#80 - What to eat to bring back control of your life with guest co-host @shawnbaker1967

Hi, my name is Jorge Cruise, and I'm known as the 8-Minute Life Strategist to the world's busiest celebrities. I've been a fitness, nutrition, and peak performance trainer for over 20 years, and you may have seen my work with Oprah Winfrey, Khloe Kardashian, Tyra Banks, President Clinton, Kelly Clarkson, Dr. Oz, Tony Robbins, or even Steve Harvey. My career started because in my early 20s I had no no control of my life, and experts told me I was tired and overweight because I didn't exercise enough and overate. They were wrong. I discovered that there are fitness shortcuts that would give you control of your life in less time. My passion to find the best science-backed fitness shortcuts has allowed me to write over 30 books and become a multiple New York Times bestselling author with over 9 million books in print. And I know I can help you Get control of your life. Welcome to the Jorge Cruise Show.

All right, everyone.

I'm super excited because, uh, I'm back with Dr. Shawn Baker. If you guys remember my first interview with Dr. Baker, uh, it was just a couple weeks ago. We talked about his incredible provocative book, The Carnivore Diet. I have it here. Incred— one of my favorite new books. Uh, I've been buying it for a lot of friends. Uh, there it is, The Carnivore Diet. Incredible theory of really of a meat-based, high-fat, high-protein diet that can transform health. He has an incredible background as an orthopedic surgeon. He's joining us here from California. We're not together yet. One of these days we're going to connect. But please say hi to everyone, Dr. Baker.

Hi, everyone. It's welcome to be here. Thanks, Jorge, for having me on for round 2. I really enjoyed our first one, and hopefully people got something out of that and look forward to expanding upon where we went last time.

Oh my gosh, I think my, my audience, uh, you know, my community is, is, is probably 80% so women in their 40s and up, and I think they struggle the most. You know, I, you know, my background and how I struggled as a young man, and I'll tell you, I'm a big advocate of certain things like intermittent fasting, but it's always been a challenge for me in the last 3 years. And I had all these biohacks with, you know, kind of like a Bulletproof Coffee. I called it Cruise Control Coffee, adding the fat and all that. But I'll tell you, ever since I've been listening to this book here, your book, and, and then, you know, I have to give credit to Mark Sisson for connecting me to this community, you know, through Paul Saladino. And then I discovered who you were and all that. It has really made intermittent fasting almost effortless where I'm never hungry. I literally, I know you eat about 2 meals a day and we'll talk about your protocol and all that. I've been doing 1 meal a day, more like the Jack Dorsey stuff, the guy from Twitter. And I know whether it's 1 meal or 2 meal, it's still a type of intermittent fasting, but I have no hunger problems, like none. I don't need all my hacks anymore. I mean, I feel like I used to want my coffee in the morning with butter. I'll still do it because it tastes good or something like that. But because I like that creamy flavor, but I know it's not going to break my fast either. At the same time, I always around 12:00 was a little hungry. I have to tell you, I usually would eat at 3:00 and was ready to eat at 3:00. I was like, "Okay, I'm hungry." I've been eating literally what's on the COVID of your book here every day around 4:00. I'll tell you, I may even have 2 small or 2 medium steaks or 1 large one, but no hunger. I have been working out again, going back to— we have here in San Diego a gym that has an open-door outdoor area, and so I've been doing lifting weights again. I've been doing a lot of indoor I do indoor training, interval training with my clients. That's been keeping me looking good, but I wanted to add a little more muscle. And I feel like because of this protocol, my life has become easier. And that's what this podcast is all about. We really want to try to share with people fitness shortcuts, you know, and I feel like you've discovered this shortcut. And I thought maybe we start by retelling a brief version of your origin story, which was incredible because then as, as an orthopedic surgeon, you know, you had to help people get ready for surgery for knees and all that. I mean, tell that story briefly. And how a lot of them, or some, I don't know if it was all, or you can maybe tell us that, were a little overweight and that can be a problem for surgery. So they would say, "Well, how do I lose the weight, Dr. Baker?" And thus you became indirectly kind of like a weight loss doctor, not that that's what you studied. And then we connect the dots in which we did, and everyone will have to listen to episode 71 if they want to hear the full story, but that brought you to what you're doing now where you have this community of incredible people that, I mean, it's not just weight loss. They overcome so many obstacles from general inflammation throughout their body to heart disease, to diabetes. I mean, the list goes on and on. So thank you for joining us again. Love round 2, and I'm excited to have you here. I have a list of questions that I'm going to save, or we'll try to sprinkle them through the interview, but my clients have a list of them, these gals. So, but would you mind telling us a little bit of how you got cooking in this business again? Because you truly are an orthopedic surgeon and you used to operate operate on people's knees, hips, and all that. I mean, tell the story a little bit to connect the dots so they realize how you started to help people lose weight so they could have these procedures at times, right?

Yeah, sure. So, and I won't do the long version because we know, you know, it's on previous podcast, but you know, basically as a surgeon, you know, I went into orthopedics because I wanted to help people and I felt that doing surgery on people would be the fastest way, you know, rather than doing primary care where no one's compliant with their meds. They don't get better. They don't get healthier. It's kind of frustrating. I thought, well, I'm going to be a surgeon. I'm just going to fix people right away. What I found out was really I was just dealing with more chronic disease. I mean, arthritis is chronic disease and really the lifestyle made an impact. But I, you know, as I started to turn my own personal health around and then I started to apply that to my patients with different diets and they tend to be low carb and ketogenic. I wasn't quite at the carnivore stage yet, but I was noticing that these people were, you know, they're just getting better. The joint pain was going away to the point where they did not need surgery anymore. And to me, that was just— say that again.

So you're saying they came to to you for surgery because they had pain, more hips, knees, or just everything, shoulders?

Well, it was, it was everything. I mean, it was, it was carpal tunnel syndrome, rotator cuff pain. It was, you know, it was knee arthritis, hip arthritis, ankle arthritis, you name it, everything in orthopedic surgeon's back pain purview. These people were getting better to the point where we had them literally on the schedule for surgery because they had everything else had failed injections, arthroscopies. Physical therapy, attempts at weight loss had failed. And then we changed their diet. And within, in many cases without even losing much weight, 2 weeks later they come back and they're saying, hey, I don't really have pain anymore. And then we're like, well, if you don't have pain, you don't need surgery.

Oh, now what would you say out of 10 people? Was that maybe a portion of them? How many out of 10 would maybe say that to you or was it a majority?

Well, it was certainly a significant percentage. I didn't keep direct stats on that because not everybody would do the diet, you know, not everybody was willing to change. And so I think of the people that actually did that, I have better stats now from what I've seen over the years. And so, I mean, now I see, you know, particularly, particularly, you know, because I've collected data on thousands of people that have been doing this, you know, particularly those who get to 3 months. By 3 months, something like 95% of the people that stick with it say that their joint pain is either dramatically improved or improved. And so that is— wow, a lot of people. That's a lot.

This is your specialty, is what you studied, it's what you literally became. For many years you were doing these surgeries, over 10 years or right around 10 years, because then you transitioned.

Started, you know, yeah, I graduated from medical school in 2001, so it was 20 years or so. And then I kind of had this weird, you know, I had this weird path because I started medical school in 1989. I quit to go play professional rugby in New Zealand, you know, came back, went in the military, launched nuclear weapons, got tired of, you know, playing rugby, getting my head kicked in. You know, maybe that's what's wrong with me. I got my head kicked in.

Oh, please. I think that's what's right with you.

I must say. Well, maybe.

Yeah, maybe.

Because you really are—

Well, no, you're thinking this direction that took you from traditional medicine, which where nutrition was something I bet you didn't study much back when you graduated. You had how many hours under your belt?

Probably, you know, I don't remember the number of hours, but it was very minimal. I mean, it was like this: these are the vitamins you get, you need, and if you don't have these vitamins, you get these deficiency syndromes. But beyond that, it was very, very little on nutrition. There was zero about how nutrition treats disease. I mean, absolutely zero on how you can implement diet. I mean, the general sentiment is, you know, a patient with better nutrition is going to do better with surgical outcomes. But beyond that, nothing, nothing at all.

Incredible. So after this incredible start in life as an athlete, I mean, you started medical school and you're incredible fit shape. We'll give out your Instagram, your social, your website. Yeah. Show us the guns. You got the gun show there. Mark Sisson and you got some good guns. I can say that. And for me, having that kind of strength in my body is important, especially I'm almost 50. I feel like for me, it's become easier as I've gotten older because of how smart I've gotten with my nutrition and my fitness. I owe a lot of that to Mark Sisson. I'm sure he's going to be watching this and hearing the podcast, but I'll tell you, he really brought me to your— brought this community of meat-eating primary— as the primary choice in what you're eating as a diet, which goes back to what Mark is passionate about, ancestral health. So how did your practice from— just for everyone, we'll wrap up and then we'll get into the new stuff because they're going to want to know what the heck are you doing to these people? What are they eating? I mean, obviously it's a carnivore diet, but we'll talk about what that means. And then I've got questions about how to supplement that or not supplement that if there isn't a concern. But when you saw people and they had this weight and they couldn't get the surgery, how did you— did you go more— was it, as I know, back in the '80s and '90s, we'd call this the Atkins diet, right? And then it's kind of keto now for the last, I don't know how many years, decade or so. But, and obviously as an athlete and someone who exercises, we were talking offline that your location right now, you're at your house, but it's your gym, but it's, you know, you're very athletic and you like to exercise and you got the guns. But was this just a personal interest of yours to have an, I would call it an optimal kind of, you know, diet. And then you just prescribed that to these folks that you were working with and then were going to do surgery on so they could get ready and qualify? Because it is— was it mainly because it was so dangerous for people that were— I don't want to call them obese, but a certain amount of weight that was over, that it would be dangerous. It would have secondary effects if they had the surgery. Was that the primary reason you started to prescribe a diet, if you will, as an orthopedic surgeon, right?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I mean, absolutely. I mean, that was a significant part of it. We know that people that have significant amounts of obesity are at a higher risk for complications, whether respiratory complications, complications, blood clots, infections. I mean, these things are there, so you want to do what you can to improve the outcomes or minimize complications. But in addition to that, I saw people that would come to the clinic that would be struggling with obesity and they would have, you know, joint pain and, you know, other issues that related to that. So I basically, I mean, I was handing, literally handing out flyers all day long in my clinic. My nurse was just printing them out over and over because there's so many people that come to an orthopedic surgeon's office that need to lose weight or improve their diet.

And what was in your flyer? Was it the diet or was it to at least come to a—

Well, it was links. It was links to different books and videos and that type of stuff. And this is— I was just getting started in this stuff. And then as I developed my own sort of knowledge and expansion, and now it's a little bit different. But, you know, I mean, you're very right, you know, Atkins or whatever you want to call the diets, these are all low-carb diets of some sort. But the common— I think the common denominator when we look at the human existence is how do you get on a low-carb diet? What are you gonna eat? We're gonna eat meat. That's the only thing left if we go back far enough, you know. I mean, or—

and that's where ancestral health comes into play, right, right, Dr. Baker? Because if we go far back enough, I mean, agriculture was only started how many thousands of years ago? It hasn't been—

yeah, it depends on a part of the world, but some statistics would suggest 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. And, you know, and then this is in the Fertile Crescent in the Middle East. And then it expanded into Europe and different places. And so some places only even, even in the hundreds of years, you know, if you look at places like, well, we, we, we didn't even colonize the Pacific Islands till, you know, maybe 8,000 years ago or something like that.

And that's what I love about this ideology or this methodology. It's really based on this ancestral historical factual account of our species called the human race, right? I mean, because if you go back now 100,000 years, there was no agriculture. Agriculture. You would agree to that. And I know Mark Sisson talks about us being in this form as a somewhat sophisticated being for at least 2 million, some people say 3 million years we've been in existence as a species. And of course, you go back that far, 2 million years or more, I mean, what was the diet? There was no agriculture. So, and agriculture is primarily carbohydrates, right? Vegetables, fruits, things, grains, things of that nature, right?

Yeah, I mean, absolutely. I mean, some people would say domestication of animals is part of agriculture. So the development of dairy and things like that. But I mean, you know, if we, you know, look about— and that 100,000 point is a pretty good point in time because many people will look at our species, which is Homo sapiens. And so remember, humans are more than just Homo sapiens. It goes back to Homo erectus, Homo habilis, Homo ergaster, the Neanderthals, and so on and so forth. But as Homo sapiens, we've been around at least 300,000 years, maybe 400,000 years, depending on which anthropology you look at. Yeah. But I mean, just, we probably reached peak physical and brain development around 100,000 years ago. And the interesting thing is, you know, when our brain was roughly maybe as high as 1,500 cc's at that time, we've lost that. We lost 200 cc's to our current brain size, only 300 cc's. Or 1,300 cc.

1,300.

That is largely due to a loss of our native diet, our natural diet, and our reliance on grains and agriculture.

Wow. So if you were to take us back 100,000 years ago, we were at a very good place in history as a species. We didn't have diabetes, we didn't have heart disease. These things didn't exist. I mean, people passed from injuries and, you know, maybe hunting an animal, which was natural. And now luckily, we have ways to solve all that. But what was— I mean, take us back the average day in the life of someone, a male, female, both, because I know a lot of the women I work with think that this is just for men. But I mean, 100,000 years ago, there were both men and females, and they had to eat together. I mean, they had families and tribes. So what were these folks doing 100,000 years ago that was allowing us and our brain, the actual— the skull itself was slightly, significantly larger, you would say, right?

Right, Dr. Baker? Yeah, I mean, there's, I mean, there's no doubt if you look at the endocranial vaults in skeletons, we see that. But I mean, you know, obviously I don't have a time machine, I wasn't there, but based on what we think, I mean, humans sort of clustered in smaller groups, maybe 12, 15, 20 people. I mean, obviously hunting was a huge part of the existence, and then preparing the food was something. Probably they didn't spend, I mean, they had a You know, they had— they didn't have jobs. You know, they weren't— they had different stresses. I mean, they were definitely outside in the environment more. There was probably some level of activity of different types. It was, you know, I mean, was there some sprinting and, you know, aggressive stuff that happened from time to time? Obviously, you know, another misconception I want to clear up is, you know, people say, well, they only lived to 25 or 30. Well, that's clearly not the case. I mean, what we see is we look at population average. The average person might live that long because Guess what? You know, 2 out of 4 babies are dead from— you know, they don't make it to 5 years of age. And so because of infection, because of trauma, because of the dangerous environment. So that really brings down your statistic. You imagine if you have 2 people, one lives to 1 and one lives to 80. Well, what's the population average? It's 40.5.

Bingo.

So you automatically know if you have high infant mortality rates, you're going to lower it down. But really, these people were living into their 60s and 70s and maybe 80s. And so, you know, that's a common misconception. So there are anthropological records of people that lived to apparently old age and they had better bone structures and they had less arthritis and they were bigger, more robust people. So, you know, again, I can't say exactly what they're doing because I wasn't there. But what I— and I know as much as I like to talk about the anthropologic stuff and what makes sense, but I think at the end of the day, what I really do is it's 2020 and I say, what happens to people in 2020 when you put them on a meat-based diet?? And the answer to me is very clear. They get undeniably healthier. And I think this is— you can speculate about epidemiology, you can speculate about indigenous tribes, you can speculate about what they ate in Asia and how much rice they ate in Asia. You can speculate what we think our ancestors did. I mean, we clearly know what they weren't eating. You can argue how many berries they ate or how many starch tubers they ate. They weren't eating Doritos and Twinkies and processed food and seed oils and high fructose as corn syrup. We know unequivocally they were not eating that. So we can, we can automatically say that's not part of the human diet or shouldn't be.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think it's incredible that if we look at the history, you know, you'd have to be almost in denial of the world being round as well, that, that this wasn't something globally we did as a species. And then obviously, uh, 10, 20,000 years ago, agriculture became this thing that allowed us to stay in one place and not have to roam and be so nomadic and all that and hunt. But we are hunters and I feel like it's been for me such a freeing tool, method to be able to control my hunger and feel my best. I'm going to be 50 next year and I want to look as good as you and Mark Sisson and all these guys that have adapted this lifestyle. And I feel like my clients, just to share with you a story, there is a gal that I've worked with and she's a big fan of yours. She loves your athleticism. She loves all your videos because you do a lot of great workouts and all that. I think a lot of ladies are impressed with that, but at the same time, very impressed with your research and your passion behind the science. I think this is based on current science. It's not just ancestral. Talk for a moment about that, and then I've got some questions that I definitely want to ask about the diet because I think we should talk about what is the diet because I know it can come down to meat, salt, and water, but we can adapt that tiny bit, make it a little more robust, but not necessarily needed to be more than that. But how does the science of today impact what has happened for these 100,000 years or so in the sense of what we did as a species? Because I think the science— and I know you're leading right now a fundraising program, which I want to make sure we give a shout out to, and you can do it now if you want, and we'll do it at the end to the show too, because you're trying to do a clinical study to kind of confirm more of this, but you've already— I mean, you have the best science. If people go to your social, you have— you weekly, if not daily, are posting, you know, I follow you now all the time, these great studies about how this carnivore diet can impact people's wellbeing. And the science is important. I do believe that's why people like Joe Rogan are doing this. That's why people that are intelligent and talk to millions of people, uh, if they read your materials, uh, even just Instagram, let alone your book, I feel like it's pretty clear the current science is showing that this is good. But tell us about your passion for that. And then definitely mention what you're trying to, because I think you're still, still raising some money to do this clinical study, but tell us about that at the end. But tell us about your passion for that, because I feel like This isn't just ancestral health. It's very 2020, as you said, you know?

Yeah. I mean, so my goal at the end of the day is that every physician in the United States, every physician in the world would feel comfortable prescribing this diet to treat patients. I mean, my, as a physician, my goal is to help sick people, you know, and we have a company called Metarex and our slogan is we get, you know, we, we fix broken people. And there's a lot of broken people out there, you know, whether it's, you know, mental health, whether it's physical health. I mean, so what I want to do is get to that level where people feel comfortable at least doing this. It doesn't necessarily— it's a lifetime thing, but it's how do you fix people? How do you take people that are sick and get them to a position where they're not sick, where they feel good about themselves and they feel good and they want to perform and they want to have a healthy life and they want to participate in life, not be on the sidelines, because it's so important. That's why we're on the planet. This is why we're breathing sentient beings, so we want to participate, and disease takes us out of us. And so I want to help people get away from that. But as far as the science, you know, if we look at, you know, what's come out lately in the last decade, you know, or in— we see this every, every few months, new study, Journal of American College of Cardiology just came out, saturated fat does not cause heart disease. I mean, that's huge. This is an organization that has said for years saturated fat causes heart disease. NutriRECS 2019, huge 6 studies, Annals of Internal Medicine. Red meat does not cause cancer. Red meat does not cause heart disease. Any evidence that shows that it does is weak and unreliable. I mean, these are huge, powerful studies coming out that show that one, it's not bad for you. Now the question becomes, well, what about if you just eat it? If it's only eat it, if you need the fruits and vegetables, that's the question we're trying to figure out. Yeah, I know based on what I'm seeing, at least over a period of time in large numbers of people, they seem to thrive in the absence of fruits and vegetables, which I know sounds crazy, without fiber, which I know sounds crazy, but it's what's happening. And so you can't deny that. You know, with one or two people you can say, oh, it's anecdotal. When it gets into the tens of thousands, you have to say, wait a minute. A curious person, a person who is scientifically minded would say, they would say either you guys are all liars or wait a minute, let's reevaluate our theories and science and test it. And what I'm trying to do in a more rigorous fashion, because if we look at nutrition science, if we look at the entire body of nutrition science, 85% of it is epidemiologic observational data. That is all self-reported data. I mean, how do you do it? You ask a bunch of people, what do they eat? Well, they got to self-report what they ate. They fill out a form. What— how many blueberries did you eat in the last year? I have no idea. I'm going to guess. So this is this kind of data we get. So the data I'm collecting on thousands of people and I have it. I have a survey of over 10,000, almost 12,000 people doing carnivore diet for, you know, anywhere up to 2+ years from 1 month on. That's the same type of data. It's self-reported data and we're getting these clear, clear improvements. And so, but the next level is let's do an intervention trial. There is a trial. And because of all these people sharing their studies— their stories, rather— Harvard University, led by David Ludwig, Belinda Lenners as a primary investigator, have taken up and they, they collected data. And I helped them get some of the data, you know, got encouraged people to participate. 2,000 people in their study, which they'll publish probably later this year, on the carnivore diet. I don't know what the outcomes are going to be, but, but I'm glad it's there.

That's fantastic.

We are trying to do an intervention trial. So So the next level of science, we're gonna take—

So this is the project you're funding or trying to fund?

This is the project we're trying to fund, right? And we're doing, you know, we've raised well over $100,000.

That's incredible.

We raise more every day. I get like $1,000 a day for the community 'cause the community is so passionate. They've got so many people, thousands of people's lives have been impacted. They're like, yeah, I'll throw in $20, I'll throw in $50, I'll throw in $100. We've had $10,000 donors. So we're gonna make this happen where we're gonna take, you know, maybe a couple hundred people and put them on a carnivore diet and we'll take another group of people and put them on a regular diet and we'll measure metrics, disease outcomes, and see what it shows. And I have my suspicion what it's going to show, but this is a science that needs to happen to make physicians comfortable to do this. And so this is one of my, among many missions, this is something that's very important to get done.

And I think your grasp of the current science and all the incredible references you mentioned, I mean, I'm going to ask ask you if you don't mind later offline, please email me those and we'll include them with part of the show here so people can click on these links and read everything you mentioned because everything is so substantiated. And those, those claims that, that big organizations for years was— I know the first question I wanted to ask you about this diet, and I want to first talk about what is the diet so we can set that point and then get into the questions that my clients and listeners have had. But the big question is, Can it cause cancer? Can it be bad for my heart? What happens if I have high blood pressure? What? And, but all these studies have already indicated what you just said, that they were wrong because at one point that material was out there, right? Dr. Baker. I mean that, and I'm not saying that they made a mistake, but obviously they've remedied whatever they thought was going on. I don't know if there's an explanation how these folks said X and now it's Y, but I mean, at least they've made that correction, but that happens in the medical community. In the research community, right, Dr. Baker? Where people and people that are passionate about research discover new things and then they share that. And it's such a great thing that you're leading this. Your goal for this new clinical study, is it starting this year or will it be more 2021, you think?

I think it will probably end up being 2021 by the time we raise the money sufficiently. We've got to design the study. We're already— We're already talking to a lot of research organizations that are going to do the study for us. I'm not the researcher. I'm not the primary investigator. I'm not a clinical researcher, so I'm not going to pretend to be. So we're going to have professionals do the study. We're going to help fund it, and we're going to help with the design, implement the design aspect, but we're not going to run the study. Your point about, you know, does it cause cancer, heart disease? This is a—

Should we jump into that? Tell us briefly. I mean, because I feel like establish before you jump into this, just in a minute, what is this darn diet? Because it's, it's a beautiful book. People got to get this book. I have it here. I've been giving it out to my friends and all that. It's simple though, and keep it simple for us because there are other folks in the community that make it a little more complicated. I love— my hat's off to you, uh, literally, because you keep it simple, but dumb it— keep it as dumb and simple as you can. What is this? And then we can ask that, and then answer that question you're about to answer. But tell us, what is the carnivore diet from your opinion? Simple way.

And the name, the carnivore diet, I actually made the name. I mean, there are people doing a zero-carb diet before, but I just found that too confusing because it's like, what is zero carb? It's Diet Coke and corn oil. So shit. Yeah. I wanted to show that it was a meat-based diet. And so the carnivore diet. So when I give lectures, I basically frame it this way. I say it's a diet that is focused on animal-based nutrition, high-quality animal-based nutrition, and you either eliminate or limit plants as necessary. And the goal is to improve health. And so what that means is, yes, some people might eat a little bit of plant food in there, but some— many people just go strictly animal-based only. And so when we talk about what's an animal-based food, well, obviously meat is.

Give us the food list. Give us your top 10 items.

Yeah. I mean, I mean, so, or whatever, you know, any kind of meat. I mean, I would say for most people that have success and do this, they tend to, to eat a lot of red meat. Ruminant meat. That would be cows, that would be sheep, that would be goats, that would be deer. That would be—

tell us that term again, the term for those that may not be familiar with it.

It's called— these are animals that have rumens instead of, you know, single stomach. So these are the guys that have the four stomachs, if you will, right? Cows. Okay. Digest.

Why are their meat more beneficial to us humans? Why would a cow beef— give, give us, give us those animals again.

The others were— which one? I mean, you would say cow and you would say sheep and you would say goat and you would say deer and elk and, you know, those would be the major ruminants. There's some others out there, other, you know, other wild animals.

Those are the common ones.

Yeah. Those are the common ones. So, you know, and most people eat beef because that's in the US. And then you have monogastric animals, which would be chickens and pigs primarily. And those tend to be certainly part of the diet. Most people don't make them the primary part of the diet. But, you know, if we look at worldwide, the number one consumed animal in the world is pigs. And it's done in Asia because there's 4.5 billion Asians and they like pork. And so a lot of people do well on pork, but I would say red meat seems to be when you test it, looking at sensitivities for people, more people tend to tolerate, you know, beef and red meat, room, than other animals. And I know pork's considered red meat or it's actually considered, they call it the other white meat, but it's really considered a red meat when you look at it scientifically. But beef tends to be the common one. So most people focus on beef in the US. Some people— lamb is another excellent source of nutrition, arguably maybe even better than beef for some people would say. And then, you know, to that you can add the monogastrics, you know, the chickens and pigs.

And tell us what that means. Mono meaning one stomach.

That means they have one stomach just like a dog, just like a human. They tend to have a little bit different way of absorb— absorbing and modifying food as it comes in. And then you have eggs. Some people do better with eggs whites versus egg yolks or egg yolks versus egg whites. Then beyond that—

How about fish and all those guys?

Fish and seafood, shellfish, many people do that. Again, as I'm going farther away from these things, these things tend to be less tolerated. If you're dealing with an autoimmune disease or a significant illness, an irritable bowel syndrome or an inflammatory bowel disease or mental health disorder. The closer you get to the beef and less things, the better a lot of people do. That's incredible. Then organ meats are something that certainly can be part of the diet. We can talk about the necessity versus whether they—

I know there's a debate out in the community right now, it seems, about how vital these are. I wanted to ask you about that heart because I was at one point buying heart meat, but it's hard to find. I had to make a special trip. I wanted to show you a picture. Let me see if I can show it to you. I was at Costco just 2 days ago and I like Costco because you can get meat there at a good price and it's fairly good stuff.

They have grass-fed.

No, so I had to go to Whole Foods to get myself a heart and then the liver and then I was at grass-fed and all this and it's just so much trouble and I know now they've got pills and all that. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but what are your thoughts now that we know what the diet is? And then you also, before we get into these questions, you also say the diet is made of salt and water. I think you usually say 3 things. Is that— Am I correct? Am I oversimplifying it or is it about those 3, right, in your book?

Well, I mean, it can be. I mean, it can be as simple as beef, salt, and water. I mean, or even beef, no salt, and water for some people. And you know, I think the one thing in the caveat there I think is for many people making sure you get enough fat in the diet, you know, and it depends on the goals. But again, there's a transition period. Most people, and perhaps many people in your audience are sugar addicts or carbohydrate addicts, so they struggle with food. And so you have to have sufficient nutrition and satiety to overcome that. And so I tell people the first 2, 3 months, don't worry about weight gain, don't worry about weight loss. Just eat enough fatty meat that you enjoy. Eat meat you enjoy. Cook it how you want it. Make some variety. Throw some bacon on there. Throw an egg on there. Dairy, we didn't get to, but dairy can be part of the diet. But I tell people that's kind of one of those gray areas where you don't want to go too much on the dairy. And eventually some people have to ultimately eliminate or limit significantly. But so that's how you kind of start with that.

But that's it pretty much. Simplicity, it really is.

I mean, it certainly can be. Now, some people will do some different things, and I'm no way saying you can't do extra things, but the minimum barrier of entry, and I think this is the important part because this is something that when you overcomplicate it, when you say you have to jump through 16 different steps when you have to spend exorbitant amounts of money on this diet.

I found the picture. Here's me at Costco buying my steaks, right?

It's so simple. Yeah, those look like ribeyes.

Yeah. And now this whole thing, just so everyone knows, $42 for 4 big ones. So it's about $10 and that's a whole meal right there. I have to show you this. This was interesting. This was this Japanese beef and I couldn't believe the price.

The wagyu. Yeah.

How do you pronounce it?

Wagyu.

$129 for 2 steaks. Now I'm sure some people would advocate for these steaks, these $129, it was $99 a pound.

They taste good.

But we don't have— so get into that. So how far off of— even though they taste good and they're not bad for us, I don't know why they're so darn expensive. Why would, why would that kind of meat be so expensive?

I don't know if the cost justifies The improvement in quality and taste. I mean, I think you get that, that other ribeye you're eating, you're going to get plenty of taste enjoyment.

And it's on grass-fed. It's okay that it's not grass-fed, right? Dr. Baker, spend a minute on that and then let's get into these organ meats and then the collagens and what is necessary. Because I feel like that's the number one question that my clients and my listeners have had. They're like, well, okay, so we got the red meat, we got the salt, we got the water. What else do we need? So do we need these grass-fed beefs? Yes or no? Is that a Is that an easy one or how would you—

So the short answer is for the vast majority of people, no, you do not have to eat grass-fed beef to make this diet work and be successful. I want to expand upon that because there are people making health claims which don't have any real human interventional trial data to support that. Now they'll say that grass-fed has more conjugated linoleic acid, it has more zinc and iron and vitamin vitamin A and vitamin E and so on and so forth. And those are true, that's true statements. Does it make a difference in your outcome? It doesn't appear to be so, you know, when again, when I've got surveys on tens of thousands of people doing a carnivore diet and I can't discern any improvement in outcome. Harvard study, I made sure they asked that question. So maybe we'll get some additional data from the Harvard study because they ask people how much grass-fed versus grain-fed you're eating. Now I will say, first of all, when you buy grass-fed beef at at the store or wherever, there's no way of verifying that's actually what you think you're getting because grass-fed, it can mean they had access to grass. Didn't mean they ate it. It may mean that they ate some of it. And remember—

Or grass-finished. I've heard of that term. At least they're somewhat honest. Grass-finished.

Well, it's even maybe, I mean, how much was they grass-finished? Does that mean they went out in the field— For one day before they were killed. For three days they had grass and the rest of the time they ate grain. Again, it's misleading.

Misleading.

All animals start out on grass. I mean, we're talking about cows. Chickens and pigs tend to be grain-fed.

Yeah.

But so that's first of all misleading. So you may be spending an extra $10 a pound for getting the same thing.

Oh, it's literally double. Don't you think, Dr. Baker? Literally double.

It often is. Now, what I will say is that grass-fed animals, you know, if we're talking about the environmental aspect of it, I think this is an important consideration. Animals raised in a feedlot cause more environmental destruction than animals raised in a different way. And so that is a consideration. So say that one more time for us, Dr.

Baker, because the audio was a little off there. Say it one more time. I think what you said is critical.

Yeah. So when we, when we, when we make the, when we make the human health argument, I think it's very weak. When we make an environmental argument, the environmental argument for the way animals are raised, is much more significant. We know that animals raised in feedlots are going to lead to more industrial runoff. You know, we— they use grains that use a lot of fertilizers and pesticides. Uh, those things kill animals, you know, they kill the biodiversity. Um, there's antibiotics that will lead to resistant organism— resistant bacteria. So those aspects are an important aspect of this. And so if your wallet allows you to support animals raised in a different way, then that is good. But I want to expand upon that farther because grass-finished animals can be very destructive to the environment as well. If you just turn it— and this is something some of these ranchers call the Columbus method. You let the animals out in your pasture in March and you go find them in October. And what they do is they chew down all the grass, they chew it down to bare dirt, they destroy that ecosystem. So there's a difference between the way that grass finishing works than grass finishing, which is also done in a holistic or a regenerative way where you move the animals in a very systematic fashion every day, every other day, twice a day. They graze a little bit and then they move. And then, so what happens is that grass now grows, it becomes biodiverse, wildlife returns, bees return, uh, birds return, the soil Soil gets carbon sequestered. In fact, you know, this is a— I want to, if you don't mind, I want to indulge me a little bit on the environmental stuff.

I think it's so important. A lot of people don't eat meat for this reason, right?

Right. And then so what we were hearing from companies like Beyond Meat and Impossible Burger, stop eating meat, start eating our processed product. This is clearly a processed product. Eat this because it's better for the environment. Well, when we look at— they're talking about greenhouse gases in general. This is one of the things. So if we look at worldwide greenhouse gas, I just posted on my Instagram today, the worldwide greenhouse gases. When we look at what US animal agriculture does contribute to that, it is 0.5%, not even 1% of all of animal agriculture in the US contributes to greenhouse gases globally.

Say that number again. I didn't think it was that big.

It's 0.5%.

I can't even imagine how small that is, but it is tiny. It's less than 1%.

So let's put it in perspective. If you could convince every single American, all 330 million of us, to completely go vegan and give up all meat, and you killed every single animal in the United States, all, you know, 100 million cows, all the pigs, all the sheep, all the horses, all the cats, all the dogs, and you did all that, the difference in worldwide greenhouse gas emissions would be 0.5%. It wouldn't even make a dent in you. And so, but what could you do?

How did we get misled? If I can interrupt, how did this become a thing where vegans— because I think half— I don't want to speak amongst vegans because I, I've been plant-based at times, but I've never been a full vegan. I, I've enjoyed plants, but I get the argument that it can hurt the earth and, you know, you hurt the animals and all that. But where do you think we went wrong? Any, any Any guesses on that, Dr. Pompa?

Yeah, no, absolutely. So one, it's very much agenda-driven. Two, we look at data from World Resource Institute that Cowspiracy was based on where they promote— they quoted these absolutely ridiculous numbers saying when cows breathe, just breathe CO2, it's being calculated. It's like saying humans breathing CO2 is destroying the world.

Wow.

That was a ridiculous number. Then in 2006, Livestock's Long Shadow done by the United Nations came out and said cattle are responsible for 18% of greenhouse gases on based on life cycle assessments. And then they retracted that and moved it down to 14%. But that's not— and then compared to transportation, but they're saying every single thing that goes into making meat, whereas all they compare that to is what comes out the back of a tailpipe of a car. And so the equivalent would say not only what comes out the back of a tailpipe of of a car, but what goes into making a car? The steel.

It's unfair. It's an unfair comparison.

It's an unfair comparison. So when you compare direct emissions, animal agriculture worldwide is 5% of our greenhouse gas emissions. Cattle is about 3% of the worldwide agricultural greenhouse gas emissions. And so when you say 3%, it's a much smaller number. That's worldwide. You got to remember, this includes all these developing countries. 70 to 80% of that number comes from developing countries like Africa, where they don't have any other energy sector, industry sectors, all still pretty rural. So again, if we go back in time 100 years ago, we'd have much higher percentage of our greenhouse gases coming from agriculture because we didn't develop all the pollution from China and all this stuff. So this is where they mislead you. And the data I quoted you about the 0.5% is directly from the EPA. This is, this is clear EPA data. So that number— and so there's people saying, oh, I'm not going to eat meat because it's so bad for the environment. Totally wrong. But this is the point I want to get to.

Okay.

So we know from calculations that are done when I talk about regenerative agriculture, we know it puts carbon back in the soil. If we could convert only 30% roughly of our pasturelands, and remember, you cannot grow crops on pastureland. It's rocky, it's hilly, it's not suitable for crops. So the reason they have cows in there, because the only thing you can grow there. And why not use that land for what it's purposed for? You can't, you know, you can't plant crops there anyway. So, but if we could convert 30, roughly 30%, this is based on the work of a guy named Allan Williams at Joyce Farms, who's a researcher, PhD, has been studying this stuff. 30% of our, of our pasture land converted to regenerative style agriculture, we could completely offset all greenhouse gas emissions produced by all sectors in the United States. Transportation, cars, you know, energy sector, industry.

That—

so instead of everybody giving up meat and making a 0.5% reduction, we could make, you know, a 10% reduction in the world's greenhouse gas things by just by converting more of our cows onto regenerative agriculture. So this is a message and needs to get out there.

It's powerful.

It's not the cow, it's the how. And if we get the how right—

I like that.

We can have a dramatically improved impact on the world's greenhouse gas emissions if we're worried about that. I know there's people out there that are not even worried about that, but if that's your argument, this is a reality. This is what the numbers really show.

It's not the cow, it's the how. That is such a, it sounds like it should be a website or a book because it's so simple. And I think, what would be your guess? I would say a good half of these folks that are eating plants, I've been very lucky as a trainer. I've met other celebrity trainers like Marko Borrago, and if you know his name, he's worked with Jay-Z and Beyoncé and has this plant-based movement, The Green Print book he recently published. Beyoncé has 200 million+ women followers and men too, and they're all eating her method, her plant-based vegan method. I know Marko's a good man. He's Cuban. He lives in Miami. He's out here a lot in California. I've met with him many times. And he got me to try a lot of his products. And at one point I was eating them and enjoying them. And a lot of the argument is for both sides of the coin, both for personal health and then for the earth. What would you say to someone like a Marco Borrago, someone who's a leader in the field that right now is a vegan? And not that we want to tell all vegans they have to be vegan. To eat meat, but I think what they've evaluated had to be based on some science. Is there one thing that tends to help a vegan broaden their thinking? A study, a book? I mean, obviously your book, but something that would be a resource for people out there that are literally holding onto those vegetables and they will not let go of them for dear life. And we're going to get into what we need to eat beyond just meat, if we need anything at all. But what— is there one tip for someone, you know, maybe they're on that tipping point, they're like, and we just want to nudge them in the right direction. Is there a tool or resource?

Yeah, I mean, we talked about it's the cow, not the how, or it's the how, not the cow. Yeah, there's a nice book that just came out written by Rob Wolf and Diana Rogers called Sacred Cow. I recommend you read that.

I'm getting that book from Ben Bellis, great publishers.

Yeah, they elaborate on what I'm talking about. They, they, they talk about— they actually mentioned me in the book. They talk about the carnivore diet. They're not necessarily promoting a carnivore diet, but they're talking about a lot of people are benefiting from it. And they're talking— they, they, they sort of elaborate on the argument that I'm putting forward that I'm trying to put in 5 minutes. But I mean, I can, I can talk about it for hours as well. But the, you know, that's a good, that's a good resource. You know, I don't—

the book, again, for people out there, it's a new book by Sacred Cow, Sacred Cow by Robb Wolf, right? Wolf.

By Rob Wolf and Diana Rogers. And they're going to make it— there's also a film coming out with the same name that will come out later.

So fabulous.

But that is good research for people that are worried about the environmental impact of eating meat versus plant-based diet. So if that is your reason for doing that, if your reason for doing it is a health-based decision, I would say that objectively assess your results. If you get the results you think you want and you're fine, then that's fine. I would say that, you know, you— I mean, it makes some time sense to try it the other way and really see what happens. And, you know, you might do fine on an omnivorous diet. A lot of people do that, too. There's no— there's no reason to be extreme on either side. I find that I got a lot of ex-vegans that come to this diet because they end up that their health is compromised, particularly gut function seems to be a big issue. A lot of women have bloating and distension and they, you know, they kind of accept that. I see this thing, this accepting the bloat. You know, these women are literally from too much carbohydrates, right? Yeah, well, too much fiber typically, and that's not normal. You think about it, I mean, we think about how our systems are supposed to run. If I said, Jorge, go out and, you know, run a mile, and you had chest pain, you would say, hey man, there's something wrong. Or every time you breathe, you had lung pain or coughing, or your knee hurt, you would know instantly instinctively something is not right there. But we accept the fact that our guts hurt. Oh yeah, it's just normal bloating. That's not normal. Either your guts are damaged or you're eating the wrong food. That's, that's just the way it is. You shouldn't feel like— when I eat just a meat-based diet, I literally don't even know I digest anything. It's a seamless— just like I don't— yeah, I don't— I'm not aware of my heart beating or my lungs breathing or my— when I move my arm, I don't I'm not thinking about my elbow.

There's no effort.

It's effort. There's no effort. There's no resistance. There's no discomfort with that. And so if your diet— and I know women, because if women have been told, eat your damn salad and put a little skinny piece of chicken and get the dressing on the side. And, you know, and they sit there and they starve. And then it's, you know, it's 10 o'clock at night and they're peeking in the fridge and they're pounding down the ice cream.

Diet.

Oh yeah. No one's looking. Yeah. That's not the way to do it. I mean, that's not the way to do it. You get on a diet that provides satiation, provides nutrition. And I mean, gosh, it just makes life so much simpler.

I love it. I love it.

All right.

So let's dive into these questions. I think the first question is this idea of any other things beyond the red meat and the items you mentioned to us, kind of the shopping list you gave us, the big stuff out there, organ meat, collagen. Should we dive into that? Which one do you want to do first?

Yeah. So I would say organ meats. It's fine. There's no reason not to eat them. I mean, you know, I mean, some people find them not particularly palatable, you know, and there's people out there, they're promoting that you have to have organ meats to be successful.

So tell us the theory of what these folks are saying, that, hey, these organs, as the animal, the head to toe, right? They ate it all. They ate everything but the bones, I guess, pretty much.

And so if we look, the theory is there. We can look at the theory and we can look at the reality. Okay, so let's just start with animals. You know, people say, well, you know, a lion or a wolf, when it kills an animal, it'll go for the viscera, the guts first, the organs first. Okay, and we think about why are they doing that, you know, and the alpha gets it and the other ones don't get the liver. And so what do the other animals do? Are they dying? First of all, most of these animals do not eat the entire carcass. They leave parts. They'll eat some of the organs, they'll eat— they won't maybe eat the brain, they won't eat the eyeballs, they won't eat I mean, you know, without getting too— hopefully not too disturbing— they don't always do that, you know. And so the first to say, you know, that these animals are eating it, you know, particularly larger animals where they take a little bit larger prey, you know, they might eat a small animal whole, you know, type of thing. But again, we're not animals eating fur. I mean, you could then make the argument that you need to eat fur and, you know, all that stuff too, which I mean, obviously you need to do that, right?

If you look at our ancestors, you know, if we go back 100,000 years, I mean I mean, if we lived in these communal tribes, which I think we did, as you had shared, I feel, how did they divvy up the heart and the liver? It's so— such a small piece of the animal. Everyone got their portion. I mean, it's just a part of the diet. If you got some, you got some. Because I think the concern is if you don't eat these, the theory is that you're going to be deficient in— what did they say out there? What are most people saying that you'll be deficient in? And then tell us how that hopefully is not true, I'm thinking.

Well, here's what the actual experience is. And like I said, I tend to favor results over theory and dogma.

Okay.

Um, when I survey the population of people that have done carnivore, and I've got, you know, data on almost 12,000 people, um, 85% of them do not eat organ meats with any regularity whatsoever. 15% will eat it at least once a week. So you only have 15% of the population that eat it regularly. So when you stratify those people based upon results, and I've got the data to show it, there's really no difference. There's really no difference at all. Now, here's what I will say. There are definitely people that will say, I felt better when I included some liver in my diet. And I don't discount that at all. I think you should experiment with that. But there are people that will say, like myself included, I've added liver to my diet, I noted zero difference, didn't make it more work for me. It was, you know, and it was something that, you know, and I, you know, it's something that I think what one of the theories is, you know, we want to look at these indigenous tribes and say these guys are the optimal, you know, they are the pinnacle of human existence. The Hadza, you know, the, you know, these Inuit, these people that living in different parts of the world, you know, the Nenés, you know, there's all kinds of them. What we do is we've examined these people in research. Modern times, the last 100 years, say, you know, some of these, you know, Weston A. Price, they would visit these people and these people were almost invariably living on the fringes of society. They had been chased out of their native grounds or native hunting grounds. The animals that they used to hunt are no longer there. You know, you look at that, like with the Maasai, they used to hunt these big, huge elephants and hippopotamus and rhinoceros and giraffe and all these big animals. Now they're, now they're left eating frigging monkeys, baboons. So they're running out of what they have. And so what happens is when you're in a situation where you're, when you are in food scarcity, guess what? You don't waste a single calorie. So you're going to get everything out of the animal. Now you contrast that to what humans likely experienced 50,000 years ago, 100,000 years ago, 1.5 million years ago when Homo erectus figured out how to start killing elephants. This is a surplus situation. So now, you know, I mean, the people that make the argument that you must eat this way and you must chew on the tendons, you know, it's a kind of this sort of, sort of asynchronous argument. This argument saying we're gonna, we're gonna prize fat, which I think is, I think that's acceptable because we're good on that. Cracked in the bone.

We agree on the fat and the meat.

The marrow. You know, sometimes we went after the brains just like us and scavenging dogs like wild dogs and coyotes that have the jaw power to break open the skulls to get to the brain. Early humans did that. And I think we were early, we were lipovores. We were going after fat. Protein was easy. You know, if you hunt animals, you're gonna get protein. Where's the fat gonna come from?

Again, what was that word you used, Dr. Baker, about— Lipovore.

Like a carnivore. It's a carnivore, but a fatovore, you know, basically like lipid, lipovore. I like that. So if we look at that as a sort of a, sort of an underlying theory of why we had so much energy. It wasn't from the protein, it was from the fat. The fat gave us this huge surplus of energy which allowed us to grow this big brain. And we couldn't have grown a big brain if we were constantly starving. Okay, does that make sense? If you're saying, I'm gonna evolutionary grow a big brain, but I'm starving, I'm going through these feast and famines, I don't think that's what occurred. And that's what the anthropologic evidence is. You go back far enough, and I go back to Homo erectus. Homo erectus was the most successful human that ever existed, 1.8 million years of existence, you know, compared to our 300,000 years. So they lived the longest of any human species. They figured it out. They figured out how to kill these big animals with just a spear. Wow, very easy. And we, and we look in the— there's a great paper out there called, uh, it's called Elephant Hunting in the Paleolithic or something like that. It's a nice scientific article, reads really fun. But if you read that, it shows that clearly human beings Homo erectus at that time could kill elephants whenever they wanted, and elephants were loaded in fat. An elephant is a very fatty animal. So the question then becomes, I've got all this fat, I've got all this energy, I've got all this food, you know, probably tastes good. Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, you know, and then am I gonna start chewing on the collagen when I prefer fat? And you're gonna tell me, I'm gonna just— because people make this argument, well, they threw out lean animals later on. We saw the Native Americans, they didn't even go after the lean animal. If they killed a skinny buffalo, they just throw it away because they're prized for the fat. So you're gonna tell me people that are throwing away lean animals, lean meat, are now gonna turn around and chew on collagen? I mean, chew on tendons? I don't, I don't really—

and for anyone that's listening, the collagen word, I've always shared with my listeners, it comes usually from bone marrow, but it can come from connective tissues. Well, explain what collagen is, and this is not heart or liver, necessarily. These are connective tissues and the marrow. And is that something you're saying, well, we may not need? Because I know a lot of people love collagen shakes, you know, things like that.

I think we do need it to some degree in our diet. And if you eat a steak, yeah, just 3% of muscle meat is collagen. So if we compare what the average American is eating, which is a 70% plant-based diet with very little actual meat, very like red meat is only 2 ounces on average. Yeah. We get some dairy, mostly dairy, some eggs, a little bit of fish. The collagen component in the average American diet is nothing. So if you're gonna continue eating a plant-based standard American diet or even a vegetarian or vegan diet, you probably need more collagen in your diet.

To supplement—

If you go fully meat-based and eat a bunch of steaks and ground beef, you're gonna probably get enough collagen. And there's some concern about glutathione and glycine ratios. And the theory is based on rat studies and, you know, and, you know, but the problem is when we look at human beings and what actually happens, you know, I don't have a collagen problem despite not eating collagen powder.

You're not doing— between you and me, you're not really having collagen shakes or soups, bone broth soups some people call them. You're fine.

Sometimes I'll have— occasionally have some bone broth, but it's not like I go out of my way to eat bone broth.

You must have it every day.

Cold out. I don't believe this. I mean, you must have it every day on a cup.

And again, a piece of steak has up to 3%. Is that what you're saying? Of collagen in the tissue, in the muscle, in the muscle tissue itself.

Now, if you want to look at some of the connective tissue, so if you get a piece of steak that's got a little bit of connective tissue in there, some of the harder, chewier parts, and you eat that, you're going to get even more. So I mean, it's generally— and ground beef, a lot of times they grind all that up, they grind up the chewier pieces so that you're going to get probably adequate collagen. I don't think you're going to run into these methionine-glycine ratios. One of the things we We know that glycine absorption when we don't have glucose in our diet.

So this is a question people had. What supplements may we need? So mention these, say these words again that you're saying here because everyone at home is listening, taking notes. So what are the ones you're saying possibly?

I, I, again, I don't know that we need much of anything to be honest. I mean, I believe that every person is going to be a little individual and if you have a known deficiencies. Say you had a gastric bypass and they've cut out part of your intestine, you know, you're going to have absorption problems. So you might need a supplement, a few things like that. Some people argue that maybe vitamin D, if you live in a cold climate and you don't get a lot of sunlight, that might be beneficial to you. You know, I think, I think electrolytes may be of benefit to people, particularly people that are exercising heavily and sweating a lot.

I love that.

That is something that people do. And Sodium is probably the main one and we want to make sure we're getting enough. And then some people add magnesium to that occasionally, potassium. Potassium can be— I would just say be cautious around excessive potassium supplementation because it can precipitate heart arrhythmias, which can be problematic, obviously.

Potassium, that's potassium.

That's potassium.

Magnesium we're good on and sodium.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's some commercial products that kind of get that right. And I know— and so I don't really have a favorite of any. I'm not a supplement guy. I mean, I'm not 100% opposed to them, but I'm kind of like, I would— this is, you know, there, as you know, I mean, the supplement industry is a monstrous industry. There have been literally probably hundreds of thousands of supplements have come out over the years. And the number of ones which have actually turned out to make a significant difference in people's lives is probably pretty small. It's probably a pretty short list.

And I think it's just fear-based. People are scared they're not getting enough with their diet. And what you said here, if you're following the standard American diet, which the acronym is very well said, SAD, right? You're gonna need these supplements. But if you're eating a meat-based diet, you're gonna get the collagen. In theory, you're gonna get magnesium, potassium, sodium from your salt that you cook, hopefully, your meat with, because I think you do that as I do. I love Redmond's Real Salt. You've used them, and they're like a pink salt, right? I think there's a little iron in it.

Yeah. That's Redmond Real Salt is a salt harvest from Utah. It's an ancient ocean sea, that's, you know, the salt that's in the sea water now, the sea salt you get has been obviously from salt water that's been dehydrated. And, you know, but the problem people will say is because the ocean's so polluted, you get some of that pollution in the salt, whereas Redmond Real Salt has not been exposed to that. So it might be a little bit better. But again, I'm not so much like you got to eat this particular salt. I don't think it's as big of a deal. And honestly, there are people on a carnivore diet that don't even do salt. I mean, quite honestly, because remember, meat has salt in it. It has sodium and has potassium. It has calcium. It has magnesium. The other thing, you know, like magnesium— let's, let's just— this is a little off topic, but please tell us about magnesium. So magnesium, many people in the United States are magnesium deficient. We see that. And one of the thoughts is we know that magnesium is a cofactor for carbohydrate metabolism. So the more carbs you need, the more carbs you eat, the more magnesium you need. And because It's harder to get magnesium or, you know, potentially some people say our soils are more depleted or whatever, but I think it's probably because we eat more carbohydrates than we can supply the magnesium requirements for. So when you drop your carbohydrates out of your diet, guess what happens to your magnesium requirement? It goes down.

Wow.

So, you know, we see the same thing with zinc requirements. When you stop eating phytates in the diet, you know, beans and legumes and grains, When you stop eating phytic acid in your diet, your zinc requirements go down. So we see this over and over again with these different nutrients. What is required? Like vitamin C. Why don't I have scurvy? You know, I don't have scurvy clearly. And I've not had any significant source of vitamin C outside of meat, you know, in 4 years now.

And there's vitamin C in meat again, you're saying?

There is a small amount of vitamin C in meat. And how much is it? Well, I will tell you it's probably enough to prevent you from getting scurvy and probably any other issues associated with vitamin C. We know things like uric acid will sometimes rise on a carnivore diet. And uric acid, uric acid is an antioxidant. Most people don't realize that. We all associate uric acid with gout, but that only occurs when you are metabolically unhealthy. When you're metabolically healthy, you can have higher uric acid levels and it serves as an antioxidant role. So I mean, these are all these things about nutrition that people they kind of get used to this. Everybody's eating the same diet. Everybody's on a standard American diet and this is what's important for those people. But when you step outside that paradigm and you approach it from a different way, all these numbers become less clear as to what they actually mean. And it's, again, it's also, you know, at the end of the day, how do I feel? How do I look? How do I perform? What are my systems doing? Am I happy? You know, I mean, these things are, you know, I mean, that basic question, am I happy, is so important.

I love that. I love that. So I'm in my notes here. I really only have 2 supplements that I think I would, for myself, that I'm interested in. And yet I get a lot of sun here in San Diego. So you mentioned vitamin D if you're not in the sun. And I think a lot of people these days are concerned about too much sun. I've interviewed on the show here, uh, dermatologists that say we need that and that yes, sunscreen is important, but not night and day because we need to get the, the vitamin D that comes from the sunlight absorption. And a lot of people don't do that. So for some reason you can't do that, vitamin D is one supplement you might mention. And then you mentioned, I think very clearly, electrolytes being important. And then other than that, it seems that from this diet, right, Dr. Baker, for the most part, we've got everything covered. So whether it's collagen, whether it's heart meat or liver meat, not that any of that is bad, but it's just extra. It's just extra. And if you choose to have it, it's not a bad thing. It's not like having a— it's not like having some carbohydrate that's process, these are animal-based products and they're fine to have, but they're not critical. And if you're on a budget, because I know some people these days with COVID and the economy being what it is, want to maximize their budget, I think we're basically saying you've got it all with— like that picture I showed you from Costco, you get your steaks, you're good, and they're not even grass-fed and you've got everything you need in there for the most part. And obviously if you can get grass-fed, you get it because it may be better to some degree, but just a little bit better. And is there any supplements I'm not hearing? And the one question I know people were asking me to ask you was about the Blue Zone diets. Dr. Oz is a friend of mine, and he promoted that for a while. And not that these— my listeners love the Blue Zone because it's a complicated diet, but they do like the vino negro or the dark wine that a lot of Italians drank. And so maybe go into a little bit of these fringes of of what people say centenarians do. And, you know, is there science that centenarians can also be carnivores? I'm assuming the answer is yes, but tell us about the Blue Zone theory because you've heard about this and, you know, Dr. Oz has talked about it numerously and a lot of people think, oh my gosh, we have to mimic the Mediterranean diet. But, uh, not that that is that because it's all around the world, but how important is these, these other theories? Because I think Blue Zone is definitely not a carnivore diet. I hate to say it. And, And yet there are people that live quite, quite a long period, they say. What are your thoughts on a little bit of that, Dr. Baker, please?

Yeah, yeah, I want to— I want to— let me just finish up a little bit on the vitamin stuff.

So please, let's finish on that.

Some people say that, you know, folate would be harder to get on a steak diet, and that is true. Okay, folate. So people will say— then people will recommend, well, either liver's got quite a bit of folate, so throw some liver in there and that will help raise up your folate levels. But here's the answer interesting thing. Folate, about 80% of our folate comes from our microbiome. And so what we see is when people go on low carbohydrate diets, the bacteria that make folate get upregulated. So it's just this, this compensatory thing that comes on. And so a lot of these things are, you know, vitamin D, for instance, you pointed out vitamin D. So we know that people on a standard American diet that have low levels of vitamin D are less healthy. We know with coronavirus, people that have low vitamin D have higher mortality rates. But when we look at serum vitamin D levels, you know, when we go back, you know, back to the studies on looking at like Inuit, they saw that people that had low vitamin D levels that ate an all meat-based diet had no problems at all even though their serum levels were low. But as soon as you added flour and sugar and canned goods to that diet, even the same levels of low vitamin D levels, they started getting clinical problems. They started getting things like rickets. So even the serum levels, we don't know. So it's really hard to sort of say that, you know, your vitamin D level, if it's this, is good, and if it's this, it's bad. It really depends on where you're at. But let's go to the Blue Zones. Okay, so the Blue Zones— Dan Buettner, you know, wrote a book called Blue Zones, and he studied, you know, these 5 places throughout the world, and Okinawa, and, you know, Costa Rica, and, you know, the Mediterranean, and Loma Linda up here in Southern California or Northern California, I guess. So first of all, the thing about the Blue Zones, none of them are vegan. 0% are vegan, right?

Okay. Check.

What they do from a dietary standpoint is they eat some quantity of meat and they don't eat junk food. So I would say that, you know, vegan diet wasn't, wasn't part of it. Eating meat and not a bunch of junk food, it seems to be helpful. Longevity is based on so much more than just diet. You know, it's diet, it's lifestyle, it's support, it's genetics, it's do you smoke, do you drink, where do you live, what's your climate like. You know, when he studied Okinawa, for instance, you know, the assumption was Okinawa was on this plant-based diet eating all these purple sweet potatoes, but the data from that data point there was collected in 1949 based on a study on the Okinawan diet, and they looked at the people And what happened right before 1949 in Okinawa? Well, there was this little thing, this little event called World War II, and the United States came in and killed 30% of the population of Okinawa. Oh, and by the way, of the 150,000 pigs that these people relied on, we killed all but 1,000 of them. So they ended up being on a starvation diet. Their diet was radically changed and altered during that time frame. So what happened shortly after 1949, in the 1950s, early 1950s, people from Hawaii, former Okinawans, started bringing pigs back in. They've got the population back up. Okinawa is the island of pork. You know, if you go to Okinawa, they eat pork. They, they say they eat everything but the squeal. They eat the hell out of pork and they live a long time.

Yeah.

So when we look at these Blue Zones, there was a study came out last year looking, reanalyzing the Blue Zones. Blue Zone data. And they said the main reason that the Blue Zone people live a long time is because their public health record keeping system is awful. It's statistical, it's fraud, it's bad record keeping. So I have no idea how long these people actually live. The other thing is when we look at right now, so if you Google Hong Kong, Hong Kong, if you Google Hong Kong life expectancy, you will see Hong Kong has the highest life expectancy on the planet. They, they, they had in the Blue Zones, if you add up all the Blue Zones, it's about, you know, it might be 100,000 people. It's not much. Hong Kong has 7 million people. They have the longest life expectancy in the world. Guess which part of the world eats more meat than any place on the planet?

Drum roll, please.

Hong Kong.

Wow.

Hong Kong. The average. There's your new Blue Zone. Yeah, they live longer than anybody on the planet. They eat the most meat of anybody on the planet. They average 1.5 pounds of meat per person per day. 1.5 pounds of meat per person per day. Wow. They eat pork. They're the third highest consumption of beef in the world. They eat the most pork in the world. They eat a bunch of seafood. They eat the hell out of meat and they live longer than anybody else. We can look at Iceland. You know, what tropical fruits you think grow in Iceland?

Right, we got ice.

I've been to Iceland. Yeah, I've been to Iceland. The people in Iceland, they lived on meat, meat, seafood, and dairy, and they had a little grain that they imported from Denmark, probably to feed the animals. This is what they grew up on. This is their traditional diet. Hong Kong has among the highest number of centenarians on the planet, particularly when it comes to male. And oh, by the way, they produce the highest percentage of World's Strongest Men. Athletes, boxing champions. They produce the world's highest percentage of CrossFit champions. They are a robust, strong, badass population that are meat-based, animal-based. They live a hell of a long time and they are thriving. They're like our ancestors that lived 50,000 years ago. Wow.

This is in Hong Kong?

This is Iceland.

Oh, Iceland.

This is Iceland. Okay. So I mean, you got to—

I'm getting excited to go visit Iceland. I've not been. You've been, yes?

Yeah, I've been to Iceland. I gave a lecture in Iceland a few years ago.

Great place.

Wow. Of course, I went in January, which isn't necessarily the optimal time, but I can tell you there were no— there was no wild fruit growing in Iceland.

I say we film a little documentary and go to Iceland together and we do that and investigate this. Yeah, this is incredible. So the Blue Zone really was just information that was used to create this theory that obviously was very popular. It was on all the television shows, the Dr. Oz Show, all this stuff. The book did very well. You know, the book was a New York Times bestseller. But the, the, I hate to say, but the science seems very flawed. It was very inaccurate. Is that, is that accurate to say?

I mean, you can find, like I said, it's cherry-picked to support an agenda. If your agenda is I want to promote a plant-based diet or a particular diet, and I'm going to pick, cherry-pick out these populations. Let's go back to Loma Linda, right? You know, it's where the LDS, not the LDS, the Seventh-day Adventist people live, their vegetarian-based religion. They live a long time. They don't smoke. They don't drink. They have a good strong community. They're very wealthy. It's only 7,000 people, by the way.

Yeah.

And you compare that to an equivalent sort of population in the United States that have a very similar ethos but eats a lot of meat. You would compare that to the Mormon population, you know, the LDS folks. They live just as long as the people in Loma Linda. And guess what? No one's calling them blue zones. So it's whoever it's— it's cherry-pick data. And so that's, that's where this comes from.

It's incredible. And, you know, one of the biggest people that I've been talking to, uh, works with this gal, Gwyneth Paltrow, you know, she has Goop. You've heard of Goop and all that. A lot of women listen to the Goop. And one of the things they talk, uh, a deep amount is not so much Blue Zone anymore. Good thing they're not, but the celery juice diet by the Medical Medium. Have you heard of this diet of just drinking the juice of celery juice, which I mean, I want your two cents on that because I feel like that's even more odd than the Blue Zone. And I don't know how much science is in celery because a lot of people say, oh my gosh, it's curative. And I understand that these are well-meaning people. I don't want to make fun of them. But at the same time, you've heard of the celery juice diet, right? All this stuff that people are— I mean, it's again, plants, but I mean, we know what we think of that. But what are your thoughts on celery juice? I hate to ask.

You know, obviously celery is a modern invention. I mean, celery didn't exist 20,000 years ago, first of all. But so you can make a sort of anthropological argument. But I mean, my thought on that is it's probably just fasting. You know, it's— if all you're doing is celery juice, yeah, you're probably getting some benefits from fasting. I, you know, it's obviously— it's expensive water, basically. What's that?

It's just expensive water.

It's expensive water. You could probably do the water diet and get the same results as the celery diet, which is fascinating. Yeah, yeah, you can get— you can go on the carnivore diet, enjoy your food, and get much better results than the celery diet. So I mean, I, I think this is something that, you know, I don't think people are gonna be doing the celery juice diet in 3 years. I just think, you know, it's gonna be something that's gonna be— how long have human beings been eating meat? 2.8 million years if you argue the origin of our species. It's never going away. It's been part of our diet forever. So celery juice diet is not here to stay. Meat is here to stay. I wouldn't bet against beef. And again, it's consistent results and it just makes sense.

I mean, and I think what's powerful is when you do a meat-based diet, this is now my testimony to your method here because I think this carnivore diet is so powerful because 3 years ago I wrote this book, was a big bestseller on intermittent fasting, and it was hard for me to do that. And I had all these hacks. I've dropped the hacks because with a meat-based diet, I have felt satiated. I feel a sense of control. And my clients, I was talking to one of them today, her name is Sandy, and she's the gal that I told you that improved her libido and is in her 50s and was overweight, very much so, has lost 91 pounds working with me, doing a lot of this interval training I teach, but now there's always a diet component. As a trainer, the second question I always get after what workout is, well, what do I eat? Is that one— people are, they want to know what to eat and exercise. So now I've been telling them this meat-based plan. Everyone's been getting your book. And I feel like because of the meat, now you can do intermittent fasting and it's almost effortless again. It's almost like there's no— I mean, have you experienced that? And you again remind everyone, do a form of intermittent fasting. Fasting as well because you're not hungry. It's just maybe natural, right?

You know, I think the name for that is physiologic fasting. I mean, your diet should naturally lend itself to infrequent meal patterns. We're not designed to snack all the time. You think about, you think about if you're, if you were, if you were a nomadic human being and walking, you know, 20 miles a day, maybe following prey to hunt, moving around, and somebody told you, and you told the leader of the tribe, hey, I need to take a snack break every 20, 30 minutes every 2 hours. It ain't happening, ain't gonna work. We're not designed to eat every bit. I mean, there's a lot more beyond that. There's science behind that. But I think you're absolutely right. Most people naturally just fall into a pattern of infrequent meal patterns, once a day, twice a day, you know, maybe they have a 14, 16-hour fast naturally within the diet. It becomes easy. Fasting should be effortless. You shouldn't need hacks. You should just be like, you know, and this is what I tell people. How much do I eat?

I agree.

So I'm not hungry anymore. When do I eat again? I eat when I'm hungry again. It's probably going to be, you know, 10 hours, 12 hours later. And that is so freeing. You think about any other animal on the planet, you know, you ask them about what's their fasting schedule, you know, what kind of trackers do they use? What kind of apps do they use to eat? And none of them do that, you know. You know, if you had to write a meal plan for a dog, they're just like, give me food when I'm hungry. Yeah, so I mean, this is how every species on the planet works. Humans are no different. And I think this is the simplicity of this. Diet should be simple. It should not be so stress— stressful, but it should be enjoyable. You should enjoy what you eat. If you're gonna fail on a diet because you're constantly hungry or you don't like the food, and I mean, those things, you know, and if you like the food and you're not hungry all the time, my gosh, that's powerful. That's a superpower. I mean, it literally is. I mean, it's like, wow, you're free. Because people talk about it's restrictive, but it's actually the opposite. It's freeing. It's liberating. You don't have to think. You don't have to worry. You don't have to count. You don't have to micromanage. You just like, what am I going to eat? I'm going to go eat a steak. How much do I want to eat? I'm going to eat till I'm full. When am I going to eat again? I'm going to eat when I'm hungry. That works for the vast majority of people.

Amen. I think it is a superpower. Yeah. No, I think you've really created a format that has taken away all the the work, you know, and it becomes effortless. And that, you know, that's why I think I've, you know, been so honored to become someone who I think now is awakened. And I think you are a light, and this light needs to be shined brightly. You know, I know there are other people talking about this kind of carnivore method, but you, I think, out of all of them, keep it the simplest. And I think that's the key that I learned from Oprah 20-some years ago. She said, Jorge, as I asked I said, you know, before I had even written a book, I was on her show, I was in my 20s. And I said, what is the key to helping the most people out there? Because I told her I was a trainer and I wanted to help people. She said it very simply to me. I remember this during our 15-minute commercial or during our commercial breaks. We had like 15 minutes of time, just her and I sitting there waiting between camera sets and all that, camera takes. And she said, keep it simple. That's all she said to me. She's like, if you can keep it simple, she's like, I may follow it. And, you know, a lot of people I think would agree that things are way too complicated, especially when it comes to diet. I mean, you got to track things. There are apps, there are pills, there is— and I love that literally there's just a few things we need to do on this diet. And I tell you, I think it's important people follow you on Instagram. I think they should get your book, The Carnivore Diet. And if they can help, tell us where to find your clinical study. It's MeatRx, is that right? I'll let you kind of Give everyone the details of where to find you.

Yeah, I mean, I'll just— one last point. I agree, you know, simplicity. When you make it complicated, most people are not going to stick to it. I think, you know, you keep it simple, you base your— you pay attention what your results are, you know, you might make an adjustment here and there, but generally the simplicity works very well for most people. Our clinical trial, yeah, we are through MeetRx. And the other thing I want to talk about one more supplement. And this is the most important supplement of all, okay? It's gonna sound goofy, but the most important supplement to this diet, or really any diet, or any mechanism, or any lifestyle intervention, is support. And I want to use that as a supplement. Having a community, a supportive community, a supportive environment, is gonna dramatically increase your success rate. And that's one of the things I'm doing with meatrx.com, with people wanting to do this. So if you want a loving supportive environment where we have people, and I interact with these people every day. It's my favorite part of my day, support system. MeetRx.com. Having said that, you know, we are trying to fund this clinical trial. We will get it done, I guarantee it. But, you know, we can— you can go there, you can kick in $5, $10, whatever you got. I'm on social media, you know, Sean Baker, Baker1967 on Instagram. You know, as you know, Jorge, I'm time on there. Oh yeah, getting out studies, putting out success stories, putting out, you know, thoughts, controversial stuff. I mean, just, just grinding. I'm grinding every day because I believe in this passionately. I want to bring it to more people, and I want to thank you for having me on to hopefully broaden the reach a little bit because I think we need to do this. I mean, I cannot tell you, I mean, I'm, I'm not alone. As a physician, I got tired of taking care of people that were sick all the time, or broken, as you say, right? I get tired of seeing broken people when there's a better way. And I think anybody that knows it, they know people, they're broken themselves, they know loved ones that are broken, friends that are broken. We as a community have to turn it around. We cannot rely on the government, we cannot rely on the pharmaceutical companies to do it. We got to take it upon ourselves as a community, and that's what I'm trying to do.

Hey, it's Jorge. If you have one more minute, I wanted to address something that I think is super important, and that is if you need help with anything from the show, if you need help about losing belly fat, if you want help about intermittent fasting, if you want help about exercise, interval training, anything at all, I want you to join my Fit Family on text. It's a brand new service I've just launched, and if you really do need help, I want you to text me right now. It really is that simple. You'll be part of my texting family. I have a group of people that I work with via text and it's all for free. So I'd love you to join. All you have to do is text my Malibu number. It's a 424 area code number. So I'm gonna give it to you right now. Jot this down or while you're listening, text me right now. I mean it. 424-228-9548. 95-48, and you'll join my Fit Family. Let me give it to you one more time. It's area code 424-228-9548. Now, it's going to work only in the US. I have to say that if you're listening to our show outside of the US, sorry, no international texting yet, at least. And, uh, but 80% of you in the US should be able to text me. I know if you have T-Mobile, you have to put on premium service or something like that. Uh, but this is free, and I'm going to be giving away a lot of my time on this texting service. A lot of free things like our Belly Fat Cure course will be announced on here. So if you've done my survey, this is how you'll get access to it. Uh, I'll be doing special livestream events only for people in my texting community, and I'll be announcing my next 19-day challenge on there as well. So really utilize prizes, and, uh, and you'll get first glances from our show as well. So it'll be a great chance for us to connect, and I may even call you and FaceTime you. So be kind of a fun thing. Again, the number— text me, literally do it right now— area code 424-228-9548. And I look forward to having you join my Fit Family. Take good care and God bless. Peace and purpose.

¡Gracias!