The animal-based diet: carnivore with fruit and honey. Saner, still unproven.

Steak, liver, raw milk, mango and a spoon of honey. It's the carnivore diet after it discovered dessert. The fruit is a step forward. Almost everything else is a bet without evidence.

The short version

What it is: Mostly meat and organs, plus fruit, honey and often raw dairy. Seed oils are out, many vegetables are frowned on.
Good for: Lots of protein, no ultra-processed food. Fruit means it isn't fibre-free like carnivore.
Bad at: Evidence (none), vegetables (barely any), and the raw milk is a genuine food-safety risk.
Evidence: None. Not a single study of the diet itself.
Our take: Keep the steak and the fruit, bring back the vegetables, skip the raw milk. Not part of our plan.

What the animal-based diet actually is

The animal-based diet is mainly the work of Paul Saladino, a US doctor turned social media influencer. He used to be one of the loudest voices for the meat-only carnivore diet, then moved on to a version that adds fruit and honey.¹

The rules, as he promotes them: meat and animal organs at the centre, fruit and honey for carbs, raw milk and other dairy, and no seed oils. He's also critical of many vegetables, including cruciferous ones like broccoli.¹ Beyond that there is no official rulebook, so versions vary from influencer to influencer, and many followers cut far more plants than that.

It also comes with a shop. Saladino founded Heart & Soil, a company selling freeze-dried organ meat in capsules.² Nothing wrong with selling things. Just notice when the diet and the product line point the same way.

How it works in your body

Lots of meat and organs means lots of protein, which fills you up. Cutting out packaged snacks, fried food and seed-oil-heavy junk cuts out a lot of calories with it. That's where the "I lost weight and feel great" stories come from. Any diet that bans junk food gets those stories.

Unlike carnivore, animal-based isn't zero-carb. Fruit and honey provide sugar, so you're not in ketosis most of the time. Fruit also gives you some fibre and vitamin C. But with few vegetables, fibre stays far lower than it could be, and saturated fat from fatty meat and dairy stays high.

What you eat, what you don't

Eat

Beef, lamb and other meat
Organ meat: liver, heart, kidney
Fruit: berries, mango, bananas, oranges
Honey
Milk, yoghurt, cheese, butter, often raw

Forget it

Seed oils: sunflower, rapeseed, soy, corn
Cruciferous vegetables: broccoli, kale, cabbage
Many other vegetables, depending on whose version you follow
Ultra-processed food, fried fast food, packaged snacks

Alcohol on the animal-based diet

OK, now and then

One glass of dry red or white wine
A G'spritzter: dry wine topped up with soda water
Gin, vodka or whisky with soda water and lime

Out

Beer, cider, sweet wine, liqueurs
Honey-sweetened cocktails and mead "because it's ancestral"
Anything mixed with juice, cola or tonic
"Zero" mixers: sweeteners are on our never list

50 Club: one glass of dry red with your steak, never on an empty stomach.

None of this is health food. The WHO's European office says no level of drinking is safe, and alcohol causes at least seven types of cancer.⁹ All the details are in our alcohol guide.

What the animal-based diet is good for, with proof

Honest answer: there is no study of the animal-based diet. Not one trial, not one cohort. So the only proof we can show is for its parts.

The fruit part: good call

Fruit is one of the best-studied foods in nutrition. In a Harvard analysis of nearly 1.9 million people, eating about two portions of fruit and three of vegetables a day went with the lowest risk of dying during the studies.³ Animal-based gets the fruit half right. It's the vegetable half it throws away.

The no-junk part: also fine

No crisps, no fried fast food, no packaged snacks. That's a win for almost anyone. It isn't unique to this diet, and it doesn't need the raw milk.

The uncomfortable truth

"Vegetables are toxic, plants are fighting back." Plants do contain defence chemicals. But in the same large analysis, higher intakes of most kinds of vegetables, went with lower mortality, not higher.³ If broccoli were poisoning people, the biggest datasets in nutrition would show it. They show the opposite.

"Honey is a natural food, so it doesn't count as sugar." It counts. The WHO lists honey as a free sugar, in the same group as table sugar and fruit juice, and recommends keeping all free sugars under 10% of your daily energy.⁴ Whole fruit is different, and fine. Honey by the spoonful isn't.

"Raw milk is healthier." The US Centers for Disease Control says pasteurised milk gives you the same nutrition without the risk.⁵ What raw milk adds is a chance of Salmonella, E. coli, Listeria or Campylobacter.

The risks

Raw milk infections. Raw milk can carry germs that cause serious illness, and children under five, people over 65, pregnant people and anyone with a weak immune system are most at risk.⁵ Pasteurised milk has the same nutrition.
LDL cholesterol. Fatty meat, butter and full-fat dairy mean lots of saturated fat. In long-term trials, cutting saturated fat lowered cardiovascular events by about 17%.⁶ LDL is a cause of artery disease, not a side note.⁷ Get it tested.
Processed and red meat. The WHO's cancer agency classes processed meat as a cause of cancer and red meat as a probable one, mainly bowel cancer.⁸ Bacon every morning is not "ancestral".
Low fibre. Fruit helps, but few vegetables, and in many versions no beans or whole grains, means far less fibre than the 25–29 g a day linked to the best health outcomes in the big reviews.¹⁰
Sugar overload. Lots of fruit plus honey can add up to a lot of free sugar, fast.
Diabetes. Lots of fruit and honey on one side, lots of saturated fat on the other. If you take medication for blood sugar, don't experiment without your doctor.

Allergies: watch the staples

Animal-based leans on several major allergens. Allergic to one and the diet loses a pillar.

Animal-based staple	Allergen (EU list of 14)¹¹	Swap
Milk, yoghurt, cheese, butter	Milk	Olive oil; calcium from sardines with bones, greens
Eggs	Eggs	Meat, fish; in the 50 Club, tofu or beans
Salmon, sardines, tuna	Fish	Meat, eggs
Prawns, crab, lobster	Crustaceans	Fish, chicken
Oysters, mussels, scallops	Molluscs	Fish, red meat
Sausages, cured meats	Can contain celery, mustard and sulphites: check the label	Plain fresh meat

Don't do the animal-based diet if you…

are pregnant or breastfeeding (and never drink raw milk if you are)
have high LDL cholesterol, heart disease or a family history of early heart attacks
have diabetes and take insulin or other blood-sugar medication
have kidney disease
have a weakened immune system
have ever had an eating disorder, or are under 18

Healthen me asks about all of these and gives you a different plan if any apply.

How we use the animal-based diet in your plan

We don't. Animal-based is not part of our plan. There's no study of the diet, it sidelines the vegetables with some of the best evidence behind them, and it promotes raw milk, which we won't put in front of anyone.

We do agree on a few things. Protein comes first at every meal, part of our high-protein rule. Whole fruit is welcome. Honey is part of the animal-based diet, but in our plan it counts as sugar: natural sugar from whole fruit is fine, honey is a "sometimes". Ultra-processed food is out. And your first meal after the fast is keto-friendly, built on eggs, fish or meat, with vegetables. If you want a stricter, grain-free style that still includes plants, read about paleo.

This article is general information, not medical advice. If you have a medical condition or take medication, talk to your doctor before changing how you eat.

Sources

Wikipedia. Paul Saladino (accessed 1 November 2026; summarises reporting from The New Yorker, The Guardian, Los Angeles Times and others). en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Saladino
Heart & Soil Supplements. About (company website). heartandsoil.co/pages/about
Wang DD et al. Fruit and vegetable intake and mortality: results from 2 prospective cohort studies of US men and women and a meta-analysis of 26 cohort studies. Circulation 2021;143(17):1642–1654. doi.org/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.120.048996
World Health Organization. WHO calls on countries to reduce sugars intake among adults and children. 4 March 2015. who.int/news/item/04-03-2015-who-calls-on-countries-to-reduce-sugars-intake-among-adults-and-children
US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Raw milk. Food Safety. cdc.gov/food-safety/foods/raw-milk.html
Hooper L et al. Reduction in saturated fat intake for cardiovascular disease. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2020;8:CD011737. doi.org/10.1002/14651858.CD011737.pub3
Ference BA et al. Low-density lipoproteins cause atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. 1. Evidence from genetic, epidemiologic, and clinical studies. A consensus statement from the European Atherosclerosis Society Consensus Panel. European Heart Journal 2017;38(32):2459–2472. doi.org/10.1093/eurheartj/ehx144
World Health Organization. Cancer: carcinogenicity of the consumption of red meat and processed meat (questions and answers); and Bouvard V et al. Carcinogenicity of consumption of red and processed meat. Lancet Oncology 2015;16(16):1599–1600. who.int: red meat and processed meat Q&A
World Health Organization, Regional Office for Europe. No level of alcohol consumption is safe for our health. 4 January 2023. who.int/europe/news/item/04-01-2023-no-level-of-alcohol-consumption-is-safe-for-our-health
Reynolds A et al. Carbohydrate quality and human health: a series of systematic reviews and meta-analyses. The Lancet 2019;393(10170):434–445. doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(18)31809-9
Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011 on food information to consumers, Annex II (the 14 allergens). eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2011/1169/oj

Keep reading

Carnivore
Meat, fish, eggs and nothing else. Fans swear by it, but there's not one long-term trial, fibre drops to zero and LDL often shoots up. Here's the saner way to eat lots of meat.
Paleo and primal
Eat like a caveman, they said. Cutting junk food works. The caveman story doesn't, and binning beans, whole grains and dairy throws out some of the best-studied foods we have.
Keto
The most hyped diet of the last ten years actually works, just not the way the influencers sell it. Here is what it does, what the science says, and who should stay well away from it.

See all diets, sorted and explained