Mark Bell's Power Project - MBPP EP. 638 - Vegans Carnivores & All Diet Micronutrient Deficiencies Solved Ft. Chris Masterjohn

Episode Date: December 8, 2021

Chris Masterjohn combines his scientific expertise with out-of-the-box thinking to translate complex science into, new, practical ideas that can help patients on the journey toward vibrant health. • Chris earned his PhD in Nutritional Sciences from the University of Connecticut in the summer of 2012. Today he shares his knowledge and solves the issues with not getting in enough micronutrients in your diet. Please find part two of this episode at the link below. Part 2: https://bit.ly/ChrisMJ2 Special perks for our listeners below! ➢Vertical Diet Meals: https://verticaldiet.com/ Use code POWERPROJECT for free shipping and two free meals + a Kooler Sport when you order 16 meals or more! ➢Vuori Performance Apparel: Visit https://vuoriclothing.com/powerproject to automatically save 20% off your first order! ➢Magic Spoon Cereal: Visit https://www.magicspoon.com/powerproject to automatically save $5 off a variety pack! ➢8 Sleep: Visit https://www.eightsleep.com/powerproject to automatically save $150 off the Pod Pro! ➢Marek Health: https://marekhealth.com Use code POWERPROJECT10 for 10% off ALL LABS! Also check out the Power Project Panel: https://marekhealth.com/powerproject Use code POWERPROJECT for $101 off! ➢LMNT Electrolytes: http://drinklmnt.com/powerproject ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150 Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Subscribe to the Power Project Newsletter! ➢ https://bit.ly/2JvmXMb Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell ➢Mark Bell's Daily Workouts, Nutrition and More: https://www.markbell.com/ Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ https://www.breakthebar.com/learn-more ➢YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang ➢Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=en ➢TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nsimayinyang?lang=en Follow Andrew Zaragoza on all platforms ➢ https://direct.me/iamandrewz #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell

Barrett Project family, how's it going? In this episode, we had an amazing conversation with Chris Masterjohn. Now, he had his PhD, or he earned his PhD from the University of Connecticut, and we were able to go into a lot of specifics in terms of micronutrient deficiencies and also how to deal with your macros.

But the really cool aspect is when we talked about dogmatic diets, like if you're vegan, if you're carnivore, and micronutrient considerations to think about if you're doing any of these diets, because a you're vegan, if you're carnivore, and micronutrient considerations to think about if you're doing any of these diets, because a lot of us just eat food and we don't really pay attention to things like our iron or our manganese or magnesium or all these little things. And Chris gave us a plan on how to do that. He also has a lot of free resources on his website, which we talk about in this episode. So I really hope you guys enjoy this amazing episode

where we do a deep nutritional jive dive with Chris Masterjohn. Pat Project family, what's up? Have you guys ever been working out and maybe, maybe you got a calf cramp, hamstring cramp, or ab cramp? Well, that's probably because you might be electrolyte deficient. That's why I've partnered with Element Electrolytes because most of the time when that happens, you're like, oh, I need to drink a lot of water, but you actually need to replenish your electrolytes. And Element comes in these easy to use packets that have a thousand milligrams of sodium, 200 milligrams of potassium and 60 milligrams of magnesium. Pour into some water, drink it up.

And trust me, you're not going to be suffering cramps anymore in the gym when you're out. Whatever you're doing, you're going to be well hydrated. Andrew, can you tell the people how to get it? Yes. You guys got to head over to drinklmnt.com slash power project. We highly recommend that you get a value bundle because you're going to get four boxes for the price of three. Get any four flavors you want, but you're only going to pay for three of them. That's again at drinklmnt.com slash power project. Links to them down in the YouTube description as well as the podcast show notes. Head over there right now.

3, 2, and... Add the music. Get the show started the right way. Whose voice is that for the intro? Is that Nseema? Is he doing the intros now? That's my brother, Babatunde. Oh, and he's doing that from

the studio here? Yeah, from the studio here. Oh, and he's doing that from the studio here? Yeah, from this studio here. Oh, he lives in the area? He comes in when I leave, yeah. What's his name? Babatunde. Oh, I've never met him. Yeah, Babatunde Areoloja Young.

He's jacked? Yeah, he looks pretty much the same as me. Why are you so jacked? Have you tried to figure it out, or are you just rolling with it? Okay, so there's a few different options here. It might be because you don't eat. It also could be because you don't sleep. Or maybe there's synergy between the two.

There is a synergy between not eating and not sleeping because you adapt to both. Like your body gets used to the lack of nutrients. We hear that all the time. The body's very adaptive. Exactly. Yeah, you want to actually know how to use the nutrients from the oxygen in the air. I do drink coffee. There's a few, you know, there's some calories in coffee.

And you said that your jiu-jitsu just makes you stronger. Yes. Even like the more tired you are, the stronger it makes you. Is that what you said? I don't want to misquote you. Yeah. There's also a little bit of, you know, when you do jiu-jitsu and you sweat with the people that you're rolling with, the sweat kind of, it can permeate the skin.

And there are nutrients and electrolytes. Would you use that word? Or is there no penetration during jiu-jitsu? Permeate. There's no. Oh, oh. What does permeate mean? Permeate means, you know, can kind of go through.

Oh, so it can penetrate then. Yeah, but we're not calling it that. Okay, we're going a little bit fancier with our jargon and calling it permeating. I don't know. I just thought we were going to talk about penetration because we got penis pumps and stuff around here. We really? Okay, so guys, that's not a joke. We got a cool guest coming in January.

Her name's Susan, and she sent us some penis pumps, too. The Whopper. It's literally called the Whopper. If I end up liking this, I'm going to change my middle name on Instagram to Penis Pump. I can't wait to read the instruction manual to learn how it's used i told you guys this this morning though but when they when they came in the mail there's one there's like two really big cylinders and i was just like i felt so insecure because i'm like yo this cylinder is way too big for my dick what am i that's but andrew said you're supposed to put your balls and your yeah yeah so it's a it's a are you sure about that i don't think unless they

unless they just put that in or unless susan put that in her ebook just to make us feel better but yeah it's a two cylinder oh i get it the nads probably help with the suction like the the the fucking cylinders as thick as the top of your mug. I was like, what? So pretty standard. Big old throbbing. It's supposed to draw blood. We'll learn more about it,

but it's supposed to draw blood to just the whole region. I'm so happy we're talking about stuff like this, though, and getting a guest to come on and talk about our dick health because, I mean, shoot, your dick needs to get some blood flow, too. And tight boxers can't be good for you.

No. You got to be careful. And let those hang. And we got weird clothes nowadays. Clothes are all synthetic, weird stuff and all that. I didn't think about that. Rubbing off on your nuts probably can't be great. My mom's always saying, yo, you shouldn't put your phone in your pocket i always keep forgetting about that but she's she's onto

something maybe she doesn't want to see you get castrated by your phone you never know you never know no one knows i'm excited for today we got chris masterjohn on i'm trying to figure out how to get a better name because like i feel like I got shorted somehow. Mark Bell. I don't know. Penis pump might be good. Yeah. I'll insert some penis pump in there, and I think that could help spice things up a bit. But Chris Masterjohn, that's an amazing name.

I feel uncomfortable saying his last name. Right. I'm just not going to do it. Chris. Chris. Masterjohn. John. John. I wonder. Master John. John. It reminds me of He-Man, too.

Master of the Universe, right? Uh-uh. Anyway, it would be awesome to have him on the show. I'm so happy I got you with that. What? I don't understand. Oh, yes, Master. Okay, gotcha.

It's Massa. Massa, sorry. No T. Well, okay. oh yes master okay gotcha and it's it's massa sorry no t well okay a lot of these names come from weird spots yeah i wonder where his came from maybe he has an interesting lineage you should go into that 23 and me and see where his roots are from it's like i'd rather not it's like mark i'll tell you off air yeah my family has gigantic uh we have so much land property what's this one really big house it's a uh i mean it's a plot fuck oh man god we suck at this we we're actually you know what we're pretty good we're like trending like really well or something, right?

Yeah. You seem to enunciate the trend in trending. Trending. Trending. Yeah, we are. We're trending. Yo, guys. Where is that?

Thank you, guys. Thank you, guys, for the comments, for the algorithm, because that's helping us out. We're ending up in a lot of recommended feeds, so you guys seem to be digging this shit. We love y'all. Thank you so much. I've been trying to have this show just sputter and flutter around, but I think because it's E-Mazon here, he's so handsome,

people tune in. They can't help it. I don't think that's the case. Are you sure? I think it's because we had Leo on. And then Leo helped us to, you know, he gave us some dick tips.

And that started the role. That's all people are tuning in for. Just dick. But it helped the growth. It did help the growth. When do we have that woman on the show? Susan, January 10th. I can't wait.

If y'all want to get a sneak little peek, we have this lady. Her name is Susan Bratton. Go check her out. But she's a sex therapist. Hey now. Very good at what she does. Lots of great information. Well, and people are always like, I don't know.

People always get that way. Give me as much help in that department as you can, lady. I want it. I want it. And it's great because she's a woman, so she can just be like, here is the formula, man. It's going gonna be fun i'm excited for that so am i oh well while we wait i guess i can share somewhat of a poop story oh yeah it's it's not that exciting okay but it did happen so yesterday we were talking to joe sullivan about in and out oh yeah i sprinted

to in and out i had to get it so did i so i i didn't eat much i only had four flying dutchmen very chill very very chill for me uh working on hunter's episode that went up today i'm gonna start getting real gassy all of a sudden and then i'm just like oh i gotta be careful oh yep uh it didn't break the surface so we were good there you know so it didn't like shoot out into my underwear but instead of going to the bathroom i just finished working on the episode and then went and cleaned up later so i was so dedicated to finishing that episode because it was getting late it was probably like almost nine at this point so i just made sure that i finished my work

and then I went to the bathroom. Damn, commitment, son. Sometimes that gives you motivation. There have been times where I've been like, nope, we're going to finish this and then I just like power through and then use the bathroom as the end treat. Well, thank goodness we have guests here

so we can stop talking about it. This lighting in this studio. Yeah, it's looking good. Good job, Andrew, man. Thanks, dude. Where did everybody go? I love the shirt. Thanks.

Is my sound okay? I think I can bump you up a little bit on my end. Yeah, you sound great. What's going on, Chris? Awesome. Not much. Hanging out, getting ready to have some conversation. Yeah, I'm excited for that.

I think what we'll do for today, we're going to – Just. Yeah, I'm excited for that. I think what we'll do for today, we're going to... Just to clarify one thing. Go for it. The email that sent the Zoom link, when we talk about... Are we recording? We're recording.

Yeah, but it's okay. It doesn't matter. Yeah, we can fix this later. Okay. So when we talk about the juice, we want to use the juice. We want to code it up. Did I understand that right?

It's all good, yeah. The normal coding of words you've been using will work. The Instagram version, yeah. Okay, cool. All right. Yeah, but we also feel that we need to dive into your nutrition and stuff as well just because you're so well-versed in that. And I do think it's great that you switched gears in addressing kind of the current situation of

what's going on so people can get more information. But let's just dive into the nutrition side of things first. How did you obtain like your nutrition background and like what got you excited and fired up to learn as much as you learned on nutrition? So I have a PhD in nutritional sciences from the University of Connecticut. And I've been as far in academia as being an assistant professor of health and nutrition sciences at Brooklyn College in Brooklyn, New York. Now work totally independently. What got me into that in the first place was I could trace it back to my teenage years where I saw my mom recover from fibromyalgia through all kinds of alternative medicine paths where I just saw her go from being in excruciating pain every night, so bad that it was keeping me up living across the house

just because that's how much pain she was in, to being very healthy and pain-free. And so I knew from that point that nutrition had a pretty profound impact, certainly underappreciated for what most people would say. But my turning point, I mean, that set me off on a bunch of journeys. I did the zone diet. I was vegan. I did lots of stuff. Veganism basically completely wrecked me mentally and physically and led me to the work of Weston Price, who was the first research director for what became the American Dental Association, turned nutritional anthropologist. And as a pioneer in nutritional anthropology, he basically studied the whole world in the 1920s, well, mainly the 1930s, actually, basically finding that no matter what continent he went to or where he went, people who were eating their traditional diets were healthy, both in their teeth and long lives, free of degenerative disease.

And all that changed when they switched to what he called the displacing foods of modern commerce, white flour, white sugar, cans, goods, syrups, et cetera, vegetable oils. And he put a big focus on nutrient-dense animal foods like organ meats, egg yolks, full-fat dairy, shellfish, and in some groups, ate whole insects and stuff like that. And so I was basically in my wrecked state from veganism finding out about these nutrient-dense animal foods, and I just totally changed my diet. And I was trying to fix my teeth because I had over a dozen cavities and needed two root canals. And it worked for that. But what was crazy was I was borderline psychotic. So there were times where I couldn't eat any... One time I distinctly remember,

I was trying to check the wrapper of my veggie burger for food tampering. And I checked it for 20 minutes until I probably cut a hole in it by myself. And then I couldn't tell whether I did it or it was already there. And so I threw it across the room in anger and went to my bed and cried because I was so hungry, but I couldn't find anything that I could trust to eat. So that was me. And then a couple months after I changed my diet, after I learned about Western Price's work, I totally forgot about that. And I'm an undergrad and I'm working in the dining hall as a dishwasher. And I see this guy pick up a stack of plates and take the middle one. I walk away. I'm like, thinking to myself,

I'm like, that guy's pretty weird. Why didn't he just take the plate off the top? And then I go on for a minute. I'm just walking. And I'm like, wait a second. And then I remembered just a couple months before that, I did that every time I took a plate. And that was the absolute least neurotic thing that I ever did regarding food. I do that sometimes too. I would spend 20 minutes trying to look for a glass that was clean. And I was the dishwasher. I was the one cleaning the glasses. I would still go out and spend 20 minutes trying to pick one. But so at that moment, I realized that over the course of trying to fix my teeth,

I had completely and totally revolutionized my mental health. And I was getting a bachelor's degree in history. And that was at the point where I said, okay, I'm going to finish my history, but I got to go into medicine, or I got to go into nutrition, or I got to do something to learn more about what happened to me, and then pay that forward to help other people because this stuff is even more powerful than I thought. And then that led me, the rest is history, led me down the road to get a PhD in nutritional sciences and become what I've become today. And probably during all this learning

and earning a PhD and everything, it probably always probably circles back. I'm just imagining that it always circles back to some of that original information that you learned from Weston A. Price. Does that sound kind of accurate? Yeah. I mean, I've grown a lot and I've realized that there's things that are more important nutrition and there's more to nutrition than what Price had discovered. But the basic principles of eating nutrient-dense whole natural foods with emphasis on some of these nutrient-dense, whole, natural foods with emphasis on some of these

nutrient-dense animal foods, I think is a principle that just stays strong and is robust. You can study the hell out of whatever you want, and you're still going to wind up with that as a core principle. I want to ask you this real quick, Chris, because you mentioned your vegan diet when you were in college. And if there are any vegans that are listening, I want to know your take on veganism as a healthy diet. Because there are a lot of people that are vegan and that they mentioned that as long as I can get my micronutrients in, it's a healthy diet for me, et cetera. So when you were doing it, were you getting all your micronutrients in. It's a healthy diet for me, et cetera. So when you were doing it, were you getting all your micronutrients in?

Do you think that if you did a vegan diet today, would it be as ineffective as it was when you were in college? Or with the knowledge you have now, could you do that and live a robust, healthy lifestyle? Or would there still be things missing that you just would stay away from that for yourself? There's a couple. I'll give you a couple answers to that.

So first of all, there are a lot of healthy vegans. There are also way more ex-vegans than there are healthy vegans. So if you look, there's not a lot of data on it, but if you look at survey data, the over two-thirds of people who become vegan stop doing veganism. And then there's also even stronger data that the vast majority of people who call themselves, I don't know about vegan, but the vast majority of people who call themselves vegetarian eat some fish or even some chicken some of the time.

And so there's also a lot of loose definition. But I have no doubt that there are also people who are straight up full vegan and do perfectly well on it. I don't disbelieve that. I just think that it's probably a pretty small number. But on the other hand, I was definitely doing the best that I could at that time. But I happen to know orders of magnitude more about nutrition than I did at that time. And so I would do it differently. And I think that I would do better on it. But it's tough to say because I don't really believe that. I think it's obvious that most people who go vegan don't wind up as bad as I did. The average experience of someone who becomes vegan, even who quits a year later, is not, well, I was vegan, but every single tooth

I had got a cavity and I went psychotic. And so I stopped. That's not the typical reason someone quits veganism. It was too hard or they were tired all the time or something is way more common. probably have some kind of genetic disorder in the synthesis of some compound that is essential to bodily function that is not found in any of the supplements that I was taking at that time and is not found in a vegan diet and is very high in organ meats. Because that would perfectly explain why I was trying to do veganism the best I could. I was also taking all the supplements that people said that if you're a vegan, you should take.

And then I just... Between that and instituting a high organ meat, high nutrient dense animal food diet from Weston Price style was just complete night and day for my functioning. I don't think the average person would go through a journey like I did unless they had something idiosyncratic about their biochemistry. And so I assume that I have that. I just haven't found it yet. I've thought of some candidates, but I haven't confirmed anything that would explain that. So it's still a mystery to me. But I guess I'm a little bit of a canary in the coal mine in the sense that my experience underscores that there are certain types of nutrients that are much easier to get from animal foods. And yeah, other people might not have some whatever genetic defect I probably have. But that's not to say that their body's not going to have an easier time if they just get those things in.

And so from a nutritional perspective, I would never advise anyone to go vegan because there are just more robust ways to go about almost any goal you could have for veganism. So for example, what are the values that people who are vegan generally have? Maybe they don't want to kill anything that's conscious. You could make a very strong case that an oyster is not more or less conscious than a plant. I think it's a debate, but the consciousness of bivalves, oysters and clams and stuff is questionable, right? Yeah. You could believe, like the China study.

So if you follow T. Colin Campbell, you could believe that you want animal foods to be as close to 2% of your diet as you can get. diet as you can get. Or you could believe like Joel Fuhrman, who's another popular vegan doctor, that you want to eat at least 90% of your diet as plant foods, but you can allow 10% as junk food, and that can include animal foods. If you believe either of those things, if you just included two ounces of... Like an ounce or two of liver a day and one or two clams and one or two oysters, you could meet the, well, liver wouldn't fit into the consciousness thing. But in the 2% or 10%, from Campbell or Furman, you could meet the two or 10% easily and be in order or two of magnitude more protected from zinc deficiency, B12 deficiency, and a bunch of other deficiencies just by including a handful of those extremely nutrient-dense animal foods. And if it's a consciousness thing, I just think the same thing is true of including some

bivalves, some clams or oysters. So I'm not going to argue with someone's ethics, but if someone was coming to me and saying, look, if someone just came to me and they were against animal cruelty, I'm going to lead them to the many alternatives to factory farms, be it hunting on the one hand or ranchers who are doing pasture-based animal feeding that treat their animals well. But if they're against killing anything conscious, I'm going to say, well, how do you think about clams from that perspective. And I wouldn't force anybody to abandon their ethics, but I would encourage them to think through their ethics and to see if those ethics are reconcilable to including a small or moderate amount of highly nutrient-dense animal foods that best comport with those ethics. Because I think that it's not that no one can be vegan and thrive,

but you're just way more likely to thrive if you've covered those bases. And when it comes to like a meat-based diet, would you conjecture kind of the same thing? Could somebody that's on a meat-based diet just maybe have a small amount of fruit and vegetables and get some of the nutrients that they need from that? Or is there not even a reason to? What are your thoughts on that? I think that's actually like a radically different thing because as far as I can tell, no one goes on a carnivore diet for ethical concerns.

Like I've never seen anyone who, you know, thinks it's ethical to kill a cow, but unethical to pick a coconut. I'm just talking about just optimal, I guess. And just like, I don't particularly love vegetables, but I do eat them here and there. And there's a lot of concern over cholesterol. And I know that's a loaded thing with cholesterol. Heart disease, just over-consuming of fat.

And it's my understanding some people have genetic predisposition to, you know, some higher dietary cholesterol, you know, issues because of heritage and things of that nature. So would it make some sense for somebody that's mainly meat-based to just at least implement some vegetables? Do you think that's wise or do you think it's like maybe not even necessary. I think the same principle is true that your diet will be more robust to deficiencies if you include plant foods. I would encourage people to view it kind of like an economic portfolio where if you're an expert trader, you might be doing something different than a diversified portfolio. But if you don't know what you're doing, trader, you might be doing something different than a diversified portfolio. But if you don't know what you're doing, you probably should be investing in a retirement account where someone else puts your money in some index funds or something like that.

And they're diversifying it in a way to protect it against the risk of... It does protect you against the risk of making too much money, but it also protects you against the risk of losing it all. And so I think if you diversify, you can view your diet as a portfolio of nutrients. And each nutrient is like an asset class. But there's also a bunch of toxic things and potentially harmful things in foods that your body tries to clear out. potentially harmful things in foods that your body tries to clear out. And so a lot of people go carnivore because there's more of those potentially toxic things that you need to clear in plant foods than there is in animal foods. But I think when you diversify across the spectrum, you are protecting yourself against the downside risk of not getting enough of an

essential nutrient. And you're also protecting yourself against the downside risk of accumulating too much of any one given toxin that exceeds your ability to clear it. Now, I view carnivore as kind of like, I believe that when people go carnivore, it's basically a subset of elimination diet. Elimination diets, sometimes for some people are like eat nothing but eat fast and then eat nothing but chicken and rice or something like that. Because the goal is to figure out what are the things that you don't tolerate from maybe you're allergic to them or maybe you have problems digesting them or what have you. And carnivore, it's basically a giant elimination diet where you're saying, there's probably some plant that I don't tolerate, and I'm going to try getting rid of all of them.

And if I improve, I validate the hypothesis that there's some plant that I don't tolerate, but I haven't validated the hypothesis that I don't tolerate any plant. that I don't tolerate any plant. And so I think most people who do well on carnivore would probably benefit from a systematic approach of trying to reintroduce certain plant foods that are the least likely to be culprits and then expand that gradually to see how can I replicate the success I've gotten

on a plant-inclusive diet? And what, if any, are the plants that cannot be part of that diet? So if you can expand what you eat to narrow down what you can't eat, then I think you put yourself in a more robust position. But there are vegans and there are carnivores, and there are going to be many in each that are going to be healthy. But just like if you wanted to put all your money in crypto or something like that, you should know what you're doing more than you should if you just put it in a retirement account.

And so if you're going to be a carnivore or a vegan, you really should be studying nutrition and understanding it better than the average person who just eats a well-rounded diet. Quick question for individuals that are carnivore, for the general population, what would be the least intrusive plant foods that they could try reintroducing? Everyone has, obviously, everyone has a different propensity

to react to different ones. But for the general population, what are the safest bets for try this and for nutrient deficiency? Yeah, so I think the most innocuous thing you could try would be dextrose powder. Honestly, it's not a whole food, but it would be a test

of do I just straight up, can I not eat carbs? Do I need to be on a zero-carb diet? is it something that's in these whole plant foods that's giving me a problem? So I think that's... I'm not saying that anyone should construct their diet around dextrose powder, but it's an interesting isolated test just to see your response to carbs. I've heard from so many people who don't tolerate carbs when their version of carbs is

pizza. And I'm like, are you sure it's the carbs? So I do think that if you're trying to test whether you just have a straight up negative reaction to carbs, I do think dextrose powder can play a role as an experimental substance. Dextrose powder is just straight up glucose. But in terms of whole foods, I think white rice is probably the most innocuous out of any of the plant foods. It doesn't have a whole lot of nutritional value, but it's very likely to be low in the substances that you don't tolerate if you have some problem with plant foods that is not with plants per se. I think that bell peppers would be an excellent thing to try to include from a nutritional value per carb. So for example, one of the nutrients that's hardest to get on a

carnivore diet is vitamin C. And bell peppers are out of the foods that Americans will eat. Bell peppers have the highest vitamin C to carb ratio. And so if you are really trying to stick to a very low carb diet, eating bell peppers, eating raw bell peppers is a great way to get some whole food vitamin C without getting too many carbs. So I would include those. But other than that, I feel like it's not really that there are any plant foods that are just straight up innocuous. It's more like you should test. And there's an analogy to an economic portfolio here as well, because you could

think of asset classes. There's classes of plants that have particular types of problems with them. And if you could try to test representatives of them, I think that would be the best thing to do. So you could try grains. You could try non-gluten grains. And then you could compare them to heirloom, sourdough, whole, gluten-containing grains. and then you could try white potatoes which have their own

class of toxin in them. You could try high oxalate foods to test your tolerance for oxalates. If eating sweet potatoes or spinach causes you to start limping, then you should probably eat a low oxalate diet no matter what. Right. Um, and so I, I, excuse me for interrupting, but have you seen, uh, people have trouble with certain foods like that to the point where I took that analogy for myself. So one time I discovered sweet potato fries and I thought they were really yummy. And so I started eating two sweet potatoes a day and they weren't

all the sweet potato fries. I just decided to start eating sweet potatoes. And by the end of the week, I was limping. And so I was like, I wonder if these are high in oxalates. I didn't know that at the time. So I looked it up and it turns out that they're extremely high in oxalates and that the native cultures that eat sweet potatoes as a staple in their diet, leach them through running water for like three days, which helps reduce the oxalate content. And I'm like, okay. So then I go on a low oxalate diet and Olympian's gone in a couple of days. So I have a problem with oxalates. Wow. I don't avoid them religiously. Maybe I should, but I also don't go around limping. Although my joints could be in a better position. So I actually, in the new year,

I'll probably run an experiment going on an oxalate-free diet or even a carnivore diet and just see if it improves some of my joint issues. If there is concern for somebody on a meat-based plan, what would it be? Like what are things they should maybe incorporate in their nutrition? What are things they should maybe avoid? Because I would imagine that basically

no matter what diet you select, you can still overeat and there's still consequences of overeating. And in the case of overeating meat, the main concern would be that you're just overconsuming fat. And maybe that would be more problematic than that. I don't actually know what's more problematic, overconsuming carbs or overconsuming fat. But maybe you can shed some light on what would the dangers be if there are any of a lot of us that eat,

like consume tons of protein and are on kind of mainly a meat meat-based plan yeah i actually have a a a free ebook called doing carnivore right and so if you google my name uh master john doing carnivore right you'll you'll come up with uh with that at the top thing i'm gonna see if I can bring it up on my computer real quick because it has a nice summary. But basically, I would say that there are some nutrients. So you brought up a couple of things. So there's macros and then there's micros and they intersect. I brought it up right here. Okay. So what I identified as high-risk nutrients are vitamin C and folate. And then I identified conditional risk nutrients as manganese, magnesium, vitamin K, potassium, and molybdenum. And conditional risk basically means if you were

to just eat steak and nothing else, and you weren't paying attention to your nutrition, else and you weren't paying attention to your nutrition, you run a risk of running into deficiencies of these because you're a carnivore. Now, of course, a carnivore can also be deficient in, say, calcium or something like that. But if a carnivore is deficient in calcium, it's probably not because of the carnivore diet per se. It's probably... I mean, because you could eat bone meal is like a traditional carnivore food, for example. But you could put calcium in there because a lot of, you know, someone just eating steak is not going to get enough calcium. And then there are, you know, I wonder about stuff like that because enough calcium for what? And what is that being compared to? Is that being compared?

Like when we say somebody's not meeting like the amount, the required amount of calcium, is that somebody that's on like a standard diet? Like what is that in comparison to? Do you know? I'm going to answer you in one second and I'm just going to shut the shade because the sun keeps coming in. It's driving me crazy.

Beaming in on you. Getting a tan during the podcast. Very convenient. All right, this is better. Yeah, sometimes when I hear stuff like that, I'm kind of curious of like, I wonder where some of that information comes from. You know, not having enough calcium from the particular diet. Do we need it?

And does your body just do something else? The body's pretty smart. It sometimes makes up for us missing out on other chunks of nutrition. So I agree with that. And I could say off the bat that you do need less calcium if you have more vitamin D. You do need less calcium if you have more vitamin D.

However, you need more calcium if you get more phosphorus. And generally speaking, there's a lot of phosphorus in meat. So I would not just assume that... There should be studies done of carnivores to see how being carnivore impacts nutritional requirements. But we don't have those studies examples of carnivores from traditional diets. So if you look at people who typically cite examples from traditional diets, people will talk about the Inuit and they'll talk about the Maasai. So the Inuit, out of those two groups, the Inuit are much closer to carnivore, but they're not strictly carnivore. But more to the point, the Inuit were very vulnerable to calcium deficiency, and they have genetic adaptations that make them less likely to take calcium out of their bones to the point where they will sacrifice the calcium available to their nervous system because their environment is so physically demanding that having poor bones in the traditional Arctic environment, especially pre-European contact where

there was some modernization of life has happened. It was just such a physical risk that there is a syndrome called P-Block-Tuck in their language that is a form of hysteria that is believed to be from hypocalcemic tetany. So hypocalcemic tetany is when you don't have enough blood calcium to support your nervous system. And this basically involves someone falling into sleep and then going crazy for three days and then going into a coma and then probably surviving eventually. But anyway, the point is, if you look at this neurological condition, it's very inverse to the supply of calcium. And so traditionally, the Inuit would dry fish bones and pulverize them and save them through the seasons where they would have less access to fish.

And they would eat dried fish and pulverized fish bone, and they would get calcium. And it's the ones who were too inland to have as year-round access to fish that were more vulnerable to that problem. And so they're an example of a carnivore diet where they had pretty significant health problems if they didn't get enough calcium and they had to eat bones to get it. Then the Maasai is not a great example of, I think we can just skip over them, but just to make the point, the Maasai often cited as being carnivore-ish are terrible examples of carnivore diets because although the Maasai specialized in cattle herding, they, except men of a certain age who served as the warrior

class, they traded with surrounding tribes and ate tons of starches and bananas and all kinds of things like that. Even at the turn of the 20th century when there wasn't much European contact. But even the men who are warriors, they will only

eat milk and meat but first of all they have milk which is very high in calcium but also they're not even carnivore during this time because when they have their meat parties they take stomachs

of the animals and they make a huge they make like a tea that they steep that is lots of herbs that have – especially herbs that have anti-parasitic herbs that they... It's almost like a keg party where they just take out the cup and they won't eat meat without this tea. So even then they're getting polyphenols and all kinds of other things that a carnivore would say are plant toxins during their meat parties. And then of course they go on marches and they eat lots of honey on the march, which isn't a plant food, but it's not an animal food either. Well, I mean, I guess you could... a vegan would say honey is an animal food, but I don't know if a lot of carnivores might dispute that. But anyway, I mean, because it comes from

a flower and a bee makes it. So it's, I think if you're a vegan, it's too animal for you. And if you're a carnivore, it's too plant for you. Did I answer your question or do you want me to take that in a different direction? I sidetracked it a little bit. Just like, you know, what are some main concerns of somebody that's kind of more on a meat-based diet? Oh, yeah. Okay. So vitamin C is significant. And if you look at... So if you eat just steak, you will get some vitamin C from it.

And it is possible to go decades eating just steak and not have scurvy, especially if when you started eating steak, you had good vitamin C status from your previous diet. you had good vitamin C status from your previous diet. However, I shared some research with Paul Saladino. We did like a five-hour carnivore debate, two-part podcast. And before we did that, we shared all our research back and forth. And he sent me this paper on why you only need like 10 milligrams of vitamin C to prevent scurvy. And although that's true, when your vitamin C is that low, sometimes the first sign of scurvy, according to that paper he sent me, is a heart attack. And so you don't want to be just getting enough vitamin C to not develop scurvy in the first 10 years of carnivore.

Like that's, that's just a wildly stupid way to go to do carnivore. You should be trying to do any nutrient. You should be trying to, it doesn't make any sense to eat at the borderline of deficiency of anything. You want a window of protection because what if you're the dude who needs 30 more percent vitamin C than that guy? And then you take the average 10 milligram a day requirement, and then it takes you two years to get a heart attack instead of 10. You should eat more vitamin

C than what you get on just eating steak. And there are animal foods that have more vitamin C than steak. Adrenal gly... Oh, and here's another thing from the traditional foods, right? When Weston Price went to the Arctic in Canada, he found these natives and he said, do you guys get scurvy? And he described it for the translator for what scurvy is. And they were like, oh no, that's a white man's disease. later for what scurvy is. And they were like, oh no, that's a white man's disease. And he's like, what do you mean? Why? And they said, well, the white man just wants us to buy the food in their store and doesn't care how we prevent scurvy. So they don't know what they're doing. And he said, okay, what do you do? And they said, well, when the moose are in mating season, they get enlarged. They can tell they're in mating season because they get enlarged gulps in their neck, which we would know to be the thyroid glands, which are pumping up the thyroid hormones, which increase the sex hormones.

They didn't know that, but they knew that there was a big lump in the neck. So they kill the moose and then they take what they described as a big lump of fat from on top of the kidney and they slice it up and give it to every big Indian and every little Indian in the tribe. And that's how they don't get scurvy. So on top of the kidney is the adrenal gland. Kidney's renal, adrenal on top of the kidney. It's not a ball of fat, it's an organ. But the adrenal gland has the highest content of vitamin C in an animal's body. And so why do these people who are on a carnivorous diet all the time, who are eating raw steak all year long, why do they know what scurvy was and know to eat the adrenal gland? It's because they weren't getting enough vitamin C from their normal carnivorous diet if they didn't eat the adrenal gland. So I think that's sort of proof of principle that it's just not true that generally speaking, and they should be adapted to that, right? They have generations of eating relatively

carnivorous diets. And the same thing is true of the Inuit. They would eat the second lining of the stomach of a certain whale that is known to be high in vitamin C and stuff like that. So you can't just borrow one principle from their diet and say, oh, they don't eat any plants and ignore the fact that they eat adrenal glands or the second stomach of a particular whale, et cetera, or pulverized dried fish bones. And so I do think that as a carnivore, there's shellfish, especially clams, mussels, oysters, and crab have more vitamin C. Adrenal glands have more vitamin C. I don't know about safety with adrenal glands. They do have adrenal hormones in them. And I did have an online friend once who ate a whole adrenal gland and then was so in hot sweats

that she had to submerge herself in an ice bath. Oh my gosh. It was giving her a panic attack. So be careful with eating the adrenal glands and know what you're doing. But you wanted to say something? Well, was that an example? Because you were mentioning

before we started talking about vitamin C or maybe it was at the start that there are certain foods that Americans will eat like bell peppers. Now, you weren't referencing adrenal glands. Were you referencing things like liver and other organ meats that Americans typically won't eat? Or what did you mean by that?

So to be totally honest, the reason that I prefaced it that way is because I don't remember exactly what I did when I figured out that bell peppers were the best, but I knew that I excluded a lot of obscure foods that I had never heard of. Okay. So that was a sloppier statement than you're giving me credit for. Okay. But what you're saying is true. I mean, there are plenty of...

I think liver is sort of like if you grew up eating it, you are likely to like it. You might also hate it, but you are relatively likely to like it if you grew up from a young child eating it. Whereas if you didn't, you probably hate it. And there are exceptions to that. But generally speaking, someone who goes carnivore at the age of 40 and had never eaten liver before is not going to suddenly like eating liver because they went carnivore. And there are exceptions to that. But generally speaking, that's true. I do eat liver because I know that I feel so much better when I eat liver, but I don't enjoy eating liver.

I don't do it for the pleasure of it. And so, yeah, that's an issue. But as I also indicated with the adrenal glands, we have lost so much specialized knowledge around these diets by just generationally giving up traditional foods, that it's a real loss. It's just a real loss to know. If we could speak to the people that Weston Price was speaking to and ask them all of our questions about carnivore, we would be getting better knowledge than I'm giving you in a certain sense, because those would be the people who had accumulated dozens of generations of knowledge from trial and error

about how specifically to implement their diet, that we now only have a very condensed version of some of the ethnographers who may have interviewed them and published a book. condensed version of some of the ethnographers who may have interviewed them and published a book. And now much of that knowledge is long gone into history. But back to the point though, there's some science around this and we have enough of the science to make some principles. So I think you need to put more emphasis on vitamin C. Folate, it looks like it's probably hard to get enough folate, but liver and kidney are both good sources of folate. And it's possible that if you eat your eggs from pasture-raised animals, that you might get a lot more folate. It's also possible that on a carnivore diet, your intake of choline is going to be so high

that it lowers your folate status. But I do think it's a good idea for carnivores to measure their serum folate while they've been on that diet for a while and just make sure that it's not totally tanked. Because I just don't think we know that much about how to maintain good folate status on a carnivore diet. We don't know that much about the effect of pasture-raised egg yolks.

I mean, that data comes from Mother Earth News, I think it is, asked for a bunch of farmers to send in their eggs and they sent it into a lab and it looked way higher in folate than others. But it's a magazine article. It's not rigorous science. So just real quickly on just to hit each one of those points. So manganese, mussels are a great source of manganese. And eating mussels is a great addition to a carnivore diet because of that. Molybdenum is mostly found in legumes and grains.

But on a carnivore diet, if you eat 1.25 ounces of liver per day, or you eat, that's basically like 8 to 10 ounces per week, 9 ounces per week, you'll get enough molybdenum. So just eating, that's basically one or 200-gram servings. Well, 200-gram servings of liver a week would totally hit your molybdenum requirement. Potassium, I think the best way to maintain potassium is to... And here's an interesting thing. So Mark, you were talking about fat versus protein. So if you eat lean meats and you preserve their juices, you will have a very good potassium intake, but there's no potassium in fat. And so there is a perspective out there that you want to avoid rabbit starvation.

And so you want to eat more fat so you don't overdose on protein. But to the extent you do that, you're hurting your ability to get enough potassium. And different people will have different potassium needs, but you want at least a few grams of potassium a day, especially if you're not on a low salt diet. And the best way to do that is to focus more on lean meats than fatty meats and to preserve the juices. And so I guess if you're focusing on fatty meats, it would be all the more important to preserve the juices. So when you cook a slab of meat and you throw out the juice, you're throwing out like half the potassium. Oh, wow.

Yeah. And then on magnesium, there's a lot of magnesium in seafood and it's just lower in a lot of meats. But if you go into my guide, there are some specific meats and cheeses that you can eat. Some mineral waters are high in magnesium and that can be a great way to add some to your diet from something that's sort of natural, but it's not a supplement really, but it's not a plant food and so it's not a plant food. And so it's carnivore. And then for vitamin K, I think if you eat liver, and especially if you can get some

goose liver into your diet and you can get some hard cheeses into your diet, which I know some people do carnivore with no cheese, but those are great ways to get vitamin K in your diet. And I think if you can... That's a free guide. If you just Google Masterjohn doing carnivore right, you'll be able to get that. And I think it's not that you have to do it that way. It's just that if you are trying to optimize for what we believe based on the current science is what everything, all the key nutrients that people need. Those are some principles that would help you implement that with whole foods. And if you're not going

to do that, you should probably take a look at your status of some of those nutrients and possibly supplement with some of them. Do we need fiber? Great question. I mean, fiber is not an essential nutrient. There's no deficiency syndrome from it, but I don't know. I think that people's guts, this individual and respond very differently to different things. And some people are going to have a minimum fiber requirement for a healthy gut function. And other people are going to get diarrhea if they eat fiber or constipation. I think that it's probably the case that normal human gut function assumes you have some basic intake of fiber. And it's probably the case that people that have serious gut problems in relation to fiber, there's probably another example of your gut screwed up, so you don't tolerate that. You should fix your gut, but in the meantime, you should probably not eat fiber because it's clearly making things worse. But I think that probably falls under the

general framework of what I said before, where once you feel like your success on carnivore is stable, you should probably experiment with different plant sources of fiber to see if there are any that you tolerate. Because fiber is – I mean, we say fiber like it's one thing, but there are many different types of fiber. So it's sort of like our plant vitamins needed. It's just fiber is a class of fibers. It's just fiber is a class of fibers. And even the most fiber intolerant people are not going to react exactly the same to corn fiber versus hydrolyzed tapioca starch versus broccoli fiber versus et cetera. So I think that falls under the category of you should probably try to get fiber in the

context of widening your net of plant foods that you can consume. But I think you should judge it by your stool quality. So you should have regular bowel movements with well-formed stool that's not liquid and doesn't float and isn't soapy and chalky and isn't a rock. And so if you have that, you're probably eating the right amount of fiber. Parapatch, how's it going? Now on this podcast, we've talked to so many professionals, coaches, doctors about the importance of getting your blood work done. I've gotten it done. Mark's gotten it done. Andrew's gotten it done. We know what's going on under the hood and we know that we are healthy and heading in the right direction.

But we know some people who have gotten their blood work done and they have been healthy and they've had to get treatment for certain things. And they're glad that they did. And that's why we've partnered with Merrick Health, owned by Derek from More Plates, More Dates. Now, Merrick Health is the premium TRT clinic that no matter what you get done, no matter what tests you get done, Merrick Health gives you plans for you. They don't give you cookie cutter plans like a lot of other telehealth clinics do, where you'll give your blood work and they'll just give you what they give to everybody. They give you specific plans for you, your specific levels. And that is extremely important. Andrew, can you tell the people more about it? Yes, you guys got to head over to MerrickHealth.com. That's M-A-R-R-E-K-Health.com.

And whether you're interested in HRT or you just want to get some labs done, use promo code PowerProject10 to save 10% off all your labs. Again, MerrickHealth.com. Links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes. When going to your Instagram page and searching through a lot of the stuff that you're talking about, you mentioned manganese while we were talking here as a deficiency, but you talk a lot about manganese on your IG page. And I haven't ever seen anybody in nutrition talk so much about manganese. So I wonder, what is the big importance of manganese and why should people start paying more attention to it? So you actually, you caught me, you caught my Instagram at a time when the manganese

stuff is coming out. So what those manganese posts are is I have, so I have a free class, Vitamins and Minerals 101, and I'm turning it into a book. And so I have like snippets taken from each chapter that are just popping out on Instagram every day. And we're in the manganese part of it. And so manganese is important in a number of ways. So I mean, first of all, it protects your mitochondria from oxidative stress. Oxidative stress is like the normal wear and tear on your tissues that occurs as you age, but it can get accelerated if you have disease states like diabetes or if you're just ill from anything really, if you have inflammation going on,

if you have toxin exposure, et cetera. And your mitochondria are the powerhouse of the cell. And so you want clean energy and manganese helps you get that. Manganese does a number of other things. It also helps you clear ammonia. And so we were talking about protein and fat before. It is more important to get enough manganese when you have a high protein diet because you're putting more tax on your system getting rid of ammonia and manganese helps with that. Manganese also helps with glutamate sensitivity. So a lot of people who have bad reactions to MSG or to slowly cooked proteins or fermented foods might fall into that category. And it does some other stuff, but those are the big ones. Okay.

You mentioned earlier like overconsuming or overdosing on protein and rabbit starvation. It was my understanding and rabbit starvation. It was my understanding that rabbit starvation is more of a lack of fat. Do I have that mixed up? And can you overdose on protein? So I'm a little bit skeptical of the whole rabbit starvation thing. I know that it's an ethnographically documented phenomenon that the Inuit talked about. But generally, people frame it as you need to have enough fat because otherwise you will have too much protein. And so it's actually too much protein that's the problem.

But you can't separate them on a zero-carb diet. You're either eating more fat or more protein. So if you're eating low-fat lean meats, then you are eating more protein. You could easily double your protein just by eating less fat. And that would be familiar to a bodybuilder who's trying to hit a protein target and realizes that if they're eating hamburger, they need to eat way more of that. And suddenly they have no room in their diet for anything else if they're trying to lean out or something like that. It's just fat and protein are inversely proportional

in any kind of animal food. But I think there's... I've looked at the data and I think that it is exceedingly difficult for most people to eat too much protein for their urea cycle to handle from meat. And so the urea cycle is how we convert ammonia, which is toxic, to urea, which is not. And you get your blood urea nitrogen measured in a metabolic panel. Some people call that the bun, and urea is named after the fact that

it winds up in the urine. So the urea cycle is how you allow yourself to metabolize protein without the ammonia being toxic. And the limit of that just seems to be well above what anyone could eat if their whole diet came from protein. However, there is a single nucleotide polymorphism or SNP, which is a genetic variation in a minority of people who have low activity of the urea cycle. And those people, because of that SNP, can probably have too much protein. So there probably is some inter-individual variation. Off the top of my head, I don't know if the Inuit had that SNP. But I would note that the Inuit are, generally speaking, very genetically different from everyone else on the planet. And so I'm not a fan at all of using the Inuit as a model for anything. To study their diet out of interest,

I think is great. But to say we're going to eat like the Inuit, I think people get into massive problems, both for the reason that they don't understand the nuances of what the Inuit did to make their diet work, and they have different genetics. Are those people even healthy?

The Inuit? Yes. Or the people that copy them. The Inuit, I think the I personally think the Inuit were very healthy on their traditional diet and a lot of Inuit are not on anything remotely

resembling their traditional diet. Decades lot of Inuit are not on anything remotely resembling their traditional diet. Decades ago, there was a study showing that the primary source of vitamin C in the Greenland Inuit was Tang. So whether the Inuit are healthy now is like, who cares? But if you go back to... If you go back, I think the best way to look at this is to look at the Russian mission. So in contrast to the Americans who sent missionaries out there to try to destroy the native language and turn them into Americans, the Russians went over there and said, we're going to give you our church and then nothing else. So you can keep hunting your fish and whatever. And we're just going to set up a church here. We're going to baptize you. We're going to go to church on Sunday. And then you keep doing whatever else you were doing. And so there was very little lifestyle creep at the time of the

first contact European mission, Russian mission. But what they started doing was they started making baptismal certificates, which are approximately birth certificates and death certificates. So we actually have good demographic data on lifespan from the early Russian contact period. And what that shows is that a lot of people died in accidents from trying to get an egg by hanging off a cliff. Their lifestyle was wild. But out of the people that didn't die early, it was very common to live into the 80s and 90s. And so I think that data is very consistent with a high-risk lifestyle. But if you survived those risks, you lived a long life. There's something I want to go back to real quick. I don't mean to sidetrack too much, but you mentioned your mom used holistic practices to get rid of fibromyalgia.

And there are quite a few people who have fibromyalgia that listen to this podcast. And that makes me wonder, did she reverse it? Is she just able to live life with minimal symptoms? How did she go about that with nutritional interventions or holistic interventions? Therefore, hard to pinpoint exactly what they were. But she went on a macrobiotic diet. She started yoga and Tai Chi. She got into herbalism. So I have no idea which of those things was, or which combination is what did the trick. But that combination of things was consistent with her getting remarkably better.

with her getting remarkably better. I suspect that she has an underlying... In fact, I suspect that I might share her underlying genetic predisposition because I have a lot of issues with my fascia. And I'm not in the position that she was in, and it's different for me, but it just makes sense that we might both share some genetics around that. And so I think there's an underlying syndrome that probably hasn't totally gone away, but she has carved out for herself the largely pain-free, mostly normally functional life within it through maintaining certain practices. So she's not macrobiotic anymore, but I think that was a long time ago. That was 25 years almost ago.

And so I think she's retained a lot of stuff that is keeping her where she is. Maybe what she's doing now wouldn't have gotten her out of that state, but it's working for her and allowing her to focus on other health goals at the same time. And so, you know, dietarily, she's not macrobiotic anymore, and she's actually constantly every three months hopping on a different diet. But there are some herbs that she still does and she still has a physical practice around. I don't know exactly what her physical practice is now. I mean, she does weightlifting, but she also has other aspects of her physical practice that are keeping her in good condition as well. Gotcha. How do you eat personally? So right now, because I am trying to, I have some big projects that I'm working on. I do put a high premium on not having to cook food. And so I'm kind of floating around between... Although I am

cooking food. So right now I'm eating mostly fish, lentils, potatoes, and whole grain sourdough bread that... I didn't cook the bread, but I batch cooked the other stuff. But I'll eat a lot of meat and vegetables. And I do eat quite a bit of whole grain sourdough bread. I use it as kind of like a calorie topper. So I'll make the base of my diet, meat and vegetables. I either include organ meats and shellfish, or I include some supplements of organ meats and shellfish. I have a cabinet that has liver capsules and oyster capsules. And so I'll go back and forth depending on how it fits in with the rest of my life between eating. I am a fan of White Oak Pastures paleo ground beef, which is, I forget the percentage, but it's like 55% organ meat, something like that.

it with taco seasoning and fry it up. And I discovered it because I was at a conference where they had tacos and I didn't know until after the fact that there was liver and heart ground into the meat. I had no idea. And so I was like, wow, this stuff is really good when it's flavored with taco seasoning. And so I've adopted that as if I cook organ meats, it is ground with ground beef and it's cooked with taco seasoning. I don't necessarily make a taco out of it, but it's always cooked with taco seasoning. But there's other foods, white rice, sometimes whole grain sourdough bread and other things

that I'll just use as calorie toppers. And then when I'm really, really working, I do have a closet full of snack foods that I can eat if I feel like I cannot interrupt myself so much as to even go to the kitchen. And those are not things that I'm super proud of eating, but they're just things that I've picked out that work for me. And I do have some gut issues with some types of fiber, believe it or not. So like, for example, Quest bars, I can't eat those because the soluble corn fiber in them is utterly...

My gut considers it satanic. But I do great on Quest chips because they don't have... That's hilarious, man. But I do great on Quest chips because they don't have that much soluble corn fiber in them. So I keep a stock of Quest chips because they're the type of quick protein.

In an emergency, I can go to eat it. And then I also have Paleo Valley fermented ground beef sticks. I'm a huge fan of. I feel a lot of the beef snacks are real dry, but these are very moist because they ferment them. They're just a fresher taste. So I like those. And then I have these bars called Foddy bars and they're just low FODMAP like snack bars. And I use it like if I need a snack, I have a stock of them there. But that's not the base of my diet. That's sort of like filler when I'm like, I can't leave working on this.

I have to eat. I have to stuff my face with something while I'm finishing this chapter or something like that. I'll go to that stash. None of us are allowed to have any snacks. We don't have any control, the three of us. We have zero control over here. What are some of the things that you think we can do to help people just understand nutrition better? We seem to be so dumb and so stupid when

it comes to nutrition that it seems to be... I think people should take my vitamins and minerals 101 free course. It's at chrismasterjohnphd.com slash 101. My goal with that, and actually you had mentioned the Instagram posts. Those Instagram posts that are coming out are just straight out taken from those lessons. So you can just go to my Instagram and you can scroll through it, try to go back to the beginning and read up. But you can also sign up for emails. You just get a daily email over the course of a month. And what I tried to do with those is solve the problem that you just said, which is it's

hard to learn about nutrition. People should learn more about it. And yet, I think most stuff that goes into what each nutrient does at that level is just generally too technical for people. And a lot of people don't want to go there. They want to say, I need to lose weight. What do I do? My knee hurts.

What do I do? And so what I've done is try to take my extensive expertise in technical detail and boil it down to something that someone who is right at the bridge between wanting to know more about nutrition than just, I have this problem, what do I do? But maybe doesn't have any science background at all and just in a real simple way, teach them what each nutrient does. So I made it for that purpose. So that's my answer to that one. Yeah. I think it might need to be taught much earlier too. I know that there's some nutrition that is shared in school, but it still seems like when I put out information, people are still concerned about cholesterol.

People are still very concerned about heart health. If I post a picture of like a cheeseburger, or if I say that I eat eggs and meat, people tend to, do you think maybe people like maybe want to be confused because they want to just kind of maybe stick to what they're currently doing or something like that? I think nutrition is an emotionally hot topic. It's like triggering for a lot of people because people make deep emotional connections with their food and there is nothing that we will ever be able to do about that. make deep emotional connections with their food and there is nothing that we will ever be able to do about that. And I think it will only get worse because actually I think it will get much, much, much, much, much worse very quickly because

our global leaders have openly decided that once we're done with COVID we are moving to climate change and we're going to COVID, we are moving to climate change and we're going to eat less meat because of it. I mean, so it's, you know, everything that you saw with COVID is going to come after

your meat. Is there any information surrounding that? I mean, that doesn't seem like the cows really cause much admissions. I know it's controversial and political. Is there any information that they're going to do that or that they should be doing it? Should be.

Is there any information that we should have major concern over the cows rather than maybe focusing more on transportation or putting our time and efforts into something else? Well, I would defer to Rob Wolf and Diana Rogers who have kind of tackled that from an ethical meat perspective. And you can find people criticizing their sacred cow work for the opposite perspective.

But I think that's where the core of the debate is. I mean, my personal... I kind of side with Rob and Diana on this. My personal perspective is that well-produced meat is totally consistent with environmental sustainability, but factory farms can be an environmental problem. But I don't, I don't, I don't think this has anything to do with science or even climate change. I think that, I think they,

they will, I think it's about monopoly power over highly processed food and meat substitutes. So I think it's all just a pretense. So we've been talking a lot about the vegan diet, carnivore diet, which I'm going to use the word extreme, but it's just a diet. It's not like you're jumping out of a plane or something, but they are extreme diets. It doesn't seem like that might not be the best for most people because it, at least

in my opinion, doesn't seem like it's the most sustainable diet. people because it, at least in my opinion, doesn't seem like it's the most sustainable diet. Have you found, I guess, any research showing that one diet versus another diet is more sustainable for most people? I haven't looked at any research on sustainability of different diets. I mean, the closest research that I've seen is the polling that I talked about at the beginning showing that most people who, at least two thirds or so of people who go vegan eventually get off it. Well, actually, it doesn't quite show that because it's not prospective data. It's retrospective data.

So when polled, ex-vegans outnumber current vegans about two to one. And so I haven't seen that with carnivore. I don't know what that data is. But my guess is that you would probably see similar data over time. I don't know that but

I mean, generally speaking, when there's a lot of pressure to kind of revert to the mean when you're at any extreme. And so I think that, I don't know, people who are vegan and who are healthy on it and who are in a well-connected vegan community that reinforces that behavior are probably going to stay vegan. People who are carnivore who are healthy on it and who are in a similar community are probably going to stay carnivore. But I would be surprised if it didn't turn out that it was just easier to revert back to what something closer to what other people are doing because there's so many,

most people have so many social obstacles and convenience obstacles to maintaining any kind of extreme diet. Chris, have you kind of seen stuff like this in your research? Maybe that's more along the lines. I've seen a lot of people when they say they lost 100 pounds, 200 pounds, when they lost kind of a lot of weight, it sounds like they utilized a lot of different techniques. I myself lost over 100 pounds, started out with a paleo diet, moved into more of like a keto diet. As I got leaner,

as I got in better shape, I was able to eat more carbs. It was a little easier for me to have more control because of the things that I learned. And then I, you know, use some intermittent fasting and stuff like that. So have you seen any research on, you know, people just using a lot of different diets? Because in my opinion, most of the time people aren't going to really like stick to, I mean, veganism is an interesting thing where being vegetarian, people have a real deliberate reason on why they're doing it. It's not just a body fat concern. It's not just, it's for a lot of people, it's a moral thing. So they just won't go there. They just won't go to that side, just like somebody that maybe chooses not to curse at all or something like that. So I think most of the time, most people are going to follow a particular protocol for a while.

Even keto people aren't perpetually in ketosis all the time. They have cheat meals. Even bodybuilders, they have a season for bodybuilding, have an off-season, and so forth. So most people are going to eat kind of normal-ish here and there, eat a burrito, eat a sandwich, eat a cheeseburger, not worry about the bun, eat some French fries here and there, and not really be on a particular diet. Have you seen any kind of information showing that maybe people use

a wide variety of diets? I haven't seen any formal research on that. Not to say that there isn't any, but I haven't seen it. But I would agree with the general principle that if you are shifting gears and creating a framework for continuing that on, I think you're a lot more likely to stick to it than if you

don't do that. Right. It just makes a lot of sense not to be dogmatic. I think you mentioned this earlier in the episode. We talked about this with other guests too, like Lane. Just don't be dogmatic about it. If you have um just don't be dogmatic about i mean if you have the ability not to be dogmatic about the way you eat that's probably more ideal like for example are you going carnivore because of a health reason because or are you going carnivore

because it's kind of a hot thing and there's a lot of people talking about it and you just want to kind of be on something that a lot of other people are doing same thing with veganism some people don't have a moral to level when it comes to veganism they just have a lot of other people are doing. Same thing with veganism. Some people don't have a moral dilemma when it comes to veganism. They just have a lot of friends that are vegan that are saying this is dope. So if you don't, if that's true, right? If you don't really have any moral dilemmas, just eat food. What are some of your thoughts on calories? Like calorie counting, you know, is a calorie a calorie?

People seem to get up in arms about that one too. Well, yeah. I mean, I honestly don't know why this is such a difficult thing. I think the phrase a calorie is a calorie is stupid. And I think that, you know, calories don't count is an equally stupid phrase. So how, you know, however, um, a caloric deficit is how anyone loses weight no matter what, which tells you nothing about how to sustainably produce a caloric deficit, which then falls to all your knowledge about human behavior and psychology and sustainability and all that stuff. So I don't see what there is to get up in arms about this stuff.

Like a calorie is not a calorie because there could be differences in the processing of the food or the matrix of the food that creates differences in how efficiently you harness those calories. Once you absorb that calorie, a calorie is effectively a calorie. Like an absorbed calorie is a calorie. Well, is it though? Well, I mean, it is, right? From calories in, it is, but you might have spent different calories out to harness it

and absorb it. So the net calorie balance might be different. But I just think these things have no practical value at all. I do all kinds of things that have no practical value, and I love spending my brainpower on things that have no practical value. But it would be misleading to talk about these things as if they mattered. Because if you're tracking calories, you don't care if they're accurate. It doesn't matter.

What matters is if my fitness pal or whatever you're using tells you that when you're eating 1800 calories every day and your scale says that you're losing 0.5 pounds a week, that when my fitness pal says you're eating 1800 calories, your scale will tell you you're losing 0.5 pounds a week. Of course, you're not eating whatever my fitness pal told you you were eating. Obviously not because myFitnessPal doesn't have the knowledge of how much you cook the food and what trimming got thrown in the trash and what the variation was from the production method or any of that stuff. But you're not trying to get an accurate calorie count. You're just trying to get a useful metric that can guide you on the path to weight loss. And so I don't think everyone needs to track calories, but if you are tracking calories, if you eat consistently with the same types of foods in a rotation, the average calorie count will probably be a useful metric in predicting what will happen to your weight.

metric in predicting what will happen to your weight. That's not to say... In other words, if you're eating raw strawberries and nothing else on day one, and then you're eating meat on day two, and you're eating rice on day three, you probably can't compare those calorie counts and expect them to even out. But if over the course of a week, you're mostly eating the same rotation of types of foods, then the average of that calorie count will roughly approximate those calories with some consistent deviation from the accurate count that will become useful. But a lot of people, there is what I call the low-hanging fruit of weight loss. A lot of people can just do, especially if they're very overweight,

can just do a handful of simple rules of thumb, 100 pounds comes off, they didn't track anything. You should do that if you can. But everyone's going to hit a plateau at some point where they need to be more deliberate about how they're approaching it would you say like is it fair to say that the tracking of calories is just to help you to be on course with whatever the scale is going to say like in terms of whatever outcome it is you're looking for if you're trying to gain weight or lose weight but ultimately it kind of comes down to what the scale says, how you look in the mirror, how your clothes are fitting, those kinds of things. I think that's exactly the case. Yeah.

Yeah, because I posted something a couple days ago, and then everyone just jumped on saying, Clark deficit, Clark deficit, Clark deficit. People try to come onto my Instagram and try to get one over on me, And I'm like, I've been doing this for a long fucking time. I know what's going on here. And in my statement, I did say to weigh yourself. And to me, it's like, for me personally, I like that measure a little bit better. I just don't want to spend the time to track. But I understand why people track. I'm not against it.

It's just that a lot of times people learn something from, you know, Lane Norton or whoever else is out there sharing good information, and then somebody, like, they want to hold that over your head. Like, don't forget about a caloric deficit. I'm like, fuck you. Well, I do think there's a place for that kind of trolling, there's a place for that kind of trolling. And it's when people pretend that a caloric think about it some totally different way or that you always have to be thinking about the caloric deficit. It's always a fact that if you lost weight, you were in a caloric deficit. And you don't need to count your calories. If whatever you're

doing is causing the scale to say you're losing weight, you're in a caloric deficit. And you don't need to count your calories if whatever you're doing is causing the scale to say you're losing weight, you're in a caloric deficit. By the same token, if someone says... I think people dramatically misunderstand this point, actually. So I had someone recently who said, my girlfriend's in a caloric deficit, but she's not losing any weight. And so I'm thinking X, Y, Z, and I'm like, your girlfriend's not in a caloric deficit. You just said she wasn't losing any weight. End of story, right? The scale tells you whether you're in a caloric deficit better than MyFitnessPal does.

What if MyFitnessPal is telling you you're in a caloric deficit and your scale says you're losing weight? I mean, if it says you're on a caloric deficit and your scale says you're not losing weight, the app is wrong. What would you suggest if someone's calories get pretty low and they're still not losing weight and they are doing their best, they are following the plan, do you think it's wise

to maybe say, okay, let's back up a minute and not pay so much attention to weight loss. Let's maybe have a minute and not pay so much attention to weight losses. Maybe have a slightly different focus. Maybe we can focus on your performance when you're running or focus on your performance when you're doing some of your workouts or maybe shift the focus a little bit for a while and then maybe kind of recalibrate and track at another time, something like that. Yeah. I think there's a lot of people trying to lose weight that shouldn't be.

And that's not to say that being a healthy body composition isn't extremely important. But if you feel like you're fighting an uphill battle and you're just trying to pull teeth

to lose one pound, you're probably not in a position where that should be your priority right now. You should probably be figuring out what physiologically is leading to you having such a hard time losing weight. And so I think that to me, that to me, I feel like my sort of bird's eye view way of looking at this is that your body wants to know that it is safe to lose weight because it is scared that it might not have enough resources available. And so I think there's a lot of different metrics that... And remember, that's not calculated based on our metrics in modern society. It's based on metrics from hunter-gatherer days. And so a lot of hormones, for example, like you could have chronic stress at your job

that doesn't appear like you're in, your tribe is getting attacked, but your brain might be reading it that way. And so you might need to work on your psychological, emotional coping mechanisms and things like that. But sometimes your body just needs a rest. I gained a lot of weight. I became almost obese in 2020 at the peak. My BMI was 29.3 in October of 2020, and I was fat. And I lost 15 pounds on an almost zero-carb diet. It was like I would eat protein, and on days that I worked out, I would allow my... I ate vegetables, low-carb veggies. And I would allow myself some rice on days that I worked out. And I lost 15 pounds. And then I was just exhausted. And so I had to rest. And then after a few months, I felt ready to lose the next part of that. But I would... At no point during

up through... I live in New York City. And so when I gained all that weight, we were under total lockdown. The gyms were closed. The only thing that you could do to maintain your sanity was leave the city. It was excruciatingly psychologically stressful. And I started losing weight when the gym opened back up. And it's not so much because I have to go to the gym to exercise. It was because it had become such a... I centered my physical practice, which was an important part of psychologically how I tied my day together around the gym.

And so losing that was... It was just very psychologically harmful. And I needed to get my positivity back to allow my brain subconsciously to feel like we are not under extreme threat anymore. And then as soon as I was able to pull that together, that's when I started losing all the weight. So you know what it's like. It was really lockdown weight that, yeah. You know what it's like to feel good. So that must have felt, in a lot of ways, must have felt horrible

and maybe almost even depressing. I know a lot of your, the information you share is about kind of interlocking and intertwining of the macro and micronutrients. So when that was fouled up for you for a while, along with gaining the body fat, that must have been a rough spot to be in. It was terrible, but it was, I mean, it was, it was terrible. It was terrible anyway. And honestly, like I don't, I'm not sure.

I know that physically gaining all that weight made me function less bad, but it made me function much worse. But at the same time, it was a psychological defense mechanism. And I know there had to have been a better way of it. But I don't think that if I just... I don't think if out of ideology I said, I will not let this change my BMI. I don't know that I would have wound up in a better psychological state. I think I would have wound up in a worse psychological state. How so?

If you didn't actually let it change your BMI, meaning if what you mean by that is. Because I had no other means of psychological coping left to me. All I had was comfort, food, and alcohol. Gotcha. I'm not saying that I couldn't have done it otherwise. I'm just saying in that particular situation, it would have taken me a lot of mental bandwidth to prioritize my body composition above everything else. Gotcha. But it's not like I wound up on unemployment with an extra $600 a week or month or whatever it was.

If you wound... And I'm not saying that... I'm not trying to trivialize being on unemployment during that time. It's not like nothing bad happens from that. But if you have a chance to rest and your income increases, that's one thing. I was running a business and so I was in a fight for survival. A lot of people went out of business in 2020 and I didn't, but that was because I stepped up to the plate and pivoted in the right way and made everything float. But that required everything that I had in me. I didn't have mental bandwidth left over to be like, okay, I made my business survive. Now I'm going to spend the other 20% of my bandwidth on keeping my body composition unchanged.

I just didn't have that mental bandwidth at that time. Is this something that you like kind of woke up with one day where you're like, shit, I got fat? Or did you kind of know what you were doing kind of when it was happening? It was a combination of the two. So I knowingly said like, all right, I'm not going to put so much energy into my body composition. I'm going to gain a little bit of weight and I'm going to be okay with that. But how much weight I gained, crap, it snuck up on me. Yeah, to gain five, six pounds,

totally understandable. But to gain, what did you end up gaining? 30 pounds, 20 pounds? About 30, yeah. Yeah. Well, I think this is a good transition spot for us to stop this podcast and then enter into us talking about the C word and some of those. Power Project family, this episode is great, but we ended it quite abruptly because we ended up getting into some topics about things going on in the world today.

So if you want to know more and see that episode, which I'm pretty sure you're going to want to see, you need to go into the link in the description box and check it out. Andrew, take us on out of here. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, everybody, for checking out today's episode. Please make sure you're following the podcast at MarkBell's Power Project on Instagram, at MBPowerProject on TikTok and Twitter. My Instagram and Twitter is at IamAndrewZ

at TheAndrewZ on TikTok and SEMA for you and Mark Bale. At SEMA Yin Yang on Instagram and YouTube and SEMA Yin Yang on TikTok and Twitter. And you can find Mark at Mark Smelly Bale on all platforms. Strength is never a weakness. Weakness is never a strength. Catch y'all later.