Carnivore only Diet

[TeeDee]

I know we have some incredibly well read and educated people here specifically with an understanding of various societies ( past and present ) and their behaviours and habits.

So currently I'm interested in any examples related to people eating ONLY direct animal products?

ie - a Carnivore Diet.

Do they suffer with any health issues across their demographic or not?

Thanks,

 

[Tengu]

Arctic peoples would have eaten mostly meat.

Vit C would be an issue. (Oddly most animals can make it, not primates)

This is why they ate raw meat, and stomach contents.

There must be other examples...oddly most ethnographic accounts I have read dont say much about diet.

 

[TeeDee]

@Toddy - any ideas?

I take the point on Vitamin C Tengu.

 

[Robson Valley]

Inuit eat muktuk (raw seal blubber) which has a very good Vitamin C content.
I'm told that the elders continue to eat barren-ground cariboo stomach contents for its vegetable values. That, I'd have to grow up with, thank you very much.

Which African tribe bleed their cattle to drink the fresh blood?

 

[TeeDee]

Inuit eat muktuk (raw seal blubber) which has a very good Vitamin C content.
I'm told that the elders continue to eat barren-ground cariboo stomach contents for its vegetable values. That, I'd have to grow up with, thank you very much.

Which African tribe bleed their cattle to drink the fresh blood?

Maasai.

Maasai people - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[TeeDee]

I believe Organ Meats contain a lot of nutritional benefits beside protein and calories.

Blubber = Fat which is a great energy source so no doubt essential consumption for off setting the crazy temperatures that they have to endure.

I wonder if they have healthy blood work and health indicators, lack of CHD etc , I'd imagine they would.

 

[Robson Valley]

The PacNW FN salmon diet is a nutritional failure.

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2021-04/wsu-ppc040921.php

 

[Toddy]

Intestines, and their contents.
Thinking on it, that's maybe where we developed sausages

Seriously the intestines of sea mammals like walrus' were (and are according to the tv programme about the last walrus hunters off Russia's coast) are nutritious and a traditional food there. That and seabirds and their eggs.
There are no poisonous eggs, doesn't matter whether it's lizard or bird or fish, they're all edible.

I suppose it must be a bit like extreme veganism, just the other way around. Vegans have issues (arguable so do vegetarians, I take great care) with vitamin B12, I suspect meat eaters might have other ones and there are organs that need great care. Livers for instance. Polar bear ones are too high in Vitamin A for humans to eat without ending up very ill.
I don't know about other sea mammals.

Humans really have evolved to be the cooking ape. We can make almost anything organic edible by cooking it.
We don't have a meat eaters dentition, nor that of the grazers or the gnawers, nor do we have the stomach or gut of those either.

Modern humans are fortunate to be able to make the choice to not eat meat, or dairy, or not eat vegetables, and still remain healthy. I very much doubt that was so easy in the past.

We still have recipes in this country for seaweeds. I reckon folks must have to have been pretty hungry to think about how to make that into a meal. Similarly ducks or chicken feet
Or how about the roasted and ground inner bark of trees for bread ?

I don't fancy the herders diet of milk and blood much, but for all they say that's all they eat, the anthropologists say that those folks don't 'just' eat milk and blood, but either way they have evolved to be healthy on really high fat and cholesterol diets. They are lactase persistent, very much so, and (I can't mind the word for very cholesterol tolerant) their genetic tolerance for cholesterol seems to manage even when they change their traditional diet for the westernised high fat one.

There has to come a point though where the effort to obtain/process food is greater than the nutritional or calorific value of the food.

I know two people (well I did, I haven't seen them in twenty years) who insisted that they only ate meat. One roasted and ate an entire chicken every day. It was all he ate.The other happily ate burgers, sausages, bacon, eggs, kebabs, chops, tins of fish, etc., Both drank beer though, even though it was pointed out that it was really fermented grain and that those wee tins of fish were usually in vegetable oil.
They were both in their twenties then, looked healthy enough, but I have to admit that they were not the company one would wish to share a lift with, iimmc ?
They blamed the beer

 

[TeeDee]

Intestines, and their contents.
Thinking on it, that's maybe where we developed sausages

Seriously the intestines of sea mammals like walrus' were (and are according to the tv programme about the last walrus hunters off Russia's coast) are nutritious and a traditional food there. That and seabirds and their eggs.
There are no poisonous eggs, doesn't matter whether it's lizard or bird or fish, they're all edible.

I suppose it must be a bit like extreme veganism, just the other way around. Vegans have issues (arguable so do vegetarians, I take great care) with vitamin B12, I suspect meat eaters might have other ones and there are organs that need great care. Livers for instance. Polar bear ones are too high in Vitamin A for humans to eat without ending up very ill.
I don't know about other sea mammals.

Humans really have evolved to be the cooking ape. We can make almost anything organic edible by cooking it.
We don't have a meat eaters dentition, nor that of the grazers or the gnawers, nor do we have the stomach or gut of those either.

Modern humans are fortunate to be able to make the choice to not eat meat, or dairy, or not eat vegetables, and still remain healthy. I very much doubt that was so easy in the past.

We still have recipes in this country for seaweeds. I reckon folks must have to have been pretty hungry to think about how to make that into a meal. Similarly ducks or chicken feet
Or how about the roasted and ground inner bark of trees for bread ?

I don't fancy the herders diet of milk and blood much, but for all they say that's all they eat, the anthropologists say that those folks don't 'just' eat milk and blood, but either way they have evolved to be healthy on really high fat and cholesterol diets. They are lactase persistent, very much so, and (I can't mind the word for very cholesterol tolerant) their genetic tolerance for cholesterol seems to manage even when they change their traditional diet for the westernised high fat one.

There has to come a point though where the effort to obtain/process food is greater than the nutritional or calorific value of the food.

I know two people (well I did, I haven't seen them in twenty years) who insisted that they only ate meat. One roasted and ate an entire chicken every day. It was all he ate.The other happily ate burgers, sausages, bacon, eggs, kebabs, chops, tins of fish, etc., Both drank beer though, even though it was pointed out that it was really fermented grain and that those wee tins of fish were usually in vegetable oil.
They were both in their twenties then, looked healthy enough, but I have to admit that they were not the company one would wish to share a lift with, iimmc ?
They blamed the beer

Thanks Toddy , It is the application of the modern version of the Carnivore Diet that does interest me - to trial it in the short term but maybe include some very basic greens on occasion. I think the Western diet of too many refined easy / ( cheap !!! ) carbs have led the way to various diseases so currently I'm just looking into differing diet models.

 

[Fadcode]

Wherever the ground was not suitable for growing, Desert, frozen Tundra, there would not be any option, so meat/fish would probably be the mainstay of the diet.
You may recall that a lot of the voyagers bringing the goods through Canada died of malnutrition because their diet was mainly rabbit, which is not very nutritional.
A meat only diet would probably need some sort of supplements, just as a vegan diet does.

 

[TeeDee]

Wherever the ground was not suitable for growing, Desert, frozen Tundra, there would not be any option, so meat/fish would probably be the mainstay of the diet.
You may recall that a lot of the voyagers bringing the goods through Canada died of malnutrition because their diet was mainly rabbit, which is not very nutritional.
A meat only diet would probably need some sort of supplements, just as a vegan diet does.

I think there maybe a significant difference in between eating just the flesh as opposed to eating the offal ( Liver and Kidneys ) also.

 

[Fadcode]

very true, I used to like tripe when I was a kid, and black pudding which was made from offal in those days,

 

[Toddy]

Not just liver and kidneys though.

My Grandpa lived hale and healthy until his late 90's. He loved a singed (as in put into a fire and burned off the hair, etc.,) sheep's heid. Very traditional food for much of the UK.
The butcher used to crack the skull in half, divide the brains up and folks roasted it and ate it.
Now we have scrapie and BSE, etc., and no one eat the brains, but they were a nutritious item of diet for most of human history. He also like marrow. I still have the long thin marrow spoons for scooping the roasted marrow out of the bones.
Powsowdie was the soup/almost stew made from barley and the sheep's head. The head is boiled up long enough that the meat rather falls of the bones and the cartilage breaks down and thickens it up. A bit like the way potted hough is made or oxtail.

Stuffed heart and tripe were very popular foods too, and nutritious.

 

[TeeDee]

very true, I used to like tripe when I was a kid, and black pudding which was made from offal in those days,

I was also fed Tripe. Under the tyrannical use of the Cane however. It always tasted just wrong.

Can I ask how yours was cooked? Ours always seemed to be boiled in Milk with an Onion to hide the taste of silage.... ( fail )

However recently I've tried to find Tripe in local Butchers as I want to try to revisit it but no butchers are selling it.

Black Pudding is always good.

 

[TeeDee]

Not just liver and kidneys though.

My Grandpa lived hale and healthy until his late 90's. He loved a singed (as in put into a fire and burned off the hair, etc.,) sheep's heid. Very traditional food for much of the UK.
The butcher used to crack the skull in half, divide the brains up and folks roasted it and at it.
Now we have scrapie and BSE, etc., and no one eat the brains, but they were a nutritious item of diet for most of human history. He also like marrow. I still have the long thin marrow spoons for scooping the roasted marrow out of the bones.
Powsowdie was the soup/almost stew made from barley and the sheep's head. The head is boiled up long enough that the meat rather falls of the bones and the cartilage breaks down and thickens it up. A bit like the way potted hough is made or oxtail.

Stuffed heart and tripe were very popular foods too, and nutritious.

Fascinating to see how food stuff and intake have changed.

I will have to look up some of those items Toddy.

Its also interesting to me that such simple things as Bone Broth are making a resurgence in certain sectors of health conscious individuals.

 

[Toddy]

Buy a pressure cooker. Seriously, if you eat meat and want to make the best use of every bit then the pressure cooker is excellent.

The potted hough is just the boney tendon and cartilege rich lower leg of the beast. Pressure cook it and what meat is on the bones will just scrape off with a fork and the jus will be so rich in gelatine that the meat can be pressed down into a wee bowl or ramkin and saturated and topped with the jus. Set it aside someplace cold and it'll firm up and can be sliced up. We usually add black pepper, salt and some ground mace to it. It's a favourite of my husband. He eats it sliced up and put on buttered toast. My Dad just liked it served with fried eggs.

If you pressure cook chicken carcases long enough they end up mostly jelly and jus. Bung the giblets in too, that will really break down.
Beef/pork/mutton bones are best roasted in the oven first. Adds to the flavour.
Makes a really nutritious soup or stock.

Me ? I am a good vegetarian
I've made haggis, and black pudding, from scratch. I never quite got the hang of enjoying meat, and have never missed it from my diet.

We can still get tripe here, but you can buy it online and have it delivered if you can't find it locally.
Like this....

Tripe - John Davidsons

This is an almost forgotten product, high in protein, Tripe was once regarded as a staple food that is still to this day loved by many all across the world.

www.johndavidsons.com

 

[TeeDee]

Buy a pressure cooker. Seriously, if you eat meat and want to make the best use of every bit then the pressure cooker is excellent.

The potted hough is just the boney tendon and cartilege rich lower leg of the beast. Pressure cook it and what meat is on the bones will just scrape off with a fork and the jus will be so rich in gelatine that the meat can be pressed down into a wee bowl or ramkin and saturated and topped with the just. Set it aside someplace cold and it'll firm up and can be sliced up. We usually add black pepper, salt and some ground mace to it. It's a favourite of my husband. He eats it sliced up and put on buttered toast. My Dad just liked it served with fried eggs.

If you pressure cook chicken carcases long enough they end up mostly jelly and jus. Bung the giblets in too, that will really break down.
Beef/pork/mutton bones are best roasted in the oven first. Adds to the flavour.
Makes a really nutritious soup or stock.

Me ? I am a good vegetarian
I've made haggis, and black pudding, from scratch. I never quite got the hang of enjoying meat, and have never missed it from my diet.

We can still get tripe here, but you can buy it online and have it delivered if you can't find it locally.
Like this....

Tripe - John Davidsons

This is an almost forgotten product, high in protein, Tripe was once regarded as a staple food that is still to this day loved by many all across the world.

www.johndavidsons.com

Thanks for the link Toddy , I'll be ordering some.

Interesting to see here how Mr Ramsay managed to make it more acceptable to the younger generations.


While the older generations eat it cold.....

 

[Kav]

Traditional Inuit who survived accident or injury had a high rate of liver failure according to early Canadian contacts. The idea of a 'Paleo diet' of just cutting steaks off a big game animal with a hand axe and charring it over a fire is wrong. We are learning more about diet via fossilized plaque and pollen. Diets can be very complex and SEASONAL with lichen, insects, honey, fungi, seeds and roots.

 

[Robson Valley]

Your Hudson's Bay Company demanded meticulous record keeping by the Factors of every fur-trading post. For the travelling traders, not as post food, Rocky Mountain House put up an annual quote of 44,000 lbs pemmican. The other posts had their quotas as well. This is defined as nearly 1/2 dried and pounded bison meat with 1/2 bison fat. That was put up in 60 lb bison hide bags, a lesser grade was put up in 90 lb hide bags.
No sugary berry additive, that only promotes mold and spoilage.

Each night on the trade routes, the crew prepared a "burgoo" of root vegetables and pemmican. Reads to me like they ate reasonably well.
Since I have had many years of easy access to bison and bison backstrap fat, I used the HBC numbers and advice from Assiniboia elders to make pemmican.
I would rather eat the bum out of a skunk.

Paddling all day, nearly day, left no time to pussy-foot through the forest for deer, rabbits and so on. Our bush-bunnies have very little meat on them. Hind quarters on my table and that's about it (with plum sauce.)

 

[TLM]

We still have recipes in this country for seaweeds. I reckon folks must have to have been pretty hungry to think about how to make that into a meal.

This from WP, I came across an article telling more: "Ángel León, a Spanish chef, has planted meadows of Z. marina (described as "sea rice") in the Bay of Cádiz in order to harvest the grains. The texture is described as between rice and quinoa, but with a more saline flavour. It is gluten-free and high in fibre."