Do I have the guts for a week of nothing but meat?

Flying in the face of sensible opinion, Ed Wiseman follows an extreme carnivore diet for seven days, with some surprising results

y mind is telling me no, my body is telling me no, and medical consensus is also telling me no. But in the pursuit of journalistic truth, and after a thorough and surely unprecedented risk assessment with The Telegraph’s Health and Safety team, I’ve agreed to spend a week following a strict, meatonly diet.

The carnivore diet has been the subject of much pearl-clutching this year. Popularised by Mikhaila Peterson, the daughter of controversial academic Jordan Peterson, the diet flies in the face of current nutritional advice. But Mikhaila says it’s helped cure the myriad health problems (including arthritis and depression) she suffered during her teenage years, and others report similarly positive results.

In principle, the objective seems to be to eliminate plants and plantderived foods. That includes things like pepper, oils and – perhaps most worryingly – coffee. But there seems to be a secondary aim, and that’s to cut out carbohydrates, which suggests cheese, milk and other dairy products are also off-limits.

I develop my own parameters based on the most restrictive possible interpretation of this diet. I can eat the flesh, skin, fat, organs, eggs and marrow from any animal. I will season my food with salt alone. I will continue to use toothpaste, I will take medicine as necessary and, in an emergency, I will drink black coffee.

It’s a departure from my usual work on this newspaper’s motoring desk – but a quick look around informs me that I am the right man for the job. Everyone else in the office is either a vegetarian or trying to be; I, on the other hand, once got a kebab delivered for lunch. I am promised a small stipend towards the cost of meat, and begin researching the challenge.