Heidi Montag is papped snacking on a raw bison heart in the midst of LA. She claims that it can boost her fertility. A person chugs 100 raw eggs on livestream. It has over three million views. Joe Rogan thinks that cooking meat over an open fire will unlock ancient genetic memories (disclaimer: it can not).

In every single place you look, carnivorous urges are infiltrating the mainstream. With roots in esoteric fitness circles and man-o-sphere blogs, health enthusiasts are swapping out smoothies for steaks in a bid to enhance their wellness. “Billions of individuals suffer health issues from not eating our natural species weight loss plan: raw meat,” asserts @rawmeatexperiment, an Instagram user who posts each day videos of himself eating ox tongue and cow livers to his 122k followers. He later admits that his weight loss plan isn’t rooted in hard scientific facts: “Could I be fallacious? Yes. But I even have nothing higher to do.”

Scroll online and also you’ll find limitless testimonials of individuals preaching the advantages of an all-meat weight loss plan. Podcast host Joe Rogan said that it helped clear his skin, while conservative pop psychologist Jordan Peterson claimed back in 2018 that his weight loss plan of beef and water cured his autoimmune issues and lifelong depression.

What’s missing from these carnivorous declarations, nevertheless, is the scientific evidence to back them up. “Consuming raw eggs or raw meats increases your risk for foodborne illness and food poisoning,” warns Roxana Ehsani, a registered nutritionist and spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. Over consuming one food might be dangerous to your health, she continues, and limits you from consuming a balanced healthy eating pattern. “It’s best to not follow any sort of weight loss plan that eliminates major food groups and only has you consuming one or two foods, that’s not sustainable for long run health.”

Salmonella and tapeworms aside, a deeper dig into the raw meat industrial complex reveals disconcerting connections to the alt-right and men’s rights groups. “Modern society has created the least masculine men in history,” a tweet by the Web’s mysterious self-described “meat philosopher” Carnivore Aurelius reads. One other tweet asserts, “The Carnivore Weight-reduction plan is the red pill that wakes you as much as reality.” An archetype of the Right Wing Bodybuilder, or RWBB – a term that describes a politically reactionary Extremely Online male whose politics is sublimated right into a fitness lifestyle – web figures like Carnivore Aurelius are a part of a growing bodybuilding and fitness community epitomised through the concept: pork is the red pill. 

With veganism on the rise, and the choice milk market valued at over $3 billion, a growing variety of traditionalists are pushing back against modern health alternatives, which they imagine have created a generation of subservient, emasculated men (or “cucks”). To them, red meat is related to old patriarchal systems and alpha males, in contrast to tofu-loving beta males. In brief, they view the war on meat as a war on men.

The followers of RWBB typically devour raw meat and follow strict back-to-basics workout regimes. They’re native to alt-right fitness forums and Twitter threads, spouting scientifically skewed facts about plummeting sperm levels and the way “Big Soy” is chargeable for “feminised” male bodies. They chug gallons of Raw Milk – unpasteurised milk that’s illegal to sell for human consumption within the US – and hate nu-milk brands like Oatly (the owner of GetRawMilk.com has written for RWBB website Herculean Strength). They even have their very own critical theory, Raw Egg Nationalism, which helps them higher hook up with the traditions of the traditional world, with many adopting Roman and Greek historical figures as their avatars.

A key figure within the RWBB community is Bronze Age Pervert (BAP), whose Twitter account was suspended in 2021 for hate speech. Now energetic on Telegram, his posts span far-right memes featuring homoerotic images of ancient Greek bodybuilders to mind-melting rants on eugenics and ‘dirtbag leftists’. A self-described “Aspiring Nudist Bodybuilder” and “Free speech and anti-xenoestrogen activist” (read: woman-hating neo-Nazi), he usually quotes Men’s Rights Activist rhetoric about ‘roasties’, AKA women who’ve multiple sexual partners, and usually maintains that ladies must be reduced to breeding stock. It’s not an amazing association.

While it’s unlikely that Heidi Montag is conversant in the intricacies of RWBB, the rise of raw meat amongst fringe health circles is indicative of a wider move towards traditional ways of considering. Whether it’s trading in Huel shakes for raw eggs, corporate scepticism within the types of 5G and vaccines, individuals are pushing back against mainstream media narratives. Consider it just like the California yoga mum to QAnon pipeline – though here’s hoping that they won’t get radicalised in the method.