Dr. Shawn Baker on Seven Years of Carnivore, Cholesterol, Processed Food Capture and Training for Life

High-Level Overview

Dr. Shawn Baker, an orthopedic surgeon, author of The Carnivore Diet and co-founder of the telehealth clinic Revero, returns to Joe Rogan's podcast about six years after his first appearance, now starting his eighth year of eating almost nothing but red meat. The two cover his fight with a hospital and medical board over lifestyle medicine, the Harvard survey of carnivore dieters, a coming study of lean people with very high cholesterol, how nutrition science was shaped by the sugar industry and religious vegetarians, why ultra-processed food dominates the American diet, whether fiber is essential, and the case for staying strong and active into your fifties and beyond.

The tone is friendly, opinionated and often indignant about corporate influence on food and health policy, with detours into politics, free speech, jiu jitsu, cold plunges, bear hunting and a now-viral debate Baker had with vegan activists. The conversation swings between nutrition science, criticism of industry and government, and practical talk about training and longevity.

The Discussion Explores:

• Baker's medical license fight and his new root-cause telehealth company, Revero
• The Harvard survey of about 2,000 carnivore dieters and results for type 2 diabetics
• Cholesterol, the lean mass hyper-responder idea, and a study of very high LDL in otherwise healthy people
• How the sugar industry, early dietetics and industry funding shaped beliefs about meat and fat
• Ultra-processed food, a USDA-linked menu that was 91% ultra-processed, and conflicts of interest on guideline panels
• Fiber, the microbiome, autoimmune conditions and food addiction stories
• Jiu jitsu, drilling, stem cells, cold plunges and Rogan's comedian workout bootcamp
• Hunting, regenerative ranching, vegan ideology and staying capable into old age

Deep Dive into Main Ideas

Seven Years of Meat and a Fight With Medicine

Rogan opens by joking that Baker is still alive after years of eating nothing but meat, and admits that although he isn't strict (he recently overate sushi and felt awful afterward), he feels much better when he eats mostly meat. Baker says his diet is probably 98% red meat, mostly steak every day, but he isn't religious about it; he had a slice of pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving, his first in about a decade.

Baker recounts how, as a busy orthopedic surgeon, he began helping patients avoid surgery by changing their diets, which he says hospitals don't want. His hospital suspended his privileges and went to the state medical board. He chose independent evaluation, which found nothing wrong, and he got his license back and has renewed it three times since. He isn't practicing now because he sees serious conflicts of interest and misaligned incentives in the healthcare system. Instead he co-founded Revero, licensed in all 50 states and funded by crowdfunding and venture capital, which he says will focus on root-cause medicine and getting people off medications rather than managing symptoms for life.

The Harvard Carnivore Survey and the Therapeutic Case

Rogan notes how many stories he hears of people whose chronic pain, arthritis, fatigue, eczema and other conditions improved after they cut everything but meat. Baker agrees the anecdotes can't be ignored even though they are not rigorous science, and describes a Harvard study with David Ludwig as senior author, whom he calls extremely ethical and unwilling to take industry money. It surveyed about 2,000 people on a carnivore diet and, as Baker describes it, around 95% reported significant improvement. Among roughly 225 type 2 diabetics, he says 92% came off insulin, all came off other injectable drugs including GLP-1 agonists, and 84% came off metformin.

Baker stresses that he doesn't claim humans are carnivores; he describes humans as opportunistic omnivores and presents carnivore as a therapeutic tool. Both men argue the biggest benefit may simply be cutting out processed junk, and Baker notes that a meat-based meal leaves you satiated. He also points to research linking asset managers such as BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street to both processed-food companies and pharmaceutical makers, and argues that profiting from making people sick and then treating them crosses into something close to evil. Rogan sees it less as a conspiracy and more as corporations chasing profit, including marketing sugary cereal to kids.

Cholesterol and Lean People With Very High LDL

Baker addresses the most common objection: cholesterol. He describes engineer Dave Feldman, whose cholesterol soared on a low-carb diet even though he felt great, and who developed the lean mass hyper-responder idea and the lipid energy model. Researcher Nick Norwitz demonstrated the model by adding Oreo cookies to his diet: when lean, low-carb people lack stored energy, the liver sends out more lipoproteins, but adding carbohydrates quickly lowers LDL cholesterol. The open question is whether very high LDL is dangerous in someone who is lean and metabolically healthy.

He describes a study designed by cardiologist Matthew Budoff at UCLA of about 100 people with total cholesterol of 500 to 700, all otherwise lean, non-diabetic and with normal blood pressure, average age in their mid to late fifties. According to Baker, detailed CT angiography showed almost none had significant plaque, and follow-up scans after a year will show whether it progresses. Preliminary data was due on December 8, compared against a Miami Heart dataset. Baker predicts little or no progression, which would challenge Peter Attia's view that heart risk depends on how much LDL you're exposed to over how much time, and suggests high LDL may matter less in people without obesity, diabetes or high blood pressure. He is careful to say he doesn't know the results yet.

On the history, Baker traces the cholesterol hypothesis to rabbit feeding studies, Eisenhower's heart attack and Ancel Keys's associational research, acknowledges that statin trials and other evidence support the idea and that most cardiologists agree with it, but notes population data in which people with higher cholesterol have lower all-cause mortality, while conceding critics attribute that to reverse causality. He says dietary cholesterol has been shown not to raise blood cholesterol much, and both men cite the 1960s sugar industry payments to Harvard researchers to shift blame onto fat.

Captured Science and the Beef Checkoff

Baker criticizes a recent Harvard epidemiology study linking red meat to diabetes, saying it counted foods like lasagna and sandwiches as red meat and did not properly account for confounders such as smoking, weight and sugar intake, while a Harvard study of people eating nothing but meat saw diabetes improve. He cites John Ioannidis's criticism that much nutrition epidemiology is wasted money. Rogan adds the revolving door between regulators and industry, and Baker says around 65% of the FDA's budget for new drug approvals comes from the pharmaceutical industry itself.

Baker wanted to run a simple intervention study: put diabetics on an all-meat diet and measure the outcome. He approached the beef checkoff, funded by a dollar each time a cow is sold and administered through groups including the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, which collects tens of millions a year to promote beef. They declined. He suspects the USDA, which oversees checkoffs, and processed-food interests don't want to promote a message that would lead people away from processed food. Along the way he shares some surprising numbers: the US slaughters about 34 million cattle a year, while India has roughly 300 million head and slaughters about 38 million, exporting much of it. He adds that US beef consumption has fallen 30 to 40% since 1977 while disease has risen, and that around half a million ranchers have gone out of business since the 1970s.

Ultra-Processed Food as Human Pet Food

Baker says the US diet is now close to 70% ultra-processed, and cites researcher Dariush Mozaffarian's point that Americans haven't eaten many more calories since about 2000, but far more ultra-processed food. Whole foods travel further through the gut, and he says the microbiome can consume up to 22% of calories, whereas refined sugar is absorbed right away. Rogan pulls up a paper that designed a menu meeting the 2020 Dietary Guidelines with 91% of calories from ultra-processed foods, scoring 86 out of 100 on the Healthy Eating Index. Baker calls this an effort to normalize eating what amounts to "human pet food."

He says Harvard physician Fatima Cody Stanford, who told 60 Minutes that obesity is a disease unrelated to diet or exercise, has ties to Novo Nordisk, the maker of Ozempic, and sits on the dietary guidelines panel, and he claims 95% of that panel have financial ties to processed-food companies. He contrasts this with Brazil's guidelines: cook at home, avoid processed foods and eat with people you love. He also says the food industry pays social media influencers and dietitians to promote processed food, and says the lethal dose of sugar is roughly five pounds.

On why meat gets demonized, Baker points to the founding of the American Dietetic Association in 1917 by Seventh-day Adventists and to John Harvey Kellogg, who promoted bland cereal to curb lust. Rogan and Baker also mock detox fads, noting that the liver and kidneys are what actually clear toxins, and warn that fruit smoothies and juices deliver sugar in an unnatural, fast-absorbing form.

Fiber, Mental Health and Food Addiction

Baker calls fiber conditionally beneficial. In a standard diet it is mostly a marker of better diet quality and higher socioeconomic status, and it displaces junk on the plate. But he cites work by researchers including Tommy Wood suggesting the gut can make the same short-chain fatty acids without fiber, including from protein, and notes that the ketone beta-hydroxybutyrate is chemically close to butyric acid. He also cites research on a gut bacterium, Prevotella copri, suggesting a high-fiber diet can worsen rheumatoid arthritis. Historically, he says, Denis Burkitt's observations about fiber in Africa ignored that those populations also ate little sugar, and he claims today's average eight-year-old has eaten more sugar than a person did in a lifetime 150 years ago.

On mental health, he cites Harvard psychiatrist Chris Palmer's book Brain Energy and a study in which about 30 psychiatric inpatients with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and major depression all improved on a lower-carb diet, noting that roughly 25% of Americans take a psychiatric drug. Baker describes a woman who reached almost 800 pounds and lost nearly 500 pounds on carnivore after trying everything else, telling him she had finally found the off switch, and a Montana man who weighed 600 pounds at 14 and quit drinking around 20 Cokes a day. He also relays that a food chemist whose job was to make food as addictive as possible contacted him wanting to work with his team because she couldn't live with the guilt.

Politics, Free Speech and Division

The conversation drifts into politics. Baker suggests Americans have never been more divided, and wonders whether poor nutrition plays a role; Rogan thinks social media drives it, made worse by poor physical health. Rogan describes himself as always left-leaning, supporting universal healthcare, free education and fixing inner cities, but says government bureaucracy is inefficient, citing homelessness spending in California and San Francisco's sudden cleanup for Xi Jinping's visit. He argues the prosecutions of Donald Trump set a dangerous precedent of pursuing political opponents, and both men criticize COVID lockdowns and school closures. Baker mentions his jiu jitsu coach Greg Anderson, a former Army Ranger fired by Seattle police after refusing to arrest a woman doing nails at home during the pandemic. They look up the Douglas Mackey case and conclude that his fake text-to-vote posts went beyond ordinary memes, though Rogan still doubts jail was warranted.

Jiu Jitsu, Drilling, Stem Cells and the Comedian Bootcamp

Baker, a white belt about two years in who got dropped on his head, thanks Rogan for help with stem cell treatment for his neck and plans to strengthen it with an Iron Neck before rolling again. Rogan describes how he healed a torn MCL with stem cells only after he finally stopped kicking for a full year, and credits Knees Over Toes exercises like Nordic curls and tib bar raises with making his knees stronger. For conditioning he uses sled work and a self-powered Assault AirRunner treadmill.

Rogan's jiu jitsu advice centers on drilling with good partners at 50 to 60% resistance; he says he made his biggest leaps as a blue belt drilling twice a week with Eddie Bravo until techniques were automatic, like tying your shoelaces. Teaching also cements skills, and Baker notes surgeons say see one, do one, teach one. Both describe jiu jitsu as a moving meditation that makes the rest of life easier.

Rogan also describes the bootcamp he runs for Mothership comedians: bodyweight squats and push-ups, light kettlebells, glute-ham sit-ups and back extensions, with everyone doing as much as they can, followed by a 185-degree sauna and a cold plunge. He tells them they can do anything for four minutes, counting to ten over and over. His core point: "if you have more energy you'll be better at everything you do," and you don't need to be an unhealthy mess to be funny. He recommends the Blue Cube cold plunge and the Morozko Forge, says his discipline wins the daily fight with his brain to skip it, and tells the comics that something as simple as a scoop of Athletic Greens can help with nutrients.

Hunting, Regenerative Ranching and Vegan Ideology

They discuss Steve Rinella's blueberry-fed black bears with purple-tinged fat, black bear overpopulation (Baker guesses Wyoming for the most bears per capita and Rogan says New Jersey), and the Lewis and Clark expedition eating up to nine pounds of meat a day. Baker cites Stephan van Vliet's research showing meat contains many thousands of compounds, including phytonutrients from grazing, at higher levels in grass-fed animals. They praise Will Harris's regenerative farm in Georgia, Baker mentions a Montana ranch that finishes cattle on sprouts grown indoors, and both argue subsidies should favor regenerative farming over the grain commodities that go into junk food.

Rogan plays Baker's debate with a vegan who said he believes the natural world is morally problematic and should be replaced with human infrastructure, even calling a lion eating a zebra a rights violation. Rogan calls this cult-like thinking, noting that crops depend on animal-derived fertilizer and pollinators. They discuss vegans who are attacked by their own community after returning to animal foods, and Rogan suggests that some of the vitriol may come from people who are physically unwell: hurt people hurt people. Baker adds that studies of vegans show the leading causes of death are still heart disease and cancer, and cites a 2018 Stanford study linking major depressive disorder to low carnitine, which comes mainly from animal products.

Staying Capable as You Age

Baker argues that alongside diet, physical activity is what distinguishes people who age well. When you accept doing 90% of what you once did, that 90% becomes your new 100%, and your range of capability shrinks until walking is a chore. He cites a 91-year-old who deadlifts 405 pounds for a triple at a body weight of about 148, and an 82-year-old Alberta rancher he says has eaten a carnivore diet since age 15 and is planning to start a new ranch in Bolivia. His approach to longevity: no one really knows, so get healthy today. Rogan agrees, saying the claim that a healthy, active person will die young while a sedentary junk-food eater will be fine makes no sense.

Conclusion

This episode is a wide-ranging case for eating real food, especially meat, and for distrusting the institutions and incentives behind the modern diet. Baker positions carnivore as a powerful therapeutic tool rather than a religion, pointing to reversed diabetes, weight loss and relief from autoimmune and mental health conditions, while being clear that some questions, like the long-term meaning of very high LDL in lean people, are still being studied. Rogan adds the practical side: drill, train smart, plunge into cold water and build energy that makes everything else in life better. Listeners should treat the claims as the speakers' views rather than settled science, but the core message is consistent: cut the ultra-processed food, keep moving, and don't slow down just because of your age.

This is a summary of "#2069 - Dr. Shawn Baker" from The Joe Rogan Experience, giving you the GIST so you can decide if you want the REST. Listen to the full episode.