No, I don’t mean the fights that break out when one of you is hangry. (In our case, that would be me.) Nor – at the risk of sounding sexist – is it the argument over when he’s going to finally pull himself towards himself and lose that paunch.

I’m referring to the sometimes farcical war between proponents of various approaches to nutrition in general and weight-loss in particular.

With the world getting fatter by the day, there’s no lack of interest in the subject. There’s also no lack of cocksure experts clamouring to sell their uniquely correct message – and, coincidentally, their silver-bullet supplement – to the overweight and desperate.

Personally, I don’t believe there’s just one right way to lose fat and maintain a healthy weight. What worked for Roy when he embarked on my Low Carb, No Crap™ eating plan back in February 2020 and lost 35kg over 18 months may not work for the next man. In fact, what works for me is not exactly what works for Roy. (He can’t tolerate as many carbs as I can, for example.)

The Honey-guzzling Carnivore

Dr Paul Saladino, previously a vegan and now famous as the Carnivore MD, cured his own variously debilitating diseases by switching to eating only meat – nose-to-tail, importantly; not just ribeye steak. Oddly likeable and credible despite his extreme views and strong penchant for taking off his shirt, Paul is the author of The Carnivore Code, the host of the Fundamental Health Podcast and the founder of supplement company Heart & Soil.

Avoiding plant-eating at all costs – remember, plants want to kill us! – worked so well for Paul that he went on a mission to share his discovery, and in doing so spearheaded a whole new eating craze: Carnivorism.

Discovering after some time that he needed some carbs, he added in a bit of fruit, but mostly honey, reasoning quite credibly that honey is in fact an animal product. (Vegans would agree: the staunchest of them won’t touch honey for that very reason.)

Importantly, Paul found that he felt a lot better on honey… and began eating quite a lot of it. While I respect him for publicly changing his mind, some of his followers did not. Instead, they were highly irate that he’d let the Carnivore side down.

The silliness of the diet wars smacks of the nonsense of certain religious differences, especially when people get all worked up about fine nuances. Just for fun, I thought I’d draw a few parallels:

Level One: Vegans vs Carnivores

To me, veganism vs carnivorism is comparable to Christianity vs Hinduism – sure, they’re poles apart! No argument. The same goes for Christianity vs Islam. Despite worshipping just one god instead of a colourful pantheon of multi-limbed divinities, there are clear differences between Christianity and Islam, like there are with the paleolithic diet (paleo) vs vegetarianism. (Though arguably not worth Crusading about the Middle East for a couple of centuries with the loss of an estimated 1.7 million lives.)

Vegans and Vegetarians

Veganism vs vegetarianism, now, is loosely comparable to Catholicism vs Protestantism. Both Catholics and Protestants are Bible-loving Christians, after all. Yet in France alone – never mind the rest of the so-called civilised world – the Eight Religious Wars (1562-98) saw off an estimated two to four million lives. And that’s just for starters.

It would have been satisfying to complete this analogy by saying that both vegans and vegetarians are plant-loving veg-eaters, but that would be untrue. All they have in common is that they don’t eat meat. In fact, plenty of animal-food shunners live on highly processed, food-like substances such as Rice Krispies, Coca Cola and Twinkies that are worlds removed from their “plant-based” origins.

And quite a few of them have misguidedly started to eat the abominable Beyond Burgers: fake meat that’s not merely junk food, but a true culinary perversion – made from chemicals in laboratories from hyper-processed, resource-gobbling, planet-unfriendly Frankengredients.* This calls for a blogpost or three on its own, but I needed an excuse to use this salutary illustration filched from the internet:

(*Go on, Verne, tell us how you really feel.)

HFLC vs Paleo vs Keto vs Mediterranean

Now, though – how about high-fat and low-carb (HFLC) vs paleo, or keto? (I like The Primal Blueprint by paleo enthusiast Mark Sisson, by the way, having just listened to the updated version on Audible. And here’s a useful blog from him on carnivorism for beginners.

Or the Mediterranean diet vs the pegan diet espoused by Dr Mark Hyman, or Dave Asprey’s Bulletproof diet? There are no doubt “important” differences – but how much do they really matter?

Getting increasingly granular, what about strict keto vs dirty keto, or even cycling in and out of keto? Or strict carnivore vs carnivore plus fruit and honey, á la Paul Saladino?

From what I see online and in the podcast space, people can get amazingly worked up about their chosen brand of dietary fanaticism – and incredibly aggressive against any heresy they perceive. To me, it’s a lot like the arguably minor differences between the many dozens of Protestant denominations.

An Olive Branch

Be it diet or religion, no doubt we’re all doing our best in the circumstances we find ourselves, subject to whatever influences we’ve received and in terms of the very different options open to us.

Fortunately, most of the best diet gurus out there support one principal commandment: eating whole, minimally processed food, in as close to its natural form as possible. (A lot like my own Low Carb, No Crap™ lifestyle, coincidentally.)

And there, at the risk of having offended absolutely everyone, I rest my admittedly meandering case.

Amen.