What exactly is Carnivore?

The carnivore diet consists of cutting out everything that doesn't come from the animal kingdom. This means eliminating potatoes and pasta, beans and lentils, lettuce and tomatoes, and absolutely everything else from the plant kingdom.

This also means that you completely stop eating absolutely all factory foods, including sweets and potato chips.

Factory food is all artificial food that is made in a factory, where they mix together lots of ingredients to make the so-called food as tasty and addictive as possible. The amount of real food inside such factory food can be frighteningly small, and especially note that it often contains flour, sugar, vegetable oils and salt, i.e. nutrient-poor fillers that you pay dearly for, and get sick from on top of that.

This means that if the food has any list of ingredients, then it is already factory food, because real food has only one ingredient:

You also avoid all chemically extracted so-called "vegetable" oils and margarines, i.e. factory grease, also known as "Vita Hjertego", because they are all extremely pro-inflammatory and disease-promoting in the human body. They are also, according to many experts, a significant contributing cause of all our modern diseases.

Instead, they use tallow (fat from ruminants) or lard (fat from pigs) or real dairy butter, or perhaps ghee, which is clarified butter. All real and natural from the animal kingdom.

This way you avoid not only so-called ultraprocessed food, but absolutely everything of factory food that is more than just sliced ​​up or ground or maybe salted and dried.

Some people still choose to keep their coffee in the morning. Others choose to go to the extreme of eating only beef, salt and water. The variations are as numerous as the individuals who want to achieve something very specific for themselves. You have to make your own rules, with the basic principles at the bottom:

Eat lots of meat, fish, shellfish, poultry, eggs and, not least, all the associated fat.

Some people also eat dairy products, which are certainly a product from the animal kingdom, but one should be aware of both that many people react to proteins and milk sugar in dairy foods. Others develop a strong addiction to, for example, cheeses or thick cream sauces. Then they can quickly end up overeating.

Carnivore is a diet that many people find because they have been searching for years for a solution to a persistent and troublesome problem. What is so amazing is that carnivore, or carnivore as it is actually called in Norwegian, seems to help almost no matter what the problem was in the first place.

Carnivore as a biological classification

Carnivore is not just a way of eating, but first and foremost a biological classificationThere is an official distinction between three categories:

• A carnivore, which only eats other animals (i.e. a fat and meat eater)
• An herbivore is someone who only eats plants (a sheep or a vegan)
• An omnivore is one that eats everything and eats both animals and plants.

It is apparently a common misconception these days that carnivore simply means that one includes meat in their diet, as a kind of contrast to veganism where one excludes meat.

This is completely wrong.

You are not a "little" carnivore. You either are or you are not, and this diet is based on the benefits you get when you peel away everything.

What can be achieved with Carnivore?

The benefits are apparently quite extreme, and one sees reversals of disease states science didn't know could happen. At least science claims it doesn't know this.

You see diabetes 2 disappear, you see arthritis, muscle diseases and neurological symptoms disappear or improve significantly. By eating natural fats and complete proteins from the animal kingdom, you even see so-called unstoppable conditions such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's slowed down, and even partially reversed.

What can be included on carnivore?

There are often questions about what can be done get away with of other tempting things that can be put in the mouth. The answer is quite simple what you as an individual can get away with, and still experience improvements? The problem is that then you are no longer a carnivore, but an omnivore. Whether you can then experience all or some of the benefits is very individual.

It also depends on what you are trying to achieve. Maybe you don't react as much to plant foods as others do, and can get all the benefits you want on a regular low-carb/ketogenic diet?

The idea behind the carnivore diet, however, is to strip away as much of the unnecessary and potentially harmful foods as possible, and toss in extremely high-quality nutrition. And it seems that it's this completely pure, extremely nutrient-dense, and non-toxic goodness that produces these absurdly good results.

How strict do you have to be?

Carnivore is not a religion, so if you personally get good results while still drinking coffee, then we are big enough to decide for ourselves, right? And fuck you, if you can treat yourself to something extra while still getting healthier. Some people can probably also do very well even if you have a (rare!) treat like an ice cream on a summer day, or a small glass of wine at an outdoor restaurant. The most important thing is what we do the other 99% of our days.

The pitfall, however, is to lose potential benefits. Doing a lot of work, and not feeling better at all.

This is another one limbo many end up in.

But as always, life is meant to be enjoyed first and foremost, so it's probably always good to strike a balance between getting tough and enjoying yourself. There's very little point in living a long life if every single day is a struggle to pull yourself together and struggle through life while writing a diet diary.

A new way of thinking about food

Food has become almost the only hobby of modern man. We hardly meet anymore for anything other than eating and drinking. This can be a cycle worth breaking when you start the carnivorous diet. Come up with other things, like going for a walk, playing billiards, darts, taking a sauna, playing badminton – the list of everything we can think of together that doesn't involve food and drink is really long. Then you can go home and eat your own food.

Anecdotally, it may seem that the easiest and most successful thing in the long run is to manage to forget the old functions food had, and think of it as nutrition, not comfort or a social thing. Hypnotize ourselves into thinking that we are ancient hunters who eat nothing but real food.

At a restaurant with friends, it's fine to eat your fill at home, and explain how hypersensitive you are, and that you're currently working on your health, while drinking a glass of sparkling water. Everyone will understand, and perhaps be both impressed and inspired, because they can see your enormous improvements at the same time.

What foods do you eat on the carnivore diet?

As mentioned, on a carnivore diet, you eat meat, fish, poultry, eggs, and dairy products, but nothing else. What we exclude is all of what we traditionally call "the accessories".

First of all, this is real food, not factory food. Sausages, for example, are not carnivorous, they are factory food with lots of weird stuff added with a little meat. Liver pâté also has lots of weird stuff in it. It is important to read any ingredient list, because ideally it has real food only one ingredient, and then you mix the individual ingredients together to make something good.

Carnivore is completely pure, simple food.

Plants and fruits are also hypermodern cultivated plants that did not exist just a moment ago. Of all the things you find in the store, only meat, fish, poultry, eggs and milk have followed us through evolution. The tomato, for example, is only about 500 years old, and was mostly used for decoration, before people scalded the skin and took out the seeds before eating it. Brussels sprouts were a cross and sour knot until they were modified in the 90s to be softer and sweeter.

So the carnivorous diet is the closest we get to real human food as it literally created us. And here we probably find the secret behind its amazing effects on us.

Isn't carnivore very boring?

You might be asked if it's not boring in the long run? No, the boring thing is being in pain. Being sick. Being fat. Waking up every day and not liking your life, not liking yourself.

So-called boring food to fix all this? Wake up in the morning with lots of energy and enthusiasm, and look in the mirror and see that you are younger than yesterday? Yes, please!

But seemingly "boring" or not, there are many variations within carnivores. The starting point is that humans naturally took advantage of everything an animal gave us.

Because, as I said, those of us who come here also have somewhat fragile health from before, whether it's obesity, neuropathy, muscle disease, skeletal disease, intestinal problems, psychiatric problems...

Isn't it amazing that people report improvements in absolutely everything? Well, maybe it's not so amazing. It's just real food, finally whole and pure and real food.

Maybe that was simply the trick all along.

Adaptations within carnivore

Within carnivores there are several adaptations, for various reasons.

It's common to cut out, for example, eggs or milk or cheese or cured meats because you personally don't feel good about it. In that case, the advice is no more complicated than avoiding the most common problem foods for a while, and then trying your luck.

Some people may avoid fermented (aged/ripened) meats because they have a reaction to them. histamines in these products. Others may avoid chicken because they react incredibly but truly to the feed The chicken has eaten.

Carnivore is a way of eating that each individual adapts to themselves. The variables arise from both what you personally like to put in your mouth, but also what you can and cannot tolerate, and what possible diseases and ailments you want to remedy.

Extremes within carnivore

As I said, it is very common to find this way of eating precisely because you are trying to find solutions to something you are struggling with. Then you may not be able to include the full range of products found in the animal kingdom – at least not while you are healing.

For some, it may mean a period of "Lion Diet", which is just beef and salt, preferably fried in tallow, which is the ox's own fat. In extreme cases, a few people end up finding their very best health by remaining on such a strict diet as that, but this is less common.

SOURCES

Photo: Shutterstock license

Anyone can comment by logging in with their Facebook or Google accounts.. Norwegian Carnivory is not health care. You must seek medical attention for medical problems.

Written 2025 © Norwegian Carnivory