 The recommended dietary allowances were enacted in 1968 to ensure that 97.5% of the population was not deficient in certain vitamins, minerals and elements. To determine that, they took an amount where 50% of the population was not deficient and then they doubled that amount, figuring, well, now 97.5% are good. They then updated the RDAs in 2016. So why are we taking advice from a government body that updates their RDAs every 50 years? And what really drives me crazy is people say, oh, I hit my RDAs today. You have these chronometer warriors and a chronometer being a dietary website where people can track their nutrients saying, oh, I hit my RDA of this today. I hit my RDA of that today. When these people are literally saying like I didn't die today or I'm such a great driver because I didn't get in a car accident today, these are literally to prevent a deficiency. These have nothing to do with optimal nutrition. And there are also many flaws with the RDAs. The biggest flaw being calcium RDA being way too high, magnesium bioavailability not being considered, as well as the fat-soluble vitamin conversions and how much more nutrients we are actually able to get in a natural indigenous diet in comparison to what we're eating now. So just a touch on the calcium RDA. The reason the calcium RDA is so high at 1,100 milligrams, which is completely unachievable from any natural food. The reason it's so high is because of osteoporosis and they think, oh, well, calcium is for strong healthy bones. But no, you need vitamin K2 and vitamin D3 to deliver the calcium to the bones. So the calcium RDA being so high is attempting to mask problems with D3 and K2. Ironically, the D3 RDA is 400 IU or 10 micrograms, which is about, I don't know, 1% of what you can get in nature in one day by being in the sun. And there is no established value for vitamin K2. So very apparent problems relating to K2 and D3 deficiencies that we're trying to make up for a very high calcium RDA. This is the biggest problem, and I'm going to link you guys two studies that show that calcium supplementation is actually associated with increased cardiovascular risk, particularly heart attacks and strokes. In addition to that, the bioavailability of calcium in foods isn't that high. It's bound to oxalate. In spinach, the calcium availability is very low. I'll show you guys studies on that too. Same thing with magnesium, but the problem isn't getting too much magnesium. The problem really is that we don't get enough. Besides soils being depleted, the magnesium RDA is 350 milligrams. But if the bioavailability of magnesium is anywhere from 20 to 50%, that means we're only getting, I don't know, 75 milligrams of magnesium to what, 150? So one pound of meat has 84 milligrams of magnesium, and that magnesium is in the most bioavailable form. So if you're eating two or three pounds of meat on a carnivore diet, it's safe to say you're getting more magnesium than pretty much anyone on a steroid American diet, even if they're hitting their RDA through plant foods, which is very unlikely. So bioavailability, not being considered in the context of oxalates in these two vitamins specifically, and then we could go into phytic acid with iron and zinc and all of those things. But these, to me, were two glaringly obvious ones. The next problem would be the carotene and K1 conversion to retinolic acid and K2. Guys, I can't even convince people on a carnivore diet, or just people in general, that nutrients are important. If you want to watch that video, I literally have one, why nutrients are important. I'll link it in the description. In addition to that video, I will link a video where I taste all the organ meats and also one where I go in-depth on vitamin D3 to kind of explain things further. But that's not going to be the focus of this video because it's not really brought up in the context of RDAs and carnivore discussion. Fat-cycle vitamin content being too low, this kind of ties in with what I just said that I can't really convince people, but it's very apparent in nature and certain foods on the carnivore diet, that we can get thousands of times the amount of vitamins that the RDAs are telling us we need. Cherry picking, as in, people tend to choose the RDAs when they fit their needs and ignore them when they don't. Like, carnivores will say, oh well, we don't need vitamin C because it's for carbohydrate metabolism and we don't consume carbohydrates. And that might be true, and there might be many, many carnivores who have been on the stye for many years without consuming high vitamin C organ meats, but then they'll go and say, oh well, I'm getting more iron and B12 than a vegan. It's very hypocritical. Same with Rhonda Patrick saying, oh well, you might not hit this RDA on carnivore, but then she goes to say, oh well, I don't listen to the RDA for DHA because there is no established value for DHA in the RDAs. Very, very hypocritical. People tend to use them when they work and then ignore them when they don't, but at the end of the day, it's what we spoke about earlier. They're just preventing deficiencies, has nothing to do with optimal nutrition. I mean, I should have ended it there, to be honest, but let's continue. So, the grain fed diet being more nutrient dense than the standard American diet, you will take that away from this video, interestingly enough. And then we'll go into nutrients that are commonly worried about on the carnivore diet, but first, my masterpiece is comparing beef to liver, all the vitamins, all the minerals, all the elements, and then I have the other B vitamins here, and then I have the German and the U.S. RDAs. The reason I have the German RDA is because Germany has this excellent website, nachortrechtner.de, that has like nutrient profiles that a lot of the United States databases don't test for. So, the German RDAs are actually 1.5 to 2 times most of the U.S. RDAs, so they are very similar, and we can make very easy comparisons. But before we go into this, we have the estimated average requirement, which is over here on the left, for U.S. is on the left, Germany is on the right, at the end over here, the estimated average requirement, and some of them are the same for both. And then we have one milligram is a thousand micrograms, and that's important because we have both of these units here. I mean, it's not terribly important because we're using percentages. And then one microgram is 0.025 IU, and that's important to understand the vitamin D3 IU. So, first we'll start with vitamin A, beef having about 2%, and liver having 2400% of your vitamin A. So, there is a big retinoic acid difference, and in my video, why nutrients are important, retinoic acid vitamin A is pretty much the main focus, as it's an important precursor to gene expression and cell differentiation, which creates literally every cell in the body and decides which cells your body creates. Very, very important nutrient, and that's that percentage of the German RDA, which is like 1.5 times the U.S. RDA. So, this would be like 3500% of the U.S. RDA. B12, liver is about 15 times higher in vitamin B12 than muscle meat. But, either way, you're hitting the B12 RDA for Germany at 163% for beef and 2000% for liver, Germany being 3 micrograms, U.S. being 2 micrograms. Vitamin C, they actually don't really test for vitamin C in muscle meat a lot, but high quality muscle meat especially does have some vitamin C in it. It does have anti-scorputic properties, so that's why there's a question mark instead of a zero. Liver is usually tested for vitamin C, and it does contain pretty large amounts of vitamin C in comparison to other parts of the animal. In this case, 22% of the German RDA is about 40% of the U.S. RDA, but again, people continue to say we don't really need vitamin C on the carnivore diet, and there's many anecdotes of that. Vitamin D, I mean we obtained it from the sun, but there are some carnivore foods like fish roe, fish liver, very high vitamin D 3 foods that some people in higher latitudes, more northern climates, would have needed to eat to get their vitamin D3 intake, particularly arctic mammalian flesh, very fatty fish, maybe caribou, just high quality ruminant pastured animal flesh, particularly wild, will have a considerable amount of vitamin D3, especially if it's fresh. What the main concern with vitamin D3 is that the RDA is way too low. At 400 IU for the U.S. and 800 IU for Germany, when you could literally get dozens of thousands of IU sitting out in the sun for a couple hours in a bathing suit. It's literally one of the biggest problems we have right now is the D3 RDA being too low. And I mean, yeah, the vitamin A RDA is too low as well, but I have a very hard time convincing people that. I mean, people, there are a lot of people and doctors even recommending higher vitamin D3 supplementation up to 10,000 IU per day to fix deficiencies, but we don't really see the same thing for vitamin A yet. I'm sure we will see that in the future. Vitamin E is not really in these two foods in particular, but vitamin E is mostly in other fatty carnivorous foods like brain tissue, which we will cover. It's very easy to get your vitamin E RDA on the carnivore diet, vitamin E being an antioxidant, vitamin K. There is no established RDA for vitamin K, but there is one in Germany. So liver is 130% of that and regular meat is 20% of that. Sodium and again, vitamin K is very important for decalcification of the arteries, calcium metabolism, you know, two very important vitamins, D and K. And there's either no established value or it's way too low by parameters of what we can get in a normal, you know, in the sun from food. Sodium. Most people salt their food, but what's interesting is there's no established value for the US and there is an upper limit of the US, but the upper limit in the US is actually the recommended amount in Germany. Potassium, there is no estimated requirement, not established in the United States, but there is 4,000 milligrams in Germany. If you look at this 8.8% and you say, well, this is 100 grams of beef and 100 grams of liver. So if you ate two and a half pounds of beef, it would be roughly 10 times this. So you would actually hit your potassium RDA because beef has about 1400 milligrams of potassium per pound. Same with liver, but no one's going to eat 10 pounds of liver. Calcium, we went over this. Calcium RDA is way too high, not actually necessary to get that amount in your diet. Magnesium, we touched on the bioavailability. If you get, you know, multiply this by 10, if you get 63% of your RDA of magnesium in meat, it's in a more bioavailable form than the plant version. Phosphorus, I mean, people don't really touch on phosphorus, but there's plenty of it on the carnivore diet. Sulfur, not really much to talk about on sulfur from what I've seen in the RDAs. Chloride, I mean, chloride is in salt. Salt is sodium chloride. Iron, I mean, no one's going to complain about an iron deficiency on the carnivore diet, but it is important to note that a lot of these other vitamins are important in the metabolism of iron. Zinc is similar in liver and muscle meat, but again, zinc isn't something that people would really talk about on the carnivore diet. I did forget to mention for iron, the German RDA is actually double the US RDA, so just, you know, on 100 grams serving of liver would easily exceed your iron RDA in the United States. Copper, 466% for liver and 6% for muscle meat. So liver is known for having a very high amount of copper, but the RDA for copper in Germany is double the United States. Pretty interesting. Manganese, not established for the US. There is a vibe for Germany. Lever has some manganese in it. Fluoride, I don't think anyone's going out seeking fluoride in their food or water for that matter. There's an interesting Wikipedia article on what countries fluoridate their water, and then iodide. Lever does contain a small amount of iodide, but it's usually obtained by indigenous cultures from seafood or dairy. So, you know, we kind of loosely went over this, all the RDAs, and it's pretty safe to say that you can easily hit pretty much every single RDA. And then if you literally threw a couple eggs in here, you would hit your vitamin A as well as your vitamin E RDA. So there's no real concern about hitting any RDAs on the carnivore diet. One other little thing I wrote up was a B vitamin comparison between steak and liver, showing that B1 thiamine is three times higher in liver, B2 riboflavin is 20 times higher, B3 niacin is four times higher, B5 panthalothenic acid is 25 times higher, B6 pyridoxine is five times higher, B7 biotin is 30 times higher, and B9 folate is overall 70 times higher about. And we have to keep in mind guys, the amount of nutrients in this food can vary from three to 10 times in regards to vitamin A, vitamin E, vitamin K, certain fatty acids, because grass-fed versus grain-fed greatly determines the quality and the amount of nutrients in the fat of the animal. So, you know, this might be 1.7% of your vitamin A RDA, but the highest quality piece of beef might be 10%, who knows. The easy way is to just actually get foods that are known for having a high vitamin A content, as opposed to just trying to get the highest quality of everything. In regards to nutrients we might be concerned about, vitamin C can be obtained from spleen and liver, 1-100 grams serving is going to be 40% plus of your RDA, row or brain tissue for vitamin E is going to be 80% plus of your RDA, eggs also have about 20% of your RDA per egg yolk, so you have half a dozen eggs for breakfast, you have way more than your vitamin E RDA, vitamin K2, although that's not something people usually worry about on the carnivore diet, it is very high in liver, it is very high in eggs. And dairy and seafood are kind of overarching, if you eat the whole fish, if you drink dairy, they are complete nutrient profiles. In the case of eating a whole animal, like nose to tail, that's what you have to do to get a complete nutrient profile from a ruminant animal. In the milk of an animal, the mother is giving nutrients for the calf that it needs to survive, so dairy itself is nutritionally complete, and fish itself is nutritionally complete if you eat the organs and the eggs, and it's a lot easier to eat those animals entirely than it is obviously to eat a whole cow, that's why foods like fish, eggs are nutritionally complete because it's literally a little miniature fish, imagine if you could shrink down a cow and eat it in one bite, you'd get a complete nutrient profile. That's kind of what you have to achieve here and what you have to keep in mind, unless you actually know the specific nutrient contents of what foods and what nutrients you're trying to achieve. I think I'm going to do an entire separate video comparing several different types of foods, like maybe we'll do fish roe, we'll do egg yolks, I don't know, let me know if you guys would like to see that. And we'll also do a video comparing the plant form of the vitamin to the animal form of the vitamin to kind of go over the bioavailability as best as I can, and then we'll also touch on anti-nutrients, and anti-nutrients are not really that big of a deal, but there's just so much information on them that I don't really even know if I could cover them properly. For Dr. Rana Patrick here, I did put good sources of DHA, fish roe is 1800 milligrams, brain tissue is 700 milligrams, and eggs are 112 milligrams, so you don't want to eat some fish roe, just go eat a dozen eggs. One funny thing, roe in German is Rogan. So I was like, I got to make a Joe Rogan joke about getting on the podcast, right? I thought I had to. So I think I kind of went over everything I wanted to in this video. Thank you guys for watching. I will link the videos that I made in regards to why nutrients are important. I'll link the one, the Greek God video on vitamin D3. I'll link the video where I tasted all the parts of the animal, and honestly guys, almost all my videos touch on these vitamins to some degree, but it's very safe to say that even with, you know, just eating only beef, that you're going to get close to if not hit all the RDAs, and in addition to that, you know, standard American diet, not going to come close really to any of these. So thank you guys for watching. If you guys would like to support me, please just share the channel. If you guys would like to reach out to me for one-on-one consultations in regards to diet, exercise, sun, or water, check out my website or shoot me an email. My email is in the description below. I do have quite a few products on Amazon that I use in my daily life that you guys might be interested in. And maybe, hey, maybe you just want to reach out to me and find out how I do my makeup.