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Will an All-Meat Diet Kill You or Cure You?

No fruits, no vegetables, no grains, just beef. What is going on in these people’s intestines and arteries?

Elemental
Published in
5 min readDec 10, 2019

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MMikhaila Peterson, CEO of Don’t Eat That and daughter of controversial psychologist and public figure Jordan Peterson, claims that she has cured herself of “multiple chronic severe idiopathic disorders” by eating nothing but beef, salt, and water. No fruits, no vegetables, no grains, just beef. She says her diet resolved her juvenile arthritis, hypersomnia, depression, anxiety, and skin problems and turned her into a “boss human.”

Based on standard dietary recommendations, Peterson and the thousands of people like her who identify as carnivores — not omnivores, carnivores — should be dead from vitamin deficiencies, heart disease, colon cancer, or constipation alone. Yet according to Instagram and online forums like Meat Heals, they’re thriving. In anecdotal testimonials, people say that eating an all-meat diet helped them drop 10, 20, 40, 80 pounds and cured them of depression, fatigue, diabetes, autoimmune diseases, joint pain, and insomnia.

How is this possible? And what is going on in these people’s intestines and arteries?

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Elemental

Health and science writer • PhD in 🧠 • Words in Scientific American, STAT, The Atlantic, The Guardian • Award-winning Covid-19 coverage for Elemental