The carnivore diet
There aren’t many people who casually dabble in the carnivore diet, which involves exclusively consuming animal products. This approach is pretty extreme when framed relative to conventional dietary guidelines, and is typically adopted with a pretty extreme level of enthusiasm.
So, if you like the carnivore diet, we're not interested in trying to talk you out of it. However, given the large body of evidence reporting health benefits of a wide range of plant-based foods, you won’t catch us suggesting that people go out of their way to avoid the consumption of micronutrient-dense plants and fungi.
A carnivore diet will be low in carbohydrate by default, so it limits your choices with regard to macronutrient distribution. Nonetheless, you can still use MacroFactor to track your daily nutrition intakes and keep your energy intake target in line with your body composition goals over time.
The Paleo diet
The Paleo diet only allows for the consumption of foods that are perceived to have been available to our early ancestors of the Paleolithic period.
Major limitations of the diet include our incomplete understanding of exactly what our Paleolithic ancestors ate, the high probability that groups living in different regions had markedly different diets, and the reality that the modern interpretation of the Paleo diet unnecessarily prohibits foods that can easily be incorporated into a healthy overall diet.
Having said that, one can easily construct a balanced and healthful diet using only Paleo-approved foods, so the diet does not directly eliminate any essential nutrients in a deleterious manner. So, Paleo is fine, but involves making some sacrifices that aren’t entirely necessary.
If the simplicity of Paleo helps you increase your intake of micronutrient-dense foods and meet your intended targets for energy intake and macronutrient distribution, then there’s nothing inherently wrong with that.
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