If you are new to a carnivore diet or are interested in learning to start fresh at a new approach then you may not know what can be eaten on a carnivore diet. I plan to cover this in detail to help you start out on the right foot, I have a totally free PDF for shopping here, no email, no anything just to help you start right!
What is Allowed on a Carnivore Diet? A carnivore diet will focus entirely on meat-based foods, aiming for the more red meat-centric approach due to the fat and protein it provides along with the included vitamins and minerals within the animal meat. This means limiting your vegetables and fruits to zero and attempting to minimize spices to salt and pepper.
Now we will tackle the carnivore diet as to the foods which are wanted versus what you should avoid to get the maximum benefit. We will dive into the nose to tail people and why you should avoid just chicken breast and technically not use chicken for a majority of your food.
Hopefully, by the end you will have a much better understanding as to how to start and follow the carnivore diet and to gain the best results possible!
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A carnivore diet needs to focus on whole meat foods preferably from red meats. This means that you should be preferably eating steaks and the lower amount of processed meats, the next up would be to eat ground beef and short of a snack you should avoid highly processed meats like luncheon meats.
This doesn't mean you need to stick to red meat only as you can add in eggs, quality fish and pork in many cases. These can provide you plenty of yummy foods which will cause your body to be satiated and help you body to repair itself.
One thing people do ask is about dairy as an option including things like milk and butter. Many people have adverse reactions to these foods but since they have never not had them in their diet they don't know it causes issues.
What every new carnivore should focus on is to avoid them and focus on meats for the first month to two.
This allows you to have it be gone long enough to know how you feel and then you can add one in and see if you have reactions over the next few days, if so then you know you should keep it removed.
The thing which is all the rage lately is grass fed meats, while these can be a good option the talk of being much better in omega-3 to omega-6 is highly blown out of proportion.
The only time that a grass fed steak would be better for you would be when you consume the fat content on the steak.
The fat content stores the vitamins and minerals, and the toxins, from the animal based on what it has eaten. So if you are like me and love a fatty steak, then grass-fed is something you should aim for eventually, as budget allows.
I prefer the way grass fed meats taste which as it has "much more yummy taste" versus a more bland tasting steak from the grocery which needs way more spices.
My Wife on Grass Fed Steaks
This is why I love Butcher Box (Signup Here) and have been a customer for almost 2 years, I get sent a box of quality meats each month (or every other month) and I get beef only.
I love to go to farmers markets to get more local meats as I can, but this keeps me from purchasing too much at the stores and my wife refuses to eat non-grass fed beef.
when dieting most people have this belief that they need to add in chicken breast to their diet and focus on the super lean breast meat.
The issues around this is that it is far less nutrition for our bodies then a red meat source is, this doesn't mean not to eat it but it isn't something you should focus on.
A bit thing currently in the carnivore world is that you HAVE to eat nose to tail and this can provide you more minerals and vitamins as things like liver are very high in some specific nutrients.
The truth is no one knows 100%, there are long term, 10+ years carnivores, who eat only muscle meats without issue.
I would say don't artificially limit yourself to muscle meats, just like when you are teaching your kid to eat, you should try everything once at least. Now you may not like it but at least you are an example of relearning and not self limiting your options.
So when you think about humans we didn't always have fire and there are people who say we get far more nutrition from our foods when not cooked or very lightly cooked.
Whether this is true or not, the data doesn't exist to give you a quality correct answer, so read up and make up your own mind.
Personally I don't find this appealing and I don't follow this at all. I love to have my steaks cooked and will continue to eat in this manner, there is too many diseases possible from raw foods to feel safe.
Here is where the rubber hits the road, remember as a kid when almost all of us hated to eat the plants on our plate? Remember how those same plants were touted to be "necessary", well what if this had been wrong and was the start to your health issues?
In health and nutrition for your body, there is ESSENTIAL fatty acids and ESSENTIAL proteins. There is not a single carbohydrate that is essential to our body that we have to consume to live, not one.
So our own bodies tell us that what we need to consume is fat and proteins, this is a tell-tale sign that we are built to eat meat, unlike other animals though we developed an ability to TOLERATEplants and vegetable matter to survive lean times.
The reason vegetables are such a problem for humans is really down to how they defend themselves from predators. Natural predators to a plant are anything that can consume it, since most don't have claws and teeth to defend themselves they developed anti-nutrients.
These anti-nutrients are problems for our intricate systems internally as they bind to the same receptors that would normally take on other nutrients.
This makes us less efficient at uptake on these vitamins and minerals which increases the need to consume more to give your body a chance to get access.
Fruits as we know them aren't what we used to have access to historically. Not only that but the fruits we now have 24/7/365 access to used to only be available for a month or two at a time.
Now that we have access to them anytime we want from the grocery store we have begun to consume them in a dramatically higher amount than in our history.
Fruits themselves aren't the enemy, the way we consume them and the way they have become concentrated sugar is. Most fruits looked nothing like they do now as we genetically groomed them to have less seeds and to be more sweet over time.
Spices are amazing, hands down I love to use spices. The issues are they almost always contain a high amount of carbohydrate to their small serving size.
Since almost no one knows the nutrition from their spices, many times because it isn't even listed on the package, it is best to remove them overall.
Similar to other things like dairy, remove them from your foods and then after two months or so add in the one you love the most, don't add other things at the same time and see how you react.
If you have no reaction then you can add it to your more frequent list, one thing you will notice is that if you salt and pepper meat to taste you won't feel like you are missing taste.
Hopefully I have answered your worries and concerns about food choices on a carnivore diet. My goal is always to help you get started and to succeed, please comment below if I missed something as I am not an expert just someone who has had a life altering change due to this diet and want to spread the word!
If you read this far you are amazing! I would love to hear from you in the comments below if I helped you gain knowledge and useful information, additionally I would like to know if I got anything incorrect that you believe should be researched more and updated. As always to get the word out please join our new Carnivore Rx group on Facebook and share this out on social media!
