Animal Foods and Deficiencies: Does the Plant-Based Dogma Withstand Human Biology?

Animal Foods and Deficiencies: Does the Plant-Based Dogma Withstand Human Biology?

by Laurent Glatz – for Athletic Carnivore

Since childhood, we’ve been told that a human deprived of plants is doomed to deficiency. Deficiency in vitamins, fiber, antioxidants—deficiency in everything modern discourse associates with health. This idea has become so familiar that it’s hardly questioned anymore. It functions as a cultural given. Yet, when we move beyond slogans to examine the actual composition of foods and human physiology, the picture becomes far less straightforward.

The first misunderstanding arises from confusing the theoretical presence of a nutrient with its actual utilization by the body. A nutrition table may list iron, zinc, calcium, or vitamin A in a plant food. But what matters biologically is not just what’s written in the food. It’s what crosses the intestine, escapes absorption inhibitors, enters the bloodstream, reaches the cells, and fulfills a function. Human nutrition is not a sum of numbers. It’s a story of bioavailability.

Animal foods are precisely powerful for this reason. Red meat provides complete proteins, heme iron, highly available zinc, selenium, phosphorus, creatine, carnitine, taurine, and a broad spectrum of B vitamins. Vitamin B12, essential for the nervous system, methylation, and red blood cell formation, is found almost exclusively in animal foods. In a strict plant-based diet, it must be supplemented externally. In a well-constructed animal-based diet, it is part of the food matrix.

The liver raises the stakes even higher. It concentrates preformed vitamin A, copper, folates, riboflavin, B12, and other micronutrients. Egg yolk provides choline, cholesterol, fat-soluble vitamins, and phospholipids beneficial for the brain and cell membranes. Fatty fish supply EPA and DHA, the long-chain omega-3 forms directly used by the brain and retina. Seafood adds iodine, zinc, selenium, and sometimes manganese. In other words, when we talk about intelligent carnivore eating, we’re not just talking about eating lean steak. We’re talking about eating the whole animal, and sometimes marine animals.

The most common fear concerns vitamin C. It deserves more than a simplistic answer. Yes, plants are important sources in a mixed diet. But actual needs vary depending on metabolic context. Glucose and vitamin C share some transport systems. In a carbohydrate-rich environment, with higher blood sugar and increased oxidative stress, demand may differ. In a very low-carb diet, with less glycation and less competition, apparent needs may decrease. Fresh animal tissues also contain small amounts of vitamin C, especially in certain organs. This is not an argument to neglect the topic but to place it within a complete physiological context.

Fiber is another major concern. It’s presented as indispensable for transit and the microbiota. But again, the question depends on the overall diet. Fiber notably slows carbohydrate absorption and feeds colonic fermentation adapted to a plant-rich diet. In a carnivore diet, fermentable mass decreases, gas often decreases, stool volume drops, and transit may become less noticeable without being pathological. The absence of bulky stools is not necessarily constipation. It may simply reflect more complete absorption and less plant waste.

This does not mean any carnivore version is perfect. A diet composed solely of lean meats, without salt, offal, fish, eggs, or sufficient fat, can become unbalanced. The problem is not the absence of plants per se. The problem is the impoverishment of animal diversity. A coherent carnivore plate must consider protein, fat, sodium, potassium, magnesium according to context, but also retinol, choline, iodine, copper, zinc, selenium, and DHA. This precision is essential.

Modern dogma often reverses the reasoning. It assumes plants protect by default and animal foods expose by default. But a plant food can contain phytates, oxalates, lectins, enzyme inhibitors, or irritating fibers for certain profiles. An animal food often provides nutrients already in a form close to what the body uses. Heme iron doesn’t need to be guessed by the body. Retinol doesn’t need to be converted from beta-carotene. DHA doesn’t need to be painstakingly made from ALA.

The question of deficiencies should therefore be reframed. It’s not: can we survive without plants? It’s: which foods provide the most direct materials necessary for the brain, blood, hormones, muscles, liver, and immune system? Once posed this way, the answer becomes much less comfortable for the dominant narrative.

Modern human nutrition suffers less from a lack of green leaves than from an excess of poor, processed, sugary, artificially enriched, and biologically incoherent foods. If we remove these products to return to dense, fresh, fatty, complete, and properly chosen animal foods, the automatic fear of deficiency looks more like a cultural reflex than a metabolic certainty.

And what if the real modern deficiency isn’t the absence of plants, but the neglect of complete animal foods?

#Carnivore #CarnivoreNutrition #Micronutrients #Offal #RedMeat #Eggs #Bioavailability #VitaminB12 #MetabolicHealth #AthleticCarnivore