 Brian Shaw is one of the most popular strongmen right now, along the likes of Eddie Hall and Hafthor Bjornsson aka Thor. Shaw has won four World Strongest Man titles, the recent one being in 2016. He decided to experiment with his diet after not winning in 2017 or 2018, with Stan Efforting's vertical diet which is primarily beef and rice, some fruits and veggies thrown here and there. After not seeing success on the vertical diet for over a year and a half, Brian has decided to go back to his roots, the original diet he won the World Strongest Man competition on, hoping that it will bring him back to the success he saw merely three years ago. I reached out and expressed my concerns on his performance, speculating on several aspects of his lifestyle that he could improve, but why would Brian Shaw listen to some fairy boy twink on his diet? Then again, my day job is posing as the statue of David. Let's take a look at the six meals he is following on this new diet. Meal number one is eight scrambled eggs with some grits and orange juice. Reminds me of Ronnie Coleman's breakfast, but the overarching issue we're going to see here is a lack of food quality, as well as the addition of some processed foods he shouldn't be having. Any conventionally raised supermarket egg has a poor omega-3 to omega-6 ratio. It lacks the nutrients that are found in pasture raised eggs. Any plant food, in this case the grits and the orange juice, is there a pesticide concern? Is there an herbicide concern? What chemicals were sprayed on these products when they were being grown? Is it GMO? What happened from the indigenous, the wild variety of that plant food to the version we're consuming now? Opting for an heirloom variety of grains, opting for organic fresh pressed, fresh squeezed orange juice are far better options than what he's consuming now. These would increase the nutrient density of the meal, lower the inflammation substantially, but the amount of effort and money required to make that next step up, something most people don't have an understanding or a willingness to do. He does suggest something called MedKit, which is a multivitamin from his sponsored supplement company, and there's some good and some bad with this. There are a bunch of plant-based extracts in this supplement, which are certainly useless, but this multivitamin actually contains nutrients that a lot of people tend to be deficient in. So in the context of a diet lacking food quality, aka Brian Shaw's old strongman diet, he probably sees a benefit from taking vitamin D3, fish oil powder, NaCl16, as well as vitamin K2, despite the small amount, despite the quality of those supplement ingredients. But if you see a benefit from taking a multivitamin, that means that your diet is incredibly deficient in nutrients, vitamins, minerals, elements, and fatty acids. Ideally, you would be achieving these nutrients from high-quality animal foods, or you could even opt for supplements in higher doses that contain more available forms of these supplements that are being used. Moving on to meal number two, he has bison, instant mashed potatoes, and some duck fat. Obviously, bison is a better choice than most proteins people have. Unfortunately, bison is still very lean, and nutrients are contained in the fat of the animal, so it's really just a slightly cleaner protein source. The instant potatoes are just inferior versions of fresh potatoes. They add emulsifiers, which tend to be oxidized vegetable oils, and there are also preservatives, so an unnecessary level of inflammation in the mashed potatoes. Yes, it is nice to see duck fat, animal fat in this meal. Unfortunately, ducks are fed primarily corn and soy. Therefore, duck fat is high omega-6 and inflammatory. Anything like grass-fed butter would be a much better choice. He gets his meat from some meal prep company he is sponsored by, and he microwaves his meat. So, the nutrient content of the meat is diminished greatly by the time it gets to him. If the meat is cooked well done, frozen, sent to him, he's already lost a fairly high percentage of the B vitamins, at least 30%. Then he chucks the meat in the microwave, blasts some more vitamins out of it. So, compared to cooking fresh meat, he's getting less than half of the potential nutrients. Not to mention microwaving damages foods on a cellular level, changing the structure into something we do not recognize. I might do a separate video on the dangers of microwaving your food. On to meal number three, which was turkey, rice, and red sauce. Turkey, just like duck, is usually fed corn and soy, so the omega-6 is a concern, but the turkey is pretty lean. They do still give these animals antibiotics and things you don't want in your meat, so turkey is definitely not the best choice. And again, it's from the meal prep company, he blessed in the microwave, greatly diminished bioavailability of the water soluble, especially the very important B vitamins. The concerns with the rice, same with the other plant foods, were there pollutants in the field? Is it a hybridized variety of a grain? Red sauce usually isn't that big of an issue. It might be slightly inflammatory, again, depending on how the tomatoes were grown, were they sprayed with glyphosate? Were there chemicals and preservatives added to the tomato sauce? Meal number four, apparently his prep coach told him to get pizza and cheesecake. For what reason I can't speculate on outside of increasing the fat in his diet? Pizza from a place like Domino's isn't all around bad choice. The dough has modern, inflammatory hybridized wheat, soybean oil, several dozen other additives. The processed cheese has dozens of ingredients in it, and even the sauce has soybean oil and dozens of more processed ingredients. He would have been far better going off to a local pizza joint, and then there's not going to be 90 ingredients and chemicals in his pizza. Ironically, compared to what most people eat, the cheesecake doesn't seem that bad, outside of it being the deadly combination of fat and carbohydrates. Cheesecake is composed of conventional grain fed dairy, which can be estrogenic and is lacking the nutrients quality dairy grass fed raw is supposed to have. Of course, we have the high sugar content in the cheesecake. Yes, there is some wheat in there. And as we said with the pizza, modern wheat is very inflammatory because of GMO, because of hybridization. There isn't actually soybean oil in a large amount or a ton of preservatives in the cheesecake. But still, that combination of wheat, sugar, and dairy on its own is nothing to tread lightly about. And we're seeing a consistent pattern here of low quality ingredients akin to the American standards of cheap, fast, and easy. This results in systemic inflammation from a high amount of pollutants and agrochemicals, as well as a lack of nutrients due to soil quality and animal feed. For meal number five, he has a bag of frozen sweet potato fries and the turkey patties again. As we just said with the turkey patties, antibiotic concern, high omega six concern, foods being heated in multiple times, degrading whatever nutrients are in the turkey patties. And fresh sweet potato, a boiled, baked, even sauteed in butter sweet potato is far better than these fries because there's soybean oil in the fries, there's preservatives. When you're buying these pre-packaged processed foods, you're getting so many nasty things you don't want in your body. Last but not least is meal number six, where he had steak from the meal prep company, some rice noodles, pasta sauce, a balsamic vinaigrette on some spinach. He had an apple as well as some more cheesecake. So the steak is from the meal prep company. Again, you know, this food's being heated multiple times, degrading what nutrients are already in it. At least steak doesn't have the omega six concerns of turkey, but there is an estrogenic herbicide, you know, atrazine concern that is fed to American feedlock cattle. Rice noodles again with the plant foods were concerned about the pollutants, how it was grown. Rice flour and water are what comprise rice noodles. So there could even be like fluoride, chlorine, bromide, halogens in the water used to make the rice noodles. You know, this is nothing to be overstated. Pasta sauce, as we said earlier, you know, slightly inflammatory. What are the growing conditions of the tomatoes? The problem with balsamic dressing and even just salad dressings in general is they put soybean oil, very poisonous vegetable seed oils in them, and he's just dousing it on these spinach leaves, you know, which at best are just giving him some fiber. You know, the nutrients and spinach are not available to the body and consuming large amounts of spinach can increase certain anti-nutrients such as oxalates, when in the context of a nutrient deficient diet can exacerbate certain issues. Apple, you know, again, is it an organic apple or was it sprayed with glyphosate? And back to the cheesecake, just to repeat what I said earlier, you know, it has conventional dairy, estrogenic, low in nutrients, high sugar, modern wheat, pretty inflammatory choice for dessert. Obviously, we can identify the main concern of his diet being a lack of food quality. If he was sourcing all of the products optimally, preparing them fresh outside of a microwave, we would see a huge increase in the vitamin mineral, you know, better omega three to omega six fatty acid ratios in his diet, reduction of very inflammatory processed foods. The biggest issue in his diet right now, without a doubt, is the high omega six fatty acid intake, which can be compromised immediately by consuming more fish as well as removing low quality meats. And of course, getting rid of all those processed food ingredients should be a given. In the mid to long term, it would benefit him greatly to increase food quality across the board. But even just right now, if he swapped out turkey for salmon, cooked the potatoes fresh, opted for a higher quality cheesecake, he would be worlds better. If Brian Shaw is unable to increase the food quality in his diet, as well as fix some other lifestyle factors I am speculative about, I don't see him at this point in time being able to get back to his peak performance. So thank you guys for joining me. If you could please like the video, subscribe, hit that bell icon, share the video if you can. I just get worried sometimes when I see these big influencers showing people what they're doing honestly, I kind of feel bad for Brian. He doesn't seem too confident in what he's doing, even just seeing how he composes himself. I mean, obviously you would assume that a strong man, especially of his caliber, a world-class athlete is a very motivated individual. But I'm not seeing the confidence in his diet. I think he needs to have more of an understanding of nutrition and try some things for himself instead of looking at people for solutions. So as I said, if you guys could please share the video. If you guys do want to support me further, you can check out Frankie's Free Range Meat, high quality nutrient-dense animal foods at an affordable price. Go to frankiesfreerangemeat.com. You can also check out Frankie's Naturals, minimal ingredients, minimally processed hygiene and cosmetic products. Thanks again for joining me guys and enjoy the rest of your day.