Historical Precedents: Peoples and People Who Lived on Meat

Carnivore advocates often point to traditional peoples who lived largely on animal foods as proof that humans can thrive on meat. There is real substance to this: several cultures sustained themselves for generations on diets far higher in animal food than modern guidelines suggest. But the history is richer and more nuanced than the slogans, and getting it right matters if we want to learn from it.

Three themes run through almost every example below:

Few traditional diets were 100% animal food. Most included some plants, berries, or trade foods, at least seasonally.
Nose-to-tail eating was the norm. Organs, fat, marrow, blood and sometimes raw or fermented foods were prized, not discarded.
Fat was precious. Lean meat alone was widely recognised as inadequate.

The Inuit and other Arctic peoples

The traditional diets of the Inuit and related Arctic peoples are the best-known example of a diet dominated by animal food. In much of the Arctic, plant foods were scarce for most of the year, and people lived on seal, whale, walrus, caribou, fish and birds.

Fat and organs were central. Blubber, organ meats, and fish eggs were valued foods.
Raw and frozen foods mattered. Research on traditional Inuit foods has shown that items eaten raw or minimally processed, including organs and whale skin (muktuk), provided vitamin C, which helps explain the absence of scurvy despite little plant food^[1].
Some plant foods were eaten where available, such as berries in season and some greens and seaweed in coastal areas.
Genetic adaptation may play a role. A 2015 study in Science found that Greenlandic Inuit carry distinctive variants in genes involved in fatty acid metabolism, consistent with adaptation to a diet rich in marine omega-3 fats^[2]. This is a reminder that what worked for one population over thousands of years may not transfer perfectly to people of different ancestry.

The Maasai

The Maasai, pastoralists of Kenya and Tanzania, became famous in nutrition science in the 1960s and 1970s. Their traditional diet was based largely on milk from their cattle, with meat and blood also eaten, particularly at certain times and by certain groups such as young warriors.

Researchers were struck that the Maasai had low blood cholesterol despite a diet high in animal fat. An autopsy study published by George Mann and colleagues in 1972 found that Maasai men had extensive atherosclerosis in their arteries, but that their vessels also appeared to have enlarged in a way that might have protected against blockage; heart attacks appeared rare^[3]. The Maasai were also extremely physically active. This story is often told selectively by both sides; the full picture is that it is complicated.

It is worth emphasising that the traditional Maasai diet was predominantly dairy, not meat, and that the Maasai diet today commonly includes maize and other purchased foods.

Plains peoples and pemmican

For many Indigenous peoples of the North American Great Plains, the bison was central to life. Fresh bison meat, fat, organs and marrow were major foods, alongside gathered plants, roots and berries.

The best-known preserved food from this tradition is pemmican: dried meat pounded into a powder and mixed with melted fat, sometimes with berries such as saskatoons^[4]. Pemmican is compact, energy-dense and keeps for a very long time; it later became an essential provision for fur traders and polar expeditions. The ratio of fat to lean in pemmican is itself a lesson: those who relied on it knew that dried lean meat alone would not sustain them.

The Sami

The Sami of northern Scandinavia and the Kola Peninsula traditionally practised reindeer herding, fishing and hunting. Reindeer meat, organs, blood and fat, along with fish, formed a large part of the traditional diet in herding communities. Berries such as cloudberries and lingonberries were gathered, and some plants and, later, flour and other trade foods were used. The Sami diet has changed substantially in the modern era, and traditional patterns vary considerably between regions and livelihoods.

Mongolian herders

Traditional Mongolian nomadic herders relied heavily on their animals: sheep, goats, cattle, horses, yaks and camels. The traditional Mongolian diet is often described as divided into "red foods" (meat, eaten especially in winter) and "white foods" (dairy products, eaten especially in summer)^[5]. Plant foods were limited on the steppe, though flour, tea and other foods were obtained through trade for centuries. Again, this is an animal-dominated diet, but one in which dairy played a large role.

The gauchos

The gauchos, the horsemen of the South American pampas in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, are frequently cited for eating a diet of beef roasted over open fires, with little else. Travellers' accounts describe very meat-heavy eating. However, gauchos also drank large quantities of yerba mate, a plant infusion, and had access to other foods to varying degrees. As with most historical examples, the documentation is anecdotal and of variable reliability.

Explorers and individuals

Beyond whole cultures, individuals have lived on meat for extended periods. The best documented is the Arctic explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson, who lived with Inuit communities and later ate only meat for a year under scientific observation at Bellevue Hospital in New York^[6]. His experience is described in detail in Vilhjalmur Stefansson and the Bellevue Experiment.

What history can and cannot tell us

What it does suggest

Humans can survive and function on diets dominated by animal foods, sometimes for long periods.
Nose-to-tail eating and adequate fat are important parts of making such a diet work.
Fresh, raw or minimally cooked animal foods may supply nutrients, such as vitamin C, that are lost in heavily cooked meat.

What it cannot tell us

Long-term health outcomes. Life expectancy in traditional societies was shaped by infection, injury, famine and lack of medical care. We do not have good data on how often they developed heart disease or cancer in later life, and the data we have are debated.
Transferability. Traditional peoples were typically highly active, ate wild or pasture-raised animals, and may have had genetic adaptations. A sedentary modern person eating supermarket beef is in a different situation.
That plants are unnecessary. Almost every group included some plant foods when available.

The bottom line

History shows that animal-dominated diets have sustained human communities in demanding environments. It also shows that those diets were diverse within the animal kingdom, prized fat and organs, and rarely excluded plants entirely. The most useful lesson for modern carnivore eaters is not "meat alone is enough" but "if you eat mostly animal foods, eat the whole animal, and eat it thoughtfully".