What to eat on a Carnivore diet?

Paleo, keto, carnivore…different people can mean different things by them, so lets be clear. The carnivore diet is in some ways more like a Paleo diet than a keto diet. For one thing, it’s defined by what foods you don’t eat. If you’re on the carnivore diet you don’t eat plants . Since meat and animal foods are more generally front and center in Paleo diets, the carnivore diet could be seen as a special case of the Paleo diet.

In fact, many advocates of the carnivore diet consider it to be the “true” Paleo diet, because they believe that plants were eaten infrequently as a last resort through at least some significant periods of our shared history [13]. Obviously, not all Paleo advocates agree with this. Some don’t even think that the Paleo diet was generally low-carb [14]! They think we ate enough fruit and starchy tubers to stay out of ketosis. Others of us don’t find that plausible at all [15].

So if you’re not eating plants at all – meaning fruit (e.g. bananas), vegetables (e.g. kale), flour products (e.g. bread), high omega-6 seed oils (e.g. sunflower oil) – what are you eating?

Carnivore diet food list

Pork chops

Ribeyes

Bacon

Shrimp

Mussels

Salmon

Chicken

Eggs

If you’re adventurous and looking for something more exotic, try the following:

Liver – usually from beef or veal

Roe – fish eggs, commonly from salmon or sturgeon

Brains – yes brains! Like lamb brains used in classic French cuisine

Kidneys – typically from beef or pork

Tripe – yes stomach! Like the classic Spanish dish from Madrid called Caillos Madrilenos

Foods to avoid

All plants (e.g. avocado, almonds, lentils, salad, blueberries, tomato)

Plant oils (e.g. soybean oil, sunflower oil, corn oil, rapeseed oil, cottonseed oil, peanut oil, canola oil). Coconut oil, olive oil and avocado oil aren’t part of a carnivore diet even though they’re commonly used on a standard (i.e. omnivorous) ketogenic diet

Flours (e.g. coconut flour, wheat flour, maize flour)

Syrups & juices (e.g. agave syrup, honey, maple syrup, fruit juice)

Low-fat dairy (e.g. skim milk)

Chocolate (e.g. dark chocolate)

What about spices and herbs? They’re usually used in such small amounts that they’re effects are negligible. An exception to this would be for those with strong autoimmune sensitivities to plant compounds. Since spices and herbs concentrate bioactive plant compounds these people may be better off avoiding them entirely as to maintain their carnivore diet as an elimination diet.

What about sweeteners? These aren’t commonly used amongst carnivores but they are an option. Read up on to figure out which options you may want to consider and which ones everyone should avoid regardless of their diet.

What are the benefits of the carnivore diet?

The main benefits that draw people to carnivorous diets and keep them there are not benefits that are currently supported by studies. That is, they are evident in anecdotal reports. But the reports share similarities and are growing by the day.

The most commonly reported effects of this diet are improvements in the following [16]:

Digestion, including from those who were suffering from IBS, IBD or Crohn’s [17]

Autoimmune conditions, including asthma, arthritis and psoriasis

Skin conditions, including rosacea, eczema and keratosis

Mood disorders, including depression, anxiety, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder

Diabetes, obesity and pathological insulin resistance more generally

The carnivore diet tends to avoid the above pitfalls of keto and Paleo, while capturing many of the benefits of both. Unlike keto, it is almost always composed of high quality foods, and, perhaps surprisingly, is likely to be nutritionally complete even without planning. Like Paleo, it avoids all the plant toxins in grains, legumes, and nightshades, and even vegetable oils, and goes beyond that by cutting out all potentially noxious plant compounds, too. However, it’s not without controversy and criticism. Some of the controversy about optimal micronutrient intakes comes from within and is best represented by the two major variations.

The Zero Carb (ZC) version of the carnivore is more or less exactly what you would be left with if you took standard American fare and removed the plants from it: a lot of steak and burgers, some chicken and pork, bacon, eggs, fish, cheese, and cream, and not much else. Fatty cuts are recommended to avoid “rabbit starvation” — the illness that can develop if you try to subsist on only protein and insufficient calories from fat or carbs. In this version organ meat (offal) is not encouraged or seen as necessary.

The Paleolithic Ketogenic Diet (PKD) version of the carnivore diet includes offal such as liver and tripe and is more culturally familiar to some people. In many places such as Spain and Hungary those items are still typically on the menu even on standard diets. But that’s not the only reason. Some carnivores are concerned about nutrient deficiencies that should theoretically occur on a ZC diet. They notice that hunter-gatherer societies, and even western societies until very recently usually ate “nose-to-tail”. They reason that it is probably wise to continue to do so and that there’s little to any downside to it given it’s very nutrient dense.

Nutrient deficiencies are surprisingly common – even today – in people on the standard American diet [18]. A notable benefit of the carnivore diet is the apparent absence of such deficiencies among its adherents. For instance, Dr.Tro Kalayjian never found a folate deficiency in his carnivore patients. Given how our gut microbes are able to make folate when eating a low-carb diet this may not be all that surprising [19].

For weight loss

The carnivore diet supplies lots of high-quality protein and very low levels of carbohydrate, both of which have interesting effects on appetite. Protein is well known for its satiating effect that remains notable up to about 20% of calories [20]. Ketone bodies, produced on carnivore diets because of their very low level of carbs, also have potent appetite suppressing effects [21]. Eating a diet where the carbs are negligible, the protein is about 20% and the rest is fat will put you into a deep fat burning state. This can be seen as your respiratory quotient (RQ) dropping down from 1 close to 0.7.

This doesn’t guarantee weight-loss but it is a good metabolic state to be in for that purpose. Appetite suppression may thus explain the explosion in weight loss anecdotes from many adherents of the carnivore diet.

Effect on inflammation

Inflammation is normally part of the body’s healing response to injury. However, if the source of the damage is ongoing, this inflammation becomes chronic and can then itself cause further damage. Weight loss is often accompanied by a reduction in chronic inflammation, as the excess fat mass we carry around is itself damaging, and therefore pro-inflammatory. For instance, as the protective fat we carry between our organs called visceral fat becomes larger, this indicates a larger need for protection and inflammation, but the increased inflammatory molecules produced there travel through the portal vein and can end up damaging the liver [22]. It’s not uncommon for people on the carnivore diet to report looking and feeling less inflamed, and suffering fewer symptoms like a puffy face or painful joints.

Crohn’s disease is a highly inflammatory state of the gastrointestinal system. There are clinical reports of the carnivore diet freeing a Crohn’s patient from all his symptoms [23]. There are reports like those from Mikhaila Peterson with verified medical histories showing that eating only beef, salt and water cured her idiopathic rheumatoid arthritis – a condition with lots of inflammation.

Effect on hormones

As the carnivore diet is a subset of low-carb diets, it also favorably lowers insulin levels compared to higher carb Westernized diets. This is a crucial hormone that needs to remain low throughout many hours of the day so that your metabolism can run off of stored fat as intended. A fat burning metabolism, irrespective of your macros, is a healthy state to be in.

There’s a clinical case report of a young boy with type 1 diabetes who had favorable increases in the hormone C-peptide after adopting a carnivore diet [24]. C-peptide can be used to estimate insulin production, which is much too low in type 1 diabetes.

Another hormone found in the gut called ghrelin is part of our hunger response system. It’s favorably modulated by ketone bodies, something a carnivore dieter will most likely produce on their higher protein, very low-carb diet [25].

Ketosis on a carnivore diet

People on the carnivore diet tend to be in ketosis. Having more ketone bodies in the blood provides interesting properties, some of which we’ve already mentioned like appetite suppression. Another is the prevention of muscle breakdown (i.e. being anti-catabolic) [26]. Having ketone bodies is likely favorable in a weight-loss scenario for preserving muscle mass, since this lean mass tends to be lost when restricting calories whether on purpose or not. A person on a carnivore diet may thus more easily maintain lean body mass than on a typical Western diet, which produces no ketones, is high in carbs and not particularly high in quality protein.

Another interesting property of a carnivorous ketogenic diet is how differently your body handles Vitamin C needs. Vitamin C helps us form collagen, a crucial component of functional arteries and youthful skin. It also helps synthesize L-carnitine, a compound that helps us burn fat by transporting fats into our mitochondria. By eating a carnitine rich diet, less vitamin C will be needed to synthesize it, thus freeing more of carnitine for collagen synthesis and other crucial processes [27]. What foods are highest in carnitine? Animal foods of course! This may be one way carnivore diets are vitamin C sparing. Amber wrote about these vitamin C needs in the context of a carnivore diet in more depth here.