- Hey everybody, so let's take a look at what happened
when two people, a carnivore and a vegan,
took science into their own hands
by swapping diets for 28 days.
This is the experiment I've been waiting ages for.
Chase on the left here has been vegan for 10 years
for environmental and health reasons.
And Joe on the right is a hardcore carnivore
and works in construction.
Both had their blood work examined before
and after the experiment.
So we're able to see exactly
how the 28 day diet swap affected them.
So first up, let's hear from Joe who had a few problems
when he tried the vegan diet.
- I would eat about twice a day.
I'd have a coffee in the morning with coconut oil in it.
And then for lunch, it was typically fruits.
It might've been apples with nut butter
and then for dinner it was when I would have typically,
you know, beans and rice, rice and beans, sweet potato,
stir fry
with rice, stuff like that.
- Hold on a second, he just said he had two meals per day,
and one of those was nut buttered fruit.
Is there any wonder that he would feel satisfied
on a vegan diet?
Of course not.
At the same time vegan Chase
was eating his meat-based carnivore meals
and unsurprisingly his body was struggling to process it.
- Yeah, two weeks in, I was about to negotiate an exit
from this experiment.
I just wanted
the carb energy back.
I wanted to be able to eat a meal
and get the almost instant energy because every meal
took me, I don't know,
45 minutes to feel like, okay, now I can kind of get up
and go do something.
Toward the end I just felt like I was really low on energy
or just like my brain wasn't moving
as quickly as I wanted it to.
And so I was really looking forward
to the transition back.
- So on a carnivore diet, the vast majority of calories
are from fat and protein.
And this was reflected in Chase's daily intake.
By mostly eliminating carbs from his body,
Chase relied on the saturated animal fat
as his primary energy source.
Which was probably a contributing factor
to his fatigue throughout the month.
But it's the blood results that paint the true picture
of the two diets, with the two vitamins of contention,
vitamin B12 and vitamin D taking up the dietary debate.
Now, we know that vitamin D is difficult to obtain
with all diets, especially in countries
with lower amounts of sunlight.
So both participants scores were below normal levels before
and after the switch.
We see a similar story with vitamin B12,
but the carnivore diet saw Chase marginally
increase his B12 levels
as a result of ingesting the recycled supplements given
to farmed animals.
These results clearly show
that regardless of your diet choice,
vitamin D and vitamin B12 supplementation
should be considered.
It was also interesting to compare Joe
and Chase's insulin levels.
As you see on a carnivore diet Chase's insulin levels
went up while Joe's went down on a plant-based diet,
which is healthy.
Their cortisol levels are also quite interesting.
Cortisol is a measure of how stressed the body is
and Chase's cortisol levels
on the carnivore diet remained pretty stable.
Whereas Joe's reduced dramatically on the plant-based diet.
So even though he didn't enjoy this way of eating,
his body certainly did.
Anyway, onto the next bio marker.
IGF-1, which is really important
when you're looking at cancer risk.
Scientific studies have shown that diets rich
in animal products are linked to raised levels of IGF-1
and the side by side results here reinforced that point.
Chase's levels of IGF-1 increased
while on the carnivore diet.
Whereas Joe's levels decreased when eating only plants.
In this experiment and this factor alone
could crown the vegan diet as the winner, in my opinion.
Next, we look at C-reactive protein
which is the measure of inflammation in the body.
High levels indicate that somebody's got a sustained injury
or just generally they're not very healthy.
And from these results,
we see Chase's levels decrease slightly
from an already healthy baseline
but it's Joe's results that are interesting.
His levels from his carnivore days
are well above the safe range,
but after adopting a plant-based diet he saw them plummet,
which was very revealing.
Last but not least, let's look at cholesterol,
which is very indicative as a health marker.
And the results are really interesting.
Chase's overall in LDL bad cholesterol shot up
whilst on the carnivore diet,
whereas Joe's reduced to healthy levels
from a score significantly above the normal range,
but what's kind of interesting
is after the experiment concluded
and irrespective of the results,
Joe went back to his carnivore diet.
Let's hear from Chase about his desire
to go back to the plant-based way of eating.
- Through the experiment,
I just wanted to find out for myself, if there's
any truth to the keto,
carnivore trend that's happening, and
in a way it's sort of re-ignited some of
the values that I had previously.
Especially now that veganism's gone mainstream
with all the processed foods,
you have to still be smart about what you're eating.
- Before we finish this video
I just wanted to highlight the fact
that this was not a peer-reviewed study,
it was just an experiment in a non-medically supervised way
between two dudes on the internet.
It was organized by a guy called Drew Morg
who is a carnivore vlogger
and the discussion was hosted on his channel.
So if there is any bias, it was probably more skewed
towards the meat-based end of the spectrum
but the results are favorable to plant-based lifestyle
and they back up the copious amounts
of evidence-based information that show that plants rule.
But let me know what you think of the results.
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