Dr. Anthony Chaffee provides a comprehensive explanation of why the carnivore diet aligns with human biology and evolution. He details how humans are specifically adapted to digest and absorb nutrients from fatty meat without requiring processing, unlike plants which contain nutrients that are largely inaccessible due to our lack of necessary enzymes. Historical evidence from Inuit populations and other traditional cultures demonstrates that humans can not only survive but thrive on meat-only diets, even in harsh Arctic environments where no plant life exists.
The discussion reveals how plants defend themselves through chemical warfare, producing over a million different defensive compounds that can harm humans. Dr. Anthony Chaffee explains specific examples like oxalate poisoning from spinach, which actually depletes calcium despite containing it, and references cases like actor Liam Hemsworth's hospitalization from excessive spinach consumption. The episode contrasts this with meat's complete nutritional profile and absence of harmful compounds, supported by emerging research showing improved microbiome health on carnivore diets.
Key Takeaways
- Humans lack the enzymes to break down plant nutrients like niacin in corn, requiring chemical processes like nixtamalization to access them, while meat provides all nutrients in bioavailable forms without processing
- Plants produce over one million different defensive chemicals to prevent consumption, with most wild plants being toxic enough to cause serious illness or death if consumed randomly
- Spinach consumption can actually lower calcium levels in the body despite containing calcium, due to oxalates that bind and strip calcium from the bloodstream, as demonstrated in 1950s studies
- Traditional populations like the Inuit thrived on 100% carnivore diets in environments with zero plant availability, proving meat provides complete nutrition for human survival and dominance
- Why Carnivore Aligns with Human Evolution and Biology
- Historical Evidence: Inuit and Arctic Populations Thriving on Meat
- Plant Chemical Defenses vs Animal Kinetic Defenses
- Oxalate Poisoning: Liam Hemsworth Case and Spinach Dangers
This is an auto-generated transcript from YouTube and may contain errors or inaccuracies.
there is a lot of controversy around what is the best diet for human health why do you think carnivore is the best diet for human health well I think just basically it aligns with our biology it's our biologically evolved or designed diet however you want to look at it but either way we're biologically adapted to eat meat fatty meat and not only are we adapted to eat it and gain nutrients from it we are specifically and explicitly not um biologically Adept at getting those same nutrients from plants in fact many of these required nutrients don't exist in plants and then you look at other nutrients that are in Plants we don't have the bio you know engineering and enzymes to break down these chemical bonds to release those nutrients such as like niin and corn there's a ton of nin and corn but we can't access it unless we put it through chemical processes uh called nich talization that that will break down these bonds and then we can absorb that or putting them or fermenting them or cooking them and preparing them in these different ways you don't need to do that you can eat meat raw we choose to cook things out of preference we humans have been cooking meat for 1.6 million years at least um but we don't have to you don't have to do that um en able in order to get the nutrients that we require from meat so you get everything you need from meat in the proportion that you need it you get no deleterious or harmful substances in the bargain plants you don't get Complete Nutrition you can't access all even the nutrients that are available in Plants because we don't have the enzymes to break them down because we're not designed to eat them and um you know they they do contain harmful chemicals that's how plants defend themselves they have they make a million different uh at least a million that we know of different defens and chemicals to stop animals and insects from eating them so you don't get enough nutrients you can't even access the nutrients that are there and they come with deleterious and harmful chemicals as a result so take home there is just eat meat and you'll be fine I want to ask um because I think people when they're researching the carnival diet and if they're just starting they're going to hear that you need to eat vegetables and you need to eat fruit because it's quite healthy so can you explain for people that are just starting the carnival diet just learning about it what is it in Plants first of all that is bad for your health in the longterm why we don't need vegetables and fruit to live yeah well we don't need fruits and vegetables to live because quite simply we get everything we need from meat how do we know this because we can see people who do this generationally we have entire civilizations of human beings alive right now who traditionally eat a a purely carnivorous diet um people make argument you look back at the literature from the early 1800s or or much before that as well you see different pioneers and explorers from Western countries charting and uh you know the different new lands in America Australia Etc and their interactions with the the natives of that land and and they were very clear these people were carnivores they ate um meat fatty meat as much as possible they knew which plants they could eat in a pinch but it was it was always it was starvation food it was if you couldn't get meat this is this is what you would eat as a result or they use them medically um it was not it was not the primary uh food source for the majority of these populations but people quibble and say well Native Americans X Y and Z and this that okay so in this isolated area they would eat some crops and you're trying to extrapolate that to two continents full of people that doesn't that doesn't actually really scan and so but you know all that aside what about you know the Inuit and and the esimo formerly called the esimo people that would live in northern Canada Greenland Northern Alaska these sorts of places um there there were no plants to eat these these people could be living in the Arctic Circle where there is no plant life at all it's there's nothing growing there's only animals largely uh sea life but then also ones that sort of transition that barrier like seals who go into the water and prey on the fish and other sorts of marine life they come up on land and then Bears get them those sorts of things and then the in that pray on them and and all of the above so we know that humans not only can survive but thrive on a meaton diet we know that humans have been alive and thrive in in the Arctic Circle in the ice ages and what are you supposed to eat in the ice ages if not meat and so we know we get everything we need in the proportion that we need it because you can't possibly survive unless you do get Complete Nutrition especially in those environments those are extremely harsh environments and if you don't Thrive you die that's all there is to it no one's no one's barely squeaking through an ice age in the Arctic Circle so we not only thrived we became the most dominant animal that you know dominant species that's ever walked this Earth and it was during the ice ages that we came to that sort of world dominance and and and prominence um as to as to vegetables well you don't a you don't need to eat them B you don't want to eat them because they defend themselves chemically polar bear can mess you up and so you know people had to uh be able to fight and risk dying in order to fight these things off defend themselves or even kill them and and bring that back to their their tribe um but once they're dead or an animal is dead the meat itself is extremely healthy you know barring smaller animals that that can use poison sacks and stingers and things like that but even in them the the meat itself is typically very healthy and that's because they have other defenses they have other kinetic defenses they can move they can fight back they can fight you they can try to hunt you and eat you um but plants can't they're stationary they can't move they can't run away they can't defend themselves in that kinetic fashion so they have to use chemical warfare to stop animals insects from from eating them and so again they make about a million different defensive chemicals to kill injure and disrupt the health of the organisms trying to eat them that that goes all the way down to to fungus and bacteria and things like that that that try to um take advantage of the plant as well so they they have extremely robust defenses we know this intuitively because most plants on Earth will just kill you if you try to eat them you know people saying like well if plants are trying to kill you they're doing a really bad job it's like okay tell that to Hemlock right so you know go ahead and make a garden Sal out of random leaves you find in a in in the forest then you know tell me how good you feel the next day if you're still alive right that'd be a terrible idea most people know that if you get lost in the wood you can't eat any random plant because most of them will make you very sick so um it's a it's a really bad idea to do that and then we just pretend that these plants that you we have we get in the grocery store are not only safe but beneficial well there's no evidence that we've ever eaten these things in large quantities while our species was evolving uh people will Trot out that some neanderthals were found to have some grains in the calculi of their teeth well a that can mean anything you know they could just have some stuff stuck in their teeth it doesn't mean that they were eating a whole bunch of grains hey guys just want to take a second to thank our sponsor at carnivore bar I don't promote many products because honestly all you need to be healthy is to just eat meat for those times that you're out hiking road tripping or stuck at work and you want nutritious snack that is just meat fat and salt if you want it the carnivore bar is a great option so I like this product not because it's just your meat but also because I want the carnivore Market to thrive as well and the more we support meat only products the more meat only products there will be available in the mainstream so if this sounds like something you'd like to get behind check it out using my discount code Anthony to get 10% off which also applies the subscriptions giving you 25% off total all right thanks guys second of all that's only in the very recent um fossils of uh neanderthals very very early uh neanderthals and homosapiens and Homo rectus and homohabilis you did not see that and um and either way you know just because what someone chooses to eat out of necessity um doesn't mean that that's what is optimal for them right you know you see Bears going through garbage cans it's garbage the optimal diet for bears like no it's opportunist ically eating that because it's just trying to get um you know enough for the for the winter so you know we're we're you know talking about optimal here and optimizing our health and and to do that you need to look at what humans have been prospering on for the longest and and that's meat you know it's not um it's not something that we have to guard against because it's not inherently dangerous it has all these nutrients that we need uh and plants are harmful they do cause harm to varying degrees let this is you know somewhat innocuous but you know what spinach isn't all that innocuous and you eat too much of it you can actually get oxalate poisoning you know Liam Hemsworth the actor actually put himself in the hospital with with acute oxalate poisoning because he was talked into going vegan by some nutritionist that probably overcharged him and he ends up you know drinking spinach smoothies every morning for three weeks and it lands in himself in the hospital with acute oxalate poisoning and massive kidney stones that had to be surgically removed so you know these are these are actually well-known phenomena um you know you read nutrition books um from a hundred years ago like Adele Davis who's a very famous nutritionist and extremely bright I mean she she figured out a lot of things long before other people did um grew up with her books we had all all her books in my house when I was growing up and you know looking back at some of these things she was spot on with first of all she said you know need to eat meat um you know liver like Raw Liver was one of the best foods for pregnant women breastfeeding women and and kids that are that are developing and um she talked about oxalates in spinach she said that the only say you know that you don't just eat raw spinach that wasn't what was done what you did you poached them in milk and the calcium from the milk would actually leech out the oxalates and bind them and then you could eat the spinach more safely because it lowered that toxic load and that's the thing we had these traditional ways of eating plants in order to lower the toxic load and increase the bioavailability of the nutrients so that we could at least gain some benefit from from eating them we have studies from the 1950s looking at spinach because they they actually have a lot of calcium in spinach and I I've spoken to people now they said oh yeah my doctor told me to eat a lot of spinach because I needed calcium it's okay well the studies actually showed that if you give people spinach it actually lowers their calcium because the calcium in the spinach is not available we don't have the enzymes to break them down they're not bioavailable and so you know because we're not designed to eat spinach very plainly that's all the proof that you need really and they contain oxalates which get into your bloodstream and actually bind and strip out and chelate your calcium and then you end up lowering your calcium levels so that's actually what what the data shows us with the scientific experimental um Studies have shown um and yet you say oh there's calcium in in spinach eat a bunch of calcium sorry that's not how plants work so you get everything you need in the proportion that you need it for meat there are things that you need in meat that you cannot get from Plants but there's nothing in plants that you cannot get from meat and well not nothing that you need anyway there's nothing deleterious in meat there are literally over a million things that are deleterious in plants so that's why you want to eat meat and you don't want to eat plants and they're finding that they're they're massively improving the health of their microbiome um in fact there was um we're seeing this just just all over the place and let many people are publishing this you know Ken Dr kenberry has published this you know benaza has published this um Dr sha omara has published this and um in fact Dr sha omara his microbiome was so good that the you know president or whomever of the company that he used to test his microbiome personally called him and said you have the best microbiome our company has ever tested what the hell are you doing he's like all right I'll tell you and um benaza who's been doing a a clean omnivorous car ketogenic diet so