Meet the meatfluencers: only meat on the plate (and pretty much nothing else)

In recent times, a variety of celebrities and influencers advocating for meat-only diets have emerged across the internet. Despite medical professionals generally recommending a balanced diet, these proponents of carnivorous eating habits argue that meat alone suffices for nutritional needs. Of course, some have managed to get rich off this guidance.

The Liver King, aka Brian Johnson, has reportedly made $100 million per year pushing his all-natural raw meat diet through viral videos and selling dried organs and supplements through his company. His diet philosophy included eating large amounts of raw organ meets daily.

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When busted for taking steroids, something he had repeatedly denied previously, he did "man up" and share the truth with his followers. “Yes, I’m on steroids,” he said, “that was a lie.” He justified it by saying he invented the persona of liver king to help save people from depression with ancestral living.

Image: Liver King Confession... I Lied/ Liver King/Youtube

“When I talk about the 85% of the population that suffers from self-esteem issues, that’s me. This is why I work myself to death in the gym… just to feel like I’m OK,” he explained, adding that hormone replacement therapy helped him in a “profound and serious way.”

Image: New York wasn't ready for this/ Liver King/ Youtube

In 2019, Dr. Shawn Baker published the influential book touting the benefits of an all-meat diet (maybe including eggs and dairy). He claims the diet can reverse diabetes, normalize blood pressure and cure many other ailments.

Photo: Shawnbaker1967/Instagram

Peterson is an influential Canadian psychologist known for ruffling feathers with his political views. And his extreme diet of just beef, salt and water raised eyebrows too. He told Joe Rogan that it made him feel much better, and just one cheat day, where he drank apple cider, knocked him out for a month.

Jordan Peterson’s daughter was the one who got him on the diet. She had experienced multiple debilitating diseases in her youth, including arthritis and depression. But after trying everything and experimenting with her diet, she said all her symptoms went into remission once she cut out everything but ruminant meat (beef, lamb, bison), salt and water.

Image: "Q&A: 5 Year Carnivore (Lion Diet) Anniversary" Mikhaila Peterson/YouTube

Much of Mikhaila Peterson's life is now largely dedicated to sharing the Lion diet, hosting a podcast where diet is often discussed, running a blog called "Don't Eat That" and giving personalized diet coaching, according to the Atlantic. Her social media feed talks a lot about all-meal diets and she gave a TEDx talk about the diet, though TED refused to post it.

Image: "TEDx Wouldn't Post This..." Mikhaila Peterson/YouTube

In response to the Peterson diet, Dr. Jack Gilbert of the University of Chicago’s Microbiome Center told the Atlantic that only eating beef was “a terribly , terribly bad idea.”

The doctor said it would cause “severe dysregulation” and was worried about colon cancer. “You would have no short-chain fatty acids in your cells; most of the by-products of gastrointestinal polysaccharide fermentation would shut down, so you wouldn’t be able to regulate your hormone levels; you’d enter into cardiac issues due to alterations in cell receptors; your microbiota would just be devastated.”

Podcast star Joe Rogan has talked with many of the proponents of only eating meat on his podcast and experimented with the diet himself. He tried it for a month and said he lost weight. But he also complained of diarrhea and said he had trouble lifting weights. According to a more recent podcast, he's not just a carnivore and also enjoys eating fruit.

This ex-vegan turned pure carnivore also has a large following wih 3.4 million likes on her TikTok posts. She often films herself eating cold butter and steak, two of her favorite foods, which she says make up the base of her diet.

Image: steakandbuttergal/Tiktok

With 121K followers on TikTok, mom and content creator Courtney Luna is another big-time meatfluencer. She mostly eats beef, but will go for bacon, chicken wings, shrimp or salmon a couple times per week. She also always snacks on butter and eggs and is just coming out with a cookbook!

Image: itscourtneyluna/TikTok

The ‘You Are Beautiful’ singer told podcast Table Manners that while studying at the University of Bristol in the 1990s, he became a carnivore when he was surrounded by women in his classes. “I just lived on mince, some chicken, maybe with some mayonnaise.”

After two months as a carnivore, Blunt said he became “very, very unhealthy.” His doctor told him he lacked vitamin C and was developing scurvy. In response, he started drinking far too much orange juice, developing acid reflux. “Food is not necessarily my forte,” he said.

Image: itscourtneyluna/TikTok

While Harvard acknowledges some individuals could see benefits from carnivore diets, it also comes with potentially serious health risks. Besides vitamin deficiency, other risks include high cholesterol, heart disease, kidney problems, and gastrointestinal issues. Eating raw meat adds to the risk.

Image: itscourtneyluna/TikTok

While Dr. Shawn Baker says that it is "patently false" that stopping consuming meat is good for the environment, other experts tend to disagree. A study in Nature found that if every person in the US cut meat consumption by 25%, it would reduce annual greenhouse gases by 1%.

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