The meat cult and other dietary fundamentalism: a psychologist’s plea for sanity

When WhatsApp becomes a diagnostic tool

I’m writing this while connected to an IV drip in a Vietnamese medical clinic, being treated for dangerously high blood pressure and chronic headaches.

My condition, according to a concerned friend, is clearly caused by my consumption of bread, pasta, and the occasional glass of wine. The solution, he assures me via WhatsApp, is to adopt a carnivore diet and drop my shoulders.

If only my cardiologist knew it was that simple.

The rise of dietary missionaries

We live in the golden age of dietary evangelism, where everyone with an elimination diet becomes a prophet, and every food group is either salvation or Satan incarnate. The latest religious movement to sweep through wellness culture is carnivory—the belief that humans should eat nothing but animal products because plants are apparently engaged in a vast conspiracy to poison us.

This wouldn’t matter much if it stayed within the bounds of personal choice. But like most fundamentalist movements, carnivory comes with missionaries. And these missionaries have a particular talent for diagnosing complete strangers’ complex medical conditions through the lens of their chosen dietary orthodoxy.

The blue shirt fallacy: how n=1 becomes universal law

Here’s what the meat prophets get backwards: they’ve confused correlation with causation, improvement with optimisation, and evangelical certainty with scientific understanding.

Yes, some people feel better on carnivore diets. Some people also feel better when they move to different climates, leave toxic relationships, or finally address chronic stress. Humans are complex systems, not single-variable experiments.

The carnivore evangelists have taken their personal n=1 experiment and declared it a universal law of human nutrition, then appointed themselves as medical authorities based on their ability to eat steak for breakfast.

This is like someone discovering that wearing blue shirts makes them feel confident, then concluding that the textile industry has been deliberately poisoning humanity with other colours, and proceeding to text everyone’s partners about their dangerous shirt choices.

Evangelism wearing care’s clothing

What makes this particularly infuriating isn’t just the scientific illiteracy—it’s the boundary violations that come wrapped in concern.

When someone texts your partner to inform them of your “systematic abuse” of your body, they’ve crossed from annoying friend into something approaching harassment. When they diagnose your blood pressure readings through WhatsApp while you’re under actual medical supervision, they’ve moved from dietary enthusiasm into dangerous arrogance.

I can assure you, this isn’t ‘care’, but it IS evangelism wearing care’s clothing.

I’ve spent decades working with people whose mental health was damaged by rigid thinking patterns. The carnivore movement exhibits every hallmark of fundamentalist psychology: black-and-white thinking, conspiracy theories about mainstream authorities, the belief that one simple change can solve complex problems, and the compulsive need to convert others to validate their own choices.

So, I wrote the following back to him:

Redacted, I appreciate that the carnivore approach works for you, but I need to address a few things directly.

First, texting Hương about my supposed “systematic abuse” of my body crosses a line. You’re not my doctor, you haven’t seen my test results, and diagnosing me through WhatsApp isn’t medical insight—it’s overreach. If you want to discuss dietary theories, do it with me directly, not by lecturing my fiancée about my health choices.

Second, the idea that shoulder posture causes 170/89 blood pressure isn’t science—it’s magical thinking. I’m currently under professional medical care with IV electrolyte correction and cardiovascular monitoring. The doctors have identified medication absorption issues and electrolyte imbalances from climate change, not dietary demons.

Here’s my perspective as someone who’s studied human physiology: If plants were trying to kill us, we’d have been extinct before we figured out fire. Humans are opportunistic omnivores who survived ice ages eating whatever we found—mammoth when we caught it, berries when available, roots when desperate. Our digestive systems evolved for variety, not purity.

The Blue Zones where people live past 100 aren’t full of carnivores—they’re Okinawans eating sweet potatoes, Sardinians eating legumes, Costa Ricans eating beans and rice. Real populations with real longevity data.

And the alcohol obsession is particularly puzzling. Humans have been fermenting things for 9,000 years. Every successful civilization figured it out independently. If moderate consumption was genuinely toxic at normal levels, we’d have evolved against it. Instead, we developed sophisticated enzymes specifically to process alcohol. The French drink wine daily with better cardiovascular outcomes than most.

My health issues developed while eating the freshest, highest-quality food I’ve ever had in Vietnam—plenty of plants included. The problem isn’t my diet or modest alcohol consumption; it’s medication bioavailability in a different climate.

I get that dietary evangelism feels good when something works for you. But declaring war on food groups humans have eaten successfully for millennia isn’t science—it’s ideology with footnotes.

Please respect that I’m handling my health with actual medical professionals who have actual diagnostic equipment.

Cheers,
Lee

To which he replied:

No apology for crossing a line (the second time he had done this; the first was to take something I had said to him in private about my fiancée and I, and share it with Hương’s best friend in front of Hương, embarrassing them both greatly).

Realising that I had unfriended him, he then shot off this to Hương:

Q.E.D.

If you want to read more about my views on carnivory, read Chapter 1: The Carnivore Gospel…

The inconvenient evidence of entire civilisations

The human digestive system evolved over millions of years to handle variety, not purity. We’re omnivores because adaptability kept us alive when food sources were unreliable. Our ancestors ate whatever they could find—mammoth when they caught it, berries when available, roots when desperate.

The Blue Zones—regions where people regularly live past 100—aren’t populated by carnivores. They’re full of people eating legumes, whole grains, vegetables, and modest amounts of meat. Real populations with actual longevity data, not testimonials from influencers selling courses.

Consider the inconvenient evidence staring us in the face. Italians have been eating pasta for over a thousand years and somehow managed to build one of the world’s great civilisations without dropping dead from carbohydrate poisoning. The Japanese have based their entire cuisine around rice for millennia and maintain some of the world’s highest life expectancies. Vietnamese people—among whom I currently live—have thrived for centuries on rice as their dietary staple, and they’re doing remarkably well despite apparently consuming what carnivore evangelists would consider toxic plant matter.

If bread and rice were genuinely trying to murder us, wouldn’t these populations have figured that out sometime before developing written language, art, and complex societies? Wouldn’t natural selection have weeded out the pasta-eaters by now?

If you want to try carnivory, go ahead. But don’t mistake your personal dietary experiment for universal nutritional truth. Don’t diagnose other people’s complex medical conditions through the lens of your food choices. And for the love of whatever deity oversees reasonable human behaviour, don’t text people’s partners about their supposed dietary sins.

Meanwhile, back in medical reality

We’re having this conversation on a small planet where humans have successfully fed themselves for millions of years using the radical strategy of eating available food. The idea that we’ve suddenly discovered the One True Diet after surviving ice ages, droughts, and plagues by eating whatever kept us alive suggests a level of hubris that would make the ancient Greeks nervous.

I’m sitting here with an IV line delivering electrolytes to correct the actual, measurable, physiological problems that developed when my blood pressure medication stopped working effectively in a different climate. Not because I committed the sin of eating plants, but because biochemistry is complicated and human bodies sometimes need professional medical attention rather than dietary exorcism.

The universe has spent 13.8 billion years evolving consciousness. The least we can do is use it for something more sophisticated than declaring war on carbohydrates.

Meanwhile, my blood pressure is slowly returning to non-stroke territory thanks to actual medical intervention, electrolyte correction, and doctors who understand that complex problems rarely have simple solutions.

But I’m sure it’s really the bread that’s been trying to kill me all along.

If you want to read more about my views on carnivory, read Chapter 1: The Carnivore Gospel…