Florida man eats diet of butter, cheese, beef; cholesterol oozes from his body

88 points
1/21/1970
2 months ago
by nxobject

Comments


tiffanyh

I have a friend who went on the carnivore diet recently.

They lost 36-pounds in just 6-weeks time (and ate as much as they wanted, so never hungry).

But they did a blood test and it was panic time. The doctor told him he's on the brink of cardiac arrest and had to be put on medication and immediately introduce vegetables into their diet.

2 months ago

isk517

I feel like a lot of the results from the carnivore diet can easily be reproduced by just completely cutting out processed sugar from your diet.

2 months ago

MrSkelter

Most of the supposed magic is simply eating high protein and fat and getting sated.

These diets work for people who will not stop eating until they feel full. As that fullness takes so much longer with processed sugary foods they consume too many calories. It’s very hard to consume 2,000 calories of red meat in one sitting.

The idea eating meat alone is healthy is totally spurious.

2 months ago

sneak

No, ketosis is a thing. Potatoes and brown rice aren’t processed sugar but will prevent ketosis sure as anything.

Carbs are the devil. They’re also my primary calorie source after years in ketosis because cholesterol is also a killer.

2 months ago

tiffanyh

At the end of the day, it's all about calories.

The appeal of the carnivore diet is, you can eat as much as you want - so long as it's only meat.

The trick is, meat is actually fairly low in calories and protein (meat) is extremely filling.

So you're achieving a calorie deficit without being hungry.

2 months ago

agnivade

> At the end of the day, it's all about calories.

No it's not. Calories is just a unit of energy. And there are good energy sources, and bad ones as well. It's not just one single factor that rules everything. Quality and variety of food matters a lot.

2 months ago

anotherhue

Eh, not quite. The microbiome is a quickly emerging and remarkably complex system.

The calorie values on food are 'bomb-calorific', which is about as far from what goes in your gut as possible.

'Bio-availabilty' is the term to look up.

2 months ago

ASalazarMX

> The trick is, meat is actually fairly low in calories and protein (meat) is extremely filling.

What? Meat, from fish to chicken to beef, is one of the most caloric foods, rivaled only by nuts and oils. Meat usually is high in fat, it's very hard for it to be low-calorie. The weight loss doesn't come from a low-calorie diet, but from forced ketosis due to prolonged lack of glucose.

As others hace said, it's the carb deprivation that makes you lose weight, you could easily do a vegetarian diet and lose the same or more weight without abusing fat and rising your bad cholesterol.

2 months ago

kcplate

> Meat usually is high in fat, it's very hard for it to be low-calorie. The weight loss doesn't come from a low-calorie diet

For me, eating a keto diet makes it easy to achieve a daily caloric intake that is significantly less than other diets I have tried because of meat being high in fat it creates greater satiety that lasts longer. Most keto and carnivore diets result it being easier to achieve caloric deficits for that reason.

There may be some out there that increase caloric consumption (and usually do for the first couple of weeks of the diet) but soon after your body adapts to fat for energy, you tend to eat much less in my experience.

So if you are religiously tracking (and I have for 8 years now), you will find that your weight loss under keto also abides by CICO rules. Ketosis is helping to burn your fat stores, and it’s easier to get there because you are not eating carbs, but your body is burning fat stores because it has a calorie deficit.

Even if you are in ketosis, never eating a carb, but not in a caloric deficit, you simply will not lose weight.

2 months ago

tiffanyh

210 calories - serving of grilled chicken

324 calories - serving of granola cereal

One of those is way more filling & less calories than the other.

https://www.eatthismuch.com/calories/one-grilled-chicken-bre...

https://www.mynetdiary.com/food/calories-in-breakfast-granol...

2 months ago

zero-sharp

>The weight loss doesn't come from a low-calorie diet, but from forced ketosis due to prolonged lack of glucose.

Lol what the fuck?

and yes, meat and foods high in fiber are satiating. That's common knowledge.

2 months ago

zero-sharp

I'm not a carnivore diet advocate, but 6 weeks of a poor diet, alone, is to blame for being on the brink of a cardiac arrest? That's really not believable. If that's not what you meant, then you should really clarify in your post.

2 months ago

ryandvm

He was probably already in a bad state. I imagine just about everyone going on the carnivore diet had already been cosplaying it for decades.

2 months ago

zero-sharp

So because he was on the carnivore diet for 6 weeks, he must have been on it for decades. Logic check out. Thanks for clarifying.

2 months ago

rdsubhas

Reminds me of https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protein_toxicity aka rabbit starvation / protein toxicity

2 months ago

readthenotes1

That must not have been a very good doctor. If the man is on brink of cardiac arrest he should be in the hospital. He can do a simple Ultra fast CT scan to see the atherosclerosis impeding blood flow, or even an exercise treadmill test will give you some hints of it.

I believe the modern understanding of the cholesterol theory of heart disease is that it's not simply LDL that is the problem, but instead small dense LDL. SD ldl can be measured directly of course, but you can kind of get a sense of whether you're likely to have it based on having triglycerides over 115, and the high triglycerides are in turn usually caused by lots of sugar or simple carbs in your diet. Something a person on a carnivore diet won't probably have

2 months ago

srid

I have been on carnivore diet for 5+ years now. Did a blood test and the doctor prescribed me statins due to high cholestrol readings. I declined to take them, of course.

2 months ago

whazor

The Mediterranean diet is really good. Start frying or roasting vegetables with lots of olive oil. They will become tasty after the olive oil and salt. As long as you keep cooking yourself and avoid processed foods, you should be good.

2 months ago

[deleted]
2 months ago

boppo1

Of course? I've pretty pro-animal foods, but I don't follow.

2 months ago

SwiftyBug

What, why?

2 months ago

hilux

I presume the diet been great for weight loss and blood-sugar maintenance.

What other effects have you noticed, good or bad?

2 months ago

ASalazarMX

Carnivore as exclusively beef/pork, or do you eat bird and fish too?

2 months ago

srid

Mostly beef, but occasionally eggs & fish as well. Chicken wings on an odd occasion.

I've written about my diet here: https://srid.ca/carnivore-diet

2 months ago

Balgair

I don't know if this is a troll, but in case it isn't: Buddy, listen to your doctors. At least, please, go talk to another MD about your blood work and see if they recommend other methods. You don't have to listen to just one MD, but if 5 are telling you the same thing then you should probably listen.

2 months ago

hilux

I'm not the guy you are replying to, but most MDs really don't know anything about nutrition. That simply is not a topic they ever took a class in, and official nutrition recommendations themselves are completely changing. The "food pyramid" with a base of carbs? Must eat breakfast of sugary cereals and orange juice? That's all murderous nonsense. (And it's changed!) And so on.

MDs want "stable" patients who resemble patients they've familiar with. Even though that could mean being diabetic on half-a-dozen meds. Based on my genes, I would be fat and diabetic by now if I had kept following only my doctor's advice.

2 months ago

2muchcoffeeman

The carnivore diet on the face of it looks suspicious. No one that tried it thinking “this is totally legit” worried about what doctors are saying.

2 months ago

srid

> I don't know if this is a troll

This is a rather odd dig towards a non-anonymous user (using his real name) and is ironically coming from a pseudoanonymous account (with no real name associated with it).

2 months ago

sneak

I did that too. Up to and including declining statins.

Without going into details here, very possibly the worst possible outcome ensued.

Don’t eat a high cholesterol diet. Really. It’s really bad for you, like kill you dead bad for you.

There isn’t some global vegetable conspiracy that invented atherosclerosis. It’s like the #1 or #2 killer alongside cancer.

2 months ago

srid

> I did that too. [..]

If you are saying that you too were on a carnivore diet long term (5+ years) and very possibly experienced "the worst possible outcome" related to cholesterol levels, you would be the first person to report as such. Perhaps you would like to publish the anecdote in detail somewhere (including just exactly what you ate, as "a high cholesterol diet" is imprecise enough to mean many things)?

2 months ago

sneak

Your first sentence isn’t true.

Heart disease kills 700k per year just in the US alone.

It’s well known that high cholesterol diets are extremely unhealthy. The research is totally unambiguous.

Us keto/carnivore people are great at finding stuff online that tells us it’s fine to eat a high cholesterol diet and that it will be safe and fine.

It is not safe and it is not fine.

If you must be no-carb, do vegan keto, but don’t eat a high cholesterol diet.

2 months ago

WorkerBee28474

To be fair, that uncommon situation is not in the dataset used to train doctors. We can theorize that he needs medication and vegetables, but we lack certainty.

2 months ago

hiyer

Reminded me of this Junji Ito story - https://junjiitomanga.fandom.com/wiki/Glyceride

2 months ago

homebrewer

Here's the full manga, the plot summary doesn't do it justice.

https://imgur.com/gallery/lni-glyceride-junji-ito-LaVdb

2 months ago

red-iron-pine

gross

2 months ago

ricardobeat

Is this the “holes” guy? His writing surely has… evolved

2 months ago

krapp

It's a good thing there are no anime adaptations of his work, except for Uzumaki which only has a single episode.

2 months ago

jjj123

Uzumaki has four episodes.

2 months ago

krapp

No it doesn't. It has one episode. The others never happened.

2 months ago

m0llusk

It's peculiar that so many think the carnivore diet is prime cuts of meat with butter and cheese. All of those are prime products with historically limited availability. Much of the diet would be tendons, tripe, organ meats and other such cooked together with vegetables for essential potassium. What we know of traditional carnivore diets is radically unlike what most nowadays think of which is based on a highly productive industrialized farming infrastructure that was not available for most of human history.

2 months ago

Profan

Eating reams of butter and cheese is a hell of a lot easier to sell than "hey you wanna go on this organ meat diet?" even if that's probably a lot more technically accurate

2 months ago

setgree

That, and probably a great deal of what we'd consider rotten meat:

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/meat-rotten-putrid-paleo...

But I suppose that part of the paleo diet doesn't have mass appeal

2 months ago

tivert

> That, and probably a great deal of what we'd consider rotten meat:

Natural human stomach pH is low, like carrion-eating scavenger-low: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gastric_acid#Comparison_betwee....

2 months ago

siliconc0w

And what muscle meat you'd get would likely be pretty lean - not a lot of nice USDA prime ribeyes in nature.

2 months ago

absolutelastone

I think most popular modern vegetables came along after farming also.

Anyway they've found evidence of heart disease in mummified human remains so you can't trust ancient people either.

2 months ago

dotinvoke

It makes no sense to go looking to the past for the ultimate health diet, ancient people had life expectancies of like 40.

2 months ago

alvah

Mainly due to infant mortality. Life expectancy at age 1 in the past was a lot closer to the current day than you’d think.

2 months ago

mvdtnz

Do a Google image search for Carnivore Diet. It's not at all "peculiar that so many think the carnivore diet is prime cuts of meat with butter and cheese" - this is exactly how it is marketed.

2 months ago

hammock

Goes to show you that your body is capable of extraordinary self-regulation.

Maintaining your health should focus first and foremost on remedying the DYSREGULATION that is often caused by inflammation, infection, trauma etc

And maybe even exercising its capabilities Of regulation, e.g. sauna/cold plunge cycles (just the first example I thought of)

2 months ago

mjamil

Goodhart’s Law in action. Targeting weight loss at the expense of overall health is a surefire way of guaranteeing early mortality.

2 months ago

slt2021

reminds me of obsession of some politicians with GDP as a single metric to optimize the economy (while offshoring jobs and local population deals with stress via drugs/opiates/antidepressants)

2 months ago

absolutelastone

A nonzero number of people will probably read this article and think "dangerous and gross.. but, exactly much weight loss are we talking about here?"

2 months ago

dismalaf

People always go on these extreme diets... From raw veganism to stuff like this.

What's wrong with just eating a bit of meat, fish, vegetables, carbs and fats? Just nice, real food in moderate amounts...

2 months ago

ender341341

While this is a particularly extreme example but I think most fad diets work because being so different from a normal diet people have to actually stop and think about what they're eating and make some level of plan around it which is easier to skip if you're just trying moderation where it's easier to grab something anywhere.

2 months ago

bluGill

That is also why the second round of such diets fail. First round you are eating less. Second round you start be finding the recipes for the "whatever diet" brownies and those tend to be just as high calorie and so you don't lose. Nothing wrong with a brownie once in a while. Even if you are overweight - so long as most days you don't each such things and so are on a calorie deficit.

2 months ago

oconnore

> What's wrong with just eating a bit

For one thing you won't get many likes, subscribes, retweets, or what have you.

2 months ago

tobr

The case is being studied and reported because it’s unusual. I’m not so sure that ”people always” is the right take here.

2 months ago

thisislife2

Health conscious, figure conscious people all of us experiment with our food to see the impact it has on us emotionally and physically. In fact, look at what the subject of our discussion himself said, "Since taking on this brow-raising food plan, he claimed his weight dropped, his energy levels increased, and his "mental clarity" improved."

But yes, as you pointed, there has been a real increase in "weird" diets in the past 3-4 decades. The internet is one factor. The other major reason for this, I believe, is the increased commercial competition in the food and agriculture industry. In the last 2-3 decades, we've all been bombarded with ads and PR campaigns about organic foods ("eat pure / natural / raw") and superfoods ("eat smart / right") or promotions of old-new crops ("eat what our elders ate") like Millets etc. etc. Then there's the PR campaigns from fast food and processed food industries and the PR campaigns from the instant cooking industry.

However much we would all like to think that we are immune from advertising campaigns, the reality is that it does impact us. So we shouldn't be surprised that people are confused and there has been a rise in eating orders - https://www.yandex.com/search/?text=rise+in+eating+disorders

2 months ago

scottyah

Usually they are suffering from something that did not go away with a doctor's visit so they take matters into their own hands. Diet is obviously one of the first things to try to change. You should see the food list I was permitted (FODMAP, though there's a lot of different versions of it) to try to see what was causing my gut issues. Almost all normal vegetables, carbs, and fats are on the Avoid list.

Usually it's not just the diet, but it is an easy and even fun place to start.

2 months ago

heresie-dabord

Eating in moderation and making informed, healthy choices is common sense, I agree.

It's just against the operating principles of a society with a massive industrial food economy. People are conditioned to eat on every occasion to the point that consuming food becomes the occasion.

2 months ago

NotGMan

Because when your gut/body/metabolsim breaks this "balanced diet" approach doesn't work.

People like that need to into all the way into eg no fiber, no carbs or they won't heal.

2 months ago

srid

That works if you have healthy gut flora, but not for others.

Including yours truly: https://srid.ca/carnivore-diet

2 months ago

ofrzeta

It's fine if it works for you but still on your page as well as your linked resources there are a lot of false claims.

For instance on that page about the Comanche it is claimed they only ate meat (which is absolutely inplausible from the start) but Wikipedia says they "also gathered wild fruits, seeds, nuts, berries, roots and tubers, including plums, grapes, juniper berries, persimmons, mulberries, acorns, pecans, wild onions, radishes, and tuna, the fruit of the prickly pear cactus. The Comanche also acquired maize, dried pumpkin, and tobacco through trade and raids."

Also, it seems, that meat is indeed not "nutritionally" complete and your source for that claim is some quack trying to sell his book?

It's great if a meat-only diet works for you, but I don't think there's scientific evidence to support it.

2 months ago

srid

That page <https://justmeat.co/peoples/> actually says "have eaten meat-heavy, if not exclusive diets" and even follows up with "Not all are necessarily fully carnivorous". If this is all the supposed fault you can find, it does easily expose your "a lot of false claims" motte-and-bailey furphy for what it actually is. In regards to "I don't think there's scientific evidence to support it", 'tis just as well I didn't have you advicing me all those years ago, else this conversation wouldn't even be happening (and I be free of my chronic condition), eh?

Finally, in regards to your "some quack" put-down, it actually behoves on you to provide evidence that an exclusively animal-based diet (especially with offal) is necessarily "deficient". It would seem that you lack sufficient understanding of nutrient bioavailability (generally high in animal foods), as well as the fact that RDA is not absolute (note for instance the reduced requirement speculations for Thiamin & Vitamin C in <https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/17/1/140>)?

2 months ago

ofrzeta

I don't get why you cite this study, or maybe you read it totally differently than me. As I understand it it only confirms my view:

"The carnivore diet met several NRV thresholds for nutrients such as riboflavin, niacin, phosphorus, zinc, Vitamin B6, Vitamin B12, selenium, and Vitamin A, and exceeded the sodium threshold. However, it fell short in thiamin, magnesium, calcium, and Vitamin C, and in iron, folate, iodine and potassium in some cases. Fibre intake was significantly below recommended levels."

2 months ago

srid

> you read it totally differently than me

Yes, I read it beyond the abstract. And if you did too, you'd know about the theory that "the requirement for thiamin is reduced due to a reduction in thiamin-requiring glycolytic metabolism" or that "the large quantities of carnitine available in an animal-based diet may provide Vitamin C sparing effect".

> As I understand it it only confirms my view

As even the abstract, that you limited yourself to read, goes on to confirm that these nutrient requirements are reduced in a carnivore diet -- cf. "facilitates a lower requirement of certain nutrients" -- then your understanding is a doozie, let alone it support your unsubstantiated view that "meat is indeed not "nutritionally" complete".

2 months ago

ofrzeta

Actually I read the abstract and the conclusion. However I think the abstract is there for a certain reason and my quote from the abstract absolutely confirms my point that a meat-based diet is insufficient. Anyway, I hope it's good for you, also in the long run (you mentioned something about cholesterol in another comment).

2 months ago

dylan604

My favorite extreme eating are the people that take the silver to the point of changing the color of their skin and act as if everything is fine.

2 months ago

hilux

Well, you can look at the US and global situation with obesity and diabetes, and see that whatever people are doing is not working.

2 months ago

jncfhnb

The problem is that it doesn’t satisfy food cravings that have been fostered by shitty food.

2 months ago

ofrzeta

Well, that would be too easy. Also doesn't make for a catchy name, book sales, and so on.

2 months ago

_elf

This gentleman is turning himself into wagyu.

2 months ago

casey2

Like it or not but this is what peak human form looks like

2 months ago

ge96

delicious on toast

2 months ago

qrush

These are called xanthelasmas for the curious - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xanthelasma

2 months ago

profsummergig

Holy sh*t. My mother had that.

She was severely overweight.

Mostly vegetarian, but had strange ideas about nutrition. E.g. she believed (from reading in the media) that seed oils were "Heart Healthy™ ".

2 months ago

qup

That's a superpower, I'm just not sure it's a useful one.

2 months ago

Uptrenda

I seriously wonder how his hospital admission went. "Help me nurse... I think I'm turning into butter..."

2 months ago

p_ing

The Kraft Mac&Cheese powder sauce comes from his hands!

2 months ago

bilbo0s

A bit off topic, but I thought this would be kind of a comedic fiction article a-la-Onion. I thought, "Oh here they go, unjustly skewering people from Florida again."

Then I read the article.

Sigh.

I've tried to agitate against the "Florida Man..." and "Florida Woman..." stereotype, but it's just gotten to a point.. I guess I don't know what to say anymore?

2 months ago

jeroenhd

Normally the whole "Florida man" thing happens because unlike many other states, Florida has a history of relatively public documentation of legal cases and police arrests. Journalists can just pick any cases that stand out and make funny looking articles because of whatever stunt the local teenagers, drunks, or drug addicts have been caught doing now. It's unfortunate that something like public access to law enforcement documents is being used to ridicule the state so much.

This isn't one of those cases, though. This is someone speedrunning a heart attack.

2 months ago

h0l0cube

Basically Poe’s law but not in the usual attribution

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law

2 months ago

ge96

Ohio as well and another one

2 months ago

[deleted]
2 months ago

jsbisviewtiful

I'm relieved the only included pictures were of hands :P

2 months ago

leshokunin

Heart disease speed run any%

2 months ago

femiagbabiaka

He's got cheese.. body.

2 months ago

instagib

“ High cholesterol is considered 240 mg/dL. The man's was over 1,000 mg/dL.”

2 months ago

[deleted]
2 months ago

faithdefender

[flagged]

2 months ago

k__

I did lose 10kg in 2 months on low carb and felt much clearer after a week of doing it.

But I couldn't keep it up for more than 3 months.

2 months ago

mvdtnz

Are you still on this diet?

2 months ago
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