The Carnivore Code: Unlocking the Secrets to Optimal Health by Returning to Our Ancestral Diet

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As described previously, there is strong evidence that high LDL promotes cardiovascular disease, and we haven’t seen substantial evidence that people eating a carnivore diet would be exempt from this. This might be taken to contradict the book’s claim, but we don’t think examining one specific gut hormone in isolation is very informative for understanding the impact of a food on satiety. The paper cites other papers in which calcium oxalate crystals have been associated with lobular carcinoma in situ.

I’ve always loved to cook and bake (and eat), and over the years I’ve purchased a variety of cookbooks covering every dietary preference under the sun. We think these studies do establish that measuring LDL isn’t a very informative predictor of risk in the elderly, although they don’t suggest it’s “protective”. A study using the gold-standard method for measuring insulin sensitivity reported that insulin sensitivity decreases on a very-low-carbohydrate diet. The author has already written that book (The Carnivore Code) and I think most people who do not eat this way will not be convinced by the overly long intro (I wasn't). Not mentioned in The Carnivore Code but consistent with its arguments: one of the men had an improvement in blood pressure, and the other experienced a resolution of his gingivitis (gum disease).

If the carnivore diet improves some of these other risk factors, it could mitigate the risk caused by high LDL. The author, nevertheless, sets out an argument based on plant toxicity and diets of primitive societies. The references in support of the book’s claim that fiber is not helpful for constipation received a score of 2, meaning that they’re only weakly convincing but most of them are consistent with the book’s claim.

The Carnivore Code points out that salivary amylase, a starch-digesting enzyme that most humans have extra gene copies of, duplicated after the split between Homo sapiens, Neanderthals, and another branch of Homo, the Denisovans. Eat in a manner that allows for insulin sensitivity, decreases inflammation, and leads to a robust amount of valuable LDL particles.Page 192: “Those of us with good insulin sensitivity are essentially a different breed, and there are many striking stories of plaque regression among insulin-sensitive individuals with ‘elevated LDL’ eating carnivore or ketogenic diets.