The Carnivore Diet and Grass-fed Beef

January was World Carnivore Month (didn’t you know?), and Joe Rogan celebrated by going rogue on the all-animal diet: The Carnivore Diet. He ate nothing that wasn’t an animal product and drank only water or bone broth. For breakfast: six eggs or a steak. For dinner — he’s a lunch skipper— he ate steak or elk. He added bacon for the fat. At the end of 30 days, he’d lost 12 pounds.

The Carnivore Diet, or Zero Carb Diet, as it’s also known, is more restrictive than the Keto or Paleo plans — two other meat-heavy diets that are raging now. The Keto Diet, for example, permits up to 50 carbs per day, but if you’re following the letter of the Carnivore Diet, zero carbs are the absolute rule.

Carnivore dieters, however, risk consuming dangerously high levels of saturated fat and cholesterol, which both pose a very real threat of heart disease and cancer. But grass-fed beef may be the answer to that. Unlike grain-fed, grass-fed is notably low in both. And bonus, grass-fed is high in Omega 3, a very heart-healthy fatty acid.

Further, grass-fed cattle have higher levels of Vitamins E and C than their grain-fed counterparts. They also have higher levels of a powerful little molecule called Coenzyme Q10. CoQ10 is used by cells to make energy, and it’s also an excellent antioxidant. Early data show that grass-fed animals have far higher quantities of it than grain-fed.

But what grass-fed doesn’t have is as good for you as what it does have. Consider this: No pesticides, which means no nasty glyphosate (think Roundup), or other harmful toxins that are consumed by grain-fed cattle, such as fat-soluble compounds like atrazine. Atrazine acts like estrogen in humans, which can and does send our hormonal balance into a tailspin.

For quick weight loss, proponents of the Carnivore Diet say a no-carb plan will get you to your goal, and science backs them. A recent study by the National Institutes of Health compared the weight loss effects of four energy-restrictive diets, such as the Carnivore Diet. Results showed that participants who ate high-protein diets — 0.4 to 0.6 grams of protein per pound of body weight per day — lost significantly more weight and fat mass than those who ate less than that. Why not go with grass-fed to get you to your goal?