Carnivore Diet: Nine Human Studies. In the One That Measured Blood, LDL Went 157 to 256.
A 2026 scoping review went looking for every human study of the carnivore diet, across four databases.
It found nine. [1]
Nine, for an eating pattern that draws well over a hundred thousand searches a month and has its own genre of testimonial video. And the reviewers add that the studies were small, short, and that the body of evidence suffers from “the absence of control groups”. [1]
The weight loss is probably real
Let us do the fair part first, because it usually gets left out of articles like this one.
Across those nine studies, the reported effects included weight reduction, increased satiety, and possible improvements in inflammatory and metabolic markers. [1] People who eat only animal products do tend to lose weight, and they do tend to report feeling full.
That is not mysterious. Strip out an entire macronutrient and most of the supermarket and you have built a calorie restriction with extra steps. It still counts as weight loss.
So this page is not going to tell you nothing happens. Something happens. The question is the whole bill.
Then somebody measured the blood
One study asked 24 German carnivore-diet followers for blood panels from before and after they started. [2]
| Marker | Before | On the diet |
| LDL cholesterol | 157 mg/dL | 256 mg/dL |
| Total cholesterol | 224 mg/dL | 305 mg/dL |
| Everything else measured | no significant difference | |
Median LDL cholesterol went from 157 to 256 mg/dL. Total cholesterol, 224 to 305. Both changes were strongly statistically significant, and no other blood parameter differed significantly at all. [2]
The authors’ own word for it is “striking”, and they call for further investigation into potential adverse effects. [2]
Two caveats, both real. This is 24 people who volunteered, filled in a questionnaire and sent in their own lab results — it is a survey, not a trial. And there is a genuine live argument in the literature about whether LDL raised this way carries the same risk as LDL raised any other way. We have not read that literature and we are not going to pretend to adjudicate it here.
What we can tell you is what was measured, and it was a 63% rise.
And be fair again: some things improved
In the same 24 people, two participants who started with pre-diabetic HbA1c — a marker of blood sugar over months — saw it come down. So did all six who started with triglycerides above 130 mg/dL. [2]
That is a small number of people and no control group, so it is a signal rather than a finding. But it is a signal in the direction its advocates claim, and leaving it out would make this page dishonest.
What the diet does not contain
A separate 2024 analysis built four carnivore meal plans for average adults and ran them against national nutrient reference values. [3]
Plenty was covered: B12, B6, zinc, selenium, niacin, riboflavin, phosphorus, vitamin A. Sodium came in over the threshold.
What fell short: thiamin, magnesium, calcium and vitamin C, with iron, folate, iodine and potassium short in some versions. And: “Fibre intake was significantly below recommended levels.” [3]
Important limit, and the authors are straighter about it than most: this was modelling of hypothetical meal plans, not blood tests in real people. They say plainly that whether the metabolic context lowers the requirement for some of these nutrients, or whether it poses real risks of inadequacy, “remains to be determined”. [3] A modelled shortfall is a reason to look, not a diagnosis.
The verdict
Preliminary. There are real human studies and they do report weight loss and satiety. There are also nine of them, they are small, they are short, and the evidence base has no control groups to speak of. That is not enough to tell you what this diet does over years, which is the timescale people are attempting it on.
The reviewers put it in one sentence, and we cannot improve on it: “At this time, long-term adherence to a CD cannot be recommended.” [1]
If you are doing it and feeling better, that experience is real and this page does not dispute it. What we would say is that the one study to measure blood found the single most alarming number in the whole literature, and it costs very little to go and get your own lipids checked rather than assume.
Journalism, not medical advice. Cholesterol is a clinical matter and a doctor can see your actual numbers, which we cannot. If you want to know how we grade this sort of evidence, here is how we read a study.
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