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Why the plant-based movement collapsed

• By 2020 plant-based eating had become mainstream, but the cultural mood shifted sharply afterward. The nutrition science did not reverse; public enthusiasm moved toward animal-based and carnivore diets.
• Beyond Meat became a symbol of the reversal. Plant-based meat products remained far more expensive than chicken, did not reach taste parity, and were caught in a wider backlash against ultra-processed foods.
• The failure of a company such as Beyond Meat does not mean that eating more plants failed. Whole and minimally processed plant foods remain the basis of the health case for plant-predominant eating.
• Three forces drove the downturn: weak health messaging and lost trust, alienating behavior inside vegan advocacy, and post-2020 cultural and political changes.

Health messaging and lost trust

• Highly processed vegan burgers, nuggets, desserts, cheeses, and similar foods were sold as health foods. They can help people transition away from animal foods, but they are not the foods behind the strongest long-term health evidence.
• There are three routes into plant-based eating: animal ethics, environmental sustainability, and human health. The ethical and environmental cases are stronger grounds for complete animal-food exclusion than human health alone.
• Mediterranean, MIND, DASH, vegetarian, and vegan diets can all produce good health outcomes when they center on minimally processed foods. The evidence does not establish that a fully plant-exclusive diet is significantly healthier than every other well-constructed pattern.
• Past advocacy often oversimplified concerns about vitamin B12, protein, fat intake, and individual variability. A diet that works extremely well for one person does not necessarily work identically for everyone.
• Rich extrapolated too much from his own success and previously platformed advocates whose health message was carrying an ethical goal; Simon sometimes tiptoed around irresponsible education on protein, B12, and very-low-fat plant-based diets.
• A fully plant-exclusive diet may not work for absolutely everyone. People should not be made guilty or ashamed if they feel better and remain healthier on a plant-predominant diet.
• Personal success can become evangelism: someone feels dramatically better, assumes others will too, and then blames people who have a different experience for doing the diet incorrectly. The same pattern occurs in carnivore and ketogenic communities.
• Across the broader evidence base, the people doing well over decades tend to eat high-fiber, plant-predominant diets that are lower in saturated fat and ultra-processed foods.
• Trust erodes when animal-rights ethics are hidden inside a health message. Health information should be given transparently even when the strongest motivation for avoiding animal foods is ethical.
• Absolute messages such as all dairy being unhealthy, all animal protein being harmful, or fish being bad for health do not fit the nutrition science. Fermented dairy such as yogurt and cheese can be neutral or beneficial depending on context, and fatty fish is generally neutral or beneficial.
• Social media rewards certainty, simplicity, and confidence, while good science contains uncertainty and context. This created incentives for stronger and simpler vegan health messages than the evidence could support.
• A practical nutrition philosophy is simple without being absolute: eat a plant-predominant pattern built from minimally processed foods, keep ultra-processed packaged foods limited, and choose the carbohydrate level that leaves you feeling best.

Protein and micronutrients

• The old message that everything takes care of itself on a vegan diet except perhaps B12 was too simple. Removing fish, meat, and other animal foods changes protein and micronutrient intake depending on what foods take their place.
• Protein-rich plant foods such as tofu, tempeh, edamame, chickpeas, beans, and lentils are better swaps for animal protein than simply eating more fruit and vegetables.
• Plant-exclusive diets need attention to vitamin B12, omega-3 fats, iodine, zinc, and overall protein. For a busy person who is not carefully tracking food, a multivitamin can function as nutritional insurance, with omega-3 supplementation added separately.
• Protein matters, but sarcopenia in the general population is driven more by inactivity than by inadequate protein. Resistance training supplies the missing stimulus for maintaining and building muscle, while the average person already consumes enough protein.

Why vegan advocacy pushes people away

• Moral superiority, scolding, shame, and purity tests make the movement less attractive. People generally do not want to join a community that begins by telling them they are bad or morally deficient.
• Ardent animal-rights activism has a role in sounding an alarm and defining moral boundaries, but alarm-raising and mass persuasion are different jobs.
• For broad persuasion, attraction works better than promotion: live the ethic in a way that looks healthy, functional, and appealing, then help people who become curious without demanding immediate ideological purity.
• Strong ethical conviction and welcoming communication can coexist. Compassion for animals can also be directed toward people who disagree, and internal attacks over who is vegan enough weaken the movement.
• Getting 80% of people to do Meatless Mondays can accomplish more for animal welfare than getting 1% of people to become 100% vegan; purity tests can destroy useful opportunities for partial change.

The post-2020 cultural shift

• Veganism became associated with "wokeness," institutional control, and the political left, while meat became tied to red-pill identity, freedom, and masculinity. "Soy boy" became an insult used to make plant-based eating look incompatible with manhood.
• Meat historically signaled hunting ability, physical strength, and provision for a group; modern meat usually signals shopping. What is on a plate no longer demonstrates those capacities.
• Young men looking for status, dating success, and a stronger identity can be drawn toward external signals such as heavy lifting, steak, and rejection of soy. Physical fitness matters, but long-term partnership also depends heavily on emotional capacity, listening, and not becoming defensive or reactive.
• Security and self-worth come from narrowing the gap between the person you want to be and the way you actually behave: being trustworthy, loyal, dependable, accountable, and able to live in line with your values.
• Food choice does not determine male identity. Equating meat with masculinity also benefits large meat companies, even though the same message is often packaged as resistance to institutional manipulation and support for local food sovereignty.
• Protecting vulnerable beings, reducing environmental harm, and making difficult choices in line with personal ethics can be expressions of strength, not weakness.

Where to go from here

• The goal does not need to be perfect veganism. A stronger direction is to eat as plant-exclusive as is compatible with feeling healthy, nourished, and physically capable while also weighing animal welfare and environmental impact.
• To start, reduce red meat, white meat, and processed meat and add more tofu, tempeh, lentils, beans, chickpeas, fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, and seeds.
• Do not remove animal protein without planning the protein source that takes its place. Aim for at least 1.2 g/kg of protein, rising to about 1.6 g/kg when very physically active; a protein shake can add roughly 40 g.
• A simple starting supplement plan is a multivitamin plus DHA/EPA omega-3 from fish oil or algae oil, with later refinement based on the individual diet.

References None.

Why I tried carnivore again

• The carnivore diet rose rapidly as advocates promoted it for athletic performance, body composition, obesity, autoimmune disease, mood disorders, fatigue, skin problems, and other chronic illnesses; more recently, major advocates such as Paul Saladino moved away from strict carnivore and reintroduced fruit and other plant foods.
• Carnivore did not simply fail as a fad: beneath the internet debates and social-media hot takes is a more nuanced story, which motivated another trial.
• An earlier fairly liberal five-month carnivore diet included dairy, eggs, and coffee and was a surprisingly positive experience; the later 30-day trial used the lion diet, the strictest and most extreme version, with no dairy, eggs, seafood, coffee, or organ meats—just meat, salt, and water.
• The experience is one data point and a springboard into the bigger story of carnivore's popularity, controversies, what the science shows, and what remains to be learned.

Gut health

• Zero fiber did not cause constipation: bowel movements occurred every day, and by day 30 they were about as close to perfect as they had ever been.
• A 2012 World Journal of Gastroenterology study found that eliminating dietary fiber in people with irritable bowel syndrome with constipation improved bowel frequency from one movement every 3.75 days to one per day, eliminated bloating and straining, and produced worse symptoms as fiber intake increased. [1]
• Ulcerative colitis took several years of life away, showing how severe inflammatory bowel disease can be.
• A case series of 10 medically confirmed Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis patients included severe cases requiring biologic drugs or intestinal surgery; most had already tried vegan, vegetarian, low-FODMAP, paleo, and other elimination diets, and every patient experienced substantial, life-changing improvement on a fiber-free carnivore diet. [2]
• One patient said a keto-carnivore diet let him forget he had Crohn's disease without drugs or surgery, and another said this lifestyle had allowed six years without having to worry about colitis. [2]
• Removing carbohydrates produces ketone bodies, including in the gut, where they act as signaling molecules that can reprogram immune cells to make them less inflammatory. [3]
• Ketone signaling may also help intestinal stem cells renew and better heal the gut lining. [4]
• Cell Host & Microbe research found that a fiber-free diet altered the metabolism and location of the pathobiont Mucispirillum and ameliorated colitis in an animal model; at a high level, removing fiber can starve problematic gut organisms, although the actual mechanism involves intraluminal migration. [5]
• Fiber-free diets are already used for refractory inflammatory bowel disease and can produce response rates around 60-85%; conventional medicine generally administers them as unpalatable fiber-free liquid formulas, while eating meat could achieve the same endpoint of fiber elimination.
• A study compared 10 healthy people eating carnivore for an average of about three years with 874 matched controls eating a mixed diet with more fiber and found no significant difference in microbiome diversity metrics, challenging the assumption that dietary fiber is essential for maintaining microbiota diversity. [6]
• Carnivore does not stop bowel movements, does not necessarily destroy microbiome diversity, and has therapeutic potential for certain people with compromised gut health, including the kind involved here; this does not make carnivore a panacea, but it makes it interesting and somewhere to start.

Nutrient deficiencies

• Some concerns about nutrient deficiencies are legitimate and warrant serious attention, beginning with calcium: standard carnivore with dairy is not a calcium problem, but dairy-free lion diets deserve attention and concern.
• Muscle meat provides only about 10-20 mg of calcium per 100 g versus a general target of 1,000-1,200 mg per day, requiring roughly 11 lb of beef; for years of carnivore, especially a lion diet, a calcium source such as an actual supplement, 100 g of Parmesan per day, or eggshell-derived calcium would be something to seriously consider.
• Omega-3 is another real concern and was already a priority: a prior month of 1,000 sardines produced an omega-3 index around 16%.
• After 30 days on nothing but ruminant meat, with no fish, sardines, or omega-3 supplements, the omega-3 index fell from 15.68% to 10.51%; 10.51% remained within the optimal range, but the decline was rapid and was expected to continue.
• With two copies of APOE4 and vulnerability to Alzheimer's disease, maintaining high omega-3 intake is non-negotiable; a serving of grass-fed beef may provide about 50 mg of omega-3 versus roughly 1,500 mg in a can of sardines, a 30-fold difference, so in this domain sardines beat steak.
• A subtle omega-3 deficiency is difficult to detect and could matter over decades for brain health, so any future carnivore diet would include a healthy amount of seafood or added omega-3.
• Meat is relatively low in vitamin C, particularly after cooking, yet historical all-meat diets did not inevitably cause scurvy; in 1928 Vilhjalmur Stefansson ate nothing but meat for an entire year under continuous medical supervision at Bellevue Hospital without developing scurvy, and his physicians published the results. [7]
• Stefansson learned this dietary pattern from Inuit populations consuming diets almost entirely composed of animal foods such as seal, whale, and caribou with minimal plant matter, without developing scurvy.
• Vitamin C and glucose are structurally similar molecules and compete for some of the same cellular transporters; when carbohydrate and sugar intake are high, glucose floods those transporters and outcompetes vitamin C for entry into cells. [8]
• Without sugar in the diet, vitamin C dietary needs drop because vitamin C is absorbed more efficiently.
• Vitamin C can also be regenerated after oxidation through an NADPH-dependent antioxidant system, and a zero-carbohydrate diet that produces ketones might support that NADPH system and help regenerate vitamin C.
• After more than 100 lb of meat in 30 days, the result was remarkably unremarkable: bowel function continued, scurvy did not occur, cheese and coffee were greatly missed, physical well-being was good, nutrient blood tests were normal, thyroid and cortisol were normal, and cholesterol was essentially unchanged; a roughly 20 mg/dL cholesterol drop was within normal noise.

Potential medical uses

• Nothing horrific or miraculous occurred because a ketogenic diet already worked for ulcerative colitis; carnivore may be not merely a diet but a potential medical intervention for people in need.
• Carnivore functions at its core as one of the most extreme elimination diets possible, removing almost every potential dietary trigger at once, and this can be transformative for people whose immune systems react to specific plant compounds.
• Strong human evidence for autoimmune and inflammatory diseases beyond inflammatory bowel disease is desperately limited, but this is a deficiency in the scientific literature that needs investigation, not something to hide from or brush under the rug.
• Unless hordes of people are simultaneously fabricating improvements in lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, psoriasis, and other autoimmune conditions, carnivore is helping at least some people; whether it is called a fad, fringe, or salvation, the questions are why it is helping and how to avoid throwing that signal away.
• The combination of mechanistic ketone data, microbiome research, and clinical evidence on fiber-free diets in inflammatory bowel disease is enough of a signal to warrant serious investigation.
• Carnivore-style animal-based ketogenic diets have emerging interest for anorexia because mental health disorders are not purely abstract psychological phenomena but arise from altered neurochemistry and changes in brain metabolism; fundamentally altering brain metabolism with ketones could also improve mental health across depression, anxiety, binge eating disorder, addiction, bipolar disorder, and anorexia.
• Patients with anorexia have said that a carnivore diet quite literally saved their lives. [9]
• A paper on animal-based ketogenic diets in severe anorexia includes an illustrative patient, Katherine, who was 39 when interviewed, had struggled with body image since age seven, and at age 34 maintained a BMI of 10.7—on death's doorstep—and on some days subsisted on little more than lettuce with zero-calorie stevia sweetener. [9]
• After adopting carnivore in desperation, Katherine said, "This solved all of my issues. All of them." For the first time in decades she experienced mental clarity and calm, her weight recovered to a healthy level, as did her relationships, and she remained healthy for years. [9]
• People with mental health disorders or eating disorders should not self-manage with carnivore; eating disorders are serious, complex conditions that require professional support.
• This belongs on clinicians' radar as a potential tool in their toolkit.
• For anorexia, where outcomes are horrible, mortality is high, and current care is pitifully unsuccessful, curiosity about outside-the-box tools that are helping people and saving lives is necessary; this is the most reasonable thing in the world. [9]

Who should try it?

• This is guidance rather than a prescription: carnivore makes the most sense as a therapeutic intervention for people with refractory gastrointestinal conditions, autoimmune conditions, or metabolic health conditions, and less sense for healthy people already thriving on their current diet or anyone unwilling to monitor key biomarkers.
• Stopping carnivore reflects lack of need, not failure; different bodies need different things, and that should not be stigmatized.
• Someone can regain health through a 30-day carnivore elimination reset or a five-year extreme lion diet and later gradually broaden the diet a little without that meaning the diet failed; the person has evolved.
• Carnivore is not a religion or simply a movement to join or reject, but a fascinating, powerful tool that will not be right for everybody and may be exactly what someone needs at a particular moment to save their life; that deserves curiosity, not ridicule.

References

1. [03:44] Stopping or reducing dietary fiber intake reduces constipation and its associated symptoms — https://doi.org/10.3748/wjg.v18.i33.4593
2. [04:41] Case report: Carnivore–ketogenic diet for the treatment of inflammatory bowel disease: a case series of 10 patients — https://doi.org/10.3389/fnut.2024.1467475
3. [06:10] Ketone body β-hydroxybutyrate ameliorates colitis by promoting M2 macrophage polarization through the STAT6-dependent signaling pathway — https://doi.org/10.1186/s12916-022-02352-x
4. [06:17] Ketone Body Signaling Mediates Intestinal Stem Cell Homeostasis and Adaptation to Diet — https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2019.07.048
5. [06:24] Fiber-deficient diet inhibits colitis through the regulation of the niche and metabolism of a gut pathobiont — https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chom.2023.10.016
6. [08:23] Long-term adherence to the carnivore diet and its impact on the gut microbiota: a cross-sectional study — https://doi.org/10.1530/MAH-25-0015
7. [12:25] Clinical Calorimetry: XLV. Prolonged Meat Diets with a Study of Kidney Function and Ketosis — https://doi.org/10.1016/S0021-9258(18)76842-7
8. [13:01] Human erythrocytes transport dehydroascorbic acid and sugars using the same transporter complex — https://doi.org/10.1152/ajpcell.00044.2014
9. [16:58] Animal-based ketogenic diet puts severe anorexia nervosa into multi-year remission: A case series — https://doi.org/10.4102/jir.v6i1.84

Guidelines and medication scale

• As a risk factor for heart disease, cholesterol has much less importance; the key question is not whether high LDL is a risk factor, but how important that risk is.
• The 2026 American Heart Association lipid guidelines call for screening children at ages 9–11, screening every five years by age 20, LDL targets around 55–70 mg/dL, and aggressive drug therapy when LDL is high without waiting and watching, while the evidence points the other way. [1]
• Applying the new guidelines would medicate about 56.5% of adults aged 30–79, about 85% at ages 60–69, about 93% by age 70, and add more than 21 million people to cholesterol medication. [2]
• That scale gives cholesterol a dominant role even though several other cardiovascular risks are much larger.

PREVENT and risk magnitude

• The AHA PREVENT calculator was built from more than 6 million patients in 45 studies and compares diabetes, high blood pressure, smoking, kidney disease, lipids, and other cardiovascular risk factors. [3]
• PREVENT uses non-HDL: triglycerides and HDL are separate from LDL, high carbohydrate intake raises triglycerides and lowers HDL, and non-HDL brings triglyceride-related risk into the measure even though statins and similar drugs mainly target LDL. [3]
• A hazard ratio of 1.0 is neutral and 2.0 means double the risk, so the magnitude of a risk factor is the relevant distinction.
• In PREVENT, diabetes raises cardiovascular risk about 60–65%, smoking about 60%, high blood pressure about 36%, kidney disease is important, and higher HDL is protective; non-HDL has a hazard ratio of 1.0 in women and only about a 5% increase in men. [3]
• Smoking or diabetes is roughly 10–12 times more important than LDL cholesterol; because the 5% figure comes from non-HDL, which also includes triglycerides, LDL itself has even less importance.
• A focus on medicating more than 90% of older Americans for LDL gives less attention to diabetes, smoking, and blood pressure, which carry much larger risks.

Statin use and the Women's Health Study

• A BMJ study of national statin use shows North America using far more statins than other regions and increasing faster; in 2020 about 26.1% of the population used a statin compared with 20% or less elsewhere. [4]
• Greater focus on diabetes and diet, including cutting carbohydrates to lower blood sugar, addresses larger risks, while doctors spend almost no time on diet and extensive time on cholesterol.
• The U.S. uses far more statins than Japan, yet Japan has very high life expectancy and very low heart-disease rates; cholesterol does not explain the whole difference, but statins are not that important.
• In the Women's Health Study analysis in JAMA Cardiology, women under 55 with diabetes had a hazard ratio of about 10.7 for heart disease, compared with 1.38 for LDL cholesterol; the LDL increase is still meaningful, but diabetes and metabolic syndrome carry much larger risks. [5]
• Diet and diabetes warrant about ten times more attention than cholesterol; diet takes clinical time, more patients generate more payment, and writing a statin prescription takes seconds.

Large global cohorts

• A New England Journal of Medicine analysis included about 1.5 million people from 34 countries and 112 studies, with an average age of 54.4 years and average follow-up of 7.4 years, and estimated the effect of modifying five major risk factors. [6]
• Eliminating diabetes or stopping smoking substantially lowers cardiovascular risk and total mortality, while lowering cholesterol has a much smaller cardiovascular effect and no effect on total mortality; statin-mediated cholesterol lowering therefore does not change the risk of dying in these data. [6]
• Heart disease may decrease, but if total mortality does not fall, other non-cardiac deaths must increase enough to offset the difference; total mortality is the crucial outcome. [6]
• A 2025 New England Journal of Medicine analysis of about 2 million people from 133 cohorts estimates that not smoking adds about 4.8–5.5 cardiovascular-disease-free years and not having diabetes adds about 4.2–4.7, while low cholesterol after medication is associated with losing about 0.4–1.3 years. [7]
• For all-cause survival, not having diabetes adds about 5.8–6.5 years, while low cholesterol after medication is associated with losing about 0.9–1.3 years; around ages 55–60, modifying hyperlipidemia adds only about 0–0.1 cardiovascular-disease-free years and loses about 0.2–0.3 years of overall life. [7]
• Cholesterol can still be lowered in some situations, but high blood pressure, diabetes, and smoking are much more important areas of focus.

Low LDL, mortality, and dialysis

• Sufficiently low cholesterol does not make heart disease impossible merely because plaque contains cholesterol and babies have low cholesterol; adults should not be compared with babies.
• In the Danish study, the LDL level associated with the lowest all-cause mortality was about 140 mg/dL, LDL below about 55 mg/dL was associated with roughly 50% higher mortality, and the lowest mortality clustered around the 60th–95th percentile and not at low LDL. [8]
• As LDL approaches very low levels, mortality rises; some very low LDL occurs with malnutrition and other illness, so very low LDL does not make heart disease impossible.
• Dialysis patients often have LDL around 68–81 mg/dL while still having extensive heart disease.
• Their estimated heart-disease risk is roughly 10–20 times higher than in the general population, so very low LDL does not eliminate cardiovascular disease.
• Dialysis patients still receive cholesterol-lowering medication despite those very low LDL levels and very high cardiovascular risk.

Stopping statins and priorities

• In a recent Lancet Healthy Longevity unblinded randomized trial of adults aged 75 years or older, stopping statins was compared with continuing them, and stopping did not increase heart disease or death. [9]
• Diabetes, smoking, and high blood pressure greatly increase heart-disease risk, and reducing those risks lowers heart disease; LDL has only a tiny effect and may even be harmful.
• The U.S. has the most aggressive LDL targets anywhere; no other country sees this as necessary, yet the AHA keeps pushing levels lower even though lower levels are associated with higher mortality.
• Lupus can carry about a 50-fold higher heart-disease risk, and the excess risk comes from inflammation, not cholesterol. [10]
• Rheumatoid arthritis carries about 1.5-times higher mortality.
• The main priorities are stopping smoking, eliminating diabetes through diet, and monitoring and controlling high blood pressure; cholesterol has much less importance.
• Statins are relatively safe but still have side effects and costs, so their use depends on the magnitude of cholesterol risk and the larger risks that can be changed.

References

1. [00:24] 2026 ACC/AHA/AACVPR/ABC/ACPM/ADA/AGS/APhA/ASPC/NLA/PCNA Guideline on the Management of Dyslipidemia — https://doi.org/10.1161/CIR.0000000000001423
2. [01:25] Implications of the 2026 Dyslipidemia Guideline for Primary Prevention Statin Therapy — https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2026.11246
3. [02:50] Development and Validation of the American Heart Association's PREVENT Equations — https://doi.org/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.123.067626
4. [07:24] Global, regional and national trends in statin utilisation in high-income and low/middle-income countries, 2015–2020 — https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2022-061350
5. [09:14] Association of Lipid, Inflammatory, and Metabolic Biomarkers With Age at Onset for Incident Coronary Heart Disease in Women — https://doi.org/10.1001/jamacardio.2020.7073
6. [11:01] Global Effect of Modifiable Risk Factors on Cardiovascular Disease and Mortality — https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMoa2206916
7. [12:46] Global Effect of Cardiovascular Risk Factors on Lifetime Estimates — https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMoa2415879
8. [16:10] Association between low density lipoprotein and all cause and cause specific mortality in Denmark: prospective cohort study — https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.m4266
9. [18:11] Discontinuation of statins for primary prevention of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease in adults aged 75 years or older (SAGA/SITE): a multicentre, open-label, pragmatic, non-inferiority randomised trial — https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lanhl.2026.100884
10. [19:28] Age-specific incidence rates of myocardial infarction and angina in women with systemic lupus erythematosus: comparison with the Framingham Study — https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.aje.a009122

Weight loss after 50

• Weight loss after 40 is possible; hormones around perimenopause and menopause can make it harder, and substantial weight loss can still occur after menopause.
• Anita has lost about 150 pounds overall, with normal fluctuations around that number, without counting temporary lows as additional weight loss.

From low carb to carnivore

• About 15 years ago Anita started with Dr. Atkins: meat, about two cups of vegetables a day, and 20 net carbs while tracking; roughly 80–100 pounds were lost in that first low-carb period.[1]
• After her father died in 2017, about 40–50 pounds returned, followed by a move into keto; for years the total loss moved between roughly 80 pounds and just over 100 pounds.
• Keto was easy to follow, but frequent keto sweets carried food addiction into the diet; 30-day carnivore challenges gradually shifted eating toward meat, with about four years as a carnivore.
• Removing foods such as nuts and almond flour helped produce roughly another 50 pounds of loss, and simple meals such as steak on a plate became preferable.
• Strict carnivore eating is not necessary all the time: seasonings, an occasional pickle, or a keto-style celebration dessert can fit because the diet has to remain sustainable for life.

Protein, fat, and dairy

• Close tracking is no longer used, but at age 68 protein gets more attention, with a target of about 120 grams a day and "protein first" even when the target is missed.
• No single fat-to-protein ratio has worked permanently: high-fat, low-fat, and middle-ground carnivore have each worked for a period and then stabilized, while high fat improved mood without breaking the weight stall.
• During a 31-day dairy-free August experiment, body weight stayed roughly within a two-pound range while waist size fell by three inches; whether the change was body fat, bloating, or something else is unknown.
• Dairy can make this way of eating much easier to sustain, so permanent "never again" rules are not used; occasional dairy will continue to be tested for individual effects.

Ageless living, muscle, and daily habits

• Carnivore for Ageless Living has more than 120 recipes, with a blueprint for simplifying life through morning light, movement, stress management, sleep, circadian rhythm, community, and small intentional habits.
• Weight training currently occurs twice a week and previously occurred three times a week; for people over 50, maintaining or rebuilding muscle is a major priority.
• Sarcopenia is a real problem in older adults, and severe muscle loss was common among nursing-home residents eating soups, puddings, cookies, and too little protein.
• Maintaining muscle requires enough protein, and rebuilding lost muscle requires resistance exercise as well; declining appetite with age can make getting 120-plus grams of protein harder.
• Sleep also needs deliberate attention with age, and resistance training helps with bone strength and protection when falls happen.
• Hal Cranmer runs assisted-living homes using ketogenic and carnivore-style food, movement, and individualized care, and some residents have improved enough to return home.[2]
• Vascular dementia in Anita's mother made brain health personally important; heart and metabolic health are linked with brain health, with omega-3-rich foods, B vitamins, folate, and vitamin D prioritized, and vitamin D supplementation used after testing showed a low level.
• Creatine for brain health remains an area for further investigation, without enough evidence reviewed to speak confidently about it.

Sardine fasting and regular sardines

• A sardine fast is not mainly a weight-loss tool; Dominic D'Agostino's sardine-fasting approach uses sardines to create a large energy deficit while still providing dense nutrition.[3]
• Sardines strongly suppress appetite and provide omega-3s and dense nutrition, with perceived benefits for brain and joint health.
• After the first few sardine challenges, Anita's knee pain improved enough to leave the replacement-surgery waiting list, although severe arthritis remained and a later fall caused more damage.
• Courtney's own sardine fast clarified hunger versus emotional eating; she lost a few pounds, ketones rose, glucose fell, and calorie intake was probably very low on some days.
• A sardine challenge is not required: sardine pâté and other recipes can be eaten regularly, and mixing sardines with foods such as tuna is an easier way to keep them in the diet.

References

1. [01:56] Dr Atkins New Diet Revolution — https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/342511/dr-atkins-new-diet-revolution-by-atkins-dr/9780091889487
2. [21:54] Revolutionizing Assisted Living: Hal Cranmer's Ketogenic & Carnivore Approach to Senior Wellness — https://www.metabolicmind.org/resources/news-views/podcasts/metabolic-mind-podcast/revolutionizing-assisted-living-hal-cranmers-ketogenic-carnivore-approach-to-senior-wellness/
3. [25:27] Dr. Dominic D’Agostino — All Things Ketones, How to Protect the Brain and Boost Cognition, Sardine Fasting, Diet Rules, Revisiting Metformin and Melatonin, and More (#825) — https://tim.blog/2025/09/03/dr-dominic-dagostino-all-things-ketones/

From Atkins to stricter low-carb

• Atkins was initially dismissed, but in 2005 Dr. Dahlqvist's account of improved satiety and weight on low-carb arrived during repeated relapses and cravings on a low-fat plan with fruit, bread, and other carbohydrates.
• Low-carb initially produced fewer cravings and relapses, but whipped cream, berries, nuts, and cheese could still be overeaten; nuts could not be limited to a few, and after a couple of years the low-carb/high-fat plan still was not working for everyone involved.
• Balancing blood sugar could not cure sugar addiction because addiction is a chronic illness, and lessons from alcohol-and-drug recovery were applied to sugar and food problems.
• Calling the problem "food addiction" made no sense if any food could become dangerous, so the food plan moved toward natural food, removed whipped cream, nuts, and most cheese, and recovery improved when triggering foods were removed.
• "Food noise" is stealth propaganda that minimizes what is really craving; craving is the relevant term, and craving can kill.
• In 1998 a dietitian supplied a paper called "From Seed to Oil" warning about canola, nut, and seed oils; nuts were later connected with omega-6, the omega-3/omega-6 relationship became important, and nuts were removed from the food plan.

Sugar and carb addiction

• This is sugar-and-carb addiction, not food addiction; flour belongs in the problem too, and Dr. David Unwin's phrase "flour is sugar molecules holding hands" is a simple explanation of why.
• While the diet was still ketogenic before carnivore, a boat lecture to Finland had a vegan buffet and kitchen staff had to be asked for fish or eggs; this reflected the strong plant-based push being encountered.
• More than 6,500 clients have probably been seen, and Sugar Bomb in Your Brain contains about 17 cases telling the hell they went through, what happened, and how they feel today. [1]
• People are held captive by forces such as an overactive reward system and survival brain, an overactive pancreas, and a broken microbiome; changing food is the starting point, but food is only about 10% of the whole recovery protocol and the larger lifestyle has to change too.
• Sugar addiction can progress through repeated dieting and restriction into anorexia; a couple of clients died when that pattern could not be broken.
• Restriction can progress into bingeing, vomiting, fasting, compulsive exercise, and later volume eating, where people may overeat almost anything.
• In that late stage, meat, butter, and salt are not the addictive agents; the survival system is so disrupted that oxytocin, insulin, GLP-1, and the wider system are damaged, leaving the survival brain screaming to eat.

Loss of control, energy, and the move to carnivore

• Addiction is loss of control: hyperinsulinemia, brain insulin resistance with "foggy brain," Candida overgrowth, and the locked-on reward and survival systems can leave a person unable to connect the dots or control the target behavior.
• Addiction is the driver and many diagnoses are consequences; when medicine does not screen for the addiction, the "one ill, one pill" approach can keep adding diagnoses and medications without stopping the driver.
• Early in recovery, feelings are not the guide because they are false negative feelings produced by the illness; energy is what matters, and restoring mitochondrial energy is necessary before people can work on sleep, relationships, and the rest of recovery.
• The progression moved from low-carb to strict low-carb and then keto as cravings fell and satiety improved; carnivore came later in that process.
• A woman with years of severe IBS had symptoms gone after three days of carnivore, and that was the point where carnivore clicked; antinutrients and oxalates then joined existing concerns about gluten and grains.
• The transition from the old food plan through low-carb, stricter low-carb, keto, and carnivore was a process, just as recovery is a process and not an event.
• Eating this way makes the brain calmer and gives energy and satiety, so cravings are gone, although chocolate can still wake up the "red dog"; breathing, nature, social contact, a dog, and a daily commitment to the food plan are also used.
• Sugar and carbohydrates make the strongest addiction-memory or euphoric-recall imprint, especially with early childhood exposure, and are a gateway drug that raises tolerance and later drives drug-seeking through the reward system.
• Healing the brain takes months, and rebuilding neural connections requires changed behavior; reading, talking, and thinking alone do not rewire addiction.

Staying stopped, biochemical denial, and shame

• Sugar addiction is harder to stay stopped from than alcohol because food is more complex, sugar and carbohydrates are constantly available in society, and family, professionals, and other people can pressure someone back toward foods on which they had felt better abstaining.
• SUGAR® is a diagnostic tool developed from addiction diagnostic criteria; by the time people seek help, the results often put them in the third severe stage, with the first symptoms sometimes going back to age three, four, or five. [2]
• Staying stopped requires regular contact with recovery peers because the illness can quickly create doubt and lure someone back; one student called addiction a "shapeshifting beast" because its forms and expressions change.
• Biochemical denial comes from faulty wiring that stops people connecting the consequences to the addiction; hiding, lying, sneaking, shame, and social stigma then reinforce the problem.
• The prefrontal cortex develops to about age 25 or perhaps later; it is her own hypothesis that children having so much sugar may make it develop more slowly.
• Poor EPA/DHA intake, excess carbohydrates, insulin resistance, and malnutrition are also connected with impaired brain development, while psychoactive substances can affect different people differently depending on neurotransmitter dominance and nutritional status.
• Moderation does not work for a sugar-and-carb addict; controlled eating can occur around other people, followed by going to a store or private stash and eating everything in sight for hours.

Biochemical repair and abstinence

• The biochemical-repair sequence is food, breathing, sleep, physical activity, and then supplements; addicts overbreathe and overdo things, crash their energy, and need to relearn nose breathing and stabilize their energy.
• The Relaxator is the main breathing tool used, sleep comes next, and physical activity starts at whatever level the person can tolerate, even if that means putting on shoes, stepping outside, and coming straight back in.
• Correct breathing is also a relaxation tool; breathing removes most metabolic waste, and when carbon dioxide gets too low the body cannot take up oxygen properly, energy falls, and sugar craving rises.
• Fish oil, magnesium, electrolytes, and sometimes GABA can help when needed, but supplements are crutches, not a cure or fix.
• It takes at least about three months to start getting some energy back and can take years depending on how damaged someone is, so craving management and relapse prevention start on day one.
• Daily support from like-minded people is crucial because society can quickly turn abstinence into "one piece of potato"; one bite is too much and a thousand is never enough.
• Sugar and carbohydrates are psychoactive substances, and recovery requires 100% abstinence; powerlessness is about the drug's effect on the reward and survival systems, not about being a powerless human being.
• Recovery is managed one day at a time with a morning commitment and practical problem-solving; groups are powerful because people can learn how others have already handled the same high-risk situations.

Immediate recovery tools and changing behavior

• For someone in strong craving, the first step is meat, butter, and salt at the next meal and again at the meal after that, along with the breathing technique, water between meals, optional ghee, butter, or coconut fat, plain salt or unsweetened electrolytes, and contact with people in recovery.
• Plan only tomorrow: decide whether to eat breakfast, what to eat, whether the food environment needs changing, what food to bring to work, when to walk, and who to call; ask family for help without demanding that they change their own food.
• Keep it simple and use HALT: do not become too hungry, angry, lonely, or tired; stick with people who are succeeding in recovery, and do not turn recipes, cookbooks, or food searching into another obsession.
• As energy returns, go into action even when early thoughts and feelings are unreliable; taking a walk and making small changes such as sitting in another chair, brushing with the other hand, or walking backward through a doorway are ways changed behavior helps the brain build new paths.
• A French study involved people with depression who could feel better with antidepressants, while putting a pen in the mouth to simulate smiling could also "fool" the brain; this serves as an example of changing the body to influence the brain.
• The assessment curve can show years of repeated diets, weight loss and regain, and even gastric bypass or sleeve surgery; repeated efforts are evidence of resilience and persistence with the wrong toolbox, and recovery means using those strengths with a new toolbox and peer support.

References

1. [13:11] SUGAR BOMB IN YOUR BRAIN: Healing From Sugar Addiction — https://www.xlibris.com/en-GB/bookstore/bookdetails/849071-sugar-bomb-in-your-brain
2. [31:32] SUGAR® (Sugar Use General Assessment Recording) — https://www.bittensaddiction.com/professional-training/sugar/

LDL in context

• A red flag next to LDL tells you almost nothing about you. Some people dismiss LDL as unimportant; LDL is not unimportant. LDL and ApoB are part of the atherosclerotic process, but they need context.
• LDL is not the whole story: the standard panel also gives triglycerides, HDL, total cholesterol, and non-HDL cholesterol, and reading LDL in isolation as good or bad captures only a fraction of the picture.
• Potassium and hematocrit have ranges where a sufficiently abnormal value is dangerous largely independent of the individual. LDL is not like that; its meaning depends on the rest of the individual.
• A healthy 32-year-old with no family history and a 72-year-old with two cardiac stents can both have LDL of 130 mg/dL with completely different clinical pictures, so LDL requires a conversation and broader evaluation.
• The 2026 guidelines make LDL above 190 mg/dL an exception: it is high risk regardless of the individual and leads to medication because it is often associated with familial hypercholesterolemia (FH). [1]
• FH is a genetic condition affecting roughly 1 in 250 people and increases cardiovascular risk at a young age. [2]
• Data include people with LDL at that level who do not have heart disease and people who have high LDL without FH.
• Even above 190 mg/dL, high LDL is not automatically high risk in the same way as potassium or hematocrit. The number warrants attention, a thoughtful conversation, further evaluation, and proper FH diagnosis; medication may still be appropriate, but high LDL does not automatically establish a genetic abnormality.

Triglycerides and HDL

• Before LDL targets, triglycerides and HDL deserve attention because many patients have said their doctor never mentioned those numbers and only looked at LDL. Whether that is literally true matters less than the fact that it was the patient's experience, meaning that is mostly where the conversation went or did not go.
• A laboratory may call triglycerides under 150 mg/dL normal, while 150 is normal for a metabolically unhealthy population here and triglycerides under 100 mg/dL are the preferred level; that goal is aggressive and important.
• The triglyceride-to-HDL ratio matters even more, with a preferred level below 1.5. Published insulin-resistance cutoffs are usually around 2 to 3; the aim is optimal metabolic health, while "optimal" is tough to define and kind of squishy, and moving toward below 1.5 remains the goal.
• The ratio does not behave the same for everyone: Black patients tend to have lower triglycerides at the same degree of insulin resistance, so the cutoff may need different interpretation and requires context, not an absolute threshold. [3]
• Multiple trials of drugs that raised HDL failed to prevent heart attacks, but interpreting that as HDL not mattering is a misreading of the data. Failure of a drug to prevent heart attacks is not the same as HDL completely not mattering. [4]
• Low HDL is a very reliable marker of metabolic dysfunction and still tracks with higher cardiovascular risk.
• In the early cohort data, HDL was a better predictor of heart disease than elevated LDL. [5]
• General HDL cutoffs are not below 40 mg/dL for men or 50 mg/dL for women.
• Raising HDL with a drug that does nothing about the underlying metabolic dysfunction is very different from HDL rising because diet changed, exercise started, and visceral fat was lost. In the latter case, the rise signals that the underlying problem is getting better and will absolutely reduce cardiac risk.
• Genetically very high HDL, around 90 mg/dL or higher for an entire life, is not necessarily beneficial; some people in that range have genetically high HDL that is actually dysfunctional. The number matters less than why the number is what it is. [6]

Lp(a), ApoB, and risk estimation

• Lp(a) is not on the standard lipid panel, but the 2026 guidelines recommend that every adult have it measured at least once in a lifetime because it is a separate genetic risk factor that can refine overall cardiovascular risk. Even with its inclusion in the guidelines, patients may still need to ask their doctor specifically for it. [1]
• In reality, the focus should be ApoB, not LDL. ApoB is still underused, while LDL is the most common lipid test on the standard lipid profile, so patients can ask their provider for ApoB.
• The LDL number means almost nothing on its own.
• The 2026 guidelines use the PREVENT risk calculator. [1][7]
• The older Pooled Cohort Equations overestimated risk, so people were being told they were at higher risk than they actually were. [8]
• There is a legitimate concern that medicine keeps moving the goalposts with lower thresholds to put more people on more medications, but PREVENT went in the opposite direction: its risk estimates came down, even though the targets continue to get lower. [8]
• Risk calculators are evidence-informed estimates, not absolutes, and should spark a conversation without dictating care. Medical practice often breaks down at the last stage of translating a population-based estimate to the individual.
• PREVENT uses age, blood pressure, BMI, kidney function, smoking, diabetes status, and the lipid profile; places the individual into low, borderline, intermediate, or high risk; adjusts for risk enhancers such as family history, obesity, lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, and other inflammatory conditions; and then gives a recommendation about whether LDL-lowering medication is used and how intensive it is. [1]

Imaging vascular disease

• High LDL by itself does not cause heart attacks or strokes; arterial plaque causes heart attacks and strokes. LDL is not the disease; vascular disease is the disease.
• For borderline and intermediate risk, the guidelines include coronary artery calcium (CAC) testing. A CAC score is a quick non-contrast CT that looks at calcium in the actual arteries and screens the individual for vascular disease beyond reliance on a population formula. [1]
• CAC scans are not perfect, but for men over 40 and women over 45 they are a good test to refine cardiac risk. Coronary CT angiography is even better, although it is harder to obtain and is not included in the guidelines. [1]

LDL goals and medication decisions

• The repeated focus on factors beyond LDL reflects that LDL is only a small part of the picture. LDL targets are more controversial because the goalposts have moved the most over the past few decades.
• The 2026 guidelines set LDL under 100 mg/dL for borderline or intermediate risk, under 70 mg/dL for high risk or established heart disease, and under 55 mg/dL for very high risk; in reality, most patients with established heart disease end up with the under-55 target. High-risk patients also need at least a 50% reduction from baseline on top of hitting the goal. [1]
• Those targets have continued to get lower and lower, but they are not completely made up: they come from studies showing fewer cardiovascular events at those levels.
• Evidence-based targets still leave questions about absolute benefit at lower targets, diminishing returns, cardiac events versus all-cause mortality, which people benefit most, and whether higher drug doses produce more side effects.
• Borderline risk with LDL 120 mg/dL but no plaque is a case for conversation, not a reflex prescription by any means.
• Not everyone wants medication, and that is their right to choose. Some people value agency and bodily autonomy more, value current certainty over a future possibility, and for some the psychological burden of giving that up degrades quality of life; clinicians and guideline writers need to respect that because numerical guidelines do not capture it.
• Coronary disease with LDL 65 mg/dL and multiple medications raises another important conversation about adding to growing polypharmacy for a small absolute event reduction to get below 55, not a reflex prescription.

Metabolic health and practical use

• LDL by itself means nothing and needs context, and all of this takes a backseat to making sure metabolic health is being addressed.
• Lowering LDL as far as possible while not aggressively addressing insulin resistance is like using scotch tape to plug a leaky dam: it may make someone feel better briefly, but it will not solve the problem.
• Even the best LDL-lowering trials reduce cardiac events by only a small absolute amount and do not eliminate them, not even close, so other issues still need attention and metabolic health rises near the top.
• This complexity is appropriate. Simplifying LDL to one number or equation that is simply good or bad does everyone a disservice; LDL is not a clear universal normal-or-abnormal value like potassium.
• When a lab comes back flagged, do not panic and do not ignore it: look at the whole panel; ask about triglycerides, HDL, the triglyceride-to-HDL ratio, Lp(a), and ApoB; ask for the PREVENT score; and ask whether CAC or possibly coronary CT angiography makes sense.
• People have more agency over their health than most realize, and access to more information can help them make better decisions than any one single number on a lab sheet can.

References

1. [00:39] 2026 ACC/AHA/AACVPR/ABC/ACPM/ADA/AGS/APhA/ASPC/NLA/PCNA Guideline on the Management of Dyslipidemia: A Report of the American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association Joint Committee on Clinical Practice Guidelines — https://doi.org/10.1161/CIR.0000000000001423
2. [02:43] Estimating the prevalence of heterozygous familial hypercholesterolaemia: a systematic review and meta-analysis — https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2017-016461
3. [04:39] Should triglycerides and the triglycerides to high-density lipoprotein cholesterol ratio be used as surrogates for insulin resistance? — https://doi.org/10.1016/j.metabol.2009.07.027
4. [04:56] Effect of HDL-Raising Drugs on Cardiovascular Outcomes: A Systematic Review and Meta-Regression — https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0094585
5. [05:17] High density lipoprotein as a protective factor against coronary heart disease: The Framingham Study — https://doi.org/10.1016/0002-9343(77)90874-9
6. [05:57] Rare variant in scavenger receptor BI raises HDL cholesterol and increases risk of coronary heart disease — https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aad3517
7. [07:08] Development and Validation of the American Heart Association's PREVENT Equations — https://doi.org/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.123.067626
8. [07:15] Evaluation and Comparison of the PREVENT and Pooled Cohort Equations for 10-Year Atherosclerotic Cardiovascular Risk Prediction — https://doi.org/10.1161/JAHA.124.039454

Children and diet

• Kids should definitely not be on the standard Western diet; it is absolutely unequivocally driving obesity, type 2 diabetes, and probably gut-related and mental-health problems in children.
• For most kids, a strict red-meat-only carnivore diet is not the answer. There are some kids where it could potentially be a solution; carnivore is best used to help people fix illnesses such as eating disorders, food addiction, metabolic disease, and autoimmune disease, while beyond that it becomes more a matter of preference.
• One woman raises her children on an animal-based diet of about 90% meat and 10% fruit, with lots of red fatty meat, some eggs, some dairy, and a little fruit; the kids are thriving, and I have seen that many, many, many times, including some big wins among kids.

Clinical examples

• One child with an extremely rare gut disease was about 2½ years old, under 20 lb, on tube feeds and TPN, and basically dying; her mother switched her to a carnivore diet, and two or three years later the child was thriving, to the point that her doctors were asking what she had done because they had never seen it before. [1]
• A vegan teenager with Tourette's syndrome wanted to add meat because she wanted to be on the track team; her parents reluctantly allowed it if she bought and cooked the meat herself, she went fully carnivore, and the Tourette's syndrome went away. [2]

My family and diet

• None of the four children are full carnivore, but all eat a healthy amount of animal products by preference; none are sick, and they are healthy, well-behaved, respectful, intelligent, physically doing well, and athletic.
• A child's diet should include plenty of animal products because they are an easy way to get high-quality nutrition and help push out ubiquitous junk food.

Food quality and GRAS

• The MAHA movement has not seriously changed the junk-food environment; there may be more junk food with protein and perhaps a few food dyes will be removed, but a wholesale removal of the literally thousands of chemicals in the food supply is unlikely.
• The "generally recognized as safe" designation is often made with minimal support and minimal evidence; companies do basic testing, say they feel an ingredient is safe for human consumption, and it gets rubber-stamped GRAS, while questions such as whether it causes inflammatory bowel disease or IBS have not been tested before approval, though some people may go back and test later. [3]

Practical diet for children

• A child's diet should have plenty of meat, eggs, and dairy for most kids, with the rest primarily composed of single whole ingredients that are minimally processed as much as possible.
• Ultra-processed food should be extremely rare: birthday cake belongs on the birthday, not as dessert after every meal, and sugary breakfast cereal is effectively another dessert.

Social norms and chronic disease

• The mother feeding an animal-based diet received more criticism than the mother feeding her children doughnuts and other garbage; this is completely backwards.
• The masses have been brainwashed to believe that convenience and a need to snack constantly make this food appropriate to consume, while chronic disease has nothing to do with it and lifelong pills, drugs, and shots are expected.
• People in their 40s, 50s, and 60s often expect that they will be on some kind of drug at some point, and when that happens it is often seen as no big deal; the physician will often downplay it as no big deal because lots of patients are in the same situation.
• A chronic-disease diagnosis is a big deal and a red-flag problem, and these illnesses should be prevented before they happen.

References

1. [01:37] Her Daughter Is ALIVE Thanks To MEAT | Dr. Shawn Baker & Jessica — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/her-daughter-is-alive-thanks-to-meat-dr-shawn-baker-jessica/id1495714614?i=1000682065854
2. [02:16] Kicking Tourette Syndrome to the Curb! | Mady — https://music.amazon.com.br/podcasts/eb1459c5-577a-4878-8acc-423fb2da12de/episodes/e2fd3fc8-4992-46ae-a023-3b70a29da959/dr-shawn-baker-podcast-kicking-tourette-syndrome-to-the-curb-mady
3. [04:08] How U.S. FDA's GRAS Notification Program Works — https://www.fda.gov/food/generally-recognized-safe-gras/how-us-fdas-gras-notification-program-works

Origins: Star Trek, Star Wars, and U.S. power

• The USS Enterprise CVN-65, the first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, inspired the USS Enterprise NCC-1701; Roddenberry originally called his starship Yorktown, and Star Trek's naval structure became an idealized image of the U.S. Navy.
• NBC rejected the first pilot as too cerebral but commissioned Star Trek because its command structure felt relatable to the U.S. Navy; the earlier video "Star Trek is propaganda" supplies the full case for reading the Federation as an idealized U.S. naval superpower. [1]
• Vietnam shattered that ideal. George Lucas directly tied Star Wars to Vietnam and the Viet Cong: the advanced technological empire loses to low-tech rebels, while Enterprise launching combat sorties is the real-world counterpart to a Star Destroyer projecting force without permission. [2]

The American mythos

• Every era has a mythos: stories such as the Olympians, the Ramayana, and Romulus and Remus tell a civilization where it comes from and shape what it becomes.
• The U.S. has spent its short history manufacturing such stories through the Old West, the Founding Fathers, advertising, schools, and mass culture.
• Francis Bellamy's 1892 Pledge of Allegiance grew out of a campaign to sell flags to schools; its original straight-arm salute was replaced by the hand-over-heart practice in 1942.
• Hollywood's capitalist competition produced the conjoined mythos of "Star Trek Wars," built around postwar America's central question: how should a superpower use its power?
• Star Trek is America's highest self-image: liberal democratic power making alliances, rebuilding enemies into friends, and using science and technology to raise up the wider world without domination.
• Star Wars is the dark image of the same power: America as an empire with superweapons, vassals, coercion, and overwhelming force.
• Together they form an American culture divided over whether America is the Federation or the Empire.

Why the mythos died

• By 2026, with Star Trek at 60 and Star Wars approaching 50, "Star Trek Wars" is a dead mythos because the American power it was built to interpret is itself dying.
• Feral Historian's 60th-anniversary reflection prompted this essay; despite coming from opposing political directions, both channels now sit outside the liberal center and critique the same exhausted myths.
• The dissident right and radical left are gaining traction for the same reason: the liberal-center myths no longer correspond to the material order they were built around.
• The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine embodied the institutional confidence of Pax Americana, while the Star Wars prequels explored a decadent republic rotting into dictatorship through emergency powers in the War on Terror and Patriot Act era.
• The death began in the 2000s, but J.J. Abrams did not personally kill it, and neither did "woke": Star Trek and Star Wars were always diverse, political, and full of empowered women.
• Corporate capitalism is the more attractive culprit: Disney bought Star Wars as exploitable franchise property, while Star Trek passed through Viacom and then into the Paramount-Skydance empire controlled by David Ellison and backed by Larry Ellison.
• That ownership now places Star Trek under billionaires who will not permit the franchise to attack certain U.S.-supported political travesties with the freedom it once used to attack Vietnam or Afghanistan.
• Andor does not save Star Wars; it shows why Disney's factory model is failing. The earlier "Andor : a Marxist story" identified the politics, and Tony Gilroy demonstrates that art is made by artists without corporate content systems. [3]
• Capitalism alone cannot be the killer because both franchises were born from corporate profit-seeking in the first place.

The collapse of U.S. power

• America itself is the killer: "Star Trek Wars" was America working through what to do with overwhelming power, and it was not equipped to handle the collapse of that power.
• The military symptoms are aircraft carriers becoming obsolete and Patriot interceptors costing roughly 200 times the drones they destroy; the deeper reality is that America is about 4% of world population and 15% of global GDP, with that share falling.
• America is neither Federation nor Empire. Its power was never destined; it was contingent on geography, historical fortune, and ruthless choices, and those contingencies are fading.
• Faced with decline, America has chosen the darker myth and is making a last attempt to become the evil empire: MAGA embraces imperial aesthetics, domestic stormtroopers, and the possibility of catastrophic nuclear escalation.

The choice that remains

• All national myths are lies and propaganda to some degree, but they are also visions that orient decisions toward futures that do not yet exist.
• The Empire leads only to the dark side; the Federation's strength was never its starships but the Prime Directive, restraint from imposing itself by force, and cooperation.
• The Federation was always America's best destiny: not a guaranteed destiny, but one that can still be chosen and built.

References

1. [00:59] Star Trek is propaganda — :contentReference[oaicite:0]{index=0}
2. [01:45] George Lucas Reveals How Star Wars Was Influenced By the Vietnam War — :contentReference[oaicite:1]{index=1}
3. [11:38] Andor : a Marxist story — :contentReference[oaicite:2]{index=2}

Pills and GLP-1 basics

• The two oral GLP-1 weight-loss drugs now approved solve the same delivery problem in very different ways: oral semaglutide is still a peptide, while orforglipron is a small molecule; neither changes the basic metabolic rules governing fat storage and release.
• GLP-1 is released from intestinal cells after food arrives. For obesity and weight loss, its most relevant effect is slower stomach emptying and therefore slower nutrient entry into the blood; appetite regulation in the brain is another possible mechanism, although evidence for its importance is debated.
• Peptide GLP-1 drugs such as semaglutide, liraglutide, tirzepatide, and retatrutide are amino-acid chains made more stable than natural GLP-1, but stomach acid and digestive enzymes denature and break down peptides, so injection historically bypassed the digestive problem.

Oral semaglutide

• Oral semaglutide keeps the peptide but packages it with the absorption enhancer SNAC. SNAC locally buffers stomach acidity, keeps semaglutide molecules from clumping, and temporarily increases passage across the stomach lining so some intact drug can enter the blood.
• Absorption occurs through the stomach and remains extremely inefficient: only about 1% of the swallowed dose, sometimes closer to 0.5%, reaches the bloodstream. The tablet therefore has to be taken in the morning on an empty stomach with only a few ounces of water, followed by roughly 30 minutes without food or drink.
• Oral semaglutide is essentially the injectable peptide adapted for swallowing through chemical assistance, with convenience traded for a strict dosing routine.

Orforglipron

• Orforglipron abandons the peptide structure altogether. As a small molecule it survives digestion, activates the same GLP-1 receptor through a distinct binding site, and produces sufficiently similar signaling without needing an absorption enhancer.
• A tracer study comparing oral with intravenous delivery found mean oral bioavailability of about 79%, roughly 80 times the oral absorption of semaglutide. [1]
• Food can reduce orforglipron exposure by roughly one-fifth, but the reduction remains compatible with a meaningful physiological response, allowing once-daily dosing without fasting, waiting, or food restrictions. [2]

Clinical data

• In a 26-week type 2 diabetes trial, orforglipron improved markers of insulin sensitivity: HOMA-IR fell by up to about one quarter by week 26, and adiponectin increased. [3]
• The all-randomized analysis counts everyone assigned whether or not they stayed on the drug; it is more conservative and more reflective of real-world use than analysis limited to people who remained on it.
• The main obesity trial enrolled about 3,000 adults without diabetes for 72 weeks. Weight fell about 7% at the low dose, 8.5% at the middle dose, and just over 11% at the highest dose, versus about 2% with placebo; among people who stayed on the highest dose, loss was a little over 12%. [4]
• In type 2 diabetes, a head-to-head trial found orforglipron beat oral semaglutide on blood sugar and weight at the doses tested, but semaglutide was only 7 or 14 mg, not its 25 mg obesity dose, so this was not a comparison of normal weight-loss doses. [5]
• Across separate obesity trials against placebo, oral semaglutide 25 mg produced about 13.5% weight loss and orforglipron about 11%; semaglutide produced somewhat more weight loss, while orforglipron was easier to take but had somewhat more nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. [4][6]
• In nearly 400 people who had reached a stable weight after injected semaglutide or tirzepatide, switching to orforglipron for a year preserved roughly 80-90% of the prior weight loss, whereas switching to placebo preserved only about half. [7]

Insulin, food, and GLP-1

• The chemistry and delivery can change, but insulin still governs whether fat cells grow or shrink: while insulin stays elevated, stored fat stays stored. GLP-1 drugs help largely by reducing how much is eaten and slowing how quickly what is eaten reaches the blood, which lowers insulin.
• Refined carbohydrate—flour, sugar, and processed starches—is the strongest dietary driver of insulin, so if the drug makes eating less easier, the food to reduce is refined carbohydrate.
• About 30 years ago, women with obesity and age-matched lean women were given carbohydrate and fat meals and followed for three hours. The obese women had a markedly blunted GLP-1 response to carbohydrate but a more robust fat response closer to the lean women. [8]
• The macronutrient that raises insulin the most can also fail to generate its normal GLP-1 satiety signal in obesity, leaving carbohydrate intake harder to regulate; a GLP-1 drug can help restore that missing signal.

Using the drug as a window for habit change

• A two-year semaglutide trial measured food cravings over time. Cravings for sweets, refined starches, and sugars were markedly reduced around six months and remained reduced around one year, but by two years the cravings had returned to normal despite ongoing and escalating semaglutide dosing. [9]
• This creates roughly a one-year window in which sugar and refined-carbohydrate foods exert less pull. Using the period merely to eat smaller portions of the same foods leaves the old habits intact; using it to build meals around fat and protein creates new habits before the cravings return.
• GLP-1 drugs are a crutch that need not be permanent: they can help break carbohydrate cravings or addiction long enough to learn what control feels like, then provide an off-ramp through dose reduction and eventually stopping the drug.
• Switching from an injectable peptide to oral orforglipron may eventually prove useful for cycling off therapy while preserving drug sensitivity, but that remains an open question for future studies.
• The practical end point is unchanged by the new chemistry: use the drug to lower insulin by helping control carbohydrate cravings, then use the period of reduced cravings to build habits that can persist without the drug.

References

1. [10:26] Disposition and Absolute Bioavailability of Orally Administered Orforglipron in Healthy Participants — https://doi.org/10.1002/cpdd.1594
2. [11:17] Effect of Food Consumption on the Pharmacokinetics, Safety, and Tolerability of Once-Daily Orally Administered Orforglipron (LY3502970), a Non-peptide GLP-1 Receptor Agonist — https://doi.org/10.1007/s13300-024-01554-1
3. [12:13] Orforglipron, an oral non-peptide glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonist, improves markers of β-cell function and insulin sensitivity in type 2 diabetes — https://doi.org/10.1111/dom.70022
4. [13:38] Orforglipron, an Oral Small-Molecule GLP-1 Receptor Agonist for Obesity Treatment — https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMoa2511774
5. [14:13] Efficacy and safety of once-daily oral orforglipron compared with oral semaglutide in adults with type 2 diabetes (ACHIEVE-3): a multinational, multicentre, non-inferiority, open-label, randomised, phase 3 trial — https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(26)00202-3
6. [15:02] Oral Semaglutide at a Dose of 25 mg in Adults with Overweight or Obesity — https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMoa2500969
7. [16:16] Orforglipron for maintenance of body weight reduction: the double-blind, randomized phase 3b ATTAIN-MAINTAIN trial — https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-026-04386-7
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