Dr. Shawn Baker on nutrition: what the evidence says · JRE #1050
SUBJECT: NUTRITION
Not a true/false call. Every claim is logged with its sources; read the exhibits below.
If you look at red meat consumption in the U.S. since about 1977, so red meat has gone down about 30% to 40%. Really? Yeah. We used to eat way more in the 70s. We ate about 30% to 40% more red meat than we do now. No kidding. Yep. And also our testosterone levels have dropped significantly.
What the evidence says 01 / RECORD
Baker's 30-40% figure roughly matches USDA data for beef alone, which fell from about 88.8 pounds per capita in 1976 to roughly 51.5 pounds in 2014 (about a 40% decline). However, "red meat" as a whole category (beef, pork, veal, and lamb combined) fell by a smaller margin, about 19%, from 105 grams per person per day in 1970 to 85 grams in 2007, because pork consumption held comparatively steady; over the same decades poultry consumption more than doubled and total U.S. meat consumption actually rose rather than fell. Separately, a peer-reviewed longitudinal study (the Massachusetts Male Aging Study) documents an age-independent decline in average male serum testosterone of roughly 17-22% (501 to 391 ng/dL) measured between 1987 and 2004, a narrower and later window than 1977-present, and its authors found the decline was not explained by weight (obesity/BMI) or lifestyle factors such as smoking that the study measured; diet was not among the factors the study examined. No cited research establishes a correlation, let alone a causal link, between falling red meat intake and falling testosterone. The claim is therefore mixed: the beef-specific figure is roughly accurate but overstates the decline when applied to "red meat" broadly, and pairing it with testosterone data from a different time frame implies an unsupported causal relationship.
Who Benefits
Baker is the author of the book "The Carnivore Diet" and founder of MeatRx (carnivore.diet), a paid coaching and membership platform built around meat-based eating; a narrative that red meat consumption has declined sharply supports the commercial case for his coaching and books promoting increased meat consumption.