Dr. Kiltz's Top 12 Carnivore Diet Book List (2024)

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The carnivore diet is simple on the surface: eat only meat and eggs, add in some dairy if you tolerate it well. Salt liberally. Drink water. Cut out plants, fruits, grains, and junk.

But there’s an abundance of fascinating and supportive knowledge behind this revolutionary return to ancestral eating that you don’t want to miss.

The books on this list have helped me find my way from paleo, to keto, to carnivore while stimulating my own experimentation, thinking, and research on these subjects. Sharing this knowledge with my patients is a major part of my life’s work. So here you go!

Dig in and enjoy!

Top 12 Carnivore Diet Books: Quick Rundown

1. The Carnivore Diet — Sean Baker
2. The Carnivore Code — Paul Saladino
3. Carnivore Cure — Judy Cho
4. The Carnivore Cookbook by Craig and Maria Emmerich & Craig Emmerich
5. Lies My Doctor Told Me Second Edition: Medical Myths That Can Harm Your Health – Dr. Ken Berry
6. The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability – Lierre Keith
7. The Carnivore’s Manifesto: Eating Well, Eating Responsibly, and Eating Meat – Patrick Martins
8. The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet — Nina Teicholz
9. Not by Bread Alone – Viljahlmur Stefansson
10. Sacred Cow: The Case for (Better) Meat: Why Well-Raised Meat Is Good for You and Good for the Planet – Diana Rodgers and Robb Wolf
11. The Plant Paradox: The Hidden Dangers in “Healthy” Foods That Cause Disease and Weight Gain – Dr. Steven R. Gundry
12. The Case Against Sugar – Gary Taubes

#1 The Carnivore Diet by Sean Baker

Shawn Baker is one of the most influential figures in the rediscovery of the carnivore diet. His book has been personally and deeply influential. And our conversations, which you can watch below, are always stimulating.

In The Carnivore Diet, Dr. Baker introduces key historical concepts supporting the view that humans are indeed carnivores. He also does a great job explaining how and why aligning with our ancestral dietary patterns leads to powerful health transformations.

If you’re looking for inspiring accounts of real-world transformations and detailed strategies for achieving them, this is the book for you.

As one of the first to popularize the carnivore diet, you better believe he does a great job dispelling myths and misconceptions. And there’s a handy section on overcoming the temporary side effects that can take place when making the transition from a standard American diet.

You can watch my conversation with Sean Baker here:

#2 The Carnivore Code: Unlocking the Secrets to Optimal Health by Returning to Our Ancestral Diet

Paul Saladino is another fellow doctor bravely challenging mainstream nutritional dogma. He’s well known for putting his meat where his mouth is by personally experimenting with “meat cleanses” and a variety of organ meats while hanging out with surviving hunter gatherer tribes.

The Carnivore Code highlights the epidemic of modern diet-based diseases of civilization like diabetes, arthritis, heart disease, and numerous inflammatory and autoimmune conditions. All of these despite eating more “healthy” plant foods than ever.

Saladino does a great job taking these plant foods to task, dispelling myths, and giving us all fair warning that green does not mean go.

There are some solid sample carnivore diet meal plans and great answers to common FAQs.

#3 Carnivore Cure: The Ultimate Elimination Diet to Attain Optimal Health and Heal Your Body- Judy Cho

I love Judy’s no-nonsense approach. The Carnivore Cure is written by a person who has truly done her homework. It does a terrific job debunking nutritional misinformation and myths. And it provides step-by-step guidelines for formulating a diet filled with the most nutrient dense and healthiest foods in the world.

Judy gets deep into the critical importance of healing your gut lining and reversing “leaky gut” (instestinal permeability) caused by plant foods, and at the root of so many digestive and inflammatory problems.

For Judy food truly is the best medicine, and she practices what she preaches.

You can watch my conversation with Judy below:

#4 The Carnivore Cookbook by Craig and Maria Emmerich & Craig Emmerich

I’ve been following and collaborating with Maria and Craig for years now. We’ve even written an extensive Keto for Fertility cookbook together.

When it comes to cooking up delicious keto and carnivore recipes Maria and Craig are simply head and shoulders above the rest. Inspiring people on their low-carb high-fat journey is their life’s work and passion.

Their Carnivore Cookbook explores tasty ways to cook up the foods that our bodies are evolved to thrive on. Maria also does a fantastic job explaining how antinutrients and plant defense mechanisms interfere with our digestion and inhibit absorption of vital nutrients and contribute to leaky gut.

But she doesn’t just talk about it, she walks you through the Carnivore Autoimmune Protocol for healing autimmune issues. Complete with meal plans and carnivore shopping lists.

You can watch my conversation with Maria below:

#5: Lies My Doctor Told Me Second Edition: Medical Myths That Can Harm Your Health – Dr. Ken Berry

Lies My Doctor Told Me is a perennial bestseller, and for good reason. It should be required reading for all doctors, and for anyone else trying to make heads or tails out of mainstream diet recommendations (misinformation).

You’ll get an eye-opening primer on why “healthy grains” is an oxymoron. After which you’d have to be a moron to keep eating them.

This is also one of the most important books for breaking healthy animal fat out of dietary prison and putting it back on our plates where it belongs. Berry also dispels dangerous myths about limiting salt and demonizing dairy.

You can watch my conversation with the fantastic Dr. Ken Berry below:

#6: The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability – Lierre Keith

This is a great book for those of you who like to get your information in the form of a captivating and personal story.

Memoire meets manifesto in Keith’s takedown of modern agriculture. If you need any more convincing that plant foods are not going to save the world, this book is for you.

Interestingly, Keith was a practicing vegan for 20 years, making his views on why regenerative meat farming is good for the environment even more compelling.

#7 The Carnivore’s Manifesto: Eating Well, Eating Responsibly, and Eating Meat – Patrick Martins

Here’s another carnivore manifesto written with passion and verve. Like the other authors on this list, Martins does a great job outlining why it’s accurate to consider humans as carnivores.

He blasts through plant-based zealotry and lays out a convincing new story of why and how sustainably farmed meats ought to be the cornerstone of our diet. It’s also rollicking and entertaining read.

#8: The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet — Nina Teicholz

Nina’s book made multiple bestseller and best books of the year lists when it came out back in 2014.

It was revolutionary at the time, making one of the most public and controversial stands against the demonization of saturated animal fats.

It not only dismantles the purported benefits of low-fat eating, but makes a convincing case that low-fat eating is actually the cause of our most deadly diseases and widespread disorders.

Like myself, Nina proposes that carnivore foods like he creamy cheeses and sizzling are the key to reversing the epidemics of diabetes, heart disease, and other inflammatory diseases.

If you’re like me you’ll be captivated by Nina’s account of the alarming history of overzealous, egomaniac researchers drove a misinformed consensus against meat.

#9 Not by Bread Alone – Viljahlmur Stefansson

Anthropologist Vilhjalmur Stefansson spent years living with indigenous Inuit and Eskimo carnivores.

Blown away by their stellar health and absence of Western diseases, Stefansson was one of the first Westerners to identify an all meat diet as a key to health.

Not By Bread Alone is the 1928 classic chronicling Stefansson and colleague Dr. Karsten Andersen’s personal experimentation with an all meat diet for an entire year at New York’s Bellevue Hospital. To the disbelief of observing doctors, the duo did extremely well, and only got sick when the doctors restricted their fat intake for a couple of weeks. Their health returned after a fat-loaded meal of brains and bacon!

#10 Sacred Cow: The Case for (Better) Meat: Why Well-Raised Meat Is Good for You and Good for the Planet – Diana Rodgers and Robb Wolf

Registered dietitian Diana Rodgers and former research biochemist and New York Times bestselling author Robb Wolf do a fantastic job examining and dismantling the mainstream assumptions about meat–specifically beef–both for our health and our environment.

It takes to task the BS plant-based solutions, and offers science-backed alternatives, such as:

• Meat and animal fat are essential for our physiologicl health
• Animals are essential to a sustainable food system
• A vegan diet may destroy more life than sustainable cattle farming
• Regenerative cattle farming is one of the best tools for sequestering carbon and combatting climate change.

Dr. Steven Gundry was one of the first to detail the ways that plant toxins and antinutrients can take a devastating toll on our health. He takes special aim at lectins, sticky proteins that are a natural part of plant defenses. When ingested in the human body they wreck havock and cause chornic inflammation.

#12 The Case Against Sugar – Gary Taubes

Taube’s blistering exposé shows us how sugar, much like tobacco, is backed by powerful lobbies that have promoted its saturation of the modern diet.

In The Case Against Sugar, you’ll find an alarming and entertaining blend of science and common sense, while revealing why and how most of us are so addicted to carbs.