Is an All-Meat Diet What Nature Intended?

The meeting also revealed problems with the meat-centric story. Dart had asserted that “all prehistoric men and the most primitive of living human beings are hunters, i.e., flesh eaters.” But contributors to “Man the Hunter” showed how one-sided this perspective was. The anthropologist Richard Lee reported that the !Kung, one of the so-called Bushman people of Southern Africa, got two-thirds of their calories from plants. Nor were they an exception. When he compared fifty-eight foraging societies from around the world, Lee found that half got the majority of their calories from plant foods; another eighteen relied mostly on fishing. Only eleven—less than a fifth—relied on hunting as their primary means of subsistence, and all but one were limited to either the highest or the lowest latitudes, far beyond our African homeland.

Since the publication of “Man the Hunter,” scientists have incorporated genomic as well as new archeological and paleontological methods into the study of diets from deep history. “The details differ and it’s easy to get lost in the weeds, but the overarching message from each is clear: we evolved as opportunistic omnivores,” Herman Pontzer, an evolutionary anthropologist at Duke University, writes in his recent book, “Burn.” It includes a takedown of paleo-style tropes, including carnivory. “Humans eat whatever’s available, which is almost always a mix of plants and animals (and honey).”

Pontzer shows just how far the consensus has shifted. Dart had insisted that Australopithecus, an early group of human ancestors, gulped down blood and guts, and yet scratch patterns on their molars suggest that they were lovers of tubers. Our more recent forebears ate plants, too, including ones vilified by paleo advocates. Consider Neanderthal diets, which Rebecca Wragg Sykes covers in vivid detail in “Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art.” Neanderthals certainly ate big beasts; sites are filled with the bones of butchered bison and red deer—there are even indications that they took down mammoths. Yet Neanderthals living in warm, wet environs had tooth-wear patterns similar to those of agricultural peoples who eat lots of fibrous plants. Further evidence has come from investigating Neanderthals’ dental calculus—that is, from probing their plaque. Shortly before he died, an individual known as Shanidar 3 consumed dates, a lentil-like plant, and an unidentified tuber or root. The remains of two adults found in Belgium had traces of grasses and water-lily-root starches, suggesting that they had foraged for plant food. A sample from El Sidrón, in Spain, had no large-mammal DNA, but it turned up matches for pine, mushroom, and moss. Scattered morsels of prehistoric diets reveal an enduring taste for veggies.

No controlled studies have been published that validate the extravagant health claims made for the carnivore diet, but the meatfluencers are undeterred. In “The Carnivore Diet,” Shawn Baker lists eczema, depression, and fibromyalgia as “ailments that seem to respond positively to the carnivore diet.” The psychologist Jordan Peterson claims that a regimen of beef, salt, and water sharpened his thinking, cleared up his psoriasis, and eliminated his gum disease; his daughter, Mikhaila Peterson, insists that the same diet, supplemented with lamb, bison, and the occasional vodka or bourbon, cured her arthritis. In “The Complete Carnivore Diet for Beginners: Your Practical Guide to an All-Meat Lifestyle,” by Judy Cho (IG followers: 99.8K), carnivory is presented as a powerful remedy, with potential for alleviating depression, inflammation, eating disorders, and autoimmune issues.

Living off flesh alone is not easy, though, and Cho lays out suggestions for how to survive. Too much lean protein can cause problems, so make sure at least seventy per cent of your calories come from fat. Too little mastication can lead to constipation, so try to chew each piece of meat twenty to thirty times. Carnivores tend to have messed-up thirst cues, so drink more often than might feel natural. If you don’t like meat, stop snacking until you’re so hungry that it becomes appealing. To ease the transition, Cho offers various weeklong meal plans, along with helpful tables of permissible items and their nutritional statistics.