If you’re skeptical about an all-meat diet, you’re not alone. In fact, Dr. Nicholas Norwitz, a researcher and metabolic health educator with a Harvard medical degree, was skeptical as well. Everything he had been taught and all his medical training suggested that it couldn’t possibly make sense. No plant material whatsoever? Just meat, eggs, and fish? No fiber? It seemed radical, but he kept hearing about people with a variety of conditions that were in remission after following the carnivore diet. There was only one way to make a determination about the diet, and that was to go on it himself. The elephant in the room was meat. For a long time, meat has been vilified for being rich in saturated fat and cholesterol, which are bad for your heart. So, is a carnivore diet inevitably bad for cardiovascular health? Will it accelerate plaque buildup and have you dropping head of a heart attack? The answer is no. Saturated fat can raise cholesterol, but that alone doesn’t translate into higher cardiovascular risk when the fat comes from whole foods. So who is the carnivore diet for? It makes the most sense for people with gut conditions like irritable bowel syndrome and for those with autoimmune disease. It makes the least sense for people who are already healthy and thriving on their current diet. Perhaps it’s not the right tool for many people, but for some it’s exactly the right tool.
