The Carnivore Diet, simply defined as an eating pattern that exclusively includes animal products like meat, fish, and eggs, appears to be a recent fad, but its origins are far more complex than a single inventor. The question of who invented this diet requires distinguishing between the ancient practice of all-meat eating, the formal scientific documentation of the concept, and its modern popularization and branding. The story involves indigenous populations, early 20th-century explorers who tested the diet in a clinical setting, and contemporary figures who used the internet to turn it into a global movement. This history reveals that the practice is ancient, but the term and movement are distinctly modern.
The Ancestral Precedent
The consumption of an almost exclusively carnivorous diet is a practice that significantly predates any formal “invention.” For millennia, certain indigenous populations, constrained by geography and climate, naturally adopted a diet composed almost entirely of animal products. The most widely cited example is the traditional diet of the Inuit people in the Arctic, where plant life is scarce for much of the year. Their sustenance came primarily from marine mammals, fish, and caribou, which provided the necessary fat, protein, and micronutrients for survival in an extreme environment.
Similarly, nomadic pastoralist groups, such as the Maasai of East Africa, have historically relied on the milk, meat, and blood of their cattle as their main dietary components. These traditional eating patterns were dictated by ecological necessity and cultural adaptation, not choices based on modern health trends. The success of these populations in maintaining health and strength on animal-exclusive diets provided early, real-world evidence that humans could thrive without consuming large amounts of plant matter. This historical context establishes that the practice of the carnivore diet is deeply rooted in human history.
Early 20th Century Pioneers
The concept moved from anthropological observation to scientific documentation largely due to the work of Canadian Arctic explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson. After spending over a decade living with the Inuit and adopting their meat-and-fat-heavy diet, Stefansson returned to the West as a vocal proponent of the all-meat lifestyle. He contested the prevailing Western medical belief that such a diet was inherently deficient and would inevitably lead to scurvy or kidney damage.
To formally prove his claims, Stefansson and a colleague, Karsten Andersen, entered a year-long study in 1928 at the Russell Sage Institute of Pathology at Bellevue Hospital in New York. For 375 days, the two men consumed only meat and animal fat under constant medical supervision. The physicians overseeing the experiment were surprised to find that the men remained in good health, with no evidence of the expected detriments to kidney function or overall well-being. The results, published in 1930, provided the first formal scientific documentation that a prolonged, all-meat diet was viable.
The Modern Architect of the Carnivore Diet
While the practice and the scientific documentation date back decades, the branding and mass popularization of the “Carnivore Diet” as a contemporary health movement is attributable to 21st-century figures. The orthopedic surgeon Dr. Shawn Baker is widely credited as the leading advocate who formalized the diet and gave it its current, recognizable name. Baker leveraged social media platforms and the internet to promote the eating pattern, sharing his personal experience as an accomplished athlete who credits the diet for improved performance and health.
His 2019 book, The Carnivore Diet, helped to solidify the concept and establish the framework for the modern movement. This contemporary promotion transformed the historical practice into a popular, named phenomenon. Other high-profile adherents, such as Mikhaila Peterson, also contributed to the diet’s viral spread by sharing anecdotal accounts of its effectiveness as an elimination diet for chronic illnesses.