FAT LOT OF GOOD

LBI SKENDERI is speaking to Men’s Health from his studio apartment in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District. A road bike leans on a wall, and a punch bag hangs in a corner. Beneath it are a yoga mat, a medicine ball and a few dumbbells. He’s wearing a Henley shirt that accentuates his build: 182 cm tall and a muscular 82kg.

The Meatpacking District is an aptly named neighbourhood for Skenderi to live in. “I switched to a carnivore diet a couple of months ago,” says Skenderi, who is 33 and works in finance. “One of my colleagues was heating up steak in the microwave at 8am. I was like, ‘Dude, what are you doing?’”

His colleague, who had heard about the diet on an episode of the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, replied, “Meat is all I’ve been eating for the last few weeks. I have so much energy and my body feels fantastic right now”.

Until then, Skenderi had exclusively been eating vegetables. “I’d become plant-based after watching The Game Changers’’ he says, referring to the movie that catalogues the alleged perils of animal foods. “I felt good. But this guy made me wonder: am I doing this all wrong? I listened to a podcast and read The Carnivore Code by Paul Saladino. Then I went to Whole Foods and bought some steaks.”

This dietary U-turn may strike you as baffling. But even more confusing is the fact that scientists can’t tell us for sure which approach to eating is healthier. At the heart of the debate is saturated fat, which is most commonly associated with animal proteins – and whether or not eating too