Carnivore Humans and Genetics: No Essential Need for Carbohydrates?

Carnivore Humans and Genetics: No Essential Need for Carbohydrates?

by Laurent Glatz – for Athletic Carnivore

There is a statement that modern nutrition often avoids confronting directly: humans have no essential dietary carbohydrate requirement. They need essential amino acids. They need essential fatty acids. They need micronutrients, salt, water, energy, light, and sleep. But there is no such thing as an “essential carbohydrate” in the same way there are essential amino acids or fatty acids.

This fact alone does not prove that humans are strict carnivores. However, it already overturns part of the dominant narrative. If the body can maintain blood sugar without consuming carbohydrates through gluconeogenesis, if the brain can use a significant portion of ketones during carbohydrate restriction, if red blood cells receive the glucose they need via internal production, then why do we still present carbohydrates as a universal and indispensable foundation?

Human genetics tells a story more complex than slogans suggest. It reveals a species adaptable enough to survive in vastly different environments. Some populations have more copies of the salivary amylase gene, likely linked to greater starch exposure. Others have developed adaptations related to marine fats, dairy products, high altitude, cold climates, or specific dietary niches. But local adaptation never proves a universal necessity.

This is where confusion begins. Because one human group digests starch better than another, we end up talking as if starch becomes necessary for everyone. Because humans can eat plants, we conclude they must eat them. Because they tolerate carbohydrates, we forget to ask what this tolerance costs long-term in insulin-resistant, inflamed, sedentary, or metabolically fragile individuals.

The real issue is not dietary identity but hormonal signaling. Frequent carbohydrate intake increases insulin demand. In a sensitive, active, young, and metabolically flexible organism, this demand can be managed. In an already insulin-resistant, stressed, sleep-deprived, or sedentary organism, it becomes a burden. The same meal does not produce the same biology depending on the individual’s metabolic terrain.

A carnivore or very low-carb diet acts precisely on this point: it reduces the frequency and amplitude of carbohydrate signals. Insulin is less solicited. Hunger often becomes calmer. Ghrelin fluctuates less abruptly. Leptin can become more audible again. The body accesses stored fat more easily. Blood sugar is less subjected to dietary rollercoasters. This is not ideology; it is an endocrine reading.

Animal foods also provide directly usable nutritional forms: B12, retinol, heme iron, zinc, creatine, carnosine, taurine, DHA from marine products, choline, glycine in connective tissues, complete proteins. Conversely, many plant nutrients require conversion, fermentation, or bypassing antinutrients. The question is not to say plants are useless. The question is why animal foods concentrate so many essential nutrients in forms the body immediately recognizes.

Genetics does not deliver a simple verdict. It does not say: “Humans are strict carnivores.” It rather says: humans are adaptable, but their fundamental needs do not argue for carbohydrate dependence. They can produce their own glucose. They can function for long periods on animal fats and proteins. They can use ketones. And many modern diseases appear precisely in a context of frequent carbohydrate exposure, hyperinsulinemia, and loss of metabolic flexibility.

The honest conclusion is more nuanced than slogans. No, genetics alone does not prove humans are exclusively carnivorous. But it increasingly challenges defending the opposite idea: that humans are naturally made to depend daily on grains, fruits, starchy foods, and repeated carbohydrate intake.

And what if the real scandal was not saying humans can live without dietary carbohydrates, but having succeeded in making people believe they cannot?

#Carnivore #Genetics #LowCarb #Insulin #Metabolism #Gluconeogenesis #MetabolicHealth #HumanNutrition #AthleticCarnivore