Episode 124 Summary
Who is Dr Anthony Chaffee? Anthony Chaffee is an American neurosurgical registrar who has an interest in diet, nutrition, and athletic performance. He first became interested in these topics as a teenager and a top-level rugby player. He later commenced a carnivore diet after learning about the toxic defense chemicals that plants use to deter animals and insects from eating them. He defaulted to a carnivore diet because he found that it made him feel superhuman and allowed his body to do things that he wasn't able to do previously.
The Benefits of a Species-Appropriate Diet - Eating a diet that is specific to the biology and natural history of a particular species is essential for overall health and wellbeing. Dr. Anthony Chaffee believes that humans are biologically appropriate carnivores, and a focus on meat intake is necessary for optimal health.
Why Meat and Fat Should Not Be Avoided - Contrary to popular belief, meat and fat are not harmful and should not be avoided due to fear of causing heart disease or diabetes. In fact, women should be encouraged to consume more meat because they are often iron deficient.
Foods to Avoid - Dr. Chaffee recommends reducing our intake of carbohydrates, sugar, and alcohol and avoiding nightshades, such as potatoes, tomatoes, and eggplants. Nightshades are worse than other foods due to their solanine content, which can be reduced through peeling, blanching, and seed removal. Beans, legumes, seeds, and nuts should also be avoided as they contain defense chemicals that are toxic.
Tips for Better Results on the Carnivore Diet - Dr. Chaffee suggests that those who are not getting the desired results on the carnivore diet should avoid consuming spices, sweeteners, tea, or coffee as they can interfere with results. He cites an example of an Inuit woman who had been on a meat-only diet for 40 years and suffered from four different autoimmune conditions which all resolved when she stopped using spices when preparing her meals.
Debunking Misconceptions about Red Meat - Many people are concerned about studies and news articles linking red meat to cancer and heart disease. However, the evidence supporting this is weak, and there are more identified carcinogens in plants than in meat. The studies linking red meat to cancer or disease are poorly done and more propaganda than science.
Final Thoughts - The media tends to sensationalize health news and take soundbites out of context, which confuses the community. It's important to understand the specific dietary requirements of humans and animals, and a species-appropriate diet can help prevent disease and promote overall health and wellbeing.
Relevant Links:
Belinda Fettke podcasts:
WHO plant toxins list:
https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/natural-toxins-in-food
Dr Chaffee's Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/AnthonyChaffeeMD
Dr Anthony Chaffee's 30 Day Carnivore Challenge:
https://www.howtocarnivore.com/
We're excited to confirm that Dr. Anthony Chaffee will be speaking at The Low Carb Road Show in Perth on Sunday, April 23rd.
Joining him are these remarkable low carb rock stars and health experts:
Dr. Peter Brukner OAM
Dr. Lucy Burns
Dr. Mary Barson
Claire MacDonell-Lui
Lynda Rose
Beck Newton
Don't miss out on this opportunity to learn from Australia's leading low carb health professionals. Get your tickets now for a full day conference at a fabulous venue, including delicious low carb meals and snacks, tea, coffee, and water throughout the day, plenty of opportunities for connection and mingling, a delegate workbook, and giveaways and door prizes. Early bird tickets are available for purchase before March 1st. Follow the link below for more information.
Book your ticket to the low carb road show! Thanks to our platinum sponsor, LAKANTO
Dr Anthony Chaffee Bio:
Dr Anthony Chaffee is an American medical doctor specialising in Neurosurgery who over a span of 20 years has researched the optimal nutritional habits for athletic performance and health. It is his assertion that most of the so-called chronic diseases that doctors treat these days are actually caused by the food we eat, or don’t eat, and can in many cases be reversed easily with dietary changes. Dr. Chaffee began his University education studying Molecular & Cellular Biology with a Minor in Chemistry at the University of Washington in Seattle at the age of 15, which culminated in attaining his MD from the Royal College of Surgeons. Dr. Chaffee is an All-American rugby player and a former professional athlete in England and America, having taken several years off from his education for the pursuit of sports between his undergraduate degree and medical school. Throughout his athletic career he saw first hand the monumental difference that diet makes to performance and recovery. Dr. Chaffee almost accidentally came across and practiced a fully carnivorous diet from age 20 to 25, having first learned of the toxic nature of plants during his University education. Since then he has rediscovered this truth and more and has dedicated many years and a large part of his professional practice to the study and education of diet and nutrition. He personally practices a fully carnivorous diet and currently resides in Perth, Australia where he does private consultations and clinics in functional medicine and nutrition.
Links:
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@anthonychaffeemd
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/anthonychaffeemd/
YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzoRyR_nlesKZuOlEjWRXQQ/videos
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/AnthonyChaffeeMD
30 Day Carnivore Challenge Website: https://www.howtocarnivore.com/
Show notes:
Episode 124 - Is Carnivore Healthy?
Dr Mary Barson: (0:11) Hello, my lovely listeners. I'm Dr. Mary Barson.
Dr Lucy Burns: (0:15) And I'm Dr. Lucy Burns. Welcome to this episode of Real Health and Weight Loss. Gorgeous ones Dr. Lucy here. Every Friday, I'm going to be interviewing an extra special expert in low carb. All of our experts are involved in the Low Carb Roadshow. The Low Carb Roadshow is a concept that Dr. Mary and I have founded where we are bringing low carb conferences to the people. We are travelling to most of Australia's capital cities. And this year's event is sponsored by Lakanto, who make non sugar sweeteners. For more information and to check out an event in your capital city, go to www.lowcarbroadshow.com. Today's guest is presenting at low carb Perth on April the 23rd. He is an American doctor. And he's well renowned in the carnivore movement. So we thought we'd have a chat with him and hear his thoughts on carnivore. Welcome to the podcast, Dr. Anthony Chafee. Anthony, it is so good to have you on the podcast. I'm thrilled. And I'm sure our audience is going to be super keen to hear about you, your story and the carnivore movement. So I thought we'd start with perhaps just a little introduction, so you can tell our listeners about yourself and how you've come to be where you are.
Dr Anthony Chaffee: (1:46) Oh, well, thank you very much for having me. I'm looking forward to it as well. Well, I'm an American doctor. I grew up in California and then have lived pretty much everywhere since then, all over the US and in Europe, and now Australia. I am currently a neurosurgical registrar. But I've also had a very keen interest in diet, nutrition and how that affects health and chronic disease, and specifically athletic performance. Since I was a teenager, and actually before my undergraduate degree in university, I always played sports, and I was a top level rugby player in the US, and played at professional level in the US and England. And I just wanted to know how to feel my body properly. So I was always very interested in that, and also wanting to be a doctor in the future that just, you know, fit very well with what I wanted to learn about. So I came around this way of eating about 23 years ago now, when I was taking cancer biology at the University of Washington in Seattle, and we were learning just how plants were toxic. And the reason they were is by design, they use these defence chemicals to deter animals from eating them, and insects as well. And some of these can be quite carcinogenic. So we were learning that from a carcinogen point of view from a cancer point of view, because it was a cancer biology class. And we learned right away that things like brussel sprouts had 136 identified human carcinogens in them, and that mushrooms had over 100 carcinogens in them, but that all the other vegetables that we eat and we find in the grocery store like spinach and broccoli, and kale, they all have dozens of carcinogens as well. We were very taken aback by this. I remember thinking to myself, like how can, how can this be, like?
Dr Lucy Burns: (3:26) How can this be? Yes.
Dr Anthony Chaffee: (3:27) And you know, because you're drilled into, this is drilled into you since birth, that you know that just vegetables are just the best things for you. And I remember thinking in my head was like, ‘Well, but aren't they still good for you though?’, even though I'm just learning all this? And my professor just looked at us, he must have read our minds, because he just looked at us as he just said, ‘I don't eat salad. I don't eat vegetables. I don't let my kids eat vegetables. Plants are trying to kill you.’ So I said, ‘Okay, stop eating plants.’ And I went to the grocery store. And absolutely everything had plants included in it some sort of ingredient or seasoning, or just in the entirety was some sort of plant or grain. And just walking around like "Oh my god, what do I eat?”, and I passed by some eggs, I was like ah, eggs, they don't come from a plant. Meat doesn't come from a plant. And so I just defaulted into a carnivore diet, because I just did not want to eat plants. And years and years later, I then realise the significance of that, because actually, at the time that my health entirely changed. It wasn't like I was an unhealthy person. I was an all American rugby player playing at the top professional level in America. But you know, and so I felt amazing. I was already feeling good. But this just went to the next level, I just felt superhuman and my body just was able to do things that just no one else could do, that I wasn't able to do previously. And so it just really, really changed everything. And it wasn't until many years later that it clicked for me. Wait, hold on. Humans actually are carnivores. That's what all the best evidence shows that we've been carnivores, our ancestors have been carnivores going back two to three million years. And when an animal eats what it evolved to eat, its biologically appropriate species specific diet is, they do better. You know, as any zookeeper can tell you, you feed an animal something that it doesn't eat in the wild, something that didn't evolve on it can get sick, and they get what's called human diseases like diabetes and heart disease and cancer and autoimmune diseases. And this is why there are signs at the zoo and signs of the park saying ‘Don't feed the animals. This makes them sick.’ And we don't realise that, you know, there's a ‘don't feed the animals’ the thing you're eating. It makes them sick.
Dr Lucy Burns: (5:41) Yeah, yeah, yeah
Dr Anthony Chaffee: (5:42) Sick too. And that's what we don't realise. And so that clicked for me later on, that ,wait, hold on, I was living as a carnivore I was eating as a carnivore. That's what was making the difference. And so at that point, I really started digging into the literature and saying, Okay, what what do we know what can we prove and what what else do we need to show so that's what I've been doing and trying to incorporate that into my practice because I just see this helps so many people reverse very serious ailments. Because, you know, as I've sort of alluded to, I don't think these human diseases are actually diseases, I think that they're from eating the wrong things or toxicities and malnutrition. And you can even go back further, you can go back 100 years, 200 years, 500 years. And you can see that these diseases were certainly not as prevalent as they are now. But most of them were known about. And they were called diseases of the West, because indigenous population, the European explorers came to, did not get them. And so the Australian Aboriginals and Native Americans and other populations that just ate meat, as we had been doing for millions of years, did not get these Western diseases. Now we call them just human diseases, because everybody gets them because everyone's eating this way. And now animals are getting human diseases and vets are saying now that domestic pets, there's an increased prevalence in human diseases as well as because we're feeding them more of the same nonsense that we're eating.
Dr Lucy Burns: (7:04) Oh, absolutely. And in fact, I think probably the rate of you know, type two diabetes in cats and dogs is just astronomical. But yeah, it's fascinating. So 23 years ago, you would have been considered, you know, a weirdo. Like, nobody would eat the way you were? How did you manage that? Didn't you get bombarded with people going? Oh, my God, you're so unhealthy.
Dr Anthony Chaffee: (7:27) Yeah.Yeah, That's the funny thing, because I wasn't thinking about it so no one else thought about it, that no one cared. I think back on that, because I was doing that for years and years and years. No one said a thing, not a single thing. Because I just said, I don't want to eat plants. I never talked about it. I just did it, you know, and so like, you know, you're at the dinner table, there's always meat there anyway, at least at my house. And so that’s all I wanted to eat anyway, and I was an adult now. So my parents couldn't force me to eat vegetables. And so I've just grabbed the meat. And that's it. And, and I wasn't, you know, preaching to anyone saying, Oh, my God, you don't want to do that plants are trying to kill you or anything like that. It was just very, very firmly stuck in my head. And so that's what I did. And so when it would be dinner and there would be meat on the table, I would just, I would just get the meat, I would just eat the meat. And when I was cooking for myself, I just ate meat and that was fine. You know, it never really came up. Then when I was doing this consciousness, oh no, okay, this is really what it is. You really shouldn't eat it because we're carnivores. And because of all this. I was like, okay, that makes sense. Now, well, then I was conscious about it. And I was a little self conscious about it. And so then it came up, we were at restaurants and I'm like thinking like, Oh, they're gonna think I'm weird or something like that. It's like, you've been doing this for 20 years. Like, who cares? You know, no one has cared so far.
Dr Lucy Burns: (8:43) Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yep.
Dr Anthony Chaffee: (8:44) And then you’re just sort of there and you're sort of self conscious. And then you feel you feel the need to talk about, well, this is why I'm doing it and whatever. And then people are like, okay, but then they'll talk about it. And maybe they'll be interested, maybe they'll think you're weird. A lot of the time, you know, if you have the arguments, and they understand and go okay, all right, that sort of makes sense. And you know, a lot of people have come to a carnivore way of eating, or at least eating more meat, just because of those conversations that I've had with them. But, you know, it was really just because I felt a little self conscious early on that I felt the need to justify what I was doing. Whereas before, I just didn't care. I was just like, it was like, oh no not eating plants. And so as..
Dr Lucy Burns: (9:24) Which embodies one of our favourite lines, which is ‘Eating is not a team sport. It's an individual pursuit.’
Dr Anthony Chaffee: (9:30) Yeah
Dr Lucy Burns: (9:31) Just, you do you, they do them but, and I can see that worked really well. But it's interesting, isn't it? Because as you learn more and more about it, you, you know, we feel this. And sometimes it feels like a complete obligation to just let people know what's actually really going on.
Dr Anthony Chaffee: (9:50) Yeah. And the thing is too and you’re, right, that when I want to learn more about it, and learn, actually how important this was eat this way, and just the the improvements that I was getting were specific to that way of eating, I felt that I wanted to share that I felt that I wanted other people to know about it, so that they could improve their life as well. Whereas, you know, 20 years ago, I'm like oop, yep, no plants, plants are trying to kill me, I'm not going to do that. But I didn't really understand to the extent that I do now, just what that meant, and just how serious and important that was. And so now I think that it is important. And I think that people deserve to know these sorts of things as well, which is, you know, why I talk about these things with people and why I started my podcasts and YouTube channel because I just wanted to sort of get the information out there to people so they could do what they want with it. Like I really don't mind what people eat. I don't care if they smoke or they drink. I don't, I really don't care. I don't care what adults choose to do with their own bodies. But I would like them to know about it. You know, like just back in the oh, 50, 70, 100 years ago when doctors you know, ‘Nine out of ten Doctors choose camel”, or something like that. Yes, it's like they’re good for you! I don't care if people smoke. I'd like them not to because I'd like them to be healthy, but I just don't want them to think they should smoke, because it's good for him, you know, like, I don't really like this, but I guess I'll have to, you know, like eating a bunch of vegetables, you know, and if you want to eat vegetables, like go for it, but I don't want them to feel obligated to if they don't want to, and to at least understand that the dietary recommendations that we've had, aren’t actually necessarily as good for you as we thought they were.
Dr Lucy Burns: (11:30) Well, we certainly know that and that the vested interest groups have sort of, you know, been able to weasel their way in and make enormous impact, kind of like with people just offline, not even realising. So yeah, it's certainly a problem. Now, one of the questions, I've got though, so you, your brain was tweaked when the lecturer said, you know, they're carcinogens, they're trying to kill you. How do you marry that up with then, you know, when people go, but red meat’s a carcinogen, it's bad for you.? What's your argument with that?
Dr Anthony Chaffee: (12:01) Well, I mean, just you have to look at the evidence and reasons why, you know, the carcinogens in plants have been catalogued, and named everything like that. People’ll say that red meat in general is a carcinogen. It's like, okay, what chemicals in red meat are carcinogenic? They can't answer that. They say, well, there's this association with homocysteine. So what Okay, so what chemical causes cancer in red meat? You know, they don't have an answer for that. Whereas there were 136, individually identified chemicals in brussel sprouts 20 to 23 years ago, right. So these are things that you can put on paper saying this name, this name, this name, this name, this name. And this is not a secret, I mean, the WHO which, which pushes a plant based agenda, they have a whole website dedicated to natural toxins, and carcinogens in food. And if you go there, you will see that every single one is a plant, fungus, or algae. None of them are meat, not a single one. Red meat does not make that list. It is all plants. And they say specifically in there, these can be toxic, these can be deadly, these can be mutagenic. These can be carcinogenic. And so this is actually well known and well established in botany and biology. These are hard sciences, this is not the soft science of nutritional medicine, which is, like you say, eminently corrupted from different corporations and different food interests. And also originally, I mean, the original study of dietetics, started in about 1917, with the Seventh Day Adventists, who have a religious fundamental belief, that meat, it causes lust and is therefore sinful. So they're saying on a religious point, that meat is bad for you. And now they're trying to really corrupt the data to say, to show that scientifically, no, no meat really is bad for you. This is a religious agenda. This is not actual science, in fact,
Dr Lucy Burns: (14:01) Absolutely. And in fact, we have a podcast series that just came out from Belinda Fettke, going through all of that. So I will link that in the show notes. But also, Anthony, I will link the WHO toxic plant website link so that if people want to look further into it, they can just click on the show notes and it'll be in there.
Dr Anthony Chaffee: (14:21) There's other institutions as well. There's other governmental bodies, like the New Zealand government, US government, all these sorts of things, they have websites, looking at the toxic nature of plants, and any, especially in animal agriculture, and animal nutrition. Animal Nutrition actually is a very robust science because, you know, with human models, you can't really do a randomised control trial with 1000s of individuals and exactly the same situations throughout a lifetime. Right? It's not ethical, it's not practical. You can do that with sheep. You can do that with mice, you can do that with goats, you can do that with cows. And so they actually have very, very strong scientific studies, looking at how exactly do these things work? And there are many diseases, if you want to call them that, with names that are not like diseases that they caught from something, they are from eating something outside of their natural diet, and big head, limp neck, you know, crazy cow syndrome, all these things are specific to eating the wrong thing. And they get poisoned, because there's poisons and toxins in there and their body can't break them down and detoxify them properly. And they get acute problems. And you can get some things that aren't as acute that over time will build up to arthritis and diabetes and things like that. And sorry, just to finish off with the red meat thing. University of Washington in Seattle, they just published a large literature review meta analysis of the literature on all the studies looking at red meat and saying that it's carcinogenic or causes diseases and things like that. And they're like, these are weak, weak studies. This is lazy science. This is not good evidence, and they just critiqued all of it and they found just like look, there is no strong evidence to say that that red meat causes cancer or is even associated with cancer. These are very poor studies, very poorly done. And they're, they're more propaganda than science. And so that was just published earlier this year. And, you know, and I would agree with that. And if you read the studies, that purport to show a link between red meat and cancer, you find that there's very weak associations usually, like 18%, whereas like any sort of epidemiological studies, or like survey studies, I mean, this is, this has so many confounding factors and that it doesn't have a strong enough signal like over 200% increase correlation, you really don't pay attention to it. And people don't realise that, that haven't studied statistics.
(16:47) So this is put off like, Oh, my goodness, there's this increase in bowel cancer with red meat. No, this one study showed that there may be an increased association of 18%. So it's far less than 200%. And there's many other confounding factors, like, you know, we're just being told that red meat’s bad for us, so people avoid it. And the people who don't avoid it, say, ‘Well, I don't care, I'm just gonna live my life, I enjoy it’. Well, what else do they enjoy, they enjoy smoking, they enjoy drinking, they enjoy driving fast, they enjoy extreme sports. So in that same category, a group of people, these people are more likely to smoke, more likely to drink, more likely to die in a car accident, more likely to die in extreme sports. So that ohl look! Eating red meat is associated with all cause mortality. All cause mortality. So if you die in a plane crash that has something to do with what you ate for dinner? You know, no! You know, and all these other factors that go into it that they do not account for, because they're trying to show something that doesn't exist. And then when people have redone those studies, and controlled for those variables, they found there's no link at all. And then the University of Washington looked at all the data and found that yeah, this is nonsense.
Dr Lucy Burns: (17:53) It's so interesting. And I think the other thing that sort of contributes to this is media who love sensationalised clickbait or soundbites. And I remember, I think it was last year, there was a study that showed there was an increased risk of type two diabetes in Chinese women who ate eggs. It was like, what? And then when you went into the study, you realised it was eggs that were in anything? So eggs that were in cakes counted, eggs that were in custard with sugar, all of that counted, and that was, and maybe the Chinese women are eating more cakes and custard. But yeah, it was just rubbish. But, you know, again, media went ‘Wow, oh, eggs cause type two diabetes!” So it's really, you're right. It's so tricky to tease apart all of that. And, you know, for someone like me, who doesn't understand science, but I still get bogged down by it. So the average layperson, it's, it is, it's really, really tricky. And I think we, you know, at Real Life Medicine, we spend a lot of time just sort of following the money, you know, following who's funding the group? Who's funding the science as well, because that's also you know, just another whole can of worms.
Dr Anthony Chaffee: (19:07) Yeah, absolutely. And you do have to look at that, you know, and unfortunately, some of these studies, while you know, you're supposed to report who's funding the study and your conflicts of interest, they don't always and that was, that's a bit of a scandal. With all the studies looking at cholesterol, the original ones looking at cholesterol and saying that cholesterol was associated with heart disease and the University of San Francisco at UC San Francisco Medical School, published in the journal American Medical Association, which is one of the top medical journals in the world, back in 2016, actual internal memos from the sugar companies back in the 50s, and 60s, detailing how they paid off three Harvard professors to falsify data and publish fraudulent studies to make it appear as if cholesterol causes heart disease, to exonerate sugar. And one of those professors was named head of the USDA, and he was the one who authored and published the 1977 USDA declaration that cholesterol causes heart disease. And that just shut down the conversation. There's a heated debate in the literature, people can go back to, all the way back to the 1950s, I found a JAMA article from 1956, where this guy was like the liberals like, well, look, you know, a lot of people basically accepted that cholesterol causes heart disease. But this is based on very weak evidence, this is based on very poor studies. And he just went through them, it was just 12 pages, just ripping these things apart. And so there's a very, very, very heated debate about this going all the way up to 1977. Then it was just, that's it. Teachers stepped in, teacher told us, nyah nyah, told you, and that's it and just shut it down. And we know that this was fraud. We know that this was fraudulent. We know these people were bought and paid for, and they did not disclose that. They did not disclose that they were being paid by the Sugar Company. They did not disclose it. Their studies were being funded by the sugar companies. We even had their contracts. We know what they were paid. $6,500. The equivalent of 50 grand now. That's what their souls were worth. That's what the health of the world was worth.
(21:04) People took those recommendations from the USDA on faith, the rest of the world followed suit. And what happened, the heart disease rates have tripled since then, in every country that has adopted those measures, and all other chronic diseases and obesity have increased by at least that much, if not much more. Type two diabetes increased by a factor of six. And so you can't say that cholesterol and saturated fat cause heart disease when you reduced it and people are getting worse, right. And we have you know, that we reduced our red meat consumption in America between 1970 and 2014, by 33%, and in that time, heart disease has tripled. And you know, our saturated fat and cholesterol consumption has gone down proportionately as well. So there's certainly not a direct one to one link between eating saturated fat and cholesterol or red meat, and heart disease and cancer, because cancer rates have tripled. Stroke rates have tripled. Heart disease has tripled, obesity has tripled, and all the rest have increased exponentially. So it's something that we have to look back on and say, ‘Okay, this was based on fraud, throw it out, start over again.’ Maybe cholesterol is linked. I mean, it's not, you know, there's tonnes of studies showing that it's not, there's randomised control trials with 10s of 1000s of people showing it's not. But you know, maybe it was, but you can't base it on that. You have to throw that stuff out, you have to start over again. And that's not what people are doing, they’re still holding onto that. And that's what we need to undo.
Dr Lucy Burns: (22:30) Absolutely. And again, you know, much like, you know, fruit. “Fruit is healthy”, that, it’s just like a firm fixed belief that they, it’s not even in their radar to challenge that idea. Because it's so, it's like a given, it's like, well, you know, we need air to breathe, fruit is healthy. And, you know, we now know that, you know, particularly excessive fruit and the way out fruit has now been bred to be so much more palatable, and with much more sugar in it. And I guess, you know, part of me thinks, Well, the fruit industry have to compete with Mars bars. And so they're breeding these products for people to actually eat them.
Dr Anthony Chaffee: (23:11) And so it's always funny to me, when people will say that, you know, like, “Well, it must be healthy, because, you know, they wouldn't let people just say that fruit’s healthy. Unless it was healthy.” Who is “They”? You know?
Dr Lucy Burns: (23:24) Yeah, yeah.
Dr Anthony Chaffee: (23:11) These benevolent, all knowing overlords that just just look down. And you know, like, is it just Jesus sitting there? No, no, no, no, no, no, can't say that. You know, these are people, these are people with their own limitations and their own conflicts. And “They”, you know, don't exist, you know, this is just, well, “Government wouldn't let you.” Well, the government's actually, not necessarily, you know, who you want to rely on. And you just look, study history and realise that almost every government ever was the bad guy throughout history. And, you know, just look at the 20th century and all the tens of millions of people who were killed in different holocausts and things like that. So those were government's doing that, that was “Them” doing it. And so, because that's, again, been drilled into us, you have to eat fruit and vegetables, fruit and veg, Oh, they're so good for you. So good for you! You have to eat them. You have to eat them! And these are the government regulations. So well, you know, they wouldn't say that unless it was true. Like, okay, they say a lot of things that aren’t true.
Dr Lucy Burns: (24:27) Yeah, yeah. And I think particularly in Australia, we have to be very mindful that Australia has a very big sugar industry, you know. Queensland is full of sugar cane, it is an integral part of the government revenue. Well there's no tax directly on sugar per se, but taxes that sugar farmers pay just as part of their normal income, but also that the sugar lobby is heavily, it's incredibly powerful and pays lobbies, both sides of politics. So it makes it very difficult for one side to make a moral stand and go, ‘No, we're not going to accept that’, because then the other side will just get double the money and buy the votes and bang, they're out. So, you know, a government does not want to lose power, that's their whole modus operandi is to stay in power, and they'll do whatever it is to stay there.
Dr Anthony Chaffee: (25:15) Yeah, that's, that's very true. And, you know, that sort of makes the argument that a lot of people share, that probably shouldn't have lobbyists, you know, special interests, you know, paying government officials to do their bidding. That was not something that was done for a very long time. And in many countries, like in America, we’ve got 150 years, they had no lobbyists, and because you couldn't actually, it was in the Constitution that you couldn't use government money for special interests. It was only things for the common good, like, you know, you know, Civil Defence and things like that. And, and then, you know, in the 1930s, they said, with FDR they said, like, oh, well, you know, if I help Adam, He's part of the community and he's gonna go and do things that are good for the community. So that helps everyone really. You know, if I help you, that helps everyone. Yeah, that was their work around for it. And because of that, then the budget in the US just just went out of control, because now they're just spending money on absolutely anything. And now you have these lobbyists come in because there was something to purchase now. Because if government officials don't have power, there's nothing they can sell. And so you know, and now there was something to sell. And so now you have lobbyists come in, they're like, “Hey, here's a lot of money. Don't you think this would help people? Don't you think it'd be good for them to have, you know, low cost sugar?”. “I do think that actually, that's a great idea. Let's do that.” You know, so?
Dr Lucy Burns: (26:41) Well, it's interesting, I read an article that just on the weekend about the concept of food’s, food is medicine, which is, you know, what, what I think you and I both believe, and they were talking in the States how now primary care physicians can prescribe food as medicine and they can write food prescriptions, and their insurance companies will pay for that. But now, of course, you've got the problem of commercial interest groups coming in and going, ‘Oh, well, we'll, we'll run this!’ And so they're now funding, or they're providing the food in the food as medicine, and it's meant to be whole food and not processed, because their thing is about reducing ultra-processed food. And then these companies are just coming in. And basically, there's no, there's very little oversight on what they're providing. And a lot of the time, it is just relabeled processed food. And it's like, arrgh! So, there's always, wherever there's money, there's bound to be corruption. But one of the things I want to move on to is to actually ask you, and people will be super keen to know, like, what do you eat? On a carnivore diet? What do you do? How do you do it?
Dr Anthony Chaffee: (27:50) Yeah, well, you know, a lot of people think that a carnivore diet is just eating more meat, you know, and then maybe eating a bit less of other things. And that's really good. You know, I mean, eating meat is very, very good for you, that is, I believe, our biologically appropriate species specific diet. That's what gives us optimal health and nutrients. But it's not just that, you know, I think it's as important what not to eat as what to eat. And because obviously, these plants and fungi and processed foods, and all these sorts of things, are processed with plants, really, even processed meats, you know, like salamis and things like that. They have spices, and seasonings and sugar that’re all derived from plants. But you know, the plants themselves, these plants and fungi and things like that, they can cause harm. And so I think it's really important to get away from those things. And obviously, any artificial ingredients. So anything that didn't exist 50,000 years ago you should not be putting in your body, as far as food is concerned. Your medicine is a different story, clearly. But, you know, even if people say, ‘Oh, no, no, we were definitely eating plants’. But first of all, we weren't. I mean, that's what all the actual hard science shows with things like the stable isotope studies going back before the agricultural revolution, we really won't weren’t. For millions of years, we were apex predators, top of the food chain. We really were just eating meat, maybe we add some plants every now and then to stave off starvation if we were in trouble. But what crops were we growing in the ice ages? You know? That wasn't possible, right? So we were eating meat, and that's what we were doing.
(29:17) But either way, whether or not we were eating plants here and there, you know what plants exist today that we were eating? Like none of them. They're all bioengineered and GMO hacked and things like that or hybridised, in ways that completely take them away from what their natural form was. So none of these plants existed 50,000 years ago. So you know that you shouldn't be eating any of those things, anyway. Meat existed, animals existed, that's fine. And so a lot of people will eat a lot of meat, but they'll still have, you know, different sorts of things. They'll still use artificial sweeteners. ‘Oh, well, it's not carbs’ and that's sort of the corruption of the ketogenic movement. Ketogenic, atkins these used to be whole foods, that's a really good first step, just whole foods. And then they were limiting out a lot of things and focusing more on meat and fat, and this conferred a lot of benefit. Now you have this sort of, well, if as long as it doesn't have carbohydrates, well then it's okay. And then you have all these artificial sweeteners and all these chemicals that got put in to get that sweet flavour that people crave. You know, it's like imitation cocaine you like, you want to just stop altogether, just stop like, halfstop. It's not technically cocaine, so it's okay if I do it, right.? Well, no, that's not what that means. And so I think that's the same with food and, and so I talk to people that say, like, well, I did a carnivore diet, and I felt a lot better and my autoimmune issues went away and all these different things happened, but I didn't really lose weight. So I stopped doing it because I guess it just didn't work for me. I wish it would have. I was like, Okay, well, it sounds like it was working for you. Sounds like you were doing well.
Dr Lucy Burns: (30:48) Yeah, yes. What is working? Yes.
Dr Anthony Chaffee: (30:52) Yeah. And also, what were you eating? What exactly were you eating? And that's always what I say, ‘What exactly were you eating?’ And there's always “Oh no, I was just eating meat.” “Oh no, no, what exactly were you eating? Were you having any artificial sweeteners? Were you having coffee? Were you having this or that?” In fact, it turns out they're having a lot of that. And almost always they're having some sort of sweetener like stevia or monkfruit sugar or whatever, you know, sweetener that they chose to use. And so it's like, okay, well, that can be why you went down. So a carnivore diet is really, you know, what a lion would eat. What a wolf would eat. What dolphins eat, what sharks eat. They eat animals, that's what they eat. And you can eat whatever animal that you like, as long as you aren't afraid of the fat and you try to get enough fat. But that's what you're eating, you're just eating meat, you're just drinking water. So my hard rule is I think of it as you know what not to eat. Yes, we eat meat, you can eat any meat, any animal, whatever you want. But no plants, no sugar, nothing artificial. And that goes for sauces, seasonings and drinks as well. People don’t realise that it can actually make a serious difference.
(31:54) People that have had, you know, hereditary background where their ancestors were introduced to agriculture far earlier than other populations, like the European population is roughly 8000 years ago, 10,000 years ago. Native Americans and Australians did not have that luxury. And so they didn't build up in their genetic stock, the slight protections to these chemicals, I have a lady who's a Native American, Native, Canadian, and a very nice lady, and she's from her own culture, they just eat meat. And most of them do. Not all of them do. But that's, you know, like the Inuit population, they just eat meat. And that's what they've done forever. So she was just eating meat, because her daughter, you know, when they ate sort of Western foods they would get, she would get very sick. So they just went back to traditional ways and were just eating meat, however, she was using spices. Using spices and seasonings, and she is just carnivore, but just using spices and seasonings. And because she didn't have these protections that other people do, she was much more sensitive to them. So she actually had a number of autoimmune diseases that she, you know, suffered with, and she was in her 60s, or is in her 60s. And you know, for 40 years, she has been dealing with these autoimmune issues. And then she joined my sort of 30 day challenge group of just really getting rid of everything except meat and water, salt to taste, and her autoimmune issue started clearing up. What the hell! It was just the spices that were enough to set her off.
(33:26) And, you know, as we know, here in Australia, the native Aboriginal population is much more sick and unwell than anyone else from anywhere else. When I first got here, I was told straight away when you, when I was working in the hospitals, they said, when you have an Aboriginal patient come in, just whatever their age says on the label, add 20 to that, because that's, you know, you're looking at that disease prevalence in certain age groups, you know, they just seem to age faster, they get these diseases much more quickly than European populations or Asian populations. That's why, you know, because they were only exposed to a Western diet, Western food diseases of the West, a few 100 years ago. They haven't had 1000s and 1000s of years to build this up.
Dr Lucy Burns: (34:15) Absolutely, absolutely. So you know, I'm thinking of various people who will go, “I can't do that. It's too hard, just meat and salt and water.” So for those people, is there like a step down procedure or something like that that they could do? Where, you know, the first step feels massive? What do you recommend for those people?
Dr Anthony Chaffee: (34:38) Yeah, well, no, I definitely think that if someone's having trouble with that, I’m sort of an all or nothing person. I see a plant trying to kill me, right, get them out. I don't want that, you know, but not everybody, you know, understands it in the same way I do or thinks about it in the same way I do. And so, you know, that's fine. I just want people to understand that meat’s not bad for you. Fat isn't bad for you. It will not cause heart disease or diabetes. And so don't be afraid of it and you can eat more of it. That should be the focus, as opposed to the other things just like salad’s the focus and you have a bit of meat but really that, no, no, opposite!
Dr Lucy Burns: (35:11) Okay, so I know this palm of your hand nonsense.
Dr Anthony Chaffee: (35:17) If the palm of my hand is that big <gestures widely> then that's okay!
Dr Lucy Burns: (35:17) Yeah. If you've got bear paws!
Dr Anthony Chaffee: (35:22) Yeah, exactly.
Dr Lucy Burns: (35:25) And it's interesting, because in Australia, we had a campaign back in the 70s, and 80s, which was called ‘Feed the man meat’, and it was all about trying to get, it was run by the meat industry trying to get men to eat more meat. But in fact, I think it should have been called ‘Feed the woman meat’, because women are iron deficient. We have horrendous menstrual problems, which have been getting worse and worse with endometriosis and polycystic ovarian syndrome. The plethora of iron deficient women who are sick and tired in their youth, you know, in their 20s and 30s, who are avoiding red meat because they think it's bad for them. Then what happens is they don't grow up with the taste of it, so then they’ll say to me, I just don't like the taste. It's like so yeah, I reckon it should have been feed the woman meat.
Dr Anthony Chaffee: (36:13) Yeah, no, just feed the people meat. Kelly Hogan has a shirt that says, ‘Eat the meat, save the humans’, you know, as it was, like, save the animals. You know, but to answer your question, I think a good step down is just eating more meat and focusing on the fat. And just going keto, you know, I mean, there's certain things I think that are worse than others. And I think sugar, alcohol and carbohydrates are top of that list. You know, because those things, they can cause direct harm. But also what they do is they kick you out of what I think of as our primary metabolic state. I do think that what we refer to as a fasting state is actually our primary metabolic state. That's the primary metabolic state of nearly all animals in the wild. And humans in the wild, because we're just eating meat, we're not eating a bunch of carbs naturally. And that's where all of our heavy machinery comes to bear. The only reason we call a carbohydrate, insulin, hyperinsulinemic state, a fed state, our primary state, is because by the time we were able to look at biochemistry at the molecular level, everyone was eating carbohydrates anyway. So they say oh when you eat, it looks like this. And when you don't eat, it looks like that, failing to recognise that when you eat anything at all, except carbohydrates it also looks like you're fasting. And so when I eat 5000 calories of ribeye, in one sitting, I am not fasting, you know, so my metabolism should not be called a fasting metabolism, because it's not. And so I think that you have so much harm done by just clicking over into that incorrect metabolism, your body's trying to protect you from hyperglycemia, which is directly damaging your body through glycation. And so your body's like, ‘Okay, we need to protect this, we need to slam up your insulin to try to protect ourselves here’. And that high insulin state causes a lot of disruption to your body and your mechanism. So I think that's a very important first step, is getting rid of carbs, sugar and alcohol.
(38:10) After that, there are certain vegetables and things that are a bit more and worse than others. Obviously, there's so many non edible plants out there that you could call vegetables, leafy green vegetables, I mean, you make a salad out of hemlock leaves, like that's not going to last too long. And, you know, most plants will kill you. And that's something that you know, if you get lost in the woods, you will know that, well, you can't just eat any random plant, you know, and or at least the people still living know that. And so there are certain things that are just worse than others. And of the food that we eat things like night shades would be at the top of that list. So potatoes, tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, capsicums, all of these things are in the nightshade family, and traditionally, we would peel potatoes, and we would vine-ripen them, blanch them, take the skin off, take the seeds out. And this would reduce and minimise the amount of solanine and other toxins from the nightshades that get into you. We've completely gone away with that. We pick them when they're not ripe. When they're still green. There are studies showing that that doesn't actually get rid of the poisons. When a fruit is not ripe the plant does not want you to eat it. The seed is not ready yet. And so it is harder, it's more difficult to bite into. And it has more toxins and defence chemicals. And then if it vine-ripens, the plant will pull out some of those toxins, there will still be some in there, most of them in the skin and in the seeds. Because the seed is a plant’s baby, just a bean and a seed and a nut and all these sorts of things. These are plant’s babies, and that's where you'll find the highest concentration of toxins generally.
(39:42) And so traditionally, when the very poor people of Mesoamerica and South America were eating tomatoes, they were doing it in that way. They were vine ripening them, taking the skin off, and taking the seeds out. And that's what the original pasta sauce was. In Spain, Portugal, and Italy, they were doing that as well. And then we thought, ‘Oh, well, actually the skin. That's where all the nutrients are. That's where all the vitamins are.’ Like, yeah, well, it's where all the poisons are too. It's the barrier protection that the plant is using to stop insects from boring into it. And so this is why we always peeled potatoes and took the skins off of tomatoes and vine ripened them. You know, this was folk history, understanding that green tomatoes were poisonous. You don't eat green tomatoes, you know? And they'll be ‘Oh, well, that's a lie. That's just being silly.’ It's like, well, you know, these people, there's a saying that you don't tear down a fence until you know why it was put up. Right? And so you were doing things in very certain ways. You know, even corn, they would go through Mesoamerica, they would go through a process of nixtamalization to extract more of the nutrients and break these bonds that we don't have the enzymes to break to free up things like niacin, which are very abundant in corn but is not available to us. We cannot extract it with our own natural design because we're not designed to eat it. So you have to go through these chemical processes to extract that and reduce some of the poisons. And then Europeans took corn and just said, ‘Okay, well, we can just eat corn’ and they forgot. They said, ‘ah, we don't need to do that whole laborious process, we'll just do it,’ until people are dying of pellagra, of niacin deficiency, you know, all across Europe and America, eating something that has a tonne of niacin in it, which is quite ironic. But you know, that was a thing. It's not available to us unless you chemically process it because we're not able to chemically process it ourselves. Which tells you we're not supposed to eat this stuff.
(41:33) And so I think that's the main thing to look at. Get rid of carbs and sugar and alcohol, get rid of Nightshade. And then also a lot of different plants will have different toxins than other ones will. Different families of plant toxins run in families and plants like nightshade, they all make solanine like Bella Donna, and tobacco and, and tomatoes. And so you know, you shouldn't eat the same vegetables and plants on a daily basis, you should switch it up because our bodies do have a capacity to detoxify some of these things to a certain extent. But you can overload yourself. So if you focus on meat, focus on fat, cut out the real nasty ones like carbs, sugar, alcohol, and nightshades, and then cycle the other vegetables that you eat, you're going to be doing a lot better. And obviously no beans or legumes, any seeds or nuts or any plant babies to stay away from.
Dr Lucy Burns: (42:26) Yep, yeah. Gosh, it's amazing. It's so amazing. And I think it's, you know, I love the idea that, you know, there's all different ways that people can look at what they're doing. And, you know, we always have this idea that everything's an experiment. So you know, if the idea of doing carnivore appeals to you, but you know, that part of your brain is going ‘Oh, but it's too hard. I don't think I could do it’, well, then I always go, ‘Well just try it as an experiment. Just try it for 30 days and see how you feel’. And you know, you've got your 30 day challenge. So tell us a little bit about that.
Dr Anthony Chaffee: (43:00) Yeah, so exactly that, because I agree with you, I think that, you know, people should just try and just understand just how much better they're going to feel after about two weeks of just being on meat and water, you get most of this garbage out of your system. And you will literally feel like a different breed of human. Your body was just saying, ‘I had no idea I could ever feel this good’. You know, and I remember when I did this again, and I was doing this consciously. And after two weeks, I was like, I just felt so amazing. And I look back on the rest of my life and realise like, I felt like garbage my whole life. That's a problem. I don't like that. And so when you get that you get about two weeks, alcohol takes about three weeks to get out of your system. But most other things will be well and truly out of your system in about two weeks. And then your body really starts getting into the stream of things and you just feel amazing. You just, your body works differently than what it has ever done before. You feel better than you ever have before. And so then you have a good two weeks of just feeling amazing. And you will, most people will lose a significant amount of weight in that time. A lot of that's going to be inflammation in water weight and things like that, but it will be fat as well. And then they will continue to lose fat and put on muscle and just feel amazing. And so just experiencing that for at least a couple of weeks, right? Because two weeks it takes to get this garbage out of your system. And then you're like, Okay, now I'm in my zen moment, I feel just amazing. And having a couple of weeks of that, where you just feel like a superhero. You know, that's a good feeling. And for me, that's not a feeling that I want, that I ever plan on losing. And so like I've just no interest, and either anything else, and I've sampled things back in, now okay, well, what does this do to me? Like, no, no, no, I don't want that. You know, my face is getting itchy. I started to get wheezy and things like that. And I was like, oh, no, I don't like that. And so, you know, for me, I'm just like, I have a complete aversion to all those sorts of things. And so just to let people experience that, and I've had a number of people that do that, like that lady, who's Native American, she's like, ‘I had no idea. I had no idea it was spices’. She was only eating meat.
Dr Lucy Burns: (45:02) Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, yeah.
Dr Anthony Chaffee: (45:04) And 40 years, literally 40 years of exclusively eating meat. Oh, you can't do that. It's not sustainable. You don't get the nutrients. Well, entire civilizations do it today, you know, like, like the Inuit living naturally, the Masai and all these others. And so this lady was doing that and just the spices were causing four, she had four autoimmune diseases. They're gone now. You know, they've just gone away. And so just trying that and just experiencing that so many people like I had no idea. I had no idea I could feel this good. And you know, some people were like, I'm really glad I did that. That was a total reset. I just feel amazing. I have incorporated, I do eat some plants, but I'm just focusing on meat and things like that. And that works better for me. And I'm like, great, that's awesome. At least you know, now, you know, and you can and if you have something out of your system, and you sample it back in and you go like that, I guess it affects me but I'm not too fussed, fine, you know, that's that's fine, but at least you know now, whereas before you didn’t, and so some things you'll have back and will know that doesn't agree with me. I don't really like that. You know, and so you can do that. With more data with more information, make a more informed decision with your life.
Dr Lucy Burns: (46:09) Yeah, everything is just an experiment. I love it. I love it. Anthony, it has been an absolute pleasure talking to you today. I will link your Patreon page and the links that we've talked about earlier in the show and pop them in the show notes so people can connect with you. And if they want to connect with you on socials, what are your socials names?
Dr Anthony Chaffee: (46:31) Yeah, so my Instagram is just Anthony Chaffee, MD, as is my YouTube channel and my Patreon and I think Tik Tok as well and and then the 30 Day Challenge is just, the website’s just www.howtocarnivore.com and that just, you know, just gives people added support. We have a telegram group where we chat and answer questions and have weekly zoom meetings and things like that. And people have access to online modules and information and educational packets and things like that. And so people can check those out. Everything's linked through my Instagram and YouTube pages. And there's like a linktree with all the rest of that if people want to check those out.
Dr Lucy Burns: (47:12) Perfect. We'll put the links in the show notes. And Chaffee spelt CHAFFEE.
Dr Anthony Chaffee: (47:19) That's correct.
Dr Lucy Burns: (47:20) Awesome. All right. Well, we look forward to connecting with you at The Low Carb Roadshow. So if you are lucky enough to live in Perth, you will be able to come and hear Anthony speak live on tips and traps for carnivore eating and we are overwhelmed with excitement about that.
Dr Anthony Chaffee: (47:40) Yeah. Me too.
Dr Lucy Burns: (47:41) Have the most wonderful day and we will catch up with you soon. So my lovely listeners that ends this episode of Real Health and Weight Loss. I'm Dr. Lucy Burns.
Dr Mary Barson: (47:59) And I'm Dr. Mary Barson. We’re from Real Life Medicine. To contact us, please visit www.rlmedicine.com
Dr Lucy Burns: (48:10) And until next time, thanks for listening. The information shared on the Real Health and Weight Loss podcast, including show notes and links provides general information only. It is not a substitute, nor is it intended to provide individualised medical advice, diagnosis or treatment, nor can it be construed as such. Please consult your doctor for any medical concerns.
