Beef, butter, bacon, eggs – some influencers declare this a “carnivore diet.” This diet fortifies meat and minimizes or completely cuts fruits and vegetables.

On TikTok, people can be seen eating a bowl of steak and 12 scrambled eggs a day, with some even nibbling on sticks of butter like they would nibble on carrots.

This diet is similar in style to the Atkins and Keto diets and goes by a variety of names, including the carnivore diet, lion diet, high-fat diet, and animal-based diet. Devotees of this lifestyle brag that their skin is clearer than ever, their guts are healthier, and they’re in the best shape of their lives.

TikToker @steakandbuttergal says in one of his videos, “One of the best things that happened after I stopped eating vegan and started eating meat was that my body odor disappeared.” “Even though I don’t use soap or deodorant, it smells amazing.”

Here’s what experts say about the safety and sustainability of carnivore diets.

One of the major benefits that people who follow a carnivore diet claim they experience after adding animal products to their diet is weight loss. Dr. Walter Willett, professor of epidemiology and nutrition at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, says this is likely due to dietary patterns that reduce carbohydrates.

“For some people who eat a lot of refined starches and sugars, a carnivore diet may improve their symptoms in the short term,” Professor Willett said. “But this seems like a very unhealthy diet in the long term.”

A diet of beef, butter, bacon, and eggs won’t provide enough fiber, carotenoids, and polyphenols found in fruits and vegetables.

Getting fiber from your diet is essential for gut health and can lower your chances of developing depression and breast cancer. Carotenoids have cancer-fighting properties, and polyphenols have properties that prevent the development of health conditions such as diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.

Willett added that foods commonly found in carnivore diets also contain high amounts of saturated fat and cholesterol.

In a 2012 study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, researchers at Harvard University surveyed more than 100,000 men and women and found that “those studied who ate the most red meat were more likely to die younger. found that they were more likely to die from cardiovascular disease and cancer. ” According to Harvard Health Publishing.

Despite numerous studies linking red meat consumption to heart disease, some people disagree that consuming red meat frequently is bad for your heart.

“This is the mainstream message we hear about red meat: Red meat is thought to be essentially the cause of all kinds of human health disasters, from cardiovascular disease to colon cancer. ,” says Dr. Georgia Ede, a Harvard-trained, board-certified psychiatrist. I specialize in nutritional psychiatry.

“They are based almost entirely on a type of research method called nutritional epidemiology, which is essentially an untested theory, essentially speculation, about how red meat affects us. “It has never been tested in clinical trials or confirmed,” Ede says. “And the very little additional evidence that remains comes from experimental studies, from very strange animal studies.”

To better understand how food intake leads to disease, researchers ask study participants to write about what they eat on paper or fill out questionnaires, all of which are self-reported. is.

Some think this is a flawed way to draw conclusions about how food affects health, but experts have yet to find a better alternative.

“If you’re eating something like that, you’re helping bring down another tree.”

But even if people are truly disgusted by the way nutritional research is conducted, the impact that meat production has on the climate is undeniable.

In response, Ede says, “Industrialized food production, whether it’s plants or animals, is very harmful to the planet.”

While this is true, there are clear differences between the extent to which the production of plant-based foods has an impact on the environment and the production of animal-based foods. Emissions of global greenhouse gases such as methane from the production of animal foods are twice as high as from the production of plant foods.

“In addition to the direct health effects, there will be significant negative impacts,” Willett said. “There is also the issue of justice, which is basically the Global North, Europe. [and] The United States is responsible for most of the climate change problems we have today, and it perpetuates these types of events. ”

“You can think about it. [that] “When you eat like that, you’re helping to bring down another tree on the other side, which basically sounds like a terrible idea,” he added.

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