Eating only meat would likely cause health issues due to lack of vitamin C and fiber. Without vitamin C, one could develop scurvy and gum disease. Without fiber, constipation would be a problem. However, some groups like the Inuit traditionally ate meat-heavy diets and thrived by eating the whole animal, including raw meat and organ meats containing vitamin C and fiber. While their diets were historically healthy, today's meat-focused diets cut out necessary nutrients and could lead to cardiac, kidney, bone, and liver problems according to the American Heart Association.

1. FYI: What Would Happen If I Ate
Nothing But Meat?
Good ol' meat and potatoes. Without the potatoes.
BY CAITLIN KEARNEY AUGUST 22, 2013
You might get scurvy, like a pirate. Cooked meat contains very little vitamin C, notes Donald Beitz, a
nutritional biochemist at Iowa State University. Without the vitamin, scurvy would bring on rashes and
gum disease, not to mention very bad breath. Moreover, meat lacks fiber, so you'd probably be
constipated. All in all, you wouldn't be healthy or comfortable.
That said, some groups of people have survived—even thrived—on an animal-only diet. Research
suggests that traditionally the Inuit ate any number of meats, including seal, whale, caribou and fish. But
they rarely, if ever, ate plant fiber. The key to their success, says Harriet Kuhnlein, the founding director
of the Centre for Indigenous Peoples' Nutrition and Environment at McGill University in Montreal, was
eating every part of the animal, "and you have to eat some of it raw." Raw meat contains vitamin C
(which is lost when cooked), and the skin, hooves and bones contain fiber. For greens, Kuhnlein adds,
traditional Inuit "ate the stomach contents of caribou and deer."
Historically, they were quite healthy, she says; they almost never suffered from heart disease. Today,
the meat-heavy diet lives on in the form of the controversial Atkins Nutritional Approach. Formulated by
cardiologist Robert Atkins in the early 1970s, the diet prescribes that adherents dramatically cut their
carbohydrate intake.
The American Heart Association issued a statement in 2001 condemning the diet for cutting necessary
sources of nutrients, stating that devotees were "at risk for compromised vitamin and mineral intake, as
well as potential cardiac, renal [kidney], bone and liver abnormalities."
This article originally appeared in the June 2011 issue of Popular Science_ magazine._.
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