Dr. Paul Saladino trained at the University of Arizona with a focus on integrative medicine. He completed his residency in psychiatry at the University of Washington in 2019, and is a certified functional medicine practitioner through the Institute for Functional Medicine. In this interview, Saladino discusses the surprising benefits of the carnivore diet, which is the topic of his new book, “The Carnivore Code,” which is currently available for preorder. I view him as one of the leading experts on the health benefits of an animal-based diet. Saladino takes it to the extreme, though, advocating a carnivore diet to the exclusion of all vegetables or plant materials, which may strike many as debatable. The evidence he presents for it, however, is quite compelling. I don't know anyone personally who has reviewed the literature more carefully and can put together a coherent argument for this strategy. (This is in part a side-effect of having gone through the basic medical sciences twice, as he went through medical school to be a physician’s assistant and later an M.D.) Saladino is likely to challenge your beliefs in this interview. This is not meant to offend anyone. If you believe you should avoid animal foods for ethical reasons, that’s certainly your choice. If you’re struggling with health issues that a vegetarian diet has not been able to resolve, however, or perhaps even made your condition worse, you may want to listen to what he has to say. Busting Nutritional DogmaIn his book, Saladino states he’s going to bust nutritional dogma, which he does in spades. Saladino, who struggled with asthma and eczema, was actually a vegetarian and then a vegan for a time. It didn’t help. In fact, it made things worse. His health problems didn’t resolve until he went on an exclusive carnivore diet, and he recounts the various twists and turns in his personal journey at the beginning of the interview. After hearing Jordan Peterson talk about the carnivore diet and how it improved his daughter's autoimmune symptoms, Saladino was intrigued enough to look into it. The rest, as they say, is history.
According to Saladino, there’s a clear ancestral history of eating an animal-based diet, which he details in the interview. In a nutshell, the evidence suggests we are descendants of omnivores, and that the increase in brain volume coincides with a transition to hunting for animal game and eating large amounts of animal foods. Some vegetarian advocates have argued that it was tubers that caused our brains to grow. Saladino disagrees, noting that the levels of nitrogen and carbon in fossilized remains from 60,000 years ago are actually greater than those in hyenas, which suggests our ancestors were eating more animal protein than known carnivores. He also points out genetic evidence suggesting Homo sapiens were not eating significant amounts of starch, as they developed a salivary amylase mutation.
In the interview, Saladino also goes into the findings of Dr. Weston A. Price, a pioneering dentist who traveled the world to document the diets and health status of indigenous cultures. A big take-home point was that Price never found a culture that was thriving on plant foods alone.
The Problem With PhytonutrientsOne of the most controversial issues relates to the health benefits and hazards of phytonutrients, i.e., plant-based nutrients. I was under the belief that phytonutrients were largely responsible for activating profoundly powerful pathways for longevity. Saladino’s work caused me to seriously reevaluate my views on phytonutrient supplementation. As Saladino explains, phytoalexins are plant defense compounds that may be causing more harm than good. A corollary to this is the issue of xenohormesis, which Saladino covered in a November 5, 2019, podcast interview with David Sinclair, Ph.D.1
The Biochemistry of Plants and MammalsIn the interview, Saladino also offers a descriptive analogy that helps explain why plant nutrients aren’t necessarily necessary in human biochemistry. The biochemical difference between plants and animals can be likened to the operating systems of PC and Mac. While their apparent functions are the same, their operating systems are different and incompatible. Your body has its own antioxidant system, which is different from that of plants. Your immune system is your primary defense, and you have innate and adaptive immunity. Plants do not have that. They only make molecules to defend against invaders. The common belief is that plant molecules act as antioxidants in humans, but according to Saladino, plant molecules do not act as direct free radical scavengers in our body. They can trigger your antioxidant response system, however, which is hormesis.
The Unacknowledged Downside of XenohormesisSinclair, a professor of genetics at Harvard whom I have previously interviewed, and others have advanced the concept of xenohormesis, which means molecules that are outside of us are good for us because they contain tiny amounts of poison. Saladino’s problem with that theory has to do with the side effects. In the interview, he illustrates his objection using the example of sulforaphane, the primary glucosinolate in broccoli. When an enzyme called myrosinase degrades glucoraphanin, it becomes sulforaphane, which acts as a pro-oxidant, not an antioxidant. By acting as a pro-oxidant, it triggers the antioxidant response system — the Nrf2 pathway. NRF2 is transcription factor that controls the activation and deactivation of genes. It will activate genes such as glutathione peroxidase, involved in the antioxidant system. When NRF2 rises, glutathione rises, which is a good thing in the short term, as it decreases DNA damage. However, there is collateral damage.
The Unique Health Benefits of Animal FoodsAccording to Saladino, animal foods are uniquely healthy for humans, and this is a topic he covers in great depth in chapter 8 of his book. One example is vitamin B12. Research cited in the book shows that B12 levels appear to be related to brain size, with low vitamin B12 equating to smaller brain volume.
Saladino also covers “the three C’s,” which are entirely or close to entirely lacking in plant foods: • Creatine -- Creatine, found only in animal food, not plants, is part of the phosphagen system in your muscles. It stores a phosphate item as creatine phosphate and donates that phosphate to ATP when it gets used up during intense exercise. It's also part of your body’s energy metabolism. “There are incredibly striking studies that I talk about in the book where vegetarians and vegans were supplemented with 5 grams of creatine per day, which is the amount of creatine in 1 pound of meat; invariably they had improvements in working memory, intelligence, decision-making tasks,” Saladino says. • Choline -- Choline is important for the membranes of every cell in your body. It’s also been shown to protect against nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, as explained in “Choline Is Crucial for Liver Health.” • Carnosine -- Carnosine is important because of its ability to limit oxidative stress by preventing the formation of advanced glycation end products (AGEs) and advanced lipoxidation end products (ALEs), both of which correlate to aging in humans. Carnosine is not present in plant foods, and in his book Saladino cites research showing vegetarians have higher levels of AGE formation in their bodies. There appear to be dozens of clinical conditions for which carnosine is useful. This includes heart disease, cancer and Alzheimer’s. It’s also a precursor for histamine, and mitigates damage caused by ALEs, which are even more destructive than AGEs, and helps combat mitochondrial dysfunction, which is at the heart of aging and chronic disease. Vitamins A and KAnimal foods are also a good source of retinol vitamin A, which is better absorbed than beta carotene from plants, which must be converted into retinol. Many lack the enzyme required for this conversion, which means they cannot break down the beta carotene to make the active form of vitamin A.
Vitamin K is another example. Vitamin K1 is primarily found in plants while K2 — which seems to provide most of the benefits — is found in animal foods and fermented foods. I go into greater detail about the different forms in “Are You Getting Enough Vitamin K?” As noted by Saladino, research shows a clear correlation between higher K2 levels and lower incidence of cardiovascular disease. No such correlation exists for vitamin K1. Unfortunately, most nutrition calculators look only at K1, which is why many are under the mistaken belief that there is no vitamin K in animal foods.
The same goes for vitamins E and C. Neither is properly measured in animal foods, thus leading to the mistaken belief that you need plant foods for these nutrients. However, Saladino presents ample evidence in his book showing meat and animal foods contain sufficient amounts of both vitamin E and C. A Note on SafetyImportantly, Saladino has performed extensive blood testing on himself and others who are on an exclusive carnivore diet, showing consistently good results and no adverse biochemical consequences. He explains:
Another important side note relates to meal timing. If you’re eating a carnivore diet 18 hours a day, you’re probably going to run into problems — just as with any other diet. Saladino covers the importance of time-restricted eating in his book as well. What About Gut Microbiome Diversity?In the interview, Saladino also covers the common perception that fiber and plant foods are essential for a healthy microbiome, and the prevention of constipation and cancer. This being an unusually long interview, I cannot cover all the details in this article so, for more in-depth information, please listen to the interview in its entirety. With regard to fiber and microbial diversity, Harvard researchers demonstrated that people eating an exclusive carnivore diet have the same alpha diversity of gut microbes as those eating an exclusive plant-based diet for one week. In fact, the carnivore diet increased beta diversity, which is another measure of diversity, so total diversity actually increased. Carnivore Diet Excels in Treatment of Autoimmune DiseasesWhile the carnivore diet may benefit anyone, it appears particularly useful for those with autoimmune diseases.
What About the Blue Zones?Saladino even dispels the idea that plant-based diets are what makes Blue Zones, areas where people are known to be particularly long-lived, stand out. Blue Zones include Ikaria in Greece, Sardinia in Italy, Loma Linda in California, Okinawa, Japan and the Nicoya region of Costa Rica. Crazy enough, these areas actually have the third highest consumption of meat per capita in the world, Saladino says. And they have the longest life expectancy. In the interview, Saladino delves into the specifics of each of these five areas, reviewing the local diets which, contrary to popular belief, are heavy on meat and animal foods.
The Problem With Epidemiological StudiesSaladino also goes into more detail about healthy user bias and the problem with epidemiological studies (which are observational, not interventional, and therefore cannot determine causation), both of which have contributed to the belief system that plant-based diets are better than meat-based ones.
More InformationI’ve only covered a portion of what we discuss in this interview, so if any of this has piqued your curiosity, please listen to the interview in its entirety. Saladino delves into many details that have not been covered in this text, including:
He also discusses the importance of nose-to-tail eating as radically exemplified by Glenn Villeneuve of Life Below Zero in his recent 3.5-hour interview3 with Joe Rogan. A carnivore diet is not just eating steak. You should eat the whole animal. This includes animal fats, organ meats and collagen from bone and marrow, for example. It’s also important to make sure the food is from grass fed and grass finished animals, opposed to factory farmed, as their diet differs tremendously, which in turn affects the nutrition you get from it. A carnivore diet also is not exclusive to bovines. You can include seafood, eggs, chicken, turkey, pork and dairy, including goat and sheep milk. If you cannot stomach the idea of organ meats, there are ancestral supplements that contain freeze dried organ components.
To get all the information Saladino discusses in this interview, and then some, be sure to pick up a copy of “The Carnivore Code.” It will be released February 2020 but is available for preorder. from http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2020/02/23/carnivore-code.aspx
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