- Dr. Saladino, now, when you're recommending this diet,
what risks do you discuss with your patients?
- I don't think there are any risks
to eating animal foods exclusively.
There are no risks in terms of kidney function.
There are many studies which show
that high protein diets do not affect kidney function.
There are no studies interventionally that show
that eating meat is going to increase the risk
of any single cancer.
- So after watching the Carnivore MD, Dr. Paul Saladino,
on "The Doctors" show last year,
I uploaded an excerpt of the same show
where a couple of highly esteemed doctors
completely schooled his diet nonsense.
- I don't know what research you're reading,
but there are literally thousands of studies
showing the benefits of polyphenols.
Let's start with those, for example.
Plant-based nutrients in the diet.
- The National Institutes of Health
just gave the Cleveland Clinic $12 million
of our taxpayer money to study the impact
of meat on TMAO and the microbiome,
because there are 1000 studies are indicating,
I am a world expert on TMAO, Dr. Saladino.
Don't take me on this.
You will not be happy.
I will not be kind.
Wait 10, 20 years before you play with his dangerous diet.
- So that was just an excerpt
of a video that we edited together.
And I believe we uploaded it to YouTube,
Facebook, and Instagram,
and Dr. Paul Saladino clearly saw this video.
He didn't like it.
And then started messaging us privately
including sending this voice note,
which you're about to hear.
- [Paul] That's weak sauce, and you know it.
I got schooled?
If any of these doctors ever came on my podcast
I would show you what's up.
If any plant-based doctor
ever came on my podcast, they're all afraid,
you'll see what's up.
- Wow, he actually sent that to us in Instagram.
I don't know if you heard that,
but I think we should play it again.
- [Paul] That's weak sauce and you know it.
I got schooled?
If any of these doctors ever came on my podcast
I would show you what's up.
If any plant-based doctor ever came on my podcast,
they're all afraid, you'll see what's up.
- Anyway, Dr. Paul Saladino's been all over YouTube
in the last few months,
and I was gonna do a video questioning
some of his carnivore diet claims,
but then I saw a video by my friend Chris,
who's channel I'll link down below,
who did an excellent job of debunking
some of his diet philosophy nonsense.
Hope you enjoy the video.
- Several friends asked me about
the carnivore diet episode on Joe Rogan's podcast
that featured Paul Saladino.
Here's the thing.
Paul looks like he could be Will Bulsiewicz's brother.
Both are good-looking 40-something doctors
with great physiques who published best-selling books
with completely opposing messages.
Will is all about plant heavy diets,
like the Mediterranean or whole plant vegan.
Whereas Paul is all meat all the time.
How does a consumer with no scientific
or medical background to figure out who got it right?
Both are great guys who believe they're on missions
to improve the world,
but their messages are so opposite
there's no room for both to be right.
Or is the answer no one knows,
so just eat to feel good?
Paul got 10 times the views on YouTube
in his interview with Joe Rogan
than Will did in his interview with Rich Roll.
But I think I can show very simply
without confusing biochemistry
that Will has 10 X the credible science on his side.
Bold claim.
Let's go.
Joe and Paul opened with this idea.
- As a talking point that I actually stole from you,
is that most plants are inedible,
but almost all animals are edible.
- That's true.
And not just for humans, but for any plant-eating animal
like a cow, a horse, or a monkey.
Does that mean they're better off eating meat?
That experiment has been done carefully
and published perhaps a thousand times on various animals
like rabbits and pigeons and monkeys and pigs, you name it.
It doesn't take much for their arteries to close up
like it did with these monkeys,
which became totally blocked
when 40% of their calories,
in this case, came from egg yolks.
Once they went back to eating predominantly plants
their arteries opened back up like this.
That only works for herbivores and omnivores.
You can't give a lion heart disease with meat.
But guess whose arteries clog up
if you give them a fair amount of meat?
Humans.
Clogged arteries are the leading cause of death in America.
And now we know from doing MRI scans on prehistoric humans,
those that ate much meat got it, too.
Here's Otzi the Iceman from 5,300 years ago
who had wild ibex meat in his stomach
and had very advanced heart disease.
Same with Inuits who lived 500 years ago in Greenland.
- I remember there was a story
about a guy in a nursing home,
and he had went out and picked mushrooms
for the people in the nursing home
and cooked them up and they all died.
- Are we really gonna focus on death by mushroom
in the middle of a pandemic
that's killed a million and a half people so far?
It's not the plants that send out viruses to get us.
It's the animals we raise to eat.
The overwhelming incidents of food poisoning
that emergency room doctors see
comes from bacteria like salmonella,
which originates in animals.
So I think that's minus five science points
for Paul and Joe for insane logic with no data.
The premise of "The Carnivore Code"
is returning to our ancestral diet.
It's on the cover of the book,
and the early part of the book is devoted to it.
Quite fascinating.
Here's the thing, people who devote their lives
to studying the evolution of men say
the idea of a paleo diet is a myth.
People like completely different diets
depending on where they live just as modern humans do today.
For example, Aborigines in Australia love grubs.
- Then we eat it cooked or raw.
Does that make them good for us?
Maybe pick up a bag at Amazon
and see if your blood work improves.
They make a unique snack around the office
to impress your coworkers.
Aborigines, like most ancient humans,
dug up a lot of fibrous roots to eat.
- The digging stick has been used by Australian Aborigines
for thousands of years.
It was of particular importance to Aboriginal women
as it was their primary means of digging up
roots and tubers,
which was the mainstay of their diet.
- What separates the carnivore diet
from every meat heavy diet before,
it is Paul's belief, that any amount of plants
is toxic to humans.
I'm trying to show respect, but let me read you a passage
from his book and let you judge for yourself.
As an aside, the whole premise that molecules
that independently evolved in plants
would somehow be beneficial in humans
sounds a bit farfetched to me.
It would be highly unlikely for one molecule,
let alone thousands, of molecules produced
during plant evolution to truly be beneficial in humans
after our evolutionary path diverged from theirs
1.5 billion years ago when we were little more
than a single cell blob.
Imagine the odds against this, exclamation point.
I'm sorry for face palming, but he really wrote that.
Honestly, I think most high school biology teachers
would give minus 10 science points for that
because coevolution of plants and animals
is key to the world's ecosystems.
Charles Darwin wrote about that
in 1859 in "Origin of Species."
This is why I recommend listening
to actual evolutionary biologists, not Paul.
- I'm an archeological scientist,
and I study the health and dietary histories
of ancient peoples using bone biochemistry and ancient DNA.
So people who live in places where there are no plants
tend to eat more animals and people who live in places
where there are plants tend to eat more plants.
- The big question is, does it matter?
We don't eat grubs and lizards anymore.
We eat what we forage in Safeway.
Isn't the most important thing
which modern foods make modern humans
with modern lifestyles slim, vibrant, and healthy?
Trying to figure that out from ancient fossil records
is like extreme CSI.
But now we have all the things, blood tests,
MRI scans, and death records.
And that brings up epidemiology,
a field of science most of us revere
when it comes to infectious diseases
like COVID-19 and tracing its spread.
Epidemiology is what helped us unravel
the health effects of smoking.
This is where Will has a huge advantage
because he got a master's degree in epidemiology
on his way to med school
and has coauthored 21 scientific papers.
Plus 10 science points for Will.
If you trust epidemiology,
which Joe and Paul don't and Will does,
then you believe the world's healthiest people
eat plant-dominated diets.
So why would epidemiology be so trusted
by consumers in infectious disease
but not by the same consumers in nutrition?
Oh, I know the answer to that one,
because I lived it in earth science.
In 1988 when acclaimed astrophysicist James Hansen,
head of NASA's Institute for Space Studies,
testified before Congress about global warming.
- [Man] Gentlemen, thank you very much for being here.
Dr. Hansen, if you'd start us off, we'd appreciate it.
- And then George H.W. Bush embraced It.
Those who think we're powerless to do anything
about this greenhouse effect
are forgetting about the White House effect.
- Scientists thought at long last,
the science has become so clear and obvious,
this would become like science's
increasing progress against smoking.
We knew the coal and oil companies were coming for us
like the tobacco companies were doing,
but we had no idea they could successfully
shake the faith in science of so many Americans
and disrupt the careers of great scientists.
- [James] I've been arrested, I think, four times.
- 32 years later, it looks like Dr. Hansen's models
were incredibly accurate and science
will end up on the right side of history as it usually does,
hopefully not tragically late.
Back to food, since all credible epidemiology
points to plant-dominant diets
being the best for health and long-term weight loss,
the only thing for the beef, dairy, and egg councils to do
was to discredit the science.
They're the masters of it.
- [Narrator] They were judged, convicted.
- Bad rap, huh?
- [Narrator] And put away for a long, long time.
But now new evidence shows it was a bad rap.
Eggs contain 22% less cholesterol than previously thought.
- All right, let the eggs go.
- [Narrator] Which is why the American Heart Association
has increased its weekly egg yolk allowance
for healthy people from three to four.
California fresh eggs, give 'em a break.
- Why do I mention epidemiology?
Because it's long-term.
Even if you smoke, it probably takes 20 years
to have major impact.
Paul has been on the carnivore diet for two years.
He came to it as a psychiatrist
who listened to the Joe Rogan interview
with Jordan Peterson, a psychologist.
How many times have clinical trials indicated
the short-term safety of things like artificial sweeteners,
only to find out 20 years later they weren't safe at all?
But blood tests are a good short-term snapshot of health.
So a great question is,
what are the blood tests of carnivores?
What's Paul's?
- What would happen if you went to a cardiologist?
- They would fall out of their chair
when they saw my lipids.
They would say- - How bad is it?
- My most recent LDL was very high.
It was 533 milligrams per deciliter.
- I went to the Mayo Clinic's heart attack risk calculator
and tried to input Paul's numbers.
It's based on an enormous database
we have accumulated in America, risk factors.
It even asks how many servings
of fruit and vegetables you eat
because the data shows that reduces risk
and how many servings of meat,
because the data shows that increases it.
It also wants to know your blood pressure,
weight, how much you exercise,
and whether you've ever smoked.
But Paul's number blew up the calculator
because it wouldn't take total cholesterol higher than 350,
and his is nearly twice that.
So I looked for other carnivore blood tests.
Here's a 28-day challenge where Joe,
a nine-month, high meat eater went vegan for 28 days,
and Chase, a 10-year vegan, went high meat for 28.
Four doctors who are on various diets themselves
commented on the blood work where the key numbers
went like this.
LDL cholesterol in the vegan more than doubled
to the high risk category.
And the high meat eater's
dropped in half to the low risk category.
Insulin dropped while eating vegan
and increased while eating carnivore.
IGF-1, which is linked to a risk of cancer,
dropped while eating vegan
and increased while eating carnivore.
C-reactive protein, which is a measure of inflammation,
dropped dramatically when the carnivore went to vegan,
although that number bounces around a little bit.
It's high after you run a half marathon, for example.
I'll put links in the description to the pretty informative
and entertaining livestream
where Joe and Chase get revealed their blood tests
in real time.
It was far from a well-controlled scientific test,
but the only person that seemed to really surprise
was the carnivore doctor, who said these guys
must not be eating nose to tail.
Too many muscle meats, not enough organ meats.
They didn't identify who the doctor was
who made those comments,
but it sure sounded like Paul.
The Joe Rogan, Paul Saladino episode got millions of views.
Although I think it's unlikely
that any came from doctors or scientists.
The guys who switched diets got a few hundred thousand views
across several YouTube channels.
And it was interesting because data,
but we do have massive data
carefully collected by real scientists.
Most people have vaguely heard of the Framingham Study,
where we have a million blood samples
collected over 70 years and rooms full
of medical records from 15,000 participants.
- Almost every part of the body
that could be imaged, measured, or tested,
Framingham has done that.
- [Chris] It doesn't get the YouTube views,
but it's massively respected among cardiologists
and scientists,
and the conclusions are ever so clear.
- High blood pressure, smoking, high cholesterol.
- When Joe asked Paul about his high numbers,
Paul went into science denial mode
using word salad with technical terms,
which seemed to really impress Joe.
- And then you start to look at people
outside the norm like yourself and you go,
okay, this guy has spent so much time
thinking about this stuff,
maybe he's got some insight
that other people have not acquired.
- Actually, Paul's only been thinking about it
for a few years and hasn't been involved
in any scientific studies.
But thankfully we have national treasures
like Jeremiah Stamler who's still
massively respected at age 100
and still actively doing heart disease research
funded by the NIH after doing 800 publications.
Dr. Stamler helped scare the beef industry
into major science denial mode way back in 1969
with comments like this.
- I would underline the fact that
the distribution of serum cholesterol in the population,
the mean levels, the rates of hypercholesterolemia,
differ markedly among these countries,
and along with that the coronary rates differ,
and only diet can explain these differences.
- How about this 80-something Olympic gold medalist
in rowing, bronze star surgeon from Vietnam,
distinguished scientist and surgeon at the Cleveland clinic,
who fixed Bill Clinton's heart disease
and weight problems without surgery.
Here's how you explain things without technical word salad.
- Coronary artery disease
is the leading killer of women and men
in Western civilization.
And yet the truth be known,
it is nothing more than a toothless paper tiger
that need never exist.
And if it does exist, it need never, ever progress.
This is a foodborne illness.
- But Chris, how about just eating until you feel good?
Isn't that the ultimate in common sense?
Paul and Joe mentioned that a lot.
This is where I have to give plus 10 science points
to Will who makes his living looking inside you
with a colonoscope.
How many people do we know who looked and felt fantastic
just before getting a heart attack,
ulcerative colitis, or colon cancer?
- For example, in a patient just this past week
I had a patient who was,
he was 50, and I found a huge polyp.
So his colonoscopy saved his life,
'cause if he never had a colonoscopy
he would have had colon care.
- And what does he say about risk factors for colon cancer?
- Every 10 grams of fiber that you consume
gives you eight to 10% reduced risk
of developing colorectal cancer.
That doesn't mean, unfortunately,
that you can eat 100 grams of fiber
and reduce your risk to zero.
But what it does mean is that
a high fiber diet is to our benefit.
And here we are in the United States
and the average person is only getting 15 grams of fiber
per day, which is minuscule.
It's nothing.
- Finally, I know some of you wonder about the planet,
and Paul is well-known for headlines like this.
As someone who has spent 16 years as an earth scientist,
I feel pretty confident in saying,
I think this spry 93-year-old
is a better authority to listen.
- Whenever we choose a piece of meat,
we too are unwittingly demanding a huge expansive space.
The planet can't support billions of large meat eaters.
- That was a really hard episode for me.
So much science denial on topics that matter so much,
it's hard on the soul.
But the good news is, the science is really clear
that eating a plant-predominant diet
is the best thing we could do for our health and the planet.
I hope this was helpful and thanks so much for watching.