still learning here.

Let me throw this out. It seems to me, just real quick, it seems to me like Sean, besides implying that more rich people have kale smoothies, is that there's a certain amount of adaptability and that potentially someone consuming a long-term carnivore diet might actually experience some kind of a shift in gut bacteria from these other sources of say butyrate or perhaps dairy that that person might be eating that would still allow their body to adapt and not experience an increase in the risk of chronic disease or say something like colon cancer by eating a carnivore diet?

Ben Greenfield: Well, I mean, let me just jump in on that real quick before Joel responds because the risk factor for colorectal cancer are, there, there are many, you know, obesity is a huge one, right? You know, chronic underlying inflammation. If you have a chronic inflammatory bowel disease like colorectal, like Crohn's disease, risk goes way, way up, you know? So I mean, we're seeing those risk factors, obesity, you know, inflammation and others go down significantly. Diabetes, you know, these things go, these generally get better on carnivore. And so if we say, you know, there's, there's, let's say there's 50 risk factors for colorectal cancer and the carnivore diet increases 2 of them but mitigates 42 of them. What's the net effect here? And so again, I, I, that's why when we focus on one mechanistic pathway to the exclusion of the other 150, sometimes it leads us to the wrong conclusions.

Yeah. So first of all, I would agree. I'm not a huge fan of reductionism. I think you've, you've probably said it differently, but I'll say the same thing, which is that we're moving into the future, which is we're moving into the unknown. And I look at it kind of like a game of golf. It's like when you're playing golf, you want to minimize risk, maximize your return. So everything comes down to percent probabilities of things, percent likelihoods of things moving into something unknown. And so when you look at mechanistic underpinnings, 1, 2, okay, whatever. But when you begin to stack them, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, in my, in my opinion, it's certainly worth being aware of. It's certainly worth saying, mm-hmm, particularly the things we're talking about. So some interesting tidbits. What's interesting to me about colectomy is that what you see are post-colectomy, you see pouches form in the small intestine, and the bacteria that were in the colon relocate into the small intestine. And so the analogy would be it's kind of like you're running a business out of your house, your house burned down, and then you move into your cousin's house and it's cramped. It's not necessarily the same thing, but, but you're still in business. And so it points to the possibility that you might be able to get by without the colon, but you probably can't get by without the bacteria that were in the colon. And they just find a way. We shouldn't be surprised that the body is incredibly adaptive. That shouldn't surprise anybody. What I think is interesting though is the relocation of the colon bacteria into the small intestine, and it seems to be that the small intestine takes on the function that the colon used to have. So that's very interesting. The other thing is, is ketone bodies. To my knowledge, that's been shown in a petri dish, but it's never been shown in vivo, in the human body. And I would, I would probably be highly doubtful because ketone bodies just tend to bypass the gut and go in the serum serum. So nobody's ever shown me a mechanism where ketone bodies go from the blood, go from the serum, and then just pop into the gut when they need it. It's very, very different. So I would be suspect that actually takes place. Maybe it does. We don't 100% know. No one knows. But I would believe there's more reason to think that doesn't happen just, just based on the way ketone bodies allocate themselves. So yeah.

I mean, I would say that, you know, the colonocytes are, well, they're, they're well vascularized and so that crosses from, from the other side. So it goes, it goes into the colonocyte and it nourishes the colonocyte and that thing. And I think, 'cause some of the argument is the ketone bodies or the, the butyrate specifically among other short-chain fatty acids is actually nourishing from the, from the gut side to the, to those cells. And I think that they're, of course they're, they're vascularized, so they're getting some of that from that way. So that would be, my assumption. The other thing that's interesting, and I think this is interesting because you mentioned putrefaction is occurring in the gut, or causing things like cadaverine and some of these other compounds that come when protein gets in the gut and we putrefy, which is— I mean, putrefaction sounds disgusting because it's putrid. It's the same process, but with carbohydrates, now it's called fermentation. It's just a name. But there's interesting studies looking at, for instance, plant-based proteins, uh, like soy. Like, there's a study out there showing that soy— the protein that gets into the colon from soy is actually higher than from beef. So again, you're still getting protein into the gut through plant-based sources, whether it's soy or some others. And soy might be, you know, the example I have. So you're still getting some level of putrefaction that's occurring. It's the amino acids are now coming from plant sources rather than animal sources. And again, on a gram for gram pace. Now, again, if you're eating more, if you're eating 500 grams of protein a day, yeah, that difference is probably going to be overwhelmed by the sheer amount that you're consuming. So again, to your point of truly high protein diets, and I certainly have been guilty of that, eating 500 grams of protein in a day. And so we don't know. I mean, like I said, it's interesting to say, But yeah, it's, you know, interesting discussion.

What I would offer on that, that to my mind it seems to be kind of like, I, you know, I can't, I can't see why not to do it, is that there have been quite a few studies actually that have shown— this was Lou, Lou showed this in 2016, several other studies that have shown us that all of the— we can make a list of issues that happens when you're just trying to run the gut on protein. And, and there's, there's a number of issues. You can alkalize the colon, you can feed Fusobacteria, you can and make metabolites that we don't want to make. All this stuff, all that's nerfed, 100% nerfed just by adding a little bit of fiber in the diet. It shifts the locus of fermentation, prevents things like nitrosyl compounds from being formed. It's just completely nerfed. So to my mind, if there's no negatives and only benefits, then you get all the benefits of meat and none of the negatives. I don't know why not to do it would be my, my response to that.

Yeah, I mean, fair. If there truly are no negatives, the only problem with— I see with that is I do see people that fiber is a net negative for them. So I mean, it's just symptomatically, and even after a period of adaptation. So yeah, you're absolutely right. I'm like, if there's all upside, no downside, then yeah, why not? But then the question is, what happens when there's a downside? Then you have to sort of weigh those odds in there. And I, you know, I mean, I get people that are eating a healthy diet, they're eating meat and they're eating some vegetables and no junk food and no sugar, and you remove the vegetables and they just get better. I don't know why. I mean, I mean, I can speculate as to why, but it is what it is. And so I have to say at least accept that at least for some people that is a concern either acutely or, and then what happens chronically. And I will tell you, as a physician, what I do is I take people, we don't put everybody on our carnivore diet with our company, by the way. Some people we do, but then we generally tell them your issue has resolved. Maybe it's been 3 months, 6 months, a year, whatever it is, we would encourage you to attempt to add some things back in and see how it goes. And you have to be kind of you know, sort of selective on how you do that and so on and so forth. And for the vast majority of the people that have ever done a carnivore diet, I would say 90% of them probably end up carnivorous or they're carnivore plus whatever, a little bit of fruit, a little of that. So again, from a long-term sustainability, I'm not going to be the guy here saying that carnivore is the best thing for everybody on the planet and everybody should be doing it. It's the best diet ever. I don't say that. I won't say that, but I, but I will sure as hell say it can be used as a therapeutic tool, and we should be definitely exploring more of that. And then if somebody wants to, like I said, if someone wants to do it long term, good for them. They're the pioneer. They're the astronauts, and we'll see what happens out of that. Maybe it'll turn out that I'm totally right, or maybe I got lucky and I'm going to live to 150 and be like Dave Asprey and claim that I'm going to live to 180, and even without my 300 supplements a day or whatever, whatever nonsense is being, you know, pushed out there about that stuff. We'll just have to see with time. And I don't know that I'll keep doing it. I mean, the honest— and just to be consistent, if I get to a point where I start feeling like garbage, I'm going to change. I'm not going to put up with that, you know. Like I said, I got a lot of goals, I got a lot of things to do, I got to run fast, you know. It's like all that stuff you got to do.

Yeah, that's a good point, Sean. And that's actually, um, because I know we're getting close to running up against time, that's kind of, kind of leads to the question I want to ask both of you is kind of a closing question, uh, Joel, based on what you learned from Shawn today and the discussion here, would you ever eat a carnivore diet or some type of relatively undiverse diet, maybe with the inclusion of some of the things that Shawn does like eggs, dairy, et cetera, just to do a short-term stint and see how your body feels?

Oh, absolutely.

Yeah.

I think as I said upfront, I think the carnivore diet can be extremely useful as an intervention. There's We have no disagreement on that whatsoever. In fact, the process of taking people from intolerances and getting them back to where they have diverse diets, we're not even in disagreement on that. So I've done a carnivore diet for periods and, you know, absolutely you can quantify that there's benefits to it. So I think it's important also to point out that when, when we talk about dietary diversity, we don't mean the 4 food groups. Um, what I talk about in my, my new book, The Way, is that there are identifiable patterns of eating in nature, and we need to replicate all of them. So then there's four primarily. One is that you just go hungry. Um, and going hungry always goes with foraging. So in the process of trying to get some game, you go hungry and you're eating whatever you run across— mushrooms, just anything. Okay. Um, foraging and fasting have always gone together, and and they are synergistic and they're beneficial. Then there's feasting. Feasting means you, you know, you, you got a trout, you got a deer or something, and you just, you eat until you can't eat anymore. Then there's a season of abundance. And so in the context of dietary diversity, what a season of abundance looks like is, you know, you kind of eat the same thing for a period of time. You know, it could be whatever, 3 months, 6 months. And that fits within dietary diversity. It's just the diversity comes in nature by scarcity. So eventually you run out of the thing and you gotta go find something else. So I'm not opposed to, you know, these types of things at all. It's my big thing, I think over the long term is that there are synergies between foods. Example, you know, oats get vilified a lot, but a benefit of oats is that they actually clear ammonia from the gut. So just by adding a little bit of oats into the diet with carnivore, you're mitigating a potential liability. Meat, and, and there's no harm to that. They actually sharpen insulin sensitivity. Another one is, um, there's been some research showing that adding roughly about 50 grams of grains into the diet per 1,000 calories increases muscle synthesis rates with high protein, so that high protein together with some grains, your muscle synthesis rates improve. Um, and on and on, you can, you can kind of find these synergies that, that show that diversity in the diet actually allows us to enjoy the benefits of animal foods and completely nerfs, uh, any potential liabilities. And it doesn't even have to be a ton, it's just some, some diversity in the diet. So that's what I would offer.

Yeah, that's interesting. Sean, you gotta start dipping your steak in oatmeal.

Well, probably not oatmeal. I mean, as I said before, you know, and certainly I appreciate Joel's perspective on this, and, you know, if I get to a point where there is some sort of clinical concern for me, whether it's, you know, and, and, you know, to me it has to be a legitimate clinical concern. I know some people say we're waiting too long long, you know, maybe because I just don't know about, you know, how I, how I relate specific facts as to what they translate in down the road. But I certainly am open to change my diet, and I will. I mean, I certainly, if I get to a point where, like, I don't feel like I'm feeling good, I don't feel like I'm as good as I can be, I will, I would not hesitate to change at all. And maybe it'll be adding some small amount of, you know, plant food carbohydrate in there, um, you know, because they taste good. I mean, I, I mean, I still like freaking chocolate cake. I'm not saying that's the health food, but I mean, I still like the way fruit tastes. I still like a lot of these things. I don't find them disgusting. I don't find them evil in any way. But, you know, the question for me is, you know, what's optimal for me? And right now I feel like I'm doing pretty good. I mean, like I said, just, you know, I'm the damn rowing machine. I'm one of the fastest guys in the world at 50, at 57. I'm beating 20-year-olds still. So that to me is a pretty good metric. You know, I mean, there's other things you can measure, and just because you're fit and in shape and athletic doesn't mean you're healthy. I mean, it kind of does. I mean, I when people say, oh, just because you're in shape, you're not healthy, I'm kind of like, yeah, that's kind of bullshit. I mean, most people that are sick are fat guys on the couch going to the cath lab. You don't see a lot of world-class athletes. When you do, you hear about it because it's such a rare event. So, I mean, you know, it depends on, you know, how you, how you define health and how I define health and what make— what's important for me. But if I get to a point where it doesn't make sense, I'm not opposed to it. As I said, I already— I, I'm not religious about this diet in any way, shape, or fashion. Do I get to a point where, and to Joel's point, I totally agree, at least in the near historical context, that yes, there were seasons. There's always seasons. I mean, there's berries in my backyard. I live in Washington. There's blackberries, August, September, my backyard's full of blackberries. I could certainly do that. I do think, I mean, from an evolutionary perspective, the farther we go back, I think things are a little bit different. I mean, a lot of our observations on foraging strategies are based on modern populations, relatively recent populations, people we can observe in nature, Hadza, Bolivians, whatever, whatever. And that may have been a very different scenario back when mammoths were everywhere and there weren't that many of us and we could kill them pretty easily. And you take down a mammoth and you got food for, you got abundance and surplus of food for several months likely. So, it's not that hard to get that. So anyway.

Yeah. But I'm open to questions for sure. I know we got a lot of people listening who are going to be interested in following you. Shawn's book is "The Carnivore Diet." Like I mentioned, I'll link to all his socials, everything he does, and his website in the shownotes. Joel wrote "The Immunity Code." He's been on the podcast a few times. I'll link to him and all of his stuff on the shownotes. Fellas, I learned a ton. I'm sure a lot of other listeners did as well.

All.

So, thank you so much for coming on and having a friendly little chat about meat and beyond. I appreciate you guys.

Likewise. Thank you, Dr. Baker.

Thank you, Ben. Alright. Thank you, Mr. Greenfield, Dr. Baker. I'll talk to you guys later.

Thanks, guys.

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