“Veganism is Bad for You and I’m Embarrassed I Promoted it – Now I Only Eat Red Meat,” Says Bear Grylls
Bear Grylls has said he is “embarrassed” by his past support of veganism, which he now says is bad for you and that his health has been transformed by only eating red meat, in the latest blow for the woke fad. The Telegraph has more.
The adventurer, whose diet is now mostly composed of red meat and organs, has claimed he was wrong to think that eating a plant-based diet was good for the environment and his health.
“I was vegan quite a few years ago – in fact, I wrote a vegan cookbook – and I feel a bit embarrassed because I really promoted that,” the 48-year-old said in an interview with PA.
“I thought that was good for the environment and I thought it was good for my health. And through time and experience and knowledge and study, I realised I was wrong on both counts.”
The television star published a cookbook in 2015 called Fuel for Life, which promoted achieving “maximum health with amazing dairy, wheat and sugar-free recipes”.
He wrote in the book: “To satisfy our insatiable appetite for meat we have developed very unnatural ways of breeding, keeping and killing animals. This far exceeds our nutritional needs for the health of myself and my family.”
But the father-of-three has made quite the U-turn since then, and now completely avoids vegetables as part of his “ancestral way of living”.
“For a long time, I’d been eating so many vegetables thinking it was doing me good, but just never felt like it had given me any good nutrients compared to the nutrient density I get from basically blood or bone marrow – red meat,” he said.
“I’ve tried to listen to my body more, tried to listen to nature, and I don’t miss vegetables at all. I don’t go near them and I’ve never felt stronger, my skin’s never been better, and my gut’s never been better.”
And despite his once proud advocacy of veganism – he reportedly used to turn his nose up when his filming crew were eating sausages for lunch – Grylls says that embracing red meat and organs has been the “biggest game-changer” for his health.
“I’ve found a counterculture way of living, of embracing red meat and organs – natural food just like our millennia of ancestors would have eaten for hundreds of thousands of years.
“And out of all the different things I do for my health, I think that’s probably been the biggest game-changer, in the sense of improving my vitality, wellbeing, strength, skin and gut.
“It’s just been getting away from the processed stuff and making the predominant thing in my diet red meat and liver and the natural stuff – fruit, honey, that sort of thing. It’s just about finding a more ancestral way of living,” he said.
Just the latest example of woke ideology running into the cold, hard wall of biological reality.
Worth reading in full.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
I do love my veg but after listening to an Ivor Cummins podcast on the topic I’ve taken to eating a lot more meat. I Try to eat liver and Kidneys at least twice a week and it does make a big difference. Unfortunately none of my family have taken to it and one of my daughters is still a veggie which is really frustrating. Kidneys for lunch and some lamb steaks on the fire pit tomorrow.
You may be surprised to know that some fruits and vegetables such as avocados are not suitable for vegans, but there are a number of body lotions, shampoos and mattresses that are.
That tells you it’s a matter of psychiatry not diet.
In addition to the health benefits of a red meat and organ-based diet, continue supporting British beef farmers and prevent any ‘nitrogen’ or ‘carbon’ bollocks from altering our countryside.
Hear, hear.
It rather seems Bear Grylls has gone from one extreme to another. Sure, eat as much red meat as you want (or more likely, can afford) also eggs and dairy – but eat low processed veggies too.
I’ll bet our ‘ancestral diet’ included green leaves, shoots, and legumes as well as ‘roots’. Probably not burger buns or chips though.
Burger buns are “bread”, one of the earliest processed foods.
Burger buns are “bread.”
Not really. Have a read of the ingredient list.
Far better to bake your own bread as we do.
Im no nutrition expert but it sounds to me like going from 100% plant based to 100% meat based is just swapping one extreme for the other.
Precisely so! Does Mr Grylls not understand the meaning of the word omnivore? Humans’ metabolism is set up to be neither carnivore nor herbivore
Having been low-carb/keto for many years now, I often have days where I just eat meat, eggs or dairy. Often unintentional as I don’t shy away from greens or anything. It’s abundantly clear to me that at the very least, low carb is the correct way to eat. I am far higher in energy and clarity that I was on a “normal (see Pyramid)” diet. I sleep far better now than before, skin is better, my weight training routines are better and yield better results. At first, all those years ago, I thought it was placebo, so I started on the research. There are now a few youtube channels with very reputable sources that go through the benefits of low carb thoroughly, so I won’t go into it. One of the hurdles I initially had to get past was that fruit was, essentially, pretty shit for you. No fruits provide anything of value that you can’t get from broccoli or even eggs. Whenever I speak about eating less carbs in general, people often get confused and speak about “good carbs” or “cutting back on sugar” while still eating beans, or rice. Carbs are carbs, glucose is glucose. I ramble, but… Read more »
Yes I also function best, physically and mentally, on a LCHF diet. When I say ”high fat” I don’t go in for all of these ”bulletproof coffees”, fat bombs, low carb treats and adding copious amounts of cheese and cream to everything. I love dairy but you can still have too much of a good thing, a bit like nut butters, and especially if you want to lose some weight these items can hold you back. You do get women who wonder why they aren’t losing and blame the ‘diet’ but when you see they’re trying to ”Ketofy” all the usual treats, using sweeteners, almond and coconut flours regularly, it can stop you making progress. I prioritise protein, moderate additional fat and have something like cauli, cabbage, celeriac in place of the typical starch accompaniment one would have with a curry, chili etc. Good job I love cauli, it’s my fauxtato sub! lol I couldn’t do carnivore just because I need variety in order to find this way of eating doable in the long-term, though I’m always amazed at the stories of people who’ve completely turned their health around eating animal-based. Fair play to them. But we have to find… Read more »
I don’t really go high fat either, but I don’t shy away from it if that makes sense. I guess I just don’t care about fat content. No more of this low-fat cheese crap!
I have tried a few of these keto desserts on occasion, and they’ve come out alright but even then I’d use them as an occasional treat if I can be arsed.
Cauliflower rice is a must, I’ll admit! I tend to just get the frozen bags from Morrisons or Iceland, fry it up in a bit of butter with garlic and I prefer it to regular rice by a large margin.
I think more people just need to try it and get past the initial sugar withdrawals. As soon as you’re on a level keel it’s great, innit!? 😛
Great post.. I wont repeat what you’ve said, only to say Ive been Keto for nearly a year now and never felt better.. bags of energy and clarity of thought. In fact the lifting of ‘brain fog’ has been one of the biggest and unexpected bonuses.. 🙂
Great post – thanks for sharing your personal experience and wisdom.
One anecdote I have is about a professional golfer called Keegan Bradley, 36 years old, 6 foot 3 and weighing 220 pounds. Last autumn he went on a “meat-heavy” diet and lost 30 pounds in 5 months – and his golf has hugely improved. As he said when he turned up in January at his first tournament post diet:
“If it walks, swims or flies, you can eat it, and I did a lot of fruit as well,” said Bradley, whose transformation has been so stunning that some fellow players inquired if he might be ill. “So, I’d have eggs in the morning, maybe chicken or ground beef for lunch and then steak at night. All grass-fed meat is the key. No vegetables. And no condiments, no sides, no starches, not even ketchup. All I did was salt, pepper … and some hot sauce.”
I’ve always been something of a carnivore with a particular penchant for liver (with onion gravy), kidneys and occasionally, stuffed heart. However, beware! Despite the myriad benefits of meat-eating, offal is particularly high in purines. If you’ve ever had gout, you’ll know what they are.I just need to sniff a bowl of chicken liver pate, and boom! Joints of the knees, toes and elbows have all been affected at one time or another over the last 30 years (began at age 45). Debilitating and excruciatingly painful.
LIver and onioons needs bacon in it.
The only way I could eat sprouts is if I sliced them and fried them with bacon and plenty of garlic. Bacon makes everything taste nicer though! 🙂
My mother used to mash up sprouts to try to convince me it was cabbage. Never worked. Had to smother them with tomato sauce to get them down.
Sprouts = the devils vegetable
I lurv sprouts.
Lovely cooked as per Mogs. Also nice with chestnuts and a few dried cranberries.
Me too Hux.. in fact if it wasn’t for Vander-Liar I’d live in Brussels.. 😉
😀😀😀
Chestnuts, good. Hold the sprouts. I have the enzyme that makes brassicas taste … awful.
I find this sproutism highly deplorable. They’re really tasty when prepared in the right way, ie when they’re not cooked until they’ve turned into mush. Melt some butter in a small pot, add some white wine, sliced sprouts, salt, caraway, ground nutmeg and maybe some allspice berries and stew slowly with the lid on (the should be a way for hot air/ water vapour to escape) on low heat.
I used to hate them as a child but that was just because my mother always cooked them until they had lost all of their individual personality.
Loving all the sprout discussion and tips on improving our gastronomic experience of said mini-cabbages. When I was a kid I hated cabbage and sprouts, due to the exact same reason as you. In my mind a cabbage literally sprouted babies, similar to how a gremlin does if you get it wet, and I was expected to eat these foul-tasting cabbage offspring. It left me traumatized for many years. Especially when you work in hospitals and care settings and the corridors always stink of cabbage hours after the food trolley has gone.
Learned experience over the years has taught me this; all things you hated as a kid can be turned delicious if you just give them a makeover with any of these 3 ingredients; cheese, garlic or bacon. Actually a combo of all 3 works super well too. My father-in-law made me a cabbage curry and it was like Diwali in my mouth. Never been able to replicate it though..
Mogs – try cabbage cooked with fennel seeds, garlic and a little bacon.
Fry the fennel seeds with bacon bits in lard, add shredded cabbage and fry for a couple of mins, add stock and garlic and cook to the texture required.
Don’t forget the Salt.
Nah, just top hole mashed spuds, with butter and cream.
Why should Bear Grylls be regarded as some kind of expert on diet? What qualifies him to be worthy of a Daily Sceptic article asserting that “Veganism is bad for you”? Bear Grylls has a degree in Spanish and he was in the SAS, so that makes him an expert on diet, does it?
The article ends: :”Just the latest example of woke ideology running into the cold, hard wall of biological reality” as if Bear Grylls is such an authority on the subject that his opinion proves it, case closed!
I don’t agree with the simplistic headline, “Veganism is bad for you”. I agree that veganism can be bad for you, but so can a meat diet. Both a vegan diet and a meat diet can also be good for you. We are all individuals: what may be a healthy diet for one person may not be a healthy diet for another person. There are many variables.
He is a “name” and it is easy propaganda to associate a lifestyle with one. Endorsement is the name of the game.
Yeah.. and there’s been plenty of endorsing Veganism.. so a little ‘propaganda’ from the other side is fine by me..
Must be some vegans about with all the down ticks.
Yeah.. craving a bacon sarny I expect.. haha 😉
That the globalist psychos want us to stop eating meat tells me that it is good for us, though a Full English isn’t complete without mushrooms and tomatoes.
And beans. Gotta be Heinz mind. I can taste a cheap imposter.🧐
Are you a brand floozy Mogs?
Spell it out Huxley.. a tart.. ‘-)
Now don’t get saucy, HP. I’ve never been a Daddies’ kinda girl..🤫🙈
😀😀😀
“The adventurer, whose diet is now mostly composed of red meat and organs, has claimed he was wrong to think that eating a plant-based diet was good for the environment and his health… ‘I thought that [veganism] was good for the environment and I thought it was good for my health. And through time and experience and knowledge and study, I realised I was wrong on both counts.'” Yes of course anybody who adopts an animal free diet for a combination of amoral environmentalist motivations and selfish health reasons won’t hesitate to both indulge in and heavily promote flesh eating (including the inevitable cruelty associated with it) if they believe it to be in their own / ‘The Planet’s best interests. Veganism can in fact be perfectly healthy if care is taken over certain nutrients (including possible supplement taking), and there is not doubt whatsoever that vegetarianism provides all the nourishment that human beings require. Though the manner in which the dairy and egg industries are currently arranged means that there is the possibility of cruelty being involved this is not a necessary feature of the diet (unlike meat-eating). “But the father-of-three has made quite the U-turn since then, and now completely… Read more »
You need to read “The Great Plant Based Con”.
Good luck getting all your nutrients from salad.
Véganisme is a cult in the wider Environmentalism religion.
We need to reassemble The Inquisition.
Meat and two veg – the British diet.
Itis interesting how untranslatable dietary advice is. Ayureveda is much better in this area when it talks about the doshas and how these energies need to be addressed. Real medicine is a very difficult discipline it requires a deep undestanding.When Jesus was on his way to heal Jairus’ daughter he met a woman on the way suffering a haemorrage and having healed her went on his way. This is a very deep understanding of healing in that you have to heal one person in order to heal another.
What?
Or rather WTF
You won’t escape it. They will but the jabs in the food if they so desire and they will use dispersal methods so that nothing concrete can ever be traced to a source. That is the future they have planned. I think it has to be rejected wholesale.
This is why we have the insane drive to destroy farming and promote lab grown”food” – you can add what you like to the ingredient list of a Billy Burger 😏
And no-one more than Farmer Gates is promoting this.
As Chief Scout he is no doubt a role model for many youngsters so it really behaves him to engage his brain before opening his mouth.
it sounds as if he’s gone from one extreme diet to another, both of which are likely to be equally unhealthy.
Behoves, I presume?
A diet of meat, dairy, fruit, honey doesn’t sound extreme to me.
Seconded. 👍
I recommend reading The Great Plant-Based Con: Why eating a plants-only diet won’t improve your health or save the planet eBook : Buxton, Jayne: Amazon.co.uk: Books which is a very well written expose on the Con.
Worryingly I am noticing many middle aged/post menopausal women of my acquaintance happily taking up veganism and proclaiming they feel good on it – yes they will for a year or two(as their bodies rely on nutritional reserves built up over the years) and then the malnutrition will kick in and their health will start to decline.
In India in the past widowed Hindu women were encouraged to commit Suttee. Nowadays they are encouraged to eat a restrictive diet and gently fade away. I suspect their widowed diet is essentially vegan.
My medical partner, once a missionary in Gujarat, told me how the local women would surreptitiously eat eggs “behind the bike sheds.”
I knew we never really treated animals that badly by eating them when I saw some Hyena’s rip the guts out of a live antelope and runaway with half a leg in their mouth. ——Now when someone tells me they are a Vegetarian I say “Oh really, and what part of Vegetaria are you from”?
Has BG a new book coming out and new sponsors?
“I was vegan quite a few years ago – in fact, I wrote a vegan cookbook – and I feel a bit embarrassed because I really promoted that,” the 48-year-old said in an interview with PA. I thought that was good for the environment and I thought it was good for my health. And through time and experience and knowledge and study, I realised I was wrong on both counts.” I’ve looked into this further and the whole thing is a disgraceful fraud at every level. First of all Bear Grylls never followed anything remotely like a vegan diet and lifestyle (the avoidance of all animal products and by-products), indeed during the period he is now claiming to have done so engaged in some of the cruellest forms of animal exploitation and consumption I have ever come across: TV tough guy Bear Grylls launches a surprisingly tame new cookbook https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3382711/Bear-Grylls-cooking-recipes-like-Gwyneth-Paltrow-Rambo.html Scroll to the first photo, and according to the subsequent text this poor creature is potentially at least still alive: “He also eats live fish – which he likes to catch himself whenever he can” And this revolting and shocking practice is far from the only non-vegan element to his… Read more »
These ever changing ‘healthy’ diets are fine and good – but I do a fair bit of group catering and I’m now at the point where my next event has 1 in every 3 people with a dietary need of some kind. Could they not, with a very few genuine health exceptions, keep their fads to themselves? Doin’ ma heid in!
It’s worse in the mums’ and toddlers’ group my wife helps with. It’s like feeding all the different animals at a zoo. Either there’s a lot of Munchausen’s by proxy about, or infants are getting exposed to something man-made that messes up their immune system…
I was a fat child who grew into a fat teenager then a fat adult. (Sorry, am I allowed to use the ”F” word?) Nearly 20 years ago, in my early 50s I discovered a low carb/high protein diet and shed over 2.5 stones which has stayed off. I get the odd craving for sugar but if I give in, I feel horrible. Now in my early 70s, I don’t seem to be plagued by the arthritis, rheumatism, weak joints, etc, as suffered by my peers.
Jeez, whatever happened to a little bit of moderation?
In my opinion, what is required is a balanced diet to contribute to good health. In the same way that a vegetarian diet excludes some vitamins and minerals that we need, a meat only diet has the same effect with different vitamins and minerals. I think it is dangerous for high profile people to encourage eating anything in excess to the exclusion of enabling a balanced diet.