Carnivore seemed to reach a huge peak of "anti-government" counter culture during the biden-era.

And for some mysterious odd reason, it started trailing off quickly in 2025 / 2026.

Of course I'm simply going "by feelz" and observing I don't see much "seed oils" or "plants are poison" memes pushed on social media lately.

Carnivore influencers must have like gods during their peak years (or however it is you feel with a 350+ LDL).

Community notes are still the best thing Twitter, now Xitter, ever added.

Carnivore MD, Shawn Baker, Mikhaila Peterson, Haleman, Sverige, Frank Tufano, Joe Rogan, Liver King, Robert Klitz, Face IQ, , etc, etc. all quit after saying it was best and healthiest way to eat. If it is so optimal why'd they all stop? And these are the most known names in the diet doing this. Literally the top names and biggest advocates of the diet all went back to plants.

Here is Shawn Baker saying he ate mostly fruit in the past 30 days recently: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/hPH7Dwxabro

Carnivore MD only lasted around two years: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6nioXyrabU

Mikhaila Peterson earlier this year saying she has added plants back, saying it's the first time without any issues, meaning she's actually been trying the whole time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CyEtqvRqdM

Although Ken Berry didn't say he quit the diet, Ken Berry’s wife does grocery shopping hauls in their channel and buy lots of vegan foods: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXmm5HFzT2c

They also have a large vegetable garden: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeNY4bY9NeI

In contrast let's compare it to the against-animal-cruelty crowd:

Meanwhile all the Vegan OG's who have been vegan even before me (I am vegan for nearly 14 years) like Dr. Michael Greger, Dr. Michael Klaper, Dr. T. Colin Campbell, Dr. McDougall (RIP), Dr. Fuhrman, Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn, Dr. Joel Kahn, Jeff Nelson from VegSource, etc. have all been vegan individually for 30+ years minimum, some are probably 70+ years vegan.

There's also influencers like DurianRider, Vegan Gains, Freelee the Banana Girl, Mic the Vegan, Fully Raw Kristina, etc. who were making videos prior or around the time I went vegan, and they are still vegan.

From Matthew Nagra:

We investigated the little research we have on carnivore diets and how they may impact heart health, mortality risk, nutrient intake, and more. Here’s what we found:

The evidence base is thin: There are zero randomized trials or prospective cohort studies. What exists is mostly self-reported surveys (carnivores love these, right?), case reports, and diet modeling.

The “benefits” are self-reported and short-term: People report weight loss, better glycemic control, and lower triglycerides. But these come from self-selected survey respondents, with no control group, and they’re largely unverified. They also coincide with cutting out ultra-processed foods, so they can’t be attributed to eating high amounts of meat per se. Even taken at face value, these are short-term effects. No studies have examined cardiovascular events (e.g., heart attacks/strokes).

LDL-cholesterol was markedly high on the diet: In the largest survey (2,029 adults), median LDL was self-reported as 172 mg/dL, up from 126 before the diet. A second survey showed LDL going from 157 to 256 mg/dL. LDL is a causal risk factor for atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease.

Concerning nutrient intake: Modeled carnivore menus provided zero fiber, little vitamin C, magnesium, and potassium, saturated fat at 26-32% of calories, and sodium of 7,200-8,789 mg/day.

Contradicts dietary guidance for heart health: Fruit and vegetable consumption is consistently associated with improved health outcomes across populations whilst high saturated fat and red meat intake (at doses well below what carnivores achieve) are typically associated with poorer health outcomes. While we do not have long-term prospective research on an exclusively carnivore dietary pattern, extrapolating from what is known about intakes of the various food groups/nutrients, it is reasonable to suspect long-term harm from following a diet devoid of healthy plant foods and enriched with less healthy food groups.

This is just gonna be a rant about the carnivore/keto diet. I'm not a fan of it. After doing a year of research into many diets and ways of eating, I have some opinions I want to share. I know many of you on here are likely vegans or things similar. This isn't an antivegan subreddit so I won't get into why i dislike that diet. This is a bit of a messy rant. Take of it what you will.

Anyway, if you are constantly in a ketogenic state, you will be constantly upregulating gluconeogenesis. Your body will require larger amounts of cortisol to increase the aa substrates and enzyme pathways. Do you want chronically elevated cortisol? Not really. It will mess up your hormones in the long run. Essentially, it is a stressful state you place yourself in to imitate starvation. Carnivore influencers will commonly say that it is just a hormone and there is no such thing as a "stress hormone", but hormones such as adrenaline, noradrenaline, adh, and cortisol, are all largely present in times of stress. This could be running from a predator, falling into cold water, injuring yourself, starving, being anxious.

Carnivores say that their muscle meat + butter only diet has every nutrient but I disagree.

You will typically be lacking sodium unless you consume many grams of salt a day. I mean even when I wanted to try this diet I just found it funny how it's normalized to go through a "keto flu". Many people advocate for electrolyte powders and sachets. I mean so much for a natural diet.

Magnesium tends to be very low. Magnesium has hundreds of functions in the body. the best sources are fruits, fruit juices, albeit some fish are high; most "carnivores" eat mostly beef and pork.

Thiamine also tends to be low. Unless you consume moderate amounts of pork, you will be deficient in B1. I am aware that there is a smaller requirement due to the absence of exogenous glucose intake but it still has other functions inside of your body.

Too much iron. I really wouldn't recommend eating more than 400 grams of meat a day (atleast this applies to men - i haven't done enough research to form an opinion for women who menstruate). Many carnivores will also be lacking adequate copper unless they frequently consume liver to balance the mineral profile. Just think of the average amount of food they eat. Many claim to eat 2-3lbs which is approx 900g-1.36kg of meat a day. lets take the median of 1.1kg. in 1.1kg of fatty ground beef you have about 22mg of iron. Because heme iron is so bioavailable, overtime you will constantly be accumulating it. I'm not saying everyone will suffer liver or heart damage, but it is a downside of this high meat consumption.

High tryptophan. This can lead to elevated serotonin levels. Overall not great.

Lack of glycine. You should be eating collagenous cuts of meat. If you eat steak and bacon all day, you will not be intaking much glycine.

What about the high cholesterol? Here I express my opinion where I think high cholesterol is moreso a symptom of hypothyroidism where your body is unable to convert it into the adequate hormones it wants. No not that it clogs your arteries lol.

Lastly in my opinion the worst of it all, too little calcium. Allow me to put the an example carnivore diet into a micronutrient tracker. 800g beef, 50g butter, 3 eggs, results in 200mg of Calcium - 1800mg of Phosphorus. This is insanely detrimental as your body will need to upregulate PTH production which will leak calcium from your bones to replenish homeostasis. ideally you want a Ca:P ratio of 1;1 if not 2:1 favoring calcium.

Now something i find funny. Take for example steak and butter gal, a famous carnivore influencer. you can go on her channel right now, and I kid you not her top 5 MOST VIEWED VIDEOS with over a million views each are all recipe imitations such as carnivore pancakes, low carb ice cream, carnivore bread. I mean come on these are her most viewed videos by far. In no way am I say bread or pancakes will bring you to an optimal health point but stressing about the cravings or 20 grams of starch you might find in a pancake is far more detrimental than consuming them.

Much like many other diets, carnivore is an eating disorder. If it has helped you, that's great. It can definitely help short term as an elimination diet and running on stress hormones can feel good. For many years even. This is just my opinion. I feel much better consuming lots of milk, fruit juices, and honey, than just cooked meat and fat everyday.

Imagine getting degrees from two prestigeous universities only to end up making videos on youtube and having a shitty mobile app hustle in addition to immediately failing at whatever research scientist prospects he may have had with the KETO-CTA clown show lmao

I don't think keto or "carnivore" are even diets to these people. I think they're political positions. Every right-winger I know STILL in 2026 has it in their head that anyone left of the Glorious Orange One is plotting in a global conspiracy to take away their precious grass-fed steaks and force them to eat grass clippings for the rest of their miserable lives.

If I didn't have a conscience, it would be soooo easy to make money off these morons. Literally just say that Bill Gates said XYZ and that I'm doing the opposite. Then post links to my exorbitantly priced grass-fed beef liver or something.

I don't think there's anything they couldn't be fooled with. A lot of them literally eat rotten (I'm sorry high) meat. It's hilarious watching them sit there trying not to vomit and then call it a delicacy afterwards. Utter delusion

I stumbled upon MAHA Summit and considering how MAHA and RFK Jr built their following explicitly on fighting corporate influence in American dietary politics, it's wild witnessing the speaker list. It's nothing but corporate influence. Every single speaker is a CEO or CMO of some "wellness" corporation. They even have fake doctor Eric Berg (supplement business) there among the speakers. Bar of entry clearly isn't professionalism or credentials, it's how much money they have.

And all that is blessed by RFK Jr and JD Vance at the closing fireside chat.

Of course, RFK Jr is a total huckster who personally staffed Dietary Guidelines Committee with food industry board members and profiteers, conviniently writing entire chapters on interests they represent.

What's just sad is the complete complacency and silence from MAHA community about all of this. They didn't react and protest filling DGA committee with industry profiteers. They aren't protesting MAHA summit being nothing but "wellness" corporate summit. It's safe to say at this point that the entire MAHA movement itself is a grift.

My wife has been raving about Ketogenic diet for the last 2 years. I am not vegetarian and I do enjoy eating meat once in a while but smelling ground meat every morning, every day, every time I come home has gotten too much to bear. But today, she sort of crossed a line.

This happened when I was telling her about my relative with MS and how he's been struggling these days. Sure enough, my wife goes, 'Well, you know Ketosis has proven to be effective for MS, too!' At that moment I said, 'I am sorry but do you know who did that research? Is there a paper or long term study done how eating mainly meat can possibly reverse the symptoms of MS? Please, unless you can prove that Keto is 100% effective against MS, please do NOT tell me to recommend it to my relative, let alone suggesting them to try it out. I am not a doctor and neither are you."

Then she lost it. I tried many times to prove my point that Keto is not proven effective and there's never been a long term studies done that could prove that is beneficial for health. And, most importantly, believing what you read and watch only on internet is more than dangerous, especially when it involves a MS patience.

She ultimately gave me a middle finger and stopped talking to me. She's acting like she's in a cult. She gets so emotional when I ask for proof that Keto is clinically proven or get her blood test done to prove it's actually making her healthy. (She hasn't gotten a health check for years, btw.)

So... I need help. If you've had a spouse who's been in a cult or the Keto cult, how did you get them out? I am really worried about her health. (Btw she is not getting obese but she's acquiring more fat and losing muscle because she does not work out. She says Keto is enough for her to stay healthy.)

Edit: Grammar

In this video, we step back from discussing the multitude of statistical errors and reporting problems of the KETO-CTA studies and look at the whole saga. And we discuss a recent comparison of the KETO-CTA plaque data to the PARADIGM study. The whole story was not presented in that comparison.

But, taking a step back, what are my thoughts from following this whole saga?

I cannot but come to the conclusion that these researchers are extremely biased and are willing to spin the result of their studies in ways that make it appear more favorable, "reassuring", and fit the story they already believe.

We clearly saw this in their promotion of the 2025 JACC paper, Plaque Begets Plaque, ApoB Does Not. In the words of Norwitz, "This reflects a level of progression that is expected with aging", and that “LDL and ApoB were pretty much irrelevant in determining or predicting whether or not plaque would progress”.

And Feldman: “Many are focusing specifically on the change in % NCPV only, particularly given it is our preregistered endpoint.” Later in the same thread, Feldman added: “There was no correlation with LDL-C or ApoB — arguably the most relevant of all.”

And Soto-Mota: “Are LMHRs progressing faster than others? No! They behave like other ↓CVDrisk groups” and “these first prospective data should be reassuring for LMHR patients and their physicians”.

Reassuring?? This is exactly the framing or spin I am talking about.

They promoted their questionable, preliminary and exploratory finding of no relationship between LDL/ApoB and plaque progression and downplayed or ignored the actual amount of plaque and plaque progression.

It's as if they were implicitly saying: don't focus on the primary outcome of our study, because it's very concerning, focus instead on our fragile and weak exploratory statistical analysis.

Now, everyone has some bias of course. But this, to me, was misleading and irresponsible.

And whatever you believe about the Cleerly situation, that happened later, and has no bearing on how they promoted this study at that time.

It is my view that they so fully believe their proposed theory that every study, data point, or result they get is analyzed within that framework. This allows them to ignore, downplay and explain away anything that isn’t “reassuring” to them. They don’t even appear to consider the alternative explanation, except perhaps in a few passing ‘strategic disclaimers’.

The same pattern extends beyond their own studies to how they interpret and present other evidence, especially in The Cholesterol Code documentary and in comparisons such as PARADIGM versus KETO-CTA.

I didn’t start from this position. I just wanted to analyze the study’s methods and data. But from following this whole saga, this is where I’ve ended up.

So I caution anyone evaluating analyses from these authors that there may be much more to the story than the conclusions they present. Important caveats may be downplayed, relevant information may be left out or reframed to sound more reassuring, consequential statistical issues may be ignored or misunderstood, and any uncertainty may be interpreted asymmetrically through a pre-existing framework of belief.

For these reasons, studies and analyses from these authors warrant especially strong scrutiny of the underlying data, methods, analytical choices, and what is and is not being presented.

References:

KETO-CTA study — JACC: Advances (2025)

https://www.jacc.org/doi/10.1016/j.jacadv.2025.101686

KETO-CTA Preprint (2026)

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.15.26343955v1

PARADIGM Study

https://www.journalofcardiovascularct.com/article/S1934-5925(20)30505-0/abstract

NATURE-CT

https://www.journalofcardiovascularct.com/article/S1934-5925(26)00097-3/fulltext

Feldman and Johnston Podcast:

https://youtu.be/ucQ3jMwtIMQ

Timestamps:
0:00 – Intro & Context on the KETO-CTA Saga.
03:42 – Why Discuss This Again? (Johnston & Feldman Interview). 08:04 – PARADIGM and KETO-CTA.
09:13 – Rapid Plaque Progressors vs. the Middle 50% (IQR)
12:26 – Looks like MACE-Free, but...
19:28 – PARADIGM: Chest pain, older, sicker and comparable to Keto-CTA.
29:01 – Adding Nature CT Comparison.
33:20 – Speculation: AI-Generated Defenses & Biased Prompts.
37:05 – It's Cleerly Gatekeeping.
44:01 – Viewer Comments.
47:00 – Preliminary Studies, Extrapolations & Challenging the Lipid Hypothesis.
52:13 – Reanalyzing the Data & Exploratory Statistical Modeling.
55:33 – General Keto Benefits vs. Cardiovascular Plaque Claims.
57:40 – Reporting the Median/IQR vs. Plaque Progression Tails.
01:03:18 – Measurement Noise & Plaque Regressors.
01:06:03 – This Study Cannot Prove High LDL/ApoB Is Safe in LMHR.
01:10:55 – A Quick Clarification. An Effect modification hypothesis.
01:14:35 – Restriction of Range, the "wide-range" argument.
01:20:04 – Community Sentiment, Cult-Like Beliefs & "The Scans Are the Scans".
01:26:41 – A Positive Note: Viewer Story on Recovered LMHR.
01:27:44 – Wrapping Up: Final Thoughts on the Saga & Moving Forward.

Sorry for the annoying colors used on the charts. Wish they were more distinct. The second and third images, filters on the US, show the markers and relative popularity at select times (September 2026 and December 2018, respectively).

After a huge wave of popularity starting around 2018, it seems like Keto and Low-Carb topic search popularities have declined somewhat steadily since 2020. Recently, Vegetarian Diet as a topic has surpassed all other diet topics that I selected.

Check out the trends, change the filters, and explore the data for yourself if you'd like:

https://trends.google.com/explore?q=%2Fg%2F11cknh9qp1%2C%2Fm%2F07_jd%2C%2Fm%2F03cg86%2C%2Fg%2F11fs0ch8mf%2C%2Fm%2F02c7v1%2C%2Fm%2F02c3sn&date=all&geo=Worldwide

Case Study - September 11, 2026

Severe diet-induced hypercholesterolemia mimicking familial hypercholesterolemia in atypical lean mass hyper-responders on ketogenic diets: A case series

Highlights

* Ketogenic diet-induced severe hypercholesterolemia may extend beyond classical lean mass hyper-responder criteria.

* Severe low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) elevation on ketogenic diets can closely mimic familial hypercholesterolemia.

* In 3 cases, LDL-C peaked at 364 to 682 mg/dL during ketogenic dieting.

* LDL-C decreased substantially after modest carbohydrate reintroduction without lipid-lowering therapy.

* When ketosis is medically required, dietary modification plus pharmacological apolipoprotein B-lowering therapy should be considered.

Abstract

BACKGROUND

The lean mass hyper-responder (LMHR) phenotype describes marked increases in low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) and apolipoprotein B (ApoB) during carbohydrate-restricted ketogenic diets, usually in lean, metabolically healthy individuals with high high-density lipoprotein cholesterol and low triglycerides.

CASE PRESENTATIONS

We report 3 Western European patients referred for suspected familial hypercholesterolemia (FH) after severe hypercholesterolemia developed during ketogenic dieting. None consistently met all current LMHR laboratory criteria. One patient was overweight before diet initiation, 1 was on the low side of the normal body mass index (BMI) range upon referral, and 1 was within the normal weight BMI range and became markedly underweight during diet exposure. Peak LDL-C during ketogenic dieting ranged from 364 to 682 mg/dL. After modest carbohydrate reintroduction, LDL-C and ApoB decreased substantially without lipid-lowering pharmacotherapy.

CONCLUSION

These cases suggest that ketogenic diet-associated severe hypercholesterolemia may extend beyond classical LMHR criteria and can closely mimic FH. Dietary patterns, weight trajectory, and secondary causes should be assessed before assigning an FH diagnosis. Because ApoB-containing lipoproteins are causal in atherosclerosis, severe diet-induced ApoB elevation should not be assumed to be benign.

Because ApoB-containing lipoproteins are causal in atherosclerosis, severe diet-induced ApoB elevation should not be dismissed as harmless.15 If strict ketosis is medically necessary, eg, for refractory epilepsy, pharmacological ApoB-lowering therapy should be considered within shared decision-making.

I got a great recommendation in my YouTube feed about how insanely influential the dairy industry is in US food supply politics and how it is basically deeply ingrained into the system at this point. Big recommendation to the whole channel. It wasn't news for me, and the EU is suffering from the same issue with China now repeating the same mistake. But it got me thinking.

Have you ever seen a single keto shill call out the huge influence of meat and dairy lobbies? I haven't and I have read all their most influential books, as well as tons of articles by them and of course watched their videos. They never raise the issue!

Now if you aren't all that familiar with how the keto shills operate, a huge part of their effort spent is on discrediting nutrition science and institutions setting up things like dietary recommendations. You can read a short primer about it here. Big part of that effort is simply lying it's all funded by sugar industry and big pharma, even when actual guidelines have never recommended eating sugar or a daily dose of ibuprofen. But they never ever bring up the massive influence wielded by dairy and meat lobbies even when their influence and what they have done is well documented. That is the hypocrisy.

Nina Teicholz is the most culpable of them all of this hypocrisy, pushing it to the extreme. She is for example author of this infamous "study" which "proved" that "Our analysis found that 95 % of the committee members had COI with the food and/or pharmaceutical industries and that particular actors, including Kellogg, Abbott, Kraft, Mead Johnson, General Mills, Dannon and the International Life Sciences, had connections with multiple members.". Sounds really bad until you read the fine print: "we considered COI without date restrictions, allowing us to go as far back in time as information is publicly available" which means if any of the 2020 DGA members had received industry grant in say 1984 for a one time consulting fee, Nina counts that as a conflict of interest in 2020, which is absolutely absurd. It's the same as saying I have conflict of interest with global cargo business because I worked a few summers in a warehouses in my teens.

It's also noteworthy the list of companies she decided to showcase when in their own study American Egg Board, National Pork Board and Beeg Checkoff are heavily represented in figure 2. Did she mention any of those in that list of companies in summary? Of course she didn't.

Furthermore we know that right now the RFK Jr's DGA panel is completely swamped with ongoing industry conflict of interests including food industry board members and corporate owners in keto business. Only one member has no COI. The keto community, as well as the MAHA community, both whose big complaint all these years has been industry influence, have been stone dead quiet about it. Their utter hypocrisy and cultish sheeplemind attitude is beyond pathetic.

And recently I learned something really sick. Guess who was the one "having conversations with Kennedy’s team" before that genuinely industry plagued DGA panel was assembled? Nina Teicholz. And here's the kicker, she has not said one bad word about industry influene in the USDA dietary guidelines process. She helped make it happen.

Hey guys, so to clarify, I like to tell people that I am Autistic, but that I have ADHD. Which is to say: I love my Autistic brain, but my relationship with my ADHD brain has been tumultuous.

Around June, I began doing some basic research on potentially using a Strict Ketogenic Diet limited to 20 grams of daily Net Carbohydrates as a means of attenuating some of my ADHD symptoms.

I will first admit that I went into this with a mix of curiosity and a bit of desperation. I relied mostly on specific personal anecdotes and general claims from literature positing the benefits Ketones have at potentially treating neurological disorders.

I began committing to the diet in July after reading Lyle McDonald’s book The Ketogenic Diet. The thing is: for about 1 month, it worked quite well. I did experience some physical fatigue, but cognitively — I felt better than I had in a long time. I could actually think through things, my impulse control massively improved, I felt essentially zero social anxiety anymore, and (as funny of a statement as this will sound) I finally felt as though I connected better to my Autism.

Over time however, many of these initial neurological benefits have seemingly leveled out. My sleep has suffered for it. I’d like to say that I’m still seeing improvements in executive function and task initiation, but as time passes I become less certain even of that. My blood pressure already feels a bit worse for wear too, and that scares me.

Ultimately, I think I feel lost. Were these cognitive benefits a kind of mania induced by cortisol spiking? Was this whole venture one big hyperfixation? I feel uncertain as to even the nature of events now.

So, was I [r/ketoduped](r/ketoduped)? Are there any mechanistic explanations for the benefits I experienced? I’ve heard some here cite cortisol, but how exactly would acute cortisol explain ADHD symptom attenuation? As silly as it is to ask such a yo-yo question: has going the opposite route of a plant based or higher carb diet helped anyone’s ADHD?