Possible defiencies

when putting in such a diet in fitday, I noticed a few deficiencies.

• Vitamin K : Officially, there is no source of this vitamin in the animal kingdom. I suspect it might be present in animal fat and that the USDA nutrient database is incomplete. Anyway, if animals do not accumulate it, how important is it? It is well known to be produced by the intestinal bacterias (I will talk about these bacterias later).

• Vitamin C : It is very low, although by eating just a few organs, it can raises to the « official » numbers to prevent scurvy (about 10 mg according to some). The main idea is that higher amounts of vitamin C and other antioxidants are not necessary when following a carnivore diet and that the small amounts are enough to do their job in collagen formations (and other things I don’t remember). Stefansson has also proved that raw meat could cure scurvy, although officially, raw muscle meat has 0 vitamin C. Organs have usually some vitamin C, although it is particularly high in the adrenals glands, which is not the kind of stuff you can eat unless you hunt yourself (which I intend to do one day). Primitive cultures often first went to the adrenals after killing an animal. Eating the tongue of caribou was also something often seen, as it is a very caloric dense food.

My main source will be chicken hearts and beef liver. I intend to eat a bit of beef tongue too, although that nutritious and extremely cheap (I get it for 1$ per kilo) food is quite the opposite of tender.

• Thamin : It is at over 90%, so it’s not bad really. From what I read, thiamin is mainly linked to carbohydrate metabolism, so…

• Calcium and magnesium : this « deficiency » is the only one I care about. The good thing though is that the levels of calcium and magnesium on a carnivore diet are very similar, and this is ideal for their absorption and use. Too much calcium (such as milk) creates magnesium deficiency. There is also the fact that these minerals in meat might be much easier to absorb. I’ve seen numbers such as 25% for milk and over 40% for almonds, I can’t find number for meat.

I intend to drink bone broths, made from marrow bones. These broth are high in gelatin which enhance protein digestion and high in very easy to absorb minerals.

The main thing I don't like is the phosphorus to calcium ratio, although the body, given the right nutrients, might be perfectly balanced despite such a high ratio.

From the fitday tables, most of my nutrients are in the multiple hundred percents range.

I also intend to eat bone marrow, which is cheap and very nutritious, but I can’t get much info about its nutrition.

Most of what I eat is organic. Nutrients are probably a bit higher. The beef I eat was fattened on a diet of about 40% grains, I would have preferred totally grass-fed. Ruminants have a rumen adapted to diets higher in protein than what grains provide, such as a diet of grass. On a complete diet of grains, the pH in the rumen change, usually requiring antibiotics because of the bad bacterias that arise at the lower pH (such as E.Coli).