Shukul Kuchwalla from High Carb Health invited me onto his podcast to discuss how the claims made by proponents of the carnivore diet stack up against scientific evidence.
Among other topics, Shukul and I discussed:
- What paleoarchaeology and genetics tell us about the diet on which humans evolved;
- The role that meat, and its acquisition, played in the development of human culture;
- The short-term survival vs long-term health trade-off of meat consumption;
- What epidemiological evidence tells us about the relationship between dietary patterns, chronic disease and life expectancy;
- How acquiring the ability to control fire literally shaped the development of humans;
- The genetic mutation that prevents Inuit people from going into ketosis, and what that tells us about the state of ketosis;
- Crucial physiological differences between humans and animals that are perfectly adapted for high-meat diets;
- Clickbait culture and how it has contributed to the unbearable stupidity of most online discourse about nutrition (and pretty much every other topic, for that matter).Share
Additional Resources
- You can watch the Microbiome Masterclass that Shukul and I recorded a few years ago here:
- … and Christina Warriner’s TEDx talk ‘Debunking the paleo diet’ here:
(or read the transcript here).
- ‘The Importance of Dietary Carbohydrate in Human Evolution’ explains the role played by starch consumption in the development of the human brain.
- Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human by Richard Wrangham explains, providing evidence from paleoarchaeology, how cooking shaped the anatomy, physiology and behaviour of humans.
- Paleofantasy: What evolution really tells us about sex, diet, and how we live by Marlene Zuk debunks the myth that human beings have ceased to evolve, providing specific evidence of biological differences between modern humans and our ‘caveman’ ancestors.
- I discussed the genetic mutation that make Inuit people resistant to going into ketosis, and the impact of this mutation on infant mortality, in Ketogenic diets: Part 2 – Is ketosis ‘natural’?
I hope you find our conversation informative and thought-provoking.
