Ancestral diet: eating everything is key

Paul Saladino is shirtless, biceps bulging as he works a butcher’s saw back and forth across a cow’s femur. When he finally severs the bone, a crowd of onlookers erupts in applause. Grinning, he checks to see if he’s being filmed, then scoops a spoonful of marrow from the center of a bone chunk. He then deposits it into the mouth of an eager young woman like a priest giving communion.

Saladino, a medical doctor, is a popular proponent of an animal-based diet that extols meat and organs and demonizes vegetables. Through videos like this on TikTok, as well as the podcast he hosts, he preaches the value of eating beef and liver, marrow, and testicles to millions of social media followers. He is the author of the 2020 book The Carnivore Code and a companion cookbook. He founded the company Heart and Soil, which sells organ-based supplements, and co-founded Lineage Provisions, which sells protein powder and meat sticks. Saladino claims that the traditional food pyramid, with its broad base of plant foods that narrows to animal foods, is upside down and that the medical establishment’s view that high cholesterol causes heart disease is wrong. He says that meat and organs are the key to health, strength, and vitality.

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