Maybe you heard about Jordan Peterson, the Canadian psychologist who was a Harvard lecturer? On a Joe Rogan podcast, Jordan told the story about how he and his daughter had lot of health problems and then switched diet to only beef, and all health problems disappeared. Jordan attribute their improved health to the Carnivore diet. His daughter even has a diet and health blog and charges $150/hour for dietary advice to improve your health. On this blog you get better health advice – for free. By reading the health posts on this blog you save $150/hour. You can read about Jordan and his daughter’s Carnivore diet here [1].

If you have read my other blog post about the foundation to a good health, you probably now understand why Jordan and his daughter’s health improved from their carnivore diet. I suggest you read my “foundation to a good health” post, before you continue reading this text, otherwise it will be difficult to understand.

Jordan and his daughter’s health did not improve because beef is healthy, no, their health improved because they stopped eating grain and cereals. Today they basically eat a very strict paleolithic diet consisting of only beef, which is very one sided. In the above link [1], Jordan’s daughter says she excluded one food at a time, until she found out that she could eat beef without problems. That is why they only eat beef today. However, as their body slowly heals, they could introduce other foods again some time later – as long as they still avoid grains and cereals.

So, the point is: Jordan and his daughter have misunderstood what a healthy diet is – this proves that even Professors at Harvard can be wrong. What saved their health is: they stopped eating cereals and grain. At the same time they started eating beef. Then they wrongly concluded that beef made them healthy, when in fact their health improved from not eating grain and cereals anymore.

In fact Jordan and his daugther did another error during their meat cleanse, as described in their interview. If you want to find out which food your cat/dog is allergic to, the standard procedure is to eliminate all food except a special very pure food, and then slowly reintroduce one food at a time until you find what food your cat/dog is allergic to. And that special pure food is not beef. No, that special pure food is meat from wild animals, such as deer, elk or moose. Almost all allergic cats and dogs can eat wild meat without problems. So Jordan did it wrong again, if they had followed the proper procedure, they would have eliminated everything except wild meat, and at once noticed their health improve (because they stopped eating grains and cereals at the same time). Therefore they would have concluded that wild meat boosts your health and makes your problems disappear, and today they would have been proselytes of the “wild meat diet”.

In fact there is a huge difference between beef from the meat industry (which has low Omega 3 fats, full of growth hormones and antibiotics), and grass fed beef from small farms which is almost as good as meat from wild animals (lot of Omega 3 fats like Salmon, no growth hormones and no antibiotics). So if Jordan wants to boost his health further, he should eat exclusively grass fed beef and wild meat, and not just “beef” because he probably eat beef from the meat industry. But I would advice Jordan to start to eat fruits and vegetables as well and decrease their beef intake because too much red meat is harmful. Now their bodies have healed a bit, they can most probably eat fruits and veggies again.

Too much red meat is harmful for your body as World Health Organization WHO explains: eat maximum 0.5 kg red meat per week and no more [2]. I will later write more on the perils of red meat. Because humans are not carnivores, our digestive system is not designed to eat lot of red meat.

REFERENCES

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/08/the-peterson-family-meat-cleanse/567613/

[2] World Health Organization WHO, https://www.who.int/news-room/questions-and-answers/item/cancer-carcinogenicity-of-the-consumption-of-red-meat-and-processed-meat