Episode 1164: Mikhaila Peterson

Why This Episode Is Problematic

Joe Rogan hosts Mikhaila Peterson, daughter of Jordan Peterson, who promotes an all-meat “carnivore diet” as a cure for serious autoimmune and psychiatric conditions including rheumatoid arthritis, depression, bipolar disorder, and eczema. Peterson has no medical, nutritional, or scientific credentials.

TL;DR: An unqualified influencer promotes an extreme, evidence-free elimination diet as a cure for serious chronic illnesses to Rogan’s massive audience, while Rogan amplifies rather than challenges the claims.

The Guest

Mikhaila Peterson is a blogger and podcaster with no formal training in:

Medicine
Nutrition or dietetics
Biochemistry
Any health-related science

She has, by her own admission, no qualifications to give medical advice, yet at the time of the episode was selling paid consultations about the diet for $90+ per hour.

Key Claims Made

The “carnivore diet” (only beef, salt, and water) cured her rheumatoid arthritis, depression, bipolar disorder, hypersomnia, psoriasis, and eczema.

Her father, Jordan Peterson, was cured of depression and lost weight by eating only meat.

Plants and carbohydrates are the cause of autoimmune and psychiatric illness.

People should try the diet themselves to “see what happens.”

Peterson herself acknowledged on the show that the diet “sounds absolutely insane” and that there is no research to back it up.

What the Evidence Actually Says

No peer-reviewed studies support an all-meat diet for treating autoimmune disease, depression, or any chronic condition. There are essentially zero controlled studies of a long-term beef-only diet in humans. BuzzFeed News
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health: Diets high in red and processed meat are associated with increased risk of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, colorectal cancer, and all-cause mortality. Harvard Nutrition Source
American Heart Association: Recommends limiting saturated fat to less than 6% of daily calories. A beef-only diet typically exceeds this by 5-10x. AHA Dietary Guidelines
World Health Organization (IARC, 2015): Classified processed meat as a Group 1 carcinogen and red meat as Group 2A (probably carcinogenic). IARC Monograph 114
Spontaneous remission and placebo effect: Rheumatoid arthritis is known to remit spontaneously, and elimination diets routinely produce dramatic short-term subjective improvements through expectation effects. Cardiologists interviewed about Peterson’s claims pointed directly to placebo as the most likely explanation. BuzzFeed News
Nutritional deficiency risk: A beef-only diet is deficient in vitamin C, fiber, folate, and several phytonutrients with well-established roles in health. Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics

Expert Rebuttals

Dr. Joel Kahn, cardiologist: Called the diet “the worst possible diet” cardiovascularly and noted that arthritis improvements are almost certainly placebo. BuzzFeed News
Dr. Yoni Freedhoff, obesity physician (University of Ottawa): Warned that promoting an all-meat diet based on n=1 anecdotes is “dangerous” and exploits desperate people with chronic illness. Spectator
Dietitians of Canada / Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics: No reputable nutrition body endorses the carnivore diet. It is the opposite of every evidence-based dietary recommendation for chronic disease prevention.
Refinery29 medical review: Multiple registered dietitians warned that the diet poses serious risks including kidney strain, elevated LDL, scurvy, and constipation. Refinery29

Joe Rogan’s Role

This is a clear example of Rogan acting as an enabler rather than a skeptical interviewer.

No pushback on credentials. Rogan does not seriously probe how someone with no medical training is qualified to advise sick people to abandon medications and standard treatments.
Active amplification. Rogan expresses repeated amazement at the claims, calls the results “incredible,” and treats anecdote as evidence.
Personal endorsement loop. Rogan went on to repeatedly discuss and partially try the carnivore diet himself in subsequent episodes, lending the idea further credibility to his audience.
No mention of risks. Cholesterol, cardiovascular disease, cancer risk, nutrient deficiencies, and the well-documented placebo response in chronic illness are not meaningfully addressed.
No counter-voices. Unlike a journalist, Rogan brings in no nutritionist, no rheumatologist, and no psychiatrist to evaluate extraordinary claims about treating bipolar disorder and autoimmune disease with beef.

Real-World Harm

This episode was a major launch pad for the carnivore diet trend.

Mainstreamed an unproven elimination diet to tens of millions of listeners, many seeking answers for chronic illness.
Encouraged abandonment of evidence-based treatment. Peterson explicitly described going off medications. Listeners with rheumatoid arthritis or bipolar disorder who stop disease-modifying drugs or mood stabilizers in favor of beef risk serious flares, joint destruction, and psychiatric crises.
Commercial exploitation. The diet fueled a paid-consultation cottage industry charging vulnerable, chronically ill people for advice from non-experts.
Documented health incidents. Subsequent reporting has covered cases of carnivore-diet followers presenting with extreme LDL elevations, scurvy, and kidney stones. Refinery29
Postscript on Peterson herself. By 2025, Peterson publicly acknowledged she was again eating plant foods, undermining the very “this diet saved my life forever” framing the JRE episode helped sell. Big Think

Bottom Line

A non-expert promoting an extreme, unstudied elimination diet as a cure for serious chronic and psychiatric illness — broadcast uncritically to one of the largest audiences in podcasting — is exactly the pattern this site exists to flag. The episode is a textbook case of platforming medical misinformation under the cover of “just having a conversation.”