Works by Harvard-affiliated authors
Excerpted from “Fed Up: What Evolution Reveals about Food, Diet, Health, and Eating Well” by Daniel Lieberman, the Edwin M. Lerner II Professor of Biological Sciences and Professor of Human Evolutionary Biology
While still a student at the University of Bristol in the mid-1990s, the future pop star James Blunt decided to eat nothing but minced beef, chicken, and mayonnaise. By his own admission, he thought the diet would assert his masculinity. It didn’t go well. According to Mr. Blunt, “It took me about six to eight weeks to get very unhealthy and see a doctor, who then said, ‘I think you’ve got the symptoms of scurvy.’” Thankfully, eating plants with vitamin C was a quick remedy, but Blunt’s troubles are just one of many potential problems caused by never eating plants. And in this respect, by experimenting on themselves, hardcore carnivore dieters are doing a favor to others who have no intention of following their example.
The first health problem carnivore dieters (keto dieters, too) usually encounter is a condition called a keto flu — so named because suddenly flooding the body with ketone bodies can cause flu-like symptoms. These include headache, nausea, constipation or diarrhea (take your pick), cramps, fatigue, irritability, and brain fog. But as your body slowly adapts, these symptoms usually resolve in a few weeks, especially if one drinks plenty of water and eats enough salt.
