I started carnivore six years ago following four rules the internet swore by. I've since dropped all four, and improved each time, which says something about the internet. Rule one: you need salt and electrolytes. I salted everything and carried sachets like a man expecting to be shipwrecked. Then I stopped and braced for the cramps. They never came. Better sleep did, and better lifting. It turns out the body can manage its own water if you let it be thirsty first. Rule two: you need liver to complete the diet. I ate it weekly for three years. A single helping carries more vitamin A and copper than the upper limit for a day, and it tastes bitter, which is nature's way of writing "steady on" across a food. My mouth objected the entire time. Eventually I listened, and I've felt better every year since. Rule three: chicken is a health food. Chicken is a record of what the bird was fed, which is corn and soy, kept in the skin and the fat. Those are the only parts with any flavour. Remove them and you're eating a damp napkin with a protein claim. Rule four: to get lean, cut the fat. I went the other way. Ribeye cap, 20% mince, butter on both, cream wherever it'll fit. When I want to tighten up, the menu stays exactly as it is and the clock moves. I eat later. Then I eat like a man who's been told it's free. So that's no salt, no liver, no chicken and more butter. Each of those rules had somebody selling it. A sachet, a capsule, a meal-prep tub, a cutting plan. The diet that's left has nothing in it to sell, and it's the only version that ever worked.

I probably wouldn’t be here today if I didn’t make the changes that I made. I was depressed. I was in a constant state of inflammation and I was losing my will to live. Sleep was my only reprieve. The dopamine in junk food was my only joy. I kept thinking, "What's the point?" And all that changed after I dedicated myself to an animal-based diet. I immediately felt better and it made me want to live again. That's why it's comical to me when someone tells me what’s on my plate is destroying me. They have no idea about the hell I left behind to get where I am today.

Ask the oldest people on earth what they ate every day, and not one of them says kale. Supercentenarians on their own daily habit: - Emma Morano, Italy, 117: three eggs a day, two raw, for 90 years - Susannah Mushatt Jones, USA, 116: four rashers of bacon each morning - Maria Branyas, Spain, 117: three yoghurts a day - Misao Okawa, Japan, 117: mackerel on rice, and sleep - Violet Brown, Jamaica, 117: fish, mutton and cow foot Morano added raw minced beef to the eggs, on the advice of a doctor in 1919 who is no longer available for follow-up. She outlived him by some margin. She outlived everybody. Jones kept a sign in her kitchen that read: bacon makes everything better. Every one of these women was born before the food pyramid, the low fat yoghurt and the statin, and every one of them outlived the people who designed all three. No verified human being has reached 115 and credited a wholegrain. The longevity industry interviews them, photographs them, and goes home to write the book about beans.

I bought a half loaf of store-bought 100% Whole Wheat bread with no artificial preservatives about 6 weeks ago to do a sponge experiment. And checking in on the loaf, it shows no signs of mold or becoming stale like normal bread should. So how is that possible? Turns out there is an ingredient in this bread that can escape being labeled as an artificial preservative and isn’t even named in the ingredients list because it is produced via fermentation. When wheat flour is fermented in this process, it produces a preservative called propionic acid. Regulators deem propionic acid safe because it doesn't cause any acute harms to humans. However, we have evidence that propionic acid... increases glucagon, insulin, norepinephrine, post-meal hunger and can trigger metabolic stress signals. You literally have to do a deep dive on store bought bread to understand why it behaves so unnaturally. All of this began with me asking, why is mold afraid of this bread? And the answer makes me think, maybe we should also be afraid of it too.

Take the cholesterol out of a cell wall and the cell leaks. Take the cholesterol out of the skin and the sun can shine all summer and make no vitamin D. Take the cholesterol out of the testicle and there is no testosterone. Take the cholesterol out of the ovary and there is no oestrogen, no cycle, no baby. Take the cholesterol out of the adrenal gland and there is no cortisol, and you cannot get out of bed, let alone run from anything. Take the cholesterol out of the liver and there is no bile, and a chip goes through you like a coin through a machine. Take the cholesterol out of the brain, which holds a quarter of all the cholesterol in your body, and you are holding a wet sponge. Take the cholesterol out of a nerve and the wire has no insulation. Take the cholesterol out of a wound and it does not close. Take the cholesterol out of your mother's milk and your brain never finishes building. There is no organ on that list that works without it. There is no plant that contains it. There is no animal that ever went without. Your liver makes most of it on purpose, every day of your life, whether you eat any or not, because the body has decided this is the one thing it will not run short of. They found the substance that every cell in you depends on, watched the body guard it with its own factory, and gave you a tablet to switch the factory off.