 Just about everyone seems to be using the word nutrient dense now. Cornemore, vegan, whatever it may be. I used to say it myself, but after seeing it used in all of these dietary hemispheres, it's left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth. It's definitely becoming more popular, almost like a household name, but unfortunately as with these other misleading marketing terms like grass fed, heritage breed, natural, plant based, there's a lot of deception. The point is, you're viewing the food as healthy, but it's not. Someone calling a grain fed steak grass fed because it was on pasture for two months and then saying it's nutrient dense for instance is ignoring the obvious downsides of conventional feedlap beef. The massive amounts of chemicals, antibiotic residue that remains in the flesh causing oxidative stress and hormonal dysfunction in our bodies. Same goes for that medical medium clown telling people to suck down celery juice. How many pesticides, herbicides, agrochemicals are being sprayed on that celery that you're sucking down in massive amounts every morning? As with everything, there are quite a few bad apples using this term nutrient density to continue their deceptive marketing. But what defines nutrient density? What does it actually mean? In my opinion, it's food that provides our body with what it needs the most from either a caloric perspective or vitamin mineral fatty acid perspective. And that caloric perspective is carbohydrates, fats, and proteins. Most standard American dieters aren't really lacking caloric energy for survival like our ancestors were. In nature, nutrient density is plentiful. It's just difficult to procure enough calories. Now it's the opposite. We have plenty of body fat but have many nutritional needs that are not being met. I figured the best way to determine if muscle meat is healthy is to just look at how much nutrition we're getting from a muscle meat carnivore diet. How many vitamins, minerals, and fatty acids do you get by eating three pounds of beef per day and what are you possibly missing? So the two main concerns here are what we just mentioned. The caloric energy component and the vitamin mineral fatty acid component. To briefly summarize, protein seems to be too high, not enough carbs, not enough fats, and there are severe nutrient imbalances. So let's run down the vitamins first. And keep in mind, this is the RDA percentage, the recommended dietary allowance amount, so it's not necessarily ideal or correct. And despite animal foods not containing anti-nutrients and being highly bioavailable, you know, you don't absorb 100% of the nutrition in the food. There could be upwards of 20, 30, 50% who knows, waste depending on enzyme capacity and what your body actually needs. Starting with the macronutrients, three pounds of beef is almost 2,000 calories, 90 grams of fat and 300 grams of protein. Just from that perspective, most people would greatly benefit and improve their body composition, you know, giving their cells the high quality fat and protein building blocks they're lacking on a standard American diet. Vitamin A retinol at 23% is plenty because most people have passed retinal stores in their liver from even a standard American diet, whether it's the carotene in the fruits and vegetables, or the retinol from eggs and dairy. Many people are lacking the antagonistic nutrients, vitamin D3 and vitamin K2, so I would say 80, 90% of people don't really need more vitamin A to start, plus vitamin A increases iron absorption which compounded with vitamin C leads to certain issues. Most of these B vitamins are around the RDA, some are well above, and a lot of people with dysbiosis, gut issues, SIBO, Candida aren't absorbing the B vitamins from their diet, which is why some people do benefit from taking a B complex even when being on a carnivore diet. From my understanding, you definitely want more vitamin B1, vitamin B5 and vitamin B7, especially vitamin B9 folic acid when you go carnivore. The first three are just not ideal amounts and folate is pretty low on a meat-based diet. The amount of B12 here is why we typically see B12 levels incredibly elevated on carnivore diet blood work. Considering most Americans are deficient in B vitamins, going carnivore would certainly help fix certain deficiencies, but it might also create new imbalances without being mindful of high quality plant food consumption or supplementing specific ones. Vitamin E is something you don't need on its own because the purpose of vitamin E is to prevent fatty acid oxidation, so once you consume that food and digest it, the purpose of the vitamin E has been served, so there's not extra oxidative stress by consuming rancid fat. That being said, grass-fed beef is higher in vitamin E which prevents oxidation and in addition our ancestors did consume rotten meat which had some level of fatty acid oxidation. So that's definitely up in the air, but that kind of ties into vitamin K because those fermented foods did have a high amount of vitamin K too. The vitamin K content of muscle meat is surprisingly high. You still want those fermented foods. You still probably want to supplement vitamin K2 and Mk4 and you still want to feed your gut bacteria with carbohydrates so you can synthesize some vitamin K. And I would say it's the biggest nutrient deficiency. Vitamin D is important, but most people are aware that they need to get sunlight or supplement vitamin D3 as opposed to vitamin K2 in the form Mk4 which most people aren't getting at all. So most databases don't have specific numbers on vitamin C and vitamin D in muscle meat. I will say that there is a small amount and if the animal was on pasture, on a higher quality diet out in the sun, the numbers will be correspondingly higher. That being said, you still want to supplement a small amount of vitamin C on any diet. I have a video on that and of course you want to get your own vitamin D from sunlight itself. Even on something like a high quality, raw, grass-fed carnivore diet, people will still benefit from something like organic lemons, acerola cherry powder, and of course plenty of sunlight. On to the minerals. The main benefits of minerals from animal products is they tend to be more available because they're bound to amino acids as opposed to plant foods that are bound to oxalate its phytoic acid which are harder to absorb. First we have the electrolyte minerals which are very overrated on keto and carnivore diets. People shielding various electrolyte powder supplements and apparently taking an electrolyte powder is the remedy to any health problem. The sodium and potassium content of the diet is fine. All you really have to do is salt your food a little bit. Calcium might be low but we don't really need that much calcium. The real issue arises with phosphorus which is excessive on a carnivore diet so consuming dairy can definitely help balance the calcium to phosphorus ratios. Magnesium is decent but it's so important for many bodily functions and the soil is heavily depleted you should supplement magnesium regardless. We just mentioned phosphorus is very high and I wasn't actually aware of that until a few days ago. Since phosphorus is antagonistic to calcium and so is magnesium we have to be mindful of the possibility of calcium depletion on a long term carnivore diet without dairy. For these really just salt your food, take a magnesium supplement and consume some dairy or a high calcium mineral water. I think Geralt Steiner is one of those ones that has a pretty high amount of calcium I think like 300 milligrams per bottle of water. Onto iron and as you guys know from my channel I think I've done about five videos now. I have had severe iron overload issues and the amount of iron in red meat isn't actually super high it's just a lack of copper, a lack of vitamin C and too much zinc over a long period of time you know when you imbalance these nutrients for five, six, seven years results in improper iron metabolism then if you consume a lot of vitamin A you drastically increase iron absorption if you throw in some vitamin C then you can end up with severe levels of iron being stored in the liver from every single meal and iron is the most oxidative element there is causes massive amounts of stress on the liver. So the iron is high, the zinc is incredibly high, the copper is kind of low and that's actually pretty ideal for someone coming from a standard American diet. Most Americans are deficient in zinc and have a copper imbalance. People think Americans are iron deficient, they just have inactive iron stored in their liver. So for the average American they would probably just have to supplement some copper or eat some quality plant foods as well as donate blood to get that iron moving throughout their system. Manganese and iodide are very, very low so you definitely want to throw in a supplement here and there. I didn't list selenium here but that's also something you probably want to supplement and there's a couple of other trace minerals like boron that you can get from foods or supplements and gauge your response to see if you feel better. In my experience if you take a manganese supplement for the first time you'll feel really good but all you really need to do is take that supplement like once a month, once every two months because it's not really needed in super high amounts in the body. Iodine though is a little bit different. Most people do benefit from taking iodine, same with selenium but there's definitely some experimenting to do. Now there are precursor fatty acids, linoleic and linolenic in beef. So if the omega 3 to omega 6 ratio in your diet is good like 1 to 1 then you can probably convert some to EPA and DHA although it's unlikely on a grain-fed carnivore diet and this meat here was grain-fed so the linoleic acid is a bit higher than the linolenic the ratio is off but that's a little bit of a silly concern considering you can just have you know some lamb brains once a week a few times a month to get plenty of omega 3's. Overall there's an excellent reason that most people feel better when they go carnivore considering it fixes several nutrient concerns of a standard American diet and of course removes those inflammatory foods. On its own muscle meat you know despite some of the obvious downsides is incredibly nutritious. You can't really look at any other food and say it's better. Of course liver might have more of this, oysters might be more complete you know there are some foods that might be a little better but they can all each have their own downsides. I will say the amount of protein is completely unnecessary. 300 grams is like IFBB professional bodybuilder. My opinion on this is that you should be eating one to one and a half pounds of meat maybe two as opposed to three pounds but throw in quality plant foods and animal foods for caloric energy. That will help balance everything out from every metabolic standpoint. If you were to eat you know a pound and a half of steak and a pound of pasta organic during meat whatever in my opinion white potatoes white rice whatever that would be more balanced from a vitamin and mineral perspective than just eating meat on its own. So thank you guys for joining me today hopefully this does a couple things it educates you on how nutritious meat is how it covers so many bases you know what the downsides of consuming all the meat are what you have to keep in mind when you're following a meat-based diet and yeah we could have talked about you know salmon or shellfish and the conversation would have been completely different because you know salmon for instance is copper dominant or whatever but you know beef muscle meat is kind of like the core of you know the focus of the carnivore diet now and muscle meat does tend to be demonized for being unhealthy. I know one thing we didn't mention was like cholesterol which is an essential building block for so many functions in our body and crucial for liver function and I'm sure there's a bunch of other nutrients we missed as well the various fatty acids amino acids that occur in meat and how each of them can greatly benefit from all metabolic perspectives so if you guys enjoy this you know please drop a like on the video leave a comment down below definitely share it on social media if you guys can sign up for the newsletter on frank-defano.com so you guys can stay updated and you can also check out all of my other businesses and things I have to offer you guys on frank-defano.com we have a nice new homepage if you guys want to check that out and if you guys can please let me know what whiteboard videos you guys would like to see over the next few weeks I'll see you guys for tomorrow's video