In a rare, shocking reversal, famed survivalist Bear Grylls now says he is “embarrassed” by his former vegan diet, and he was wrong to assume it was good for his health or the environment.
In the past, Grylls believed in his vegan lifestyle so much that he wrote and promoted a vegan cookbook,”Fuel for Life,” that attacked society’s “unnatural ways of breeding, keeping and killing animals.”
Now, he has a diet consisting entirely of red meat, eggs, and organ meat. That is a dramatic shift in ideology to go from munching on salads to grilling up liver and steaks. On Wednesday, Grylls told The UK Telegraph what was behind the stunning reversal. Via Fox News: “I was vegan quite a few years ago – in fact, I wrote a vegan cookbook – and I feel a bit embarrassed because I really promoted that,” Grylls said. “I thought that was good for the environment and I thought it was good for my health. And through time and experience and knowledge and study, I realized I was wrong on both counts.”
Grylls was doing vegan as recently as November but began to note that some of the foods he was eating seemed to be having negative health effects. He switched to all red meat and animal organs and now claims his body has “never been better.”
Grylls continued: “For a long time, I’d been eating so many vegetables thinking it was doing me good, but just never felt like it had given me any good nutrients compared to the nutrient density I get from basically blood or bone marrow – red meat,” he said. “I’ve tried to listen to my body more, tried to listen to nature, and I don’t miss vegetables at all. I don’t go near them and I’ve never felt stronger, my skin’s never been better, and my gut’s never been better.”
Glad to see there are some that aren’t afraid to speak the truth!! @BearGrylls pic.twitter.com/Av6wOhciC7
— Dr Shawn Baker 🥩 (@SBakerMD) May 12, 2023
Bear noted that he is completely avoiding anything processed, which is a big step towards a totally healthy diet and life. Processed foods are linked to many diseases and ailments. In the animal kingdom, apex predators feed on the blood organs of other animals, so it isn’t an unreasonable question to ask; why don’t we see any fat lions and tigers? The answer might lie in the nutrient-dense organ and bone marrow diets wild animals have. He continued:
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“I’ve found a counterculture way of living, of embracing red meat and organs – natural food just like our millennia of ancestors would have eaten for hundreds of thousands of years. And out of all the different things I do for my health, I think that’s probably been the biggest game-changer, in the sense of improving my vitality, wellbeing, strength, skin and gut. It’s just been getting away from the processed stuff and making the predominant thing in my diet red meat and liver and the natural stuff – fruit, honey, that sort of thing. It’s just about finding a more ancestral way of living,”
The so-called carnivore diet certainly runs the opposite of what conventional medicine and groups like the FDA and PETA might prefer, but for Bear Grylls, it works. He reports not feeling hungry anymore, and feeling satisfied after meals, two big keys to maintaining normal body weight.
It might not work for everyone, but for Bear Grylls, the all-meat diet has been a game changer. It might have been cool to be a vegan and pretend you are saving the Earth, but at the end of the day, it’s about how you feel and how healthy you are as an individual. Whatever works, works, and for Bear Grylls, meat works.