This solo episode delivers a ranked guide to carnivore foods, giving listeners a clear framework for prioritizing their meat choices based on nutrient density and omega-3 content. Wild-caught and grass-fed, grass-finished animals top the list because their fat retains full DHA and EPA profiles, while grain-finished beef still ranks highly, compared to an Olympic silver medalist: it outperforms virtually every other food even if it falls short of the gold standard.
The episode also addresses critical pitfalls that derail carnivore dieters. Stripping fat from meat risks protein poisoning, a dangerous buildup of ammonia that crashes hormones, causes hair loss, and leaves people feeling miserable. Full-fat dairy is positioned near the bottom for strict carnivore practitioners due to its potential to trigger inflammation and weight gain signals, while heavily processed meats and keto snack products rank last due to fillers, additives, and misleading labels. The overarching message: eat the best whole meat with fat that your budget allows.
Key Takeaways
- Preserve and eat all fat from wild or grass-fed animals, including omental and kidney fat, because this is where DHA, EPA, fat-soluble vitamins, and essential fatty acids are concentrated. Stripping the fat removes the most nutritious part of the animal.
- Grain-finished beef loses most of its omega-3s (DHA and EPA) after approximately 3 months in a feedlot, so compensate by sourcing grass-finished butter or tallow and adding wild-caught fish. Plant-based ALA converts to DHA and EPA at less than 1%, making it an inadequate substitute.
- Eating predominantly lean meat with very little fat forces the body to break down protein for energy, generating ammonia that can overwhelm the liver's ability to convert it to urea. This condition, protein poisoning, causes hair loss, hormonal disruption, and serious illness.
- Full-fat dairy is nutritious but can trigger inflammatory flare-ups in people with autoimmune conditions (such as Crohn's, colitis, or rheumatoid arthritis) and may stimulate hunger and fat-storage signals in adults. Those on a strict carnivore protocol aiming for weight loss or autoimmune relief should prioritize eliminating or minimizing dairy first.
- Wild-Caught and Grass-Fed Beef Ranked #1: Why Animal Fat Is Essential
- Saturated Fat and Cardiovascular Disease: What the Research Actually Shows
- Pasture-Raised Pork, Chicken, and Eggs vs Grain-Finished Ruminants: Omega-3 Differences
- Processed Meats, Full-Fat Dairy, and Autoimmune Flare-Ups on Carnivore
- Protein Poisoning: Why Lean Meat Without Fat Destroys Hormones and Health
- Nonfat Dairy, Highly Processed Meats, and Keto Snacks: Bottom of the Carnivore Rankings
This is an auto-generated transcript from YouTube and may contain errors or inaccuracies.
All right, so here are all the different carnivore food ranked out in order of how I see it in about 10 minutes. So first of all, they're going to be, you know, wild-caught, grass-fed, finished animals that are eating its natural diet. So if you're a hunter and you're going out into good country where the soil's healthy and the land's healthy, the animals that are living there are going to be healthy as well. So getting one of those where you get a large animal that's eating what it's designed to eat and has all the nutrients it is designed to have, then that's going to be the most nutritious and have the least harmful toxins as a result of that passing on to you. And the important thing is you need to make sure that you're cultivating the fat and keeping the fat. >> [snorts] >> Because wild animals that are eating its natural diet, their muscles are lean and they're supposed to be lean, just like our muscles are supposed to be lean. But if they're healthy, and it's not like the end of winter or they're starving or something like that, they will have a lot of subcutaneous fat, even as much or more than you get in a well-marbled animal that has been in a feed lot. It also has a lot of fat in the abdomen. The omentum is an organ that's almost entirely made out of fat, so is the mesentery, which is another organ, well, considered an organ, but it's the blood supply to the intestines. And of course, there's fat around the kidneys and all these other sorts of places as well. So you want to make sure you don't just strip that off and throw it away. You want to keep all the fat because that is extremely nutritious. You're going to get all the DHA, EPA, saturated fats, and other healthy vitamins and minerals that come with the fat. So that's my number one. Number two would be grass-fed and finished pasture-raised beef and lamb with the fat. So again, you want to get these animals, but it's the fashion that everybody just strips off all the fat possible, so that you don't get any of these things. And that was the fashion for a long time because they thought, well, lean is really healthy. We don't want to have fatty meat, but we know that that's not true anymore. We know that animal fat and saturated fats are actually very healthy. This was published in the Journal of American College of Cardiology in 2020 by Dr. Astrup and his colleagues showing that in randomized controlled trials and meta-analyses of randomized controlled trials and systematic review looking at all of the above, they found absolutely no increased risk of cardiovascular disease from increased consumption of saturated fat. And in fact, they found that increased saturated fat consumption was protective against having a stroke and that less saturated fat consumed increased your likelihood of getting a stroke. And also, animal fat and even butter are not entirely saturated fat. There are a lot of monounsaturated fats and other fats that are actually very healthy as well. It's not just saturated fat. Coconut oil actually has more saturated fat than beef tallow has and olive oil is very similar amounts of saturated fat to beef tallow as well. So, don't let that hang you up and get the fat. Next down the list would be pasture-raised animals eating their natural diet with no grain or feed, but non-ruminant. So, things like pigs, chicken, um those sorts of things. And uh eggs as well. So, some people have some problems with eggs, so that's, you know, maybe a bit of a gray area, but I have no problem with eggs and then so they're very, very healthy. Um especially when the chicken is eating what it's designed to eat. The ruminant animals can thankfully filter out more of these toxins and so that's improvement and also extracts more of the nutrients, but the non-ruminant animals, the monogastric such as pigs and chicken, as long as they're eating their natural diet, they're still going to be very very healthy and they'll be able to filter out a lot of those toxins and extract a lot of those nutrients. So, those are excellent sources well and that's number three. Then you get down to the grain-finished beef and lamb and other ruminants, uh but you need to consider where you're going to get your omega-3 sources from because after about 3 months a feed lot, most of the omega-3s like DHA and EPA are pretty much gone out of the fat at that point. So, you'll have to think about where you're going to get your fat source from for like grass-fed and grass-finished butter, grass-finished tallow, some wild-caught fish added in to get those omega-3s that you need. It doesn't work coming from plant sources because the plant version of omega-3 is ALA, which has less than a 1% conversion over DHA and EPA, which is actually what you need for your brain. But a lot of people ask if it's okay to eat grain-finished beef and lamb. And yes, of course it is because it's still very, very healthy. I like to think about it as athletes in the Olympic Games. And grain-finished beef being silver medalists while grass-fed finished or wild-caught animals would be gold medalists. And yes, silver lost to gold in that set, but the silver medalists also beat everybody else on Earth. So, that's a pretty good position to be in. So, next one on the list would be non-pasture-raised, non-ruminant meat and eggs, but otherwise whole meats. So, things like pork, chicken, things like that, other poultry animals that are non-ruminant that have that monogastric digestive system and are being fed feed and corn and hopefully not soy, but you know, usually is. And so, that would be next on the list. They're going to be filtering out a lot of those toxins and harmful substances, but they're not going to get out everything like a ruminant will or as many things as the ruminant will. And so, while it's extremely healthy, it's extremely beneficial, you still may find that some people have problems with it and may not be as nutritious or somebody has autoimmune issues, they might have problems with that as well. So, next on the list would be minimally processed meats such as no sugar cure bacon. So, these sorts of things would be meats, but they've been processed so they've turned it into a salami or ham or something like that, but it's minimally processed so it's not adding a ton of sugar. It's not adding a bunch of weird artificial additives and and flavorings and preservatives and all these other sorts of things. There are preserved processed meats, things like prosciutto, that may be just salt cured. And those can be quite healthy as long as you're making sure you're not and you're drinking enough water and things like that because these things can be very salty. So, next on the list would be full-fat dairy. So, it has a lot of great nutrients, has a lot of great protein, a lot of great fats, and a lot of great vitamins and minerals, but it can also be pro-inflammatory for some people, especially those with autoimmune conditions, and they can get flare-ups of Crohn's or sort of colitis, rheumatoid arthritis, things like that. It can also trigger hunger signals. It can also trigger weight gain cuz this is telling baby mammals to eat more and to grow and store energy. And so, if we're doing that as an adult, that can tell us to store energy and to grow, and unfortunately that we grow out, we don't grow up like kids will. However, it is still a very good source of nutrition, and if you're eating other things or a mixed diet, it can be a very, very positive addition to your diet because it is so nutrient-dense. And the downsides of it are probably not going to be anywhere close to the downsides of all the other garbage that people normally eat. So, if you're doing a strict carnivore diet, dairy may hold you back a little bit, especially if you're trying to lose weight or you have an autoimmune condition, but otherwise it's very healthy and has a lot of great nutrients. Next on the list would be lean meats such as skinless chicken breast or lean pork or lean steak that has the fat all stripped off of it because fat is a a set of essential nutrients. There are essential fatty acids that you have to have or you will get sick and die. There are essential fat-soluble nutrients that you have to have or you will get sick and die. It's also essential to get your nutrient source outside of just protein. So, if you're on a ketogenic diet like a carnivore diet, and really what you're eating is protein and fat with minimal carbohydrates, you need to get the majority of your energy from fat because that is what your body typically uses for energy. If it needs to and it starts cutting into protein in order to generate energy, it has to break down those amino acids and pull off an amino group that the nitrogen group and then that gets turned into ammonia and that later gets turned into urea in the liver. However, if you're eating predominantly lean meat and protein with very little fat and even very little carbohydrates, you'll find that you'll get a buildup of that ammonia and it can overwhelm your liver's ability to turn it into urea. And so you can get a serious problem with high ammonia levels and this is called protein poisoning. People lose their hair. Yes, they lose weight, but they lose their health. They get very sick. This is what bodybuilders experience when they're in their cutting phase going towards competition. They cut out fat, they cut out carbs, and they just eat a lot of lean protein. And yes, they get lean, but they feel miserable doing it and they all say you can't keep this up year round because you just feel miserable and you get too sick and it destroys your hormones and your health generally. So when people are having problems with carnivore, it's often because they're listening this horrible advice from people trying to sell you a $2,000, $3,000 program and weight loss package where they take other people's information and get it wrong and tell you to cut calories and eat ultra lean. And so people, yes, they're losing weight, but it's like that bodybuilder cutting for a competition. They get very sick and they trash their hormones. So people say, "Well, this hurt my hormones, this hurt my thyroid." It's often the ones that are eating super low fat to try to lose weight because they think, "Well, if you have fat, you don't need to eat fat." Wrong. You need these nutrients that are in there and you need the energy to come from fat as opposed to protein. Next on the list we have nonfat dairy because it's still a good source of nutrition and proteins. However, you're taking out some of the best parts, which are the the fats. And you still have all the inflammatory potential and weight gain components that could go into it. And then next on the list is the highly processed meats with a ton of additives. You can see these on ingredients where it says like 75% beef or pork, and then you have to think to yourself, "Okay, what's the other 25% that's in there?" Obvi- It's generally fillers and additives and starch and garbage that you don't want. And who knows what else. >> [snorts] >> So, it's definitely better than not eating meat at all because it still has a lot of great nutrients. 75% of it still meat, so it's still going to have very good vitamins, minerals, proteins, and fats that you're going to want to have. But, depending on what what else goes in there, it may not be optimal. What's not going to be optimal. Certainly not as good as whole foods. However, the underlying all of this is that you want to eat the meat that you can afford, that you enjoy, and that makes you feel the best. So, if steaks just really aren't in the budget or even ground beef isn't really in the budget, just get the meat that you can afford and have access to and that makes you feel good because at the very least it's better than the rice and beans and pastas and things like that you could be eating instead. And then lastly would be all the various keto treats and snacks and things like that that may be low carb and predominantly meat, but sometimes not. Sometimes they're not even very low carb. They just say they are, but they might use a lot of sweeteners and additives and other sorts of things that are not all that great that people can have a a big problem with. Um a lot of people actually find that they gain a lot of weight when they get these keto treats and snacks. Even though they're ketogenic, they're still not good for you. So, just stick to whole meats with plenty of fat and you'll do great. Hey everybody, as you know, I don't usually take sponsors, but I've been working with Carnivore Bar for a while because they genuinely care about quality and the carnivore movement. Obviously, whole food is always best, just making your meat at home and taking it with you. But, if you are traveling, camping, hiking, or at the airport, or just need something on the go, these are really great. They have the traditional carnivore bar, but now they have the new everyday bar, which is smaller, but it's also a lot cheaper. It uses grain-finished beef meat. However, it also uses grass-finished tallow, so you get all the omega-3s and vitamins that you would want from the grass-finished cows. And of course, if you still want the full Cadillac carnivore bar, they still have the grass-fed finished versions as well that you can get. So, check out the link below and use code Anthony for 10% off. Thanks, everyone.