Meet the young female meatfluencers of TikTok

Gone are the days of snacking on a light “girl dinner.” The latest dieting trend involves a couple of beef patties and a whole lot of butter. Meet the carnivore diet: a meat-heavy menu of beef, chicken, pork, lamb, turkey, organ meats, and bone broth, with butter and eggs as the sides of choice. 

On TikTok, there are over 146,000 videos tagged #carnivore, and searches for the term have increased by 79%, according to Google data. The most famous advocates of the all-meat diet include men like Joe Rogan, Lex Fridman, and Jordan Peterson. One of the best-known meatfluencers, Liver King, has amassed over six million followers on TikTok advocating for the consumption of raw meat. However, it’s not just a guy thing. Young women are also tucking into the carnivore diet as a way to regulate hormone levels, promote gut health, and maintain a lean physique. 

“If you feed your gut with whole foods, all your problems disappear,” TikTokker Mackenzie Merriot says in a video viewed 1.5 million times. Making a post-workout shake, she blitzes raw eggs, butter, salt, and bone broth with a number of other ingredients—all of which goes down with a side of raw liver. The result looks about as appealing as it sounds. Other meatfluencers have gone viral for claiming that the carnivore diet has improved their skin, regulated their hormone levels, and woken up their libido. One ">YouTuber, Limitless Lindy, claims to have lost 500 pounds in just over two years by sticking to a strict carnivore diet.

But before you start snacking on a stick of butter, experts at Healthline say there are no controlled studies that support claims that the carnivore diet helps eliminate health issues. In fact, it lacks beneficial nutrients, including fiber and plant compounds like antioxidants and may ultimately have long-term health consequences. Higher meat intake has also been linked to headaches, triggered by nitrates and nitrites, which are found in processed meats, stomachaches, and weight gain. 

The U.S. 2020 Dietary Guidelines developed by the Department of Health and Human Services and Food and Drug Administration recommend a varied diet, which includes vegetables, fruits, and grains, as well as dairy and protein. It has been suggested that Americans actually limit red meat in favor of lean poultry and fish, due to red meat being linked to cardiovascular disease. Then there’s the fact that meat consumption is terrible for the planet, increasing greenhouse gas emissions while using up a ton of freshwater. 

For now, I’d stick to the five-a-day diet.

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