How the Liver King eats

Brian Johnson is known to 3 million social media followers as the Liver King, said Madeleine Aggeler in GQ. The 45-year-old Texan has earned fame on TikTok and Instagram with a ripped, bulging physique and his proselytizing for “the ancestral lifestyle”—a return to the virtues of caveman life. It involves following nine “ancestral tenets,” including an excruciating level of physical activity and eating raw liver, which he consumes at the rate of about a pound a day. Johnson learned the transformative power of muscle building as a skinny kid pushed around by bullies in San Antonio. But his lifestyle conversion came decades later, as the father of young sons beset with debilitating illnesses and allergies. “We cut out all the processed foods, the liquid calories, the seed oils. We just went to whole foods, chiefly liver and bone marrow,” he said. Within days, “they had this new vibrancy, this new electricity.” As his family’s health and strength grew, Johnson says he felt an obligation to “preach this to the world.” The King, who calls his followers “primals,” sells nutritional supplements and sings the praises of other animal parts besides the liver. These include the testicles, which he believes boost the vitality of the eater’s own. “Why eat vegetables,” he said, “when you can eat testicles?”