A conversation (Josh Trent interviewing Paul Saladino) about the structure and philosophy of a carnivore-style diet. Paul outlines a five-tier framework (referenced from chapter 12 of his book) and defines the entry-level "carnivore-ish" tier as meat and organs plus only the least-toxic plant parts (mainly fruit such as avocado, olives, squash, and select berries). He explains that many plant parts (seeds, grains, nuts, legumes, leaves, stems, roots) contain defensive chemicals—lectins, oxalates, enzyme inhibitors—that evolved to deter predation, and argues eliminating the most toxic plant parts makes a meat-and-organ-centered diet more approachable for most people.
When we look at Carnivore, is it literally only nose to tail? I mean no extra fats, no butters, no olive oils, nothing like that. Can you just go into the high level structure? We'll get low level as we go along in the show. But what's the high level structure of Carnivore? Just if people don't know anything about Carnivore.
So in chapter 12 of the book I kind of outlined five tiers and these are just my framework that I created to help people understand. And the first tier is what I call carnivore ish. It actually includes some plant foods and I think that it's time to put aside dogma. I've been posting about this recently. I've noticed a lot of dogma in the carnivore community recently and it really saddens me. It's not about being a, quote, carnivore or fitting into a tribe of people who only eat meat. Like I said, it's about people helping people understand that meat and organs are central to the human diet, super nutritious. And that plants exist on a toxicity spectrum. So tier 1, carnivore ish diet in my opinion is meat, organs. All of those types of foods plus the least toxic plant foods we can get into. Why I think these foods are the least toxic and which ones are the least toxic. But if you just pause for a moment and think about things from a plant's perspective. Plants are rooted in the ground, they're part of an ecosystem. And plants have had to defend themselves against predation for 450 million years of CO evolution with animals and insects and fungi. Out of necessity, they've developed chemical defenses. We're aware of some of these, but we are really not aware of the majority of them. Nor is the research on the majority of these defensive plant chemicals really in the forefront of people's consciousness. It's not talked about, but it's out there. But from the perspective of a plant, it makes sense. There are defense chemicals in there. A plant is in a unique space, it has to reproduce, but it also doesn't want to get eaten before it does that. So a plant seed grows into a plant sprout, goes into a plant with roots and leaves and stems, and eventually the plant produces a flower and a fruit or some sort of reproductive part. But the stems, the roots, the seeds, the leaves of plants, these are what the plant defends most highly. And you can really look at this pattern in plants as well. This is really getting to botanical science. The more Vulnerable the plant is, the more highly defended it is, the more full of toxins, digestive enzyme inhibitors, things that don't play well with human biology. There are in that part of the plant. So plant seeds are some of the most harmful for humans, broadly speaking. We have to remember that plant seeds encompass seeds, grains, nuts and legumes. They're all plant babies. They're kind of like this little plant baby put on the River Nile that's very, very defenseless, very susceptible, very vulnerable to attack. But plants have encased in that a lot of these little chemical ninjas. There are myriad defense chemicals, digestive enzyme inhibitors, lectins, oxalates, all kinds of things to prevent animals from over consuming the seeds. But there's one part of a plant, the fruit that is often less toxic because the plant is saying it's okay to eat this part of me, I'm going to allow you to eat this fruit to spread my seeds. So generally speaking, the framework that I'm working from in the book is that the least toxic parts of plants are the fruit. And there are many fruit that we think of as vegetables. Things like avocado, olives, squash, these are all plant fruits. But more, you know, more specifically speaking going back to the seeds, the stems, the leaves, the roots, these are highly defended. And I think that if we cut those out of our diet, we can include some fruit. Most people can and do okay while we're making the meat and organs, the centerpiece of our diet, getting all the good nutrition in there. So that's where it starts. That's what I would call a carnivore ish type diet.
So it's the jumping off point for most people.
That's the jumping off point for most people. So it could be something that's like, you know, grass fed steak, some wild salmon, some well raised chicken, some turkey with some berries and avocado and I.
Mean this sounds really good to me. This sounds, it's pretty reason do this.
That's the idea is to help there be a starting point where it's much more approachable. Right. And to help them understand that it's approachable and yet intentional with regard to what foods are in and what foods are out. This idea of eliminating the most offensive plant foods is not original to me. Autoimmune paleo ideas have done this. The original paleo ideas have done this. I've just tried to extend this and say, hey, I'm really kind of the anti broccoli crusader. Kale doesn't love you back. Just, just realize this, you guys. Kale and almonds do not love you back. The seeds, the leaves, if you cut those out, most people get pretty close to what I would consider a carnivore, ish type diet.
Eating certain vegetables are okay, but there's a very skinny list, and then eating the fruits are okay. The next phase of this is for us to all return back home to eat the way that we were always eating before there was any financial narrative whatsoever. Can you talk about that a little bit?
Yeah. So the beginning part of the book is this evolutionary story and this idea of where humans have come from. And we can look back at the ethnographic record, the archeologic record, the anthropologic record, and we can look at currently living indigenous hunter gatherer groups, and we begin to see very similar patterns among all of these. The pattern is that they prioritize animal foods. I love this idea. This idea of ancestral eating is so fascinating to me. Some may debate the validity here, but I think that it's pretty clear that our genetics haven't changed much in 3 million years, really certainly not much in the last 350,000 years of homo sapiens sapiens evolution. We have a genetic blueprint, and there does appear to be a species appropriate diet, quote, unquote, for a human. Just like there's a species appropriate diet for a cow or a chicken or your dog or your cat. We know what our pets are kind of supposed to eat. A lot of us get that more than the fact that we're really able to understand that humans have a similarly species appropriate diet. So that's the idea. What is a species appropriate diet for humans? What can we take from these ancestral narratives about what that might be? And that's what I'm trying to recreate with a carnivore diet. And if you look at these indigenous groups, this is essentially what they're eating. There's a group in the Amazon called the Kaiwi Menno. There's a researcher and anthropologist, Douglas London from Harvard, who has studied this group. They were previously uncontacted by Westerners, and they eat animal meat, animal organs and seasonal fruit. You look at African indigenous tribes, it's very similar. Mostly meat, organs and fruit seasonally. It's like, okay, this kind of makes sense. They're prioritizing animal foods. They're prioritizing animal meat and organs above everything else. If they can kill something, respectfully, gratefully, sharing it with a tribe in a beautiful celebration, they will make that the center of their diet. They may go looking for other plant foods, but it's really only in times of scarcity. They use plant foods as survival foods. These are fallback foods. They're not the center of their diet. And that's completely different than the narrative we've been told today. And I try so hard in the book to debunk so many of these myths, and we can get into those if you'd like. There are so many essentially non supported narratives that we are told today about red meat at through heart and soil. I've been getting emails from people with questions asking, what should I do about this? What should I do about that health condition? And people tell me every day things that just make me very sad. They say, my doctor told me red meat worsens my X, y or Z. I've gotten emails saying psoriasis, diverticulitis, cancer, heart disease. And I think, wow, we as humans in 2020 are very badly misled by epidemiology, by observational science. There's no real evidence that red meat is bad for these things. And why would it be? Why would these animal meat and organs that we have been eating for our entire evolution as hominids be bad for us? That's completely evolutionarily inconsistent. And yet we're told in 2020, the best foods you can eat are plants. And you think, wait a minute, that's not true. They're clearly less nutrient rich, the nutrients in them are less bioavailable, and they have a lot of things in them that are meant to kind of piss off our digestion and inflame our guts. Sam.
