When did eating meat become equivalent to smoking? This ongoing demonization of meat has had detrimental effects on our health. Learn the truth behind the Carnivore Diet with your hosts Dr. Jack Wolfson and Dr. Lauren Lattanza as they interview Dr. Paul Saladino. Dr. Saladino is the leading authority on the science and application of the Carnivore Diet and animal-based diets. He has used these diets to reverse autoimmune issues, chronic inflammation and mental health issues. He is also the author of The Carnivore Code. Learn more about which plants he recommends and which ones you should avoid. Discover the benefits of the Carnivore Diet and learn more about his book today.

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Dr. Paul Saladino Discusses The Incredible Evidence Behind The Carnivore Diet And Which Plants To Eat And Which To Avoid

We bring on the best of the best guests to give us new and useful information. We will present some science and practicality. I want to introduce to you, Dr. Paul Saladino. Paul, great to see you.

Thanks for having me on, Jack. It’s good to be here.

I first heard about Paul a couple of years ago as I started delving into carnivore and we were doing some carnivore challenges with our patients. Imagine that cardiologist talking about carnivore nutrition with patients and how amazing it was. You’ve got a very impressive bio and some cool stuff going on as well. I’m going to let Dr. Lauren Lattanza take over from here and jump right into your intro.

It’s my pleasure to introduce Dr. Saladino. He is the leading authority on the science and application of the carnivore diet and animal-based diets. He has used these diets to reverse autoimmune issues, chronic inflammation and mental health issues in hundreds of patients. Many of whom had been told their conditions were untreatable. He is the author of the best-selling book, The Carnivore Code, and the host of the top ten podcasts Fundamental Health.

He can be found featured on numerous podcasts, including The Joe Rogan Experience, Meat Eater, The Minimalists, Health Theory, The Model Health Show, Bulletproof Radio, The Dr. Gundry Podcast, the Ben Greenfield podcast, Dr. Mercola and many others. He has also appeared on The Doctors TV Show and many other prominent media outlets.

Dr. Saladino is board certified as a Physician, Nutrition Specialist and completed his residency at the University of Washington. He attended medical school at the University of Arizona where he focused on integrative medicine and nutritional biochemistry. When he’s not researching the roots of chronic illness, he can be found in wild places in search of the perfect wave, sunset and mountain top. He lives in Austin, Texas. Welcome, Dr. Saladino.

It’s good to be here.

Regarding the carnivore diet, what evidence is there for the critical role of meat and the progression of us as humans in history?

The anthropology and the ethnography of humans are so fascinating. I feel like they should have taught us all this in medical school and they didn’t. This is not the type of thing taught in medical school, where humans have come from and what humans looked like millions of years ago. It’s a fascinating story. What you have learned, looking at our history as humans from the fossil record and stable isotopes from bone fragments and living hunter-gatherers, is that there has been this progression of humans. We have these ancestors who had much smaller brains.

Somewhere around million years ago, we suddenly saw a massive increase in the size of the human brain. It’s a parabolic-type curve. It is an exponential increase over the last million years from around 500 CC to 1,500 CC in size. Essentially it triples in 2 million years after 60 million to 90 million years of having a brain that was the same size as our primate ancestors. It’s an interesting story on what caused that and there are lots of theories but clearly, the most compelling explanation is we changed something in our diet and we changed something in our lifestyle. What we started doing was hunting.

There’s so much good evidence for this in the fossil record. There are cut marks on bones. There’s evidence for what is called the Acheulean tools, these bifacial tools that happened two million years ago. There are wound marks on the bones of animals. There are mass graves of animals that were herded off large cliffs. We see changes in our hominid ancestors. We see a brain that is growing based on the cranial vault size.

We see a small intestine that is growing and a large intestine that is shrinking. This is all talked about as the expensive tissue hypothesis. This idea is that as we transition from primates to humans going from Australopithecus to Homo habilis and Homo erectus, eventually Homo sapiens, we see this massive large intestine that primates have shrinking and the small intestine, where a lot of the more nutrient-rich foods are absorbed and growing.

That energetic trade-off allows for a growing brain because you have this energy-intensive brain that needs to have a caloric surplus from somewhere. You have all of this energy digestion that gets saved when you eat more nutrient-rich foods, which are animal foods, and then you can grow a brain. There are unique nutrients in these animal foods and this is something that’s also not talked about in medical school. It’s this idea that if you look at plant foods, I believe a human could construct a healthy diet that includes moderate amounts of plant foods. We will probably get to what I think of as a hierarchy of plant foods.

If you look at plant foods, there are nutrients in plant foods that humans can absorb. Compared to animal foods, they pale in comparison, which is the irony. The mainstream messaging is that plant foods are the savior. If you are sick, all you need to do is eat more kale. If you have gut issues, all you should do is eat more fiber. That’s clearly the answer. You are not eating enough plants that you are eating too much meat, and you are not eating enough fiber. My message has been completely the opposite of that.

When you look at the actual nutrients in animal foods, it’s fascinating to discover that there are so many nutrients in animal foods that do not occur in plant foods in any appreciable quantities that are critical to being an optimal human. Things like Creatine, Choline, Carnosine, Carnitine, Anserine, Taurine, Coenzyme Q10, Biotin, Folate, Riboflavin, the list goes on and on. These are critical in making a healthy human.

There are studies with vegetarians, which are incredibly striking, where you can take vegetarians or vegans and you can supplement them with 5 grams of Creatine per day and they get smarter. Creatine is used in our brain as this phosphate carrier. We know that when humans are deficient in Creatine, we are not at our peak intelligence.

We are also not at our peak muscle performance, we are not going to be at a peak anything and this is true across the board with many of these nutrients like Choline, which is used to make Acetylcholine and Phosphatidylcholine and all the cell membranes of your body. Deficiencies of Choline are hugely problematic and connected with things like non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, mental health issues, the list goes on and on.

You could look at every single one of those nutrients and think, “Why are we told that kale is a superfood when, in fact, I don’t know what criteria they are using to do that?” Meat and organs are the real superfoods. It’s not to say that plants can’t have a role in a healthy diet but there are some caveats there. Evolutionarily, this idea that the consumption of meat, organs and hunting was the spark that made us human is a thesis that I have advanced in my work.

When you think about it that way, all of these notions that we should not eat meat or that meat is harming humans start to look very silly. Why would that make sense? That makes no sense evolutionarily. We then start to see the studies that indict meat or that denigrate meat in a different light. We can understand, “This is all epidemiology.” We can get into why the science regarding meat is misleading. When you think about evolutionarily, meat is crucial for humans. It always has been and always will be. It’s what made us humans, meat and organs. There’s so much evidence for that.

That’s fantastic stuff, Paul.  We are talking with Dr. Paul Saladino, author of The Carnivore Code, if you have not gotten the book, you have to get a copy of it. When I wrote the book, The Paleo Cardiologist, and all about paleo nutrition, paleo lifestyle, we talked about so many of these same things. Number one, how the medical doctors are not getting any training, nutrition and lifestyle.

Certainly not in anthropology, paleontology and evolutionary biology. It almost seems like we get indoctrinated from day one as far as, “Here are the pharmaceuticals and surgical procedures. Here’s the test we can order.” We don’t get many of these fundamentals and it would have been nice if they would have grounded us early on in that.

In The Paleo Cardiologist, I talk about all the benefits of meat, organs, and seafood but I don’t get into the plant bashing. I love that’s what you do. Not only do you bash it but you’ve got pages and pages of references of why you are doing so. To look at it through the lens of, “Maybe everything we have been told about plants is wrong or at least can be questioned,” that’s the beauty of your book.

There are some assumptions that we have in the nutritional world that I have called into question. I like the way you phrase that, Jack. It’s okay to question these assumptions and ask ourselves, “Why do we assume that plants are good for us?” Let’s think about this. At the beginning of the show, I tried to create a framework through which we should see human nutrition and optimal human health. That framework is this evolutionary, anthropological paleoanthropological context.

If we look at an optimal human diet or we ask questions about, “What might be an optimal human diet through the same lens with the same framework?” things start to come out or interesting questions arise. I was talking 2 to 4 million years ago. If we rewind the clock even further and we go 450 million years ago, that’s when we start to see the diversions of plants and animals evolutionarily.

This idea is that plants and animals have coexisted for millions and millions of years. Plants are rooted in the ground and plants are intelligent. There’s no question about it. Plants are incredible. For anyone that’s studied botany, the lengths that plants go to interact with animals is fascinating. I heard on a podcast that there are plants that can hear the frequency of a bee’s wing. What they will do is when they hear this wing of a bee, they will increase the amount of nectar in their flowers to try and entice a bee to come in. Plants have this incredible evolutionary intelligence within them.

Similarly, you can take a plant. I’m not making this up but when the plant hears the sound of a caterpillar eating its leaves, it will increase the number of defense chemicals in those leaves to dissuade the caterpillars. What they have done is they have played a recording of a caterpillar eating leaves to a plant and the plant increases the number of toxins in their leaves to dissuade the caterpillar from eating them. How incredible is this?

Think about what plants have done over 450 million years of coevolution with animals. They have had to make defense chemicals because plants don’t want most of their foliage to get eaten. They don’t want their leaves to get eaten by animals. They don’t want their stems, roots, bark or seeds to be eaten by animals. To coexist and create this incredible ecosystem we see around us, plants have, out of necessity, evolved defense chemicals. This is not something that we are told in medical school. It’s not completely foreign because there are lots of examples of this.

I don’t know if you heard this growing up but when I was growing up, whenever there were kids around at Christmas, my parents were always like, “Make sure the toddlers don’t eat the poinsettias.” Poinsettias are the bright red leaves of these plants that probably looked like a strawberry to a toddler but they are frankly toxic. You cannot eat a poinsettia leaf. On Christmas, we have these plants and people would say, “Don’t let people eat them. They are toxic.” Rhubarb leaves are frankly toxic because they have so much oxalic acid in them.

There are examples of poisonous plants but we have forgotten how far this rabbit hole goes and how long this thread is. Most plants have evolved and have devised these intelligent strategies to put defense chemicals in all of the parts of their body. They don’t want to get eaten. I had a lot of fun in the book, digging into that and understanding what we know. What are these defense chemicals? A lot of them are things that we have thought of that are good for us. We can talk about Sulforaphane, curcumin or some of these other examples. Some of these are defense chemicals that are in plants that may have harm-inducing possibilities in humans.

I should frame this whole discussion a little bit further and say that all of these detoxification systems in the liver, Phase 1 and Phase 2, and canonical detoxification systems in our livers have probably evolved in response to plant toxins. That’s why we have Phase 1 and Phase 2, the CYP450 systems in our bodies in response to these plant toxins. We have some intrinsic ability to detoxify these plant chemicals but we need to be honest about what we are dealing with here, which are plant defense chemicals. For many people, it could be at the root of underlying issues or leading to suboptimal health.

In the book, I talked about a lot of different divisions of these plant chemicals. I talked about how there are many polyphenolic molecules, a buzzword that has been associated with health that could be harmful to humans. I talked about lectins, which are carbohydrate-binding proteins. The most famous lectin is perhaps Gluten and Gliadin, these fragments of wheat. They are hugely problematic for humans and are known to open these tight junctions in our guts by activating these pathogen-associated molecular patterns at the level of our gut epithelium. Gluten is a lectin.

There are also tons of other lectins in beans. The most common one is called Phytohemagglutinin, which is massively problematic for humans. Nuts, seeds, beans and grains are full of these lectins, and then you can go on and look at oxalic acid. That’s the rhubarb example I gave. There are documented cases of death from consumption of too much oxalic acid in plants, whether it’s from sorrel in the wilderness or from rhubarb. You can kill yourself by eating oxalic acid.

There’s probably a lethal dose of spinach, which is one of the highest commonly eaten leafy greens of oxalic acid. You would have to eat a lot of it and you probably would get sick and vomit before you could get to that lethal dose but it’s probably out there. There are other defense chemicals in plants. There are many of these are digestive enzyme inhibitors but many of these defense chemicals. The whole framing is what I try and create at the start, which is plants don’t want to get eaten. I’m wearing a shirt that says, “Kale is bullshit.” I also joke, “Kale doesn’t love you back.”

I will give an example of the Isothiocyanates in kale leaves, which will illustrate this. Isothiocyanates are defense chemicals in kale, cabbage, broccoli and collard greens. These are all the same species that have been hybridized. Isothiocyanates are not polyphenolic but in some ways, they look similar. They don’t have any polyphenolic rims at the rings if you look at the structure.

I ask people this question. I hope to be able to have a conversation with Rhonda Patrick at some point and debate her on this. For most people, if you ask them and you say, “How much Sulforaphane is in broccoli?” Many people will say, “I don’t know but it’s this amount.” “How much Sulforaphane, which is this Isothiocyanate chemical, we have been told is so good for us in broccoli sprouts?” The answer is zero until you chew them, which exposes the intention of the plants.

Sulforaphane is produced in a chemical reaction when its precursor molecule, which is called glucoraphanin combined with an enzyme called Myrosinase, and these are in separate compartments of the cell in a piece of broccoli or a piece of kale. There’s no Sulforaphane in a kale leaf and broccoli until you chew it. This is like that scene in Goonies where Data is like, “Booby traps.” I think of these as plant booby traps. This is almost like a superglue also. You get to combine two chemicals. You get this enzyme, Myrosinase, which combines with the precursor molecule glucoraphanin, and then you get the trap sprung. Clearly, this is what happens in the animal kingdom.

Sulforaphane is not intended as a gift from the plants to the animals that are eating them. It’s intended as a, “Stop eating me. If you eat me, I am going to inhibit the absorption of iodine to level up your thyroid. If you eat enough of me, I’m going to stunt your growth, I’m going to make you infertile, and I’m going to completely mess up all of your physiology if you eat enough of my leaves because I put in these defense chemicals.”

Sulforaphane is one Sulforaphane. There are many others that are even more potent and you can look at these. There’s a great study looking at this. There’s one called Goitrogen and Allyl Isothiocyanate. Goitrogen is even more efficacious at inhibiting iodine absorption at the level of the thyroid. There’s a study that I talked about in the past that in levels of food consumed by humans. There’s enough goitrogen in the Brussel sprouts to meaningfully inhibit iodine absorption to the level of the thyroid, which could potentially lead to hypothyroidism. These are plants saying, “Get away from me. Stop eating me.” It’s an example of a defense chemical.

I will say this so people have the whole story. One of the problems I have with the literature around these plant chemicals is that it has a false assumption. That false assumption they are making is, these plant chemicals are good for us so that plants are benevolent. From that framework, when these molecules are studied, they often will show only the benefits without talking about the harm.

In the book, I make the case and say, “Can we prove these molecules are a net benefit?” I want to be clear about the fact that there are studies with Sulforaphane that show that it will have some benefits in humans. This is where things get a little complicated, so bear with me. Sulforaphane, we’ve heard, is an antioxidant, which is completely incorrect. Sulforaphane is a pro-oxidant. If we dig into this, we can talk about what a pro-oxidant and an antioxidant are in terms of which direction the electrons are moving. It’s not that important.

Suffice it to say that when Sulforaphane enters your body, your body detoxifies it immediately and it’s a pro-oxidant. Meaning it’s going to strip electrons from your molecules creating free radicals and lipid peroxides. Sulforaphane has been shown to do this. Sulforaphane induces lipid peroxides in the membranes of cells. How does your body respond to that? It turns on this transcriptional system with genes including NRF2 and KEAP1. It then transcribes genes involved in the antioxidant response.

Sulforaphane is a pro-oxidant and people have said that it may be beneficial because it’s a little bit of poison. It’s triggering your antioxidant system. I have taken issue with this and said, “I’m not convinced it’s a net benefit.” There are tons of studies that show that even people who include lots of vegetables in their diet that are brassica vegetables don’t have any better antioxidant status or any more glutathione or any less oxidation of the molecules in their body when they are eating those things compared to people who don’t eat any vegetables.

This is an interesting set of literature around the fallacy of vegetables being good for us. It raises this question, “Are we convinced that this is what we need to have optimine oxidation status?” I would argue, no. In the book, I talk about the fact that living a well-lived life, being in the sun, exercising, cold plunging and sauna, are all hormesis-inducing inputs as well. I make this delineation between environmental hormesis and molecular hormesis. When you introduce a molecule like Sulforaphane that you are claiming is hermetic, you also have to remember that the molecule is going to have side effects.

Every drug that all of us were told to prescribe in medical school, we have said, “These side effects, whether it is metoprolol, carvedilol, statin. We know that there are side effects.” These plant molecules, we are never told about the side effects. That’s what I argue in the book. We have become amnestic toward these collaterally damaging side effects, these plant molecules. In total, it doesn’t make sense that these molecules would be beneficial for us.

Sure, you can show from an isolated study that if you give rats or humans Sulforaphane, you could increase the glutathione but does that matter in the context of a healthy diet? They are not looking at the way that the thyroid obese people might be decreasing. There’s an interesting story here to paint. I apologize for my long-windedness. Hopefully, I was able to paint that picture for you. It’s a complex thing to explore.

You hit on it so well in the book, too and the hundreds of references that you have in there explained the science. At its root, it’s a paradigm-shifting book to get people to be able to think, “Maybe plants don’t have our best interests.” As you said, the broccoli isn’t sitting there growing and thinking, “How can I help out the humans? How can I help prevent cancer, diabetes, heart disease and so forth in humans?” I will say this about your book. You are a child of the ‘80s and the references you tried out there. I’m a few years older than you. The references, you do put a lot of humor. Even though Dr. Paul is intelligent and well-read, he brings some hardcore science and some levity to it as well.

Once again, for people who want the deep dive on science is all there. Should you choose to impress your friends or even convince and meet a medical doctor as far as the right way to go, the science is there. You have quoted it so well. You talk about how all these studies are put out there. Talk about that, Paul, as far as epidemiological studies versus randomized trials and how difficult it is in the food industry, in general, to come up with this randomized data.

This is such an important point. I spend a lot of time in the book explaining this. No doubt that your readers have heard on the news repeatedly evidence from studies that say, “Red meat is associated with worse cardiac outcomes or shorter life.” That word associated or correlated is never talked about and that’s an important word.

They can’t say causes. You can only say causes if you do an interventional study where you have a control group, you follow, you have an experimental group, and you have two groups and you control their diet. One group eats more meat than the other group, and you look at actual clinical outcome markers, whether it’s CRP or Atherosclerosis Progression or any of these other markers of insulin resistance. Those studies have been done. I will talk about the results of those studies.

Ninety-nine and nine percent of what gets reported in the media is epidemiology. It’s observational research. They have to use the sneaky words that say correlated or associated. The problem with that type of research is twofold. There are two types of bias, healthy user bias and unhealthy user bias. You can think about it this way. What have we been told in the United States or the Western world broadly speaking for the last 70-plus years about meat? We have been told it’s bad for you.

Even here in Costa Rica where I’m surfing, I was talking to an Argentinian. In Argentina, they eat a lot of meat. When he talks to his friend about my work, they say, “We love meat.” They almost think about it like a cigarette. They are going to eat meat because they love it so much but they think about it like a bad thing. They say, “Everybody knows it’s bad for you but we are going to eat it anyway because we love it.” That’s what’s confusing to us. There is this perspective that meat is bad for us and that’s always based on these epidemiology studies.

When does the general population believe that, who eats meat? It’s people who might also smoke a cigarette, who are likely to ride a motorcycle, drink alcohol, and be doing shots of bourbon with their friends on a Friday night. I’m not judging any other behaviors but we know these other behaviors are associated with much worse outcomes and much overall worse health behaviors, in general. They are much less likely to exercise, get general checkups, mammograms or prostate exams. They are much less likely to see a doctor and look to see if they are insulin resistant. They are more likely to eat junk food with their meat because we have been told meat is bad for us.

Outside of your peer group which I’m sure is very special, when is the last time that the average American sees someone eating meat and not only meat but a grass-fed, grass-finished steak without a brownie, seed oils, macaroni and cheese that certainly has soybean oil in it? Meat gets associated and gets blamed for all the things that it’s often packaged with maybe doing and arguing. When you go to McDonald’s, nobody gets the patty at McDonald’s. Your friends or my friends might but 99.9% of people get the hamburger with the bun, the wheat, with the special sauce that has seed oils in it, with fries that are cooked in soybean oil, and they are getting a massive dose of many things.

This is why the unhealthy user bias is misleading in these epidemiology studies. The other side of the coin is you will see evidence and epidemiologist studies where they say, “A vegetarian diet is associated with better COVID outcomes. A vegetarian diet is associated with longer life.” It’s the same story, who are the people who are vegetarians? Generally, they are the people that don’t eat at McDonald’s. They are less likely to eat junk food, less likely to smoke and drink Coca-Cola. They are more likely to play tennis on Sunday with their friends and get adequate vitamin D from the real sun. They are more likely to be affluent, a member of a higher socioeconomic status. This is why the observational studies are misleading.

There are good studies that have been done that shed light on this. One of the best is called the UK Shopper Study, where they looked at vegetarians in England. If you look at vegetarians in England and you compare them to the general population, they have a longer life. If you compare them to the general population that is composed of omnivores, people that eat meat, who do healthy behaviors if you compare vegetarians to healthy behaving omnivores, they have exactly the same life expectancy.

There is no benefit to a vegetarian diet at all. In some cases, there’s a detriment to it. There are tons of studies that show that when you exclude meat from the diet, you end up with all these nutrient deficiencies that we talked about earlier. There’s great evidence for that. There are interventional studies done with meat. There are controlled studies where they take people into two groups. They have a control group who eats their normal diet and they have an experimental group where they replace 200 grams of carbohydrates per day with 1/2 a pound, 8 ounces of red meat per day.

What do they find at the end? They find lower inflammatory markers and improve insulin sensitivity in the group that ate more red meat and fewer carbohydrates. Presumably, these were grain-based carbohydrates at the end of the study. We can talk about my views on carbohydrates. I’m not against carbohydrates. The carbohydrates that were eliminated were probably grain-based carbohydrates, which are seeds and the parts of the plants we don’t want to eat that are full of lectins that we talked about earlier.

There are good interventional studies that show that eating red meat is not inflammatory but those are not the studies you hear about in the media because those are hard to do and they often don’t get repeated. It’s important that people understand the difference between interventional studies and epidemiology and that we educate people on these differences and they can become more savvy health consumers of information.

With the COVID stuff, when we think about this, why do vegetarians look to have better health outcomes in the COVID realm? It’s the same thing. If you compare vegetarians to omnivores that do healthy behaviors and that have the exact same COVID outcomes but of course, these vegetarians are probably the people who are in the sun, exercising and less likely to have obesity. This is why it all gets misleading but the story that the plant-based side always wants to paint is the meat. That doesn’t make any sense and it’s misleading.

In the book, all the science is in there. If we haven’t convinced everyone at least that carnivore is a possibility, the book dives right into it. Without touching on it here and talking about the environmental impact of eating nose-to-tail free-range, grass-fed, you spell it out eloquently in the book. Also, you allude to it as well in the book.

There are so many other fantastic resources that break down the myth that is free-range and grass-fed meats that are in the consumption thereof that’s destroying the planet. That can be nothing further from the truth. That’s what’s going to cause the planet to survive. Paul, you took us in some major deep dives there regarding science. For the supporting literature, you can go and geek out on all that. Now I’m convinced that this carnivore thing sounds intriguing. Where do I start?

I will unpack it a little bit more for people because there are a few more things that need to be talked about before the whole story is explained. I will say that I’ve also got a cookbook coming out. The cookbook is available for pre-order on Amazon or anywhere, it’s called The Carnivore Code Cookbook. That’s going to be a great place for people to start in terms of recipes and how you do it. If we go back to the plant idea, I want to complete that story because if you think about things from the perspective of plants, I want to talk a little bit about fruit. Fruit is the difference.

In the book, I tried to create an easy-on rump for people toward carnivore or animal-based and that easy-on-rump includes plant foods. I talk about this hierarchy of plant toxicity. I talk about this idea and I say, “If you want to go full carnivore and completely eliminate plant foods from your diet, you can do that.” People have massive benefits from that. You need to make sure you are careful with your electrolytes. People can have some issues with ketosis if they are not maintaining their electrolytes.

One of the things that I found is that if you include carbohydrates from plants in the least toxic sources, it makes it a lot easier for people to come into this realm of animal-based. That is fruit, honey and avocado. It’s these parts of plants that are fruit. Plants are okay with you eating this. That’s why they made a fruit around it. They want you to eat the fruit and not eat all the seeds and then deposit the seeds in your poop somewhere so they have fertilizer. They want you to eat the peach, end up with this hard shell around the pit and throw the pit somewhere.

Plants are smart. They have encapsulated seeds and fruits, so they want us to eat the fruit. If you look at a fruit, there are no defense chemicals in there. There’s a whole bunch of literature and a zeitgeist in the nutritional community about fearing fructose. I have done lots of podcasts about this on my podcast, which is Fundamental Health. Fructose is not harmful to humans in a whole food matrix, whether that’s raw, organic honey or fruit.

Many of the studies that are vilifying fructose are done with isolated fructose and animal models. They don’t have the same physiology that humans do. They do much more de novo lipogenesis with fructose. They convert much more of it to fat than humans do. Don’t fear fructose in the whole food matrix. That is a great outline for people.

In the book, I outline these five tiers of a carnivore diet. Tier 1, which is the on-rump and where most people end up long-term, and where I have ended up is an animal-based diet. It’s meat and organs, and these least toxic plant foods, mostly fruit, honey, avocado and squash. We think of them as vegetables but they are fruit. You can email us at Heart & Soil. We will send you an infographic with all these. There’s an infographic we have in the cookbook that I give out free with a whole diet plan and where I think about the plant foods in terms of medium, low and high toxins.

The last piece of the equation in the animal-based realm is something I have hinted at. It’s the organs. We know our ancestors were not just eating meat. One of the coolest experiences I had in 2020 was I’ve got to go to Tanzania and I spent two weeks living and hunting with the Hadza, some of the last hunter-gatherers left on the planet. You better believe that when we hunted an animal and killed it, the organs were the first thing that gets eaten. That’s what has been lost in terms of meat-eating in our culture.

If you go into any supermarket, the majority of supermarkets, you are not going to see anything but cuts of meat. Muscle meat is super nutritious but it’s only part of the story. If you go to the Hadza, they are going to eat the liver, kidney, heart, spleen and lungs. They are going to eat every piece of the animal. I ate brains with them and it was delicious. Of course, people are like, “You are going to get prion disease.” That’s a whole separate story. I didn’t get prion disease. I was fine. We ate brains with the Hadza because they eat everything.

There are unique nutrients in animal foods relative to plant foods. There are unique nutrients in animal organs relative to the muscle. We do different physiology in our liver, heart, spleen, pancreas, kidneys, and brain than we do in our muscles. A lot of those nutrients I enumerated earlier are most robustly represents in foods like liver and heart, things like Riboflavin, which is critical for people with MTHFR polymorphisms. That’s found mostly in the heart and liver. The kidney is a good source of that, too. There’s vitamin A in the liver in a bioavailable form. There’s Coenzyme Q10 in the heart. Also, unique peptides.

If you dig into this rabbit hole, the organs are beneficial for humans. It’s incredible and magical. They have these peptides, these short protein molecules that do valuable things in the human body. We were never taught about this in medical school. They are almost like the next type of vitamin, things like BPC-157. There are so many of these peptides that are present in our organs. There are peptides unique to the liver, the heart, and even the sex organs like testicles or ovaries that can be beneficial for men or women to eat.

Knowing this and seeing how hard it was to convince my family and friends to eat organs is why I built Heart & Soil. This is my company and we make these desiccated organ supplements because it’s hard for people to eat liver. My sister and her kids were never going to eat liver, heart, kidney, spleen and pancreas. You can’t find it at Whole Foods. If you can get those organs and you want to eat them fresh, amazing. You are going to thrive. I have a company and we make grass-fed and grass-finished organs from regenerative farms in New Zealand. We put them in capsules and it’s easy. That is the last piece of this equation.

The on rump looks like get a good amount of meat, think about 1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight to start, preferably from grass-fed, grass-finished or generally raised animals. Get organs either fresh or desiccated. The website is HeartAndSoil.co and you can send us an email from the support. We will send you the infographic.

As you are starting, most people benefit by including some of the least toxic plant foods, most for variety, texture and flavor in the diet. That’s pretty easy on-rump for people. The question that I always get is, “How do you eat, Paul?” I’ve got a video about how I eat in a day. I will tell you guys what I’m going to eat. I’ve got back from surfing so I haven’t eaten yet. Before I went surfing, I had a couple of coconuts and a quarter of papaya.

After this show, I’m going to eat about a pound of steak. It’s going to be about a pound of ribeye with some Maldon salt. I’m going to eat some honey. That’s going to be my breakfast. Maybe I’m going to have about an ounce of liver and probably 2 or 3 ounces of heart. That’s what I eat for breakfast. I repeat the process around dinnertime. I eat 2 or 3 meals a day. You could also include things like avocado or squash for more variety. My diet is simple. Does that answer your question? Hopefully, that’s a little bit of a blueprint for people for how they can get into this. It seems intimidating but there are lots of resources out there for you.

I like that you do the supplementation because it makes it more palatable, a little bit easier to obtain, or for the family to all indulge as well.

It’s great because you can take the capsule and empty it. That’s what my sister does. She will take the capsule and empty 1 or 2 capsules onto the food that my niece and nephew are eating, which is great. I was at a friend’s house and we put a little bit of the desiccated organs into their son to force food. You think about how hard it is to get kids to eat healthy sometimes.

This is a secret but I want to write a kid’s book. The kid’s book is going to be about how you don’t need to eat your vegetables. I won’t give away too much of the plot. I want to write a kid’s book because I want parents to read this and understand that we could save so much consternation at the dinner table if we weren’t forcing kids to eat broccoli, kale and spinach, which they don’t want to eat in the first place. They probably have a good sense these are bitter and not ideal foods for humans.

If kids want to eat liver, great. If your kids won’t eat liver, talk about getting kids a good multivitamin. This is going to blow Flintstones out of the water. There’s no question that this is going to be way better for kids in terms of multivitamins. That’s the way I think of it. If you give your kids liver, heart, spleen, pancreas and kidney, which is what we put in our beef organs capsule at Heart & Soil, it’s going to help them out in terms of all the nutrients we talked about earlier.

Speaking of kids, I’ve got my son here, Noah. He read The Carnivore Code and loved it. What do you have to say about being a kid here?

I have a couple of questions for you. I have a sister. Her name is Journey. She wakes up every day and asks for liver and fish eggs. My parents are strong believers in carnivore and paleo so we have grown up with that our entire lives. How could other families do the same thing if they are not used to eating that way?

We talked about it a little bit with these desiccated organ supplements. You can start with this powder that you can add to food but you are right. The earlier you start your kids, the better. Many of the people I talked to will say, “Liver? That’s gross.” The liver does have a unique flavor. When I was with the Hadza and we killed an animal, that liver came out and they treated it like pure gold. With two hands, they gently place it on a rock. Everyone in the tribe gets a little piece.

There’s so much evidence that, as humans, we have treasured these organs. Losing the taste for it is tragic because then we avoid it, either giving your kids a little bit of it but if your kids are already older, starting with the desiccated supplements is a great way to do it. Incorporating small amounts maybe, even starting with an organ like the heart first. If you want to eat the real organ or you want to eat the fresh organ as opposed to desiccated, you can start with something like the heart. The heart has a mild flavor. Gradually move to gamier organs. If anybody you know gets their kids to eat spleen or pancreas, send me an email and I will send you an autographed copy of my book, for sure. That’s why we make desiccated organs.

My other question is, many other kids my age suffer from acne and other autoimmune diseases, how would carnivore play a role in that?

You hit the nail on the head there. It’s important. This is what breaks my heart and a big reason that I do what I do. I strongly believe that a lot of chronic illnesses and autoimmune diseases in humans of all ages are related to discordance between our genetics. What are a species-appropriate diet and our environment is what we are eating?

I see kids in puberty, in middle school with acne and other issues, and you think, “I know this is the junk food they are eating. I know they are eating seed oils, which end up in the pores, skin, cell membranes. It creates lipid peroxidation in the skin and that leads to acne.” In medical school, we are never taught acne is soybean oil, potentially a dairy allergy in some people or gluten intolerance. We are never taught to change the kid’s diet.

I know that as much as young adults love their junk food, I’m pretty sure if you told your peers like, “I bet your acne would get better if you change your diet like this.” They might at least hear it because you can motivate a kid or a young adult by acne. It’s important how we show up in the world. Many of these autoimmune diseases that end up manifesting early in adulthood or late in childhood could be improved by modifying kid’s diets by taking out the junk food, the sugar first, of course, the seed oils. Also, taking out things like these highly toxic plant foods could be causing a lot of issues.

I was at my friends and we were talking about how they were in Hawaii together. At that time, one of my friends ate a lot of nuts and they were asking him, “Why are you bloated every day?” He’s like, “I don’t know.” He loves nuts. He’s eating almonds and nuts all day. How many gastrointestinal issues, gas, bloating, and constipation, which are tough things for young adults to deal with could be solved by modifying the diet in this way?

I fart way less with no kale in my diet. It’s nice not to have gas and to be able to be around people, go on a date and not be like, “My stomach hurts.” I remember when I was younger, I go to dinner with women and I would be nervous because I’m on a date or whatever. Midway through dinner, I’m eating a salad and my stomach starts to hurt. By the end of the dinner, I’m super bloated. I can’t wait to get home so I can not embarrass myself here. There are many ways this can be beneficial and eliminating these most toxic parts of plants, the roots, stems, leaves and seeds will massively improve GI issues as well. It’s almost magical.

Sometimes we get controversial. There’s so much controversy that’s out there now. When you introduce this topic to the world, it’s what would be considered a controversial topic. If you talk to the Head of the American College of Cardiology, the former, Kim Williams, he is a well-known vegan. Now everybody is preaching veganism.

Now you come out with carnivore, which you eloquently spelled out in your book in detail as far as a carnivore and being heart healthy. This is The Happy Heart Show. On our show, what we are talking about is cardiac health and wellness. Everything we are talking about is cardiovascular health, especially when you read the book and you get down to it. Paul, what blowback has there been regarding this new paradigm shift and people gunning for you?

There’s a strong narrative and it takes a lot to deprogram that. The media has a lot to do with it. Mostly everything that’s in the media is epidemiology. Mostly it’s misleading. It has been fun. It has been interesting to push against it. People slowly realize what’s going on. It’s satisfying seeing people “wake up” and think, “How many other things am I being told that are not founded in science and that are based on false narratives?” That’s interesting. It is an uphill battle but it’s meaningful that I enjoyed doing it.

You were on my podcast in the past. Lipids are the sharp end of the spear because when you eat more saturated fat from animals, which is hugely healthy, LDL goes up but triglycerides go down. HDL goes up and people get more metabolically healthy. Western medicine is myopic about LDL. You know this as well as anyone. The blowback is there. There are a lot of sayings out there. Grant Cardone said, “If you have 10 haters, get your 20.” That’s how you know you are doing something good.

It’s never going to be easy. There’s always going to be people pressing against you and that’s okay. Peter Diamandis says, “If 99% of the world thinks you are wrong, you are either really wrong or you are going to change the world.” I would like to think that we are all in the latter camp and I firmly believe that and that’s okay. That’s a good message for everybody to hear. If you feel like you are going up a steep hill, there’s a good chance that you are going to initiate or be a part of a paradigm shift, which can be beneficial.

I have often said that giving the gift of health is the best gift you can give to someone. Sometimes the individual one-on-one dialogue that people would have can be difficult as you are trying to get your point across and I’m trying to get my point across. That’s why giving your book is a phenomenal birthday gift to anyone. The upcoming cookbook is going to be absolutely stellar. I’m going to venture to guess that one of the most difficult things you have ever done is write the cookbook.

The Carnivore Code was probably easy as the cookbook because there are so many limited ingredients and I’m sure you break it down all through the different tiers. Once you get to a Tier-5 carnivore, it’s like, “Here’s the liver and then you bake it and then you eat it. That’s the recipe.” It’s simple and the foods are so satiating that you don’t have to eat anything for hours and hours. It makes it easy and doable.

The thing I will say about the cookbook is it’s animal-based. Even on the cover, we have some fruit. When you expand your perspective to meat, organs, plus the least toxic plant foods, there’s so much that you can do. It starts to look like an autoimmune paleo, and then this is a little bit further down the spectrum. If autoimmune paleo doesn’t resolve or doesn’t get you where you want to go, go a little bit further. I think of it along that spectrum.

Paleo is amazing. Autoimmune paleo and animal-based, which incorporates organs and gets rid of a lot of vegetables that are in autoimmune paleo. There are still a lot of variety and there are a lot of creative recipes in the book with all kinds of fruit, squash, honey and things like that. There are colors and flavors. It’s much more than a carnivore book, which is good. If people want to do that, there are plenty of recipes about how to cook meat or organs in there, too.

I love the work that you have done. I do want to say this though, Paul. In the cookbook, I have been a little critical about this with you. I’m a massive seafood guy. Are there any seafood recipes in the book for the Wolfson family?

There are plenty of seafood recipes in the book. We didn’t talk much about seafood in this show but I’m a huge fan of seafood. The only caveat, which I’m sure you have talked about with your fans as well, is to be aware of the quality of the seafood like you are being aware of the quality of your meat. Avoid the bigger fish, which are high in mercury. Avoid farm-raised fish, which are going to have PCBs. Knowing where your seafood is coming from is the thing.

If you choose to include a lot of seafood in your diet, make sure that you are getting organs as well to complete the picture. Check your metals. Sometimes people will ask, “Can I just eat seafood?” You can but I would recommend checking your heavy metals if you are only going to include seafood as your meat source because the oceans have become a little bit dirty in certain places. It’s possible to eat that food as a healthy diet. That’s the only caveat from my perspective.

One of the things I love to show my patients are pictures of us eating the whole sardine, anchovy or shellfish as much as possible. If you open up an oyster, you eat what’s inside the oyster. I do eat the prawns and the shrimp. I tend to eat a fair amount of shell. I know you talk about the bone meal in The Carnivore Code outside of a supplement and doing bone broths. For the people that are doing bone broth, either the water could be a problem or even the cookware that they are using to boil this stuff forever. Talk about metal exposure, that’s of paramount importance to make sure that you are preparing these foods in good quality cookware.

We didn’t talk about glycine but I’m sure your audience is familiar with the importance of collagen. One of the things I talked about in the book is the methionine-glycine ratio. We don’t have to go too deeply into this now but the idea is that if you are the type of person that eats a steak and cuts off all the chewy bits and all the fat, you may not be getting enough glycine. It’s a critical amino acid that is part of glutathione and collagen. The human body has two critical proteins.

In that case, you might want to supplement with something like a Collagen supplement, either Hydrolyzed Collagen. At Heart & Soil, we have a supplement called Skin, Hair & Nails that has special Collagen from the trachea and scapula. It’s an interesting, high-quality Collagen. In my opinion, it’s better like hoof and high in Collagen.

Trachea and scapula cartilage has been studied by John Prudden and have interesting powers. It has been associated with interesting wound healing and regeneration because of unique peptides that occur in the trachea and the scapula. There are all sorts of Collagen sources that can be beneficial for humans. If you aren’t making bone broth, don’t cook it in something that’s aluminum. Cook it in a good pan. Cook it in the highest quality if you can. That could definitely leach some stuff in there.

I do think that humans benefit from Calcium in the diet. There are unique benefits to eating bones as well. There are Peptides in bones, Manganese and Boron. When I was with the Hadza, they are eating the marrow out of bones and you are eating bone flakes. You are getting Calcium in your diet. They will eat the small bones of animals. They will eat the ends of the bones.

We certainly had Calcium even without dairy. Dairy can be amazing for people. I don’t tolerate it. A lot of people don’t tolerate it. If you tolerate dairy, great. Cheese is delicious. Colostrum is a great supplement. If you don’t tolerate dairy, it’s important to consider getting some bone meal in your diet for Calcium. We also have a bone meal supplement at Heart & Soil. We are trying to connect all the dots.

Your diet gets healthier, you convert. You tell the story well in your book. You were vegan for a while, a vegetarian. When you go hardcore carnivore, does that make it easier for you to tolerate dairy, you personally?

No. Despite my efforts, I have tried it multiple times with dairy. It always triggers my eczema. It makes my beard itch and my scalp itch. The Casein and the whey in the dairy are causing issues for me so I let it go. Well-raised dairy, whether it’s raw, preferably raw, grass-fed or grass-finished, is a part of many cultures that is prized by many people. My genetics don’t align with it.

You make the case earlier too as far as plants being somewhat sentient beings. The plants feel pain when we pick them. My good friend, Dr. Joel Kahn, who’s a famous vegan cardiologist, shakes his head and he’s like, “I’ve got the blood of beets on my hands.” He’s brilliant, witty and a funny person. Ultimately, we don’t know but you can probably point to some literature that these are intelligent organisms that we have no idea what they feel or don’t feel.

Think about this. We didn’t go down the rabbit hole of regenerative agriculture in this show but monocrop agriculture is a nightmare for the planet for ecosystems. When you monocrop plants, whether you are growing lettuce, beets or whatever, you are tilling the soil, which destroys the mycorrhizal networks between plants and fungus. It releases a whole bunch of carbon dioxide from the soil into the atmosphere and destroys all of the ecosystems in the soil, the earthworms, the voles, the mice, the crickets, the beetles and the burrows for rabbits.

What about all of the raptors, the hawks that feed on the bugs in that field? If you look at plants in the field, you are destroying the biodiversity of that field. You may or may not be spraying pesticides there. Hopefully, you’re not. If you have destroyed the biodiversity of that field, it takes generations to recover. It takes probably more than a decade to recover from even one monocropping of a field. You think about the harvesting of that field. This is called bikills. The numbers are in the tens of thousands upon hundreds of thousands of organisms.

There’s a great saying, “Carnivore is vegan.” If you are interested in causing the least amount of suffering but also being a healthy human, using one life from a cow that lived its whole life eating grass in an environment that was completely safe and happy for it. At the end of their life, it dies like all of us do, and then it feeds us and nourishes us.

There’s an important ethical argument to be made there. There’s so much more life lost when you destroy an ecosystem. Not to mention the hundreds of thousands if not millions or trillions or billions, we are talking about innumerable bacteria and communities in the soil that you are destroying with that. There is no virtue in eating monocrop plants in my opinion. You are not causing less suffering. For something to live, something else must die. This is the way of life. This is what we have always done as humans. It’s important to know where your meat comes from and to eat it respectfully.

I have talked about this on other podcasts as well, the importance of hunting. If anyone hunts and does so with a decent amount of intention and awareness, they will quickly realize that when you see the animal that you are eating, that will change you forever. It changes you as a human and reminds you, “I’m fortunate. I am lucky to be nourished by this animal.” With that comes a responsibility to be a good human, kind and considerate. There is a reminder. It’s almost like a sacrament. There are a lot tied up in there. We are not always aware of where our food comes from, whether it’s plants or animals.

We have been misled that meat isn’t a good choice for the planet. It’s always about considering your sourcing, first and foremost. I wanted to circle back. You had mentioned a species-appropriate diet for humans. Are there species-appropriate diets in other species? What would a species-appropriate diet be for humans?

There’s a great story of the lions in captivity in a zoo. This is maybe by some of the Weston Price folks. I’m not sure what Zoo it was but it’s a true story. They have these lions in captivity. I’m not excited about lions in captivity in the first place. Maybe they were sheltered. Let’s imagine the lions were sheltered or protected from poachers in a zoo.

In the beginning, the lions were fed meat. They would throw the lion’s meat like a leg of lamb. Over time, the lions became lethargic and they didn’t want to mate. The male lion wasn’t mating with the females and they were like, “We are going to lose our population. Why don’t these lions have libido? Why don’t they want to mate?” They realized, “We are not feeding the lion the species-appropriate diet. We are not feeding lions nose to tail.”

The lions eat the whole animal. They will eat the bone. When they kill an animal, they go straight for the organs. It’s visceral but they are going to go straight for the liver. They are going to go straight for the intestines of an animal. They are going to eat the kidneys. They are going to eat all these things. Lo and behold, they feed the lions a whole animal with the organs, and then they are mating in captivity again.

There are examples of species-appropriate diets. One that might land a little closer to home for people is dogs and cats. I don’t know if you guys have seen this #VeganCat. It’s animal abuse. Cats are not vegans. If you feed a cat plant foods, that cat will slowly die. It’s horrible. People try to pretend that their dogs are vegans or vegetarians also. You can do this on talk shows. It’s a schtick that has been done over and over. They will put meat and vegetables in front of this virtuous dog that the owners are claiming is amazing. The dog goes straight for the meat.

There are species-appropriate diets for dogs as well. Dogs are clearly animal-based omnivores. Cats are purely carnivorous. This brings up a great point that I could have made earlier. I don’t believe that humans are carnivores. We are omnivores based on our history. If you look at the literature in Zoology, more than 75% of omnivores, either plants or animals. Meaning that omnivore generalist is a myth.

As humans, we are animal-based omnivores. That’s the trick that we talked about in the beginning. That’s the change that made us human. We are plant-based omnivores as primates. We then started eating a bunch of meat and we became animal-based and a whole new species emerged. We see this in hunter-gatherers. We see this with our ancestry.

Like dogs, we are meant to get the majority of our food from animals, animal-based omnivores. If you are reading this and if you have dogs, watch what happens when you cook a steak around your dog. Watch what happens when you cook liver around your dog. Your dog is going to go crazy. Your dog will love you forever if you give them a little piece of your steak or you feed them liver. If you want to feed your dog a species-appropriate diet, give them organs and animal foods. You can give them a few plant foods but avoid the most toxic plant foods for dogs as well because that’s what they will eat in the wild.

Wolves are animal-based omnivores. This concept is well-established in the literature. It’s just that as humans, we have forgotten this. There’s this other notion that I will disagree with, which is that, “Maybe vegan is good for some people.” It’s like, “No. We are all Homo sapiens.” There are no vegan species. It’s not like Homo sapiens carnivorous and Homo sapiens vegan. We all have the same biochemistry. We all have the same enzymatic systems. We all have the same transporters in our small intestine to absorb nutrients and the detoxifications in our liver. There’s some variation in terms of these genetics but we all are similar in terms of how we are built.

As humans, if we elect to avoid animal foods, we are eating a species in an appropriate diet. If we look at living hunter-gatherers like Hadza and we take direction from our evolutionary ancestry, we see that a species-appropriate diet for humans looks to be mostly meat and organs, either fresh or desiccated. It’s eaten as the majority of the diet with some of these plant foods that are least toxic.

The same thing is true with the Hadza. They don’t go around trying to make a salad. They are not trying to eat pumpkin leaves. They might eat pumpkin leaves or baobab seeds if they are starving and have nothing else. There’s a clear hierarchy in hunter-gatherer tribes in terms of what foods they prefer. If you ask the Hadza, “What’s your favorite food?” “Meat.” “What do you dream about?” “Meat.” They mean meat and organs. “What’s the best day of your life?” “The day that I hunted and killed the biggest animal and brought it back to the tribe.”

When you are out there with them, if they see a hive, they are going to eat the honey and they are going to eat fruits but they are not going to stop there hunting to pick up a plant leaf and eat it, “There are some pumpkin leaves on the side. Let’s eat some pumpkin leaves.” Forget that. They want to eat an animal, honey and fruit. This has been documented by anthropologists like Frank Marlowe, who did his PhD dissertation working with the Hadza. That’s my perspective and there are a lot of good evidence for that. An animal-based diet is the closest I can imagine to a species-appropriate human diet.

Those TV shows like Alone, Naked, Afraid, and Survivor, those people are looking for animal food. The ones who show up there as vegans quickly changed because they are starving. They don’t have access to a full salad bar and a farmer’s market and all the other stuff that they have. Paul, this has been fantastic. There’s so much information to go over.

For everyone who’s reading, don’t forget to get a copy of Dr. Paul’s first book, The Carnivore Code. The cookbook is coming up in time for the holiday season. Get that as holiday gifts or birthday gifts. Skip the shirt and tie or the bottle of booze. Back in the old days, you would buy someone a carton of cigarettes who was a smoker. Give the informational health and wellness book.

Of course, visit HeartAndSoil.co for those you love in your life. Even if you do have access to good organ foods, sometimes it can be difficult to get. Sometimes they can be not palatable for a lot of people. If you are interested in better libido, male or female, how do you get testicles and ovaries? That is extreme for many. Dr. Paul Saladino, thank you so much.

Thanks for having me on. We didn’t even talk about the whole package supplement. We do have a testicle supplement for men and an ovary supplement for women and they are powerful. That’s great stuff. Thanks for having me on. It’s great to be here.

Also, all of these different organ-based supplements, basically, you are eating food. I don’t think you can go wrong with any of it. You are eating food in a capsule form from the best source on the planet. You are getting your stuff from New Zealand, which the law of the land is to produce ethically raised animal products. That’s certainly fantastic. One thing we didn’t talk about because I don’t want to talk about it is carnivores and coffee. That’s my new mantra. I’m not going to let you bash coffee. You are going to go eat some animal products. I’m probably going to go have my third cup of coffee.

We will talk about coffee next time. Coffee is the least of many people’s worries. If coffee is what you are worried about, you can do carnivore with coffee.

You, I and many people focus on the cholesterol numbers but it’s all about inflammation. Honestly, it’s to the point now where I don’t even care what someone’s lipid numbers are if the inflammation on that person is under control. There are other parameters that we look at. I’m not focused on that in the majority of people unless things are out of whack. You’ve got to dive into other things, whether it’s something in the environment or it has to do with sleep, sunshine, mental health, wellness and all these other things. It’s good to know that you are not down completely on coffee. That’s good.

Before we let you go, maybe let’s wrapped up in all this critical thinking that you pose in your book, which is excellent. How do you live a heart-healthy life?

I question the norm and I love doing that. When I have done this in the past, changed my diet, and decreased seed oils, I saw my LDL go up. If I listened to the mainstream thinking on that, I would be on this tag now, which is something that I don’t believe is necessary at all. You can see my triglycerides go down, my HDL go up and my fasting insulin goes down. Questioning the mainstream and thinking for ourselves is super important.

There’s a saying in the crypto community, “Don’t trust. Verify.” I try to think outside of the box here. Having said that, in my own life, I also choose the best quality foods that I can. I avoid seed oils and processed sugars. I spend a lot of time in the sun. I do things like this where I get to talk to my friends and that makes me happy. That’s a huge part of it as well.

Happy people live longer. I totally agree with that.

Dr. Paul Saladino, thank you so much. Check out his website and his books. We will see you next time on another episode of The Healthy Heart Show. Eat well, be healthy, 100-year heart. See you next time.

Important Links:

• Paul Saladino
• The Carnivore Code
• Fundamental Health
• The Joe Rogan Experience –  Past Episode
• The Minimalists – Past Episode
• Meat Eater – Past Episode
• Health Theory – Past Episode
• The Model Health Show – Past Episode
• Ben Greenfield Podcast – Past Episode
• Dr. Mercola – Past Episode
• Dr. Gundry Podcast – Past Episode
• The Doctors TV Show – Past Episode
• The Paleo Cardiologist
• Rhonda Patrick
• The Carnivore Code Cookbook
• HeartAndsoil.co
• Video – YouTube
• Podcast – Fundamental Health Past Episode

About Dr. Paul Saladino

Dr. Saladino is the leading authority on the science and application of the carnivore diet and animal-based diets. He has used these diets to reverse autoimmune issues, chronic inflammation and mental health issues in hundreds of patients, many of whom had been told their conditions were untreatable.

He is the author of the bestselling book, The Carnivore Code and the host of the top 10 podcast, Fundamental Health. He can be found featured on numerous podcasts including The Joe Rogan Experience, MeatEater, The Minimalists, Health Theory, The Model Health Show, Bulletproof Radio, The Dr. Gundry Podcast, The Ben Greenfield Podcast, Dr. Mercola, and many others. He has also appeared on The Doctors TV show and on many other prominent media outlets.

Dr. Saladino is board certified as a physician nutrition specialist and completed residency at the University of Washington. He attended medical school at the University of Arizona where he focused on integrative medicine and nutritional biochemistry. When he is not researching the roots of chronic illness, he can be found in wild places in search of the perfect wave, sunset and mountain top. He lives in Austin, TX.