The Carnivore Diet Wants to Convince You to Eat a Stick of Butter for Breakfast

Have you ever eaten a stick of butter? Not in a pie crust or spread on toast — I’m talking about biting into a plain stick of butter. Or maybe you’ve browned butter, frozen it into “popsicles,” and enjoyed it as a treat?

Either of these options will likely shock most people or sound like something you’d do on a dare, but they’re often par for the course for those who adhere to the carnivore diet and their audiences online.

The idea of an animal-based diet has existed for centuries. German author Bernard Moncriff’s 1856 book The Philosophy of the Stomach; or an Exclusively Animal Diet is the Most Wholesome and Fit for Man outlines an argument for why men can and should eat an animal-only diet. Throughout the 19th century, James Salisbury, a physician and creator of the Salisbury steak, advocated for a beef-heavy diet with low amounts of fruits, vegetables, and carbohydrates. In 1979 Scottish doctor John Rollo began prescribing a diet of only meat and fat for patients with diabetes, a practice that became popular with other physicians until the discovery of insulin.

But the term “carnivore diet” was only popularized in the past few years, and social media’s ability to cultivate subcultures has created the ideal space for carnivore communities to form and grow. Simply put: there’s never been a better time to be a carnivore diet content creator. Although carnivore influencers can now leverage Instagram and TikTok to reach other like-minded individuals who are interested in eating animal products exclusively, part of their success is thanks to the controversy that this kind of content stokes. Someone biting into a stick of butter will certainly stop you in your tracks — and it will either catch your attention in a good way or possibly prompt you to leave a disgusted comment. Either way, it’s generating engagement, the fuel of algorithmic success.

For someone like me, who deeply values having carbohydrates and vegetables throughout the day, it might seem easy to dismiss the carnivore diet community. But that doesn’t negate the fact that it’s becoming increasingly visible and likely primed for more success as efforts to “Make America Healthy Again” amplify belief in scientifically dubious health claims. (Joe Rogan, host of one of the most-listened-to podcasts in the world with 18.9 million subscribers on YouTube and currently holding the number one spot on Spotify's list of most popular podcasts in the United States, has featured carnivore experts on his show and given the diet a try.) .

As with other hotly contested parts of the food world — like seed oils — there are a variety of opinions on whether the carnivore diet is good or bad for you. Carnivore diet enthusiasts may claim that it can heal hormonal imbalances or chronic gastrointestinal issues, while conventional medical wisdom directly opposes these notions, stating that consuming too much red meat can put you at greater risk for cardiovascular disease and even cancer. But harmful or not, the carnivore diet is a growing presence online, and ignoring parts of the food landscape doesn’t mean they don’t exist.

To start, it’s important to note that the carnivore diet does not look identical for everyone. One of the most extreme renditions is the lion diet, which dictates that you can only partake in ruminant meat, salt, and water. (Ruminant meat hails from animals with a ruminant digestive system, including cows, sheep, goats, bison, and deer). This degree of restriction is less common than other forms of animal-based diets, but it does have its own digital presence. Influencer Mikhaila Fuller, daughter of right-wing author and psychologist Jordan Peterson, has built up a large following for her promotion of the lion diet.

Many other variations on the carnivore diet are more generous, allowing the consumption of any animal-derived products — hence why carnivores often refer to their diet as “animal-based.” This can include all or a selection of pork, poultry, fish, shellfish, eggs, and dairy. (Quite a few carnivore content creators have come under fire for touting the benefits of raw milk, which food safety experts repeatedly point out is more than pasteurized milk likely to carry food-borne pathogens.) Other subtle choices, like whether or not spices may be used to flavor meat, may differ depending on who is practicing this way of eating.

Related: Why Is Social Media Telling Us It’s OK to Drink Raw Milk?

The journey that each content creator takes to arrive at the carnivore diet is similarly personal, but there are shared experiences among animal-based eaters. Bella, better known as @steakandbuttergal online (a handle that accurately indicates two of her dietary staples), switched to the carnivore diet after being vegan for six years in the hopes of healing issues with her hormonal health and skin. “I started a carnivore diet because I was sick and tired of feeling sick and tired. So I really had a lot to heal,” Bella tells Food & Wine. “I lost my period…. So I was searching for answers on what to do to bring my period back and also to heal my skin. At that time I was struggling with cystic acne, I was struggling with psoriasis and eczema.”

When first starting a carnivore diet, Bella focused on a high-fat and low-variety approach to eating, explaining that “In the beginning I would say I was [eating the highest amount of fat]. So I would be eating a whole stick of butter per day every day because I was just that deficient in fat.” But now, six years in, she’s expanded to include a wider array of ingredients like cheese, kefir, chicken, seafood, pork, and eggs.

If you see a carnivore diet content creator, the odds are high that their journey began with — or at some point was guided by — The Carnivore Diet by Dr. Shawn Baker. From how to start a carnivore diet to the ideal cooking temperatures for different meats, the 224-page book is a guide to every aspect of being a carnivore. Baker (@shawnbaker1967), who is often credited as the founder of the modern carnivore movement, is regularly featured as a spokesperson for the community, and it was Baker who appeared on Joe Rogan’s podcast to explain the ins and outs of the diet.

Like Rogan, Baker’s popularity is frequently mixed with controversy — his medical license was revoked in 2017, before being reinstated in 2019, although he has not returned to practicing as an orthopedic surgeon — and it’s surprising to hear a doctor recommend a way of eating that contradicts what we know about a healthy diet. Baker believes that the carnivore diet is particularly useful for healing chronic illnesses and gut issues, telling Food & Wine that “I started talking about this is because I saw a lot of people actually healing various diseases, anything from Crohn’s disease or psoriasis to depression to diabetes and so on and so forth.”

Baker is now solely focused on the carnivore diet, and his life centers around helping other people discover its benefits. Just this month, he announced a video partnership with Bella, which the two will use to teach new carnivores everything about going animal-based. When speaking with him, it’s clear that he’s prepared with ample information to convince skeptics that the carnivore diet is helpful, not harmful — he cites both personal stories of individuals being healed through the carnivore diet and a litany of medical and biological terms ranging from the gut’s microvilli to production of creatine, all of which are difficult to disagree with when you're interviewing him in the moment.

Some of these claims are more questionable — like when Baker says that people on the carnivore diet don’t get scurvy, a vitamin C deficiency historically common in sailors who didn’t have access to fruits and vegetables. But other beliefs are more approachable, like his emphasis on the carnivore diet as simply another tool in the arsenal of treatments that can be leveraged to combat chronic diseases. He notes that some carnivores may “think vegetables are trying to kill you and all this stuff. And I think that’s a little bit of nonsense. I think this is something that is just a very powerful therapeutic tool.”

Consuming carnivore content can be a slippery slope. For a layperson like me, not versed in medicine, it may be difficult to parse through wordy assertions that the carnivore diet is backed by scientific evidence. However, the vast majority of doctors consistently say that such a narrow diet carries health risks. Penny Kris-Etherton, PhD, registered dietitian, science advisory board member at Humann, and a professor emeritus at the Department of Nutritional Sciences at Penn State University, tells Food & Wine that “Dietary diversity, particularly the inclusion of plant-based foods, plays a crucial role in helping to promote a healthy gut microbiome and decrease IBS symptoms mainly by providing essential nutrients for gut health.”

Related: Are Seed Oils Bad for You? Here Are the Facts

Kris-Etherton also mentions the potential cardiovascular impacts of a carnivore diet, which are among the greatest concerns. “Although research on the health effects of a Carnivore diet is lacking, we do know that a diet that only includes animal products (mainly meats, eggs, and low carbohydrate dairy products like butter and hard cheeses) and excludes all other foods, i.e., fruits, vegetables, legumes, grains, nuts, and seeds has adverse cardiovascular health effects. Most notably, it markedly increases LDL-cholesterol, the very bad cholesterol that is a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease.”

Qi Sun, associate professor in the Departments of Nutrition and Epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, echoed this concern, saying that “Eating a meat-dense diet may lead to an elevated risk of developing multiple chronic diseases, such as type two diabetes, heart disease, and colorectal cancer, to name a few. The reasons for these links are not entirely clear, but excess animal fat intake, heme iron intake, and insulin-raising effects of animal proteins may play a role.”

However, both Kris-Etheron and Sun mention that more research is needed on the effects of an animal-based diet. In a nutshell, there’s more we can learn about the carnivore diet. In the meantime, we can rest assured that, as with everything else, it’s not a magical panacea and anyone practicing it should consult a doctor to ensure they are meeting their nutritional needs and not putting their health at risk.

What is clear about the carnivore diet is that — whether you like it or not — it's finding growing support and community through digital platforms. Bella has 408,000 followers on Instagram, and Baker has 592,000, not to mention the dozens of other carnivore content creators who collaborate with them. The shock factor of seeing someone eat a stick of butter and two steaks in a single serving is an undeniably powerful visual hook, and it's likely to pull in more people on social media.

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