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Episode 1050: Dr. Shawn Baker

carnivore diet nutrition pseudoscience health misinformation

Episode 1050: Dr. Shawn Baker

TL;DR: Joe Rogan platformed a then-recently-license-suspended orthopedic surgeon promoting an all-meat “carnivore diet” with no clinical evidence, helping launch a fad with documented harms while offering essentially no pushback.

This 2017 episode is widely credited with catapulting the “carnivore diet” into the mainstream. Baker — an orthopedic surgeon with no training in nutrition, endocrinology, or cardiology — used a multi-hour platform to promote eating nothing but meat as a treatment for autoimmune disease, depression, and chronic illness.

Who Is Shawn Baker?

  • Credentials: MD (Texas Tech, 2001), orthopedic surgery residency. No formal training in nutrition science, lipidology, or endocrinology.
  • License status at time of recording: The New Mexico Medical Board had ordered the “voluntary and permanent surrender” of Baker’s medical license in 2017 — the same year as this episode — citing “failure to report adverse action taken by a healthcare entity and incompetence to practice as a licensee.” NM Medical Board order (PDF)
  • Rogan does not seriously interrogate Baker’s credentials or the circumstances around his license loss.

Key Claims and What the Evidence Says

Claim 1: An all-meat diet cures autoimmune disease, depression, and chronic illness

Baker claims eating only meat reverses autoimmune conditions, fixes mental health, and resolves a wide range of chronic conditions.

What the evidence says:

  • No randomized controlled trials support carnivore diet claims for any disease. The evidence Baker cites is anecdotal testimonials from his own followers.
  • Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (2021): Called the carnivore diet “extreme” and warned it eliminates entire food groups associated with reduced disease risk. Harvard Nutrition Source
  • The only published study on long-term carnivore dieters (Lennerz et al., 2021, Current Developments in Nutrition) was a self-selected online survey with no controls and is not evidence of efficacy.

Claim 2: Red meat does not raise cardiovascular risk

What the evidence says:

  • WHO/IARC (2015): Classified processed meat as Group 1 carcinogen and red meat as Group 2A (probably carcinogenic to humans). IARC Monograph
  • Harvard meta-analysis (Zhong et al., 2020, JAMA Internal Medicine): Higher intake of processed and unprocessed red meat associated with higher cardiovascular disease and all-cause mortality. JAMA Internal Medicine

Claim 3: You don’t need vegetables, fiber, or vitamin C from plants

What the evidence says:

  • National Academies of Sciences: Dietary fiber recommendations of 25-38 g/day are based on cardiovascular and colorectal cancer prevention evidence.
  • Eliminating plants risks vitamin C, folate, vitamin E, magnesium, and potassium deficiencies, even if not always acutely symptomatic.
  • The “you get vitamin C from raw meat” claim Baker and similar advocates make is not supported by clinical nutrition data.

Joe Rogan’s Role

This is a textbook example of Rogan-as-amplifier rather than Rogan-as-skeptic.

  • No meaningful pushback on whether an orthopedic surgeon is qualified to prescribe radical dietary interventions for autoimmune disease, mental illness, or cardiovascular conditions.
  • No mention of the 2017 New Mexico Medical Board action, which was a matter of public record at the time of the recording.
  • Rogan repeatedly expresses enthusiasm and personal interest rather than skepticism, treating dramatic anecdotes as evidence.
  • The episode reportedly garnered over 10 million downloads and is broadly credited as the launching pad for the carnivore diet trend. Rogan’s platform turned a fringe idea into a mass-market fad.

Real-World Harm

  • The carnivore diet trend that traces back in significant part to this episode has been linked to documented elevated LDL cholesterol (Lennerz et al., 2021 itself reported a mean LDL ~172 mg/dL among self-reported carnivore dieters — well above clinical risk thresholds).
  • Case reports of xanthelasma and severe hyperlipidemia in carnivore dieters have appeared in clinical literature.
  • The diet provides cover for people to avoid evidence-based treatment for autoimmune and psychiatric conditions in favor of dietary self-experimentation.
  • Baker built a media business (book, app, supplements, “Revero” clinic) on the back of this platform — a financial conflict of interest Rogan did not probe.

Why It Matters

A non-credentialed-in-nutrition surgeon, whose medical license had just been revoked, was given a multi-hour uncritical platform to promote an extreme elimination diet as a treatment for serious illness. That’s the core problem — and Rogan’s failure to push back is what made the episode harmful at scale.

Sources

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