Dr Shawn Baker 🥩

The Forest Laws Never Ended After 1066, William the Conqueror and the Norman kings turned vast stretches of England into royal forest. Inside those bounds the red deer and fallow deer belonged to the crown. A peasant who killed one to feed his family could lose his eyes, his hands, his manhood, or his life. The laws were written so that, as one chronicler put it, the English would have “nothing but their eyes to weep with.” The meat of the wild was reserved for the ruling class. Everyone else was expected to live on what the land under the plow could produce: grain, pottage, the occasional chicken or pig if they were lucky. When the Charter of the Forest finally arrived in 1217 it removed the worst mutilations and the death penalty, but the underlying idea stayed intact: the best animal protein was a privilege, not a right. That idea never really died. It simply changed costume. Today the same hierarchy reappears in softer language. Elite tables still feature steak, lamb, and game. Private jets still carry foie gras and dry-aged beef to conferences where the speakers tell everyone else that livestock are the problem. The recommended diet for the rest of the population is heavy on “whole” grains, legumes, and plant protein—foods that historically filled the peasant bowl while the lords kept the animals. The rhetoric is climate, health, or equity. The practical result is the same as the old forest law: the high-quality meat stays upstream. The punishments are no longer blinding and castration. They are subsidies, guidelines, school menus, and social pressure. But the direction of the flow has not changed. The deer still belongs to the people who write the rules. The rest are told the grain is good for them.

In February 2021, while in the Democratic Republic of the Congo with researchers tracking endangered bonobos, Ashley Judd was walking in the rainforest in low light when she tripped over a fallen tree. The impact shattered her plant based tibia in multiple places—described in contemporary accounts as a catastrophic break that put the leg at immediate risk. She spent roughly 55 hours being carried out of the remote jungle by local teams before reaching advanced care. Recovery involved surgery, prolonged immobilization, and extensive rehabilitation. Months later she shared video of herself walking again, emphasizing the near-loss of the limb and the role of the people who extracted her. In 2022, after the death of her mother Naomi Judd, she once again sustained a second, less severe fracture to the other leg. She publicly attributed it to a “freak accident” tied to grief-related clumsiness rather than any high-impact event. That break healed more quickly, and she has since discussed functional training as part of returning to activity. Judd is a longtime animal-rights and conservation advocate; the Congo trip itself was research-related. Numerous scientific papers have now shown that plant based, and particularly vegan diet are associated with much higher rates of fracture. Whether this was the underlying reason for her fractures is hard to say for sure, but undoubtedly one has to wonder if eating a diet based on emotion is a good idea.

So I’m in the elevator today, heading down to the grill on the ninth floor with my steaks on a cutting board. Old guy on elevator with a dog that has his tongue perpetually hanging bizarrely out of the side of his mouth because all his teeth rotted out and had to be pulled. I suggested that the dog might like to gum on my steaks . His said the dog has never had “human food” before I suggested that steak was also “wolf food” and I bet he’d love it He looked mortified that I’d suggest something so absurd as feeding a dog meat rather than kibble!

Tom Brady is not a vegan. He’s said it plainly: “When people ask if I’m a vegan or a vegetarian, I tell them no, decidedly not.” His TB12 approach is an 80/20 split — mostly plants (vegetables, fruits, grains, nuts, seeds, legumes) with about 20% high-quality lean animal protein. That means wild-caught fish (especially salmon), organic/grass-fed chicken or turkey, occasional steak or bison, and pasture-raised eggs in palm-sized portions at meals. He also uses protein powders. It’s a flexitarian, performance-focused pattern — not vegan. This is a recurring pattern: vegans and plant-based advocates often claim high-profile people as fully vegan when they’re not. Plant-heavy, temporary challenges, or “mostly plants” diets get upgraded to full vegan status for marketing and influence. Reality is usually more flexible. Other clear examples: • Bill Clinton was widely labeled the “world’s most famous vegan” after shifting to a near-plant-based diet for heart health. His doctor recommended (and he ate) occasional organic salmon or lean protein for iron, zinc, and muscle. He is mostly plant-based, not strictly vegan. • Gisele Bündchen (Brady’s ex) tried vegetarian and vegan approaches but developed anemia and nutrient issues. She reintroduced animal protein (fish, chicken, some meat, eggs) and now follows a similar ~80/20 pattern. She has been open that strict veganism didn’t work for her. • Miley Cyrus, Lizzo, Anne Hathaway, Beyoncé, and Serena Williams have all been claimed or promoted as vegan (or long-term vegan) at various points. Most either quit for health/energy/brain function reasons, did short challenges, or never went fully strict. They still get listed in “vegan celebrities” roundups. The pattern is consistent: claim the celebrity for the cause, downplay or ignore the animal foods, then move on when the details come out. Brady’s actual diet (high-quality animal protein in moderation + mostly plants, no processed junk) is closer to what many high-performing athletes do than pure veganism. High-quality meat, fish, and eggs are part of the picture for a lot of people who get results — Brady included.

In 2018, Spanish vegan YouTuber and animal-rights activist Sonia Sae (Barcelona) put her pet fennec fox, Jumanji, on a fully plant-based diet. She claimed she had “rescued” him from a breeder in 2014 and fed him primarily vegan cat food plus supplements (taurine, lysine, etc.). Photos and videos she posted showed a thin animal with hair loss, reported partial blindness, spontaneous convulsions, and lethargy. Critics (including other animal lovers, exotic-animal people, and even some vegans) called it cruelty. Fennec foxes are desert canids whose wild diet is ~90% animal matter: insects, small rodents, reptiles, birds, eggs, and occasional plants they dig up. They are not designed for a purely plant-based diet. Taurine, certain amino acids, and bioavailable nutrients from animal tissues are important; synthetic supplements do not always match what a carnivorous gut extracts from real prey. Heavy plant matter can also stress their digestive system. Sae defended the diet, said bloodwork was fine, blamed the appearance on a pollen allergy he already had, and argued that feeding any animal food was the real abuse because “no animal had to die.” She posted some videos of the fox moving around and said she would release more evidence. A petition circulated, police were reportedly looking into it, and PETA weighed in that fennec foxes are unsuitable as pets and should go to a sanctuary. No widely reported official seizure or final medical outcome followed in public coverage. This fits a broader pattern: ideology applied to animals whose biology does not match it. Carnivores (cats, foxes, ferrets, many reptiles, etc.) require animal-sourced nutrients. Forcing the opposite and then dismissing visible problems as “allergy” or “bias against veganism” prioritizes the owner’s beliefs over the animal’s physiology. Biology does not care about the politics of the person holding the bowl. Healthy fennec foxes in proper care (or in the wild) are compact, energetic, and maintained on appropriate protein and prey items—not plant-only menus with synthetic add-ins.

The Battle Creek Sanitarium, 1908 Mr. Horace Langley arrived in a state of what the intake form called “nervous dyspepsia and moral debility.” He had eaten beefsteak the week before. That, the nurse informed him while confiscating his trunk of clothing, was almost certainly the root of the problem. By the second morning he was already on the table. The enema apparatus was wheeled in without ceremony. Warm water first, then a second course of yogurt culture “to repopulate the bowel with wholesome germs,” the attendant explained. Langley was told the colon must be cleansed of the putrefying residues left by years of flesh foods. Red meat, he was instructed, produced toxins that inflamed the system, clouded the mind, and excited the lower passions. The yogurt, by contrast, was pure. Between sessions he was assigned to the mechanical vibrator—a heavy machine that shook his abdomen while an orderly read aloud from Dr. Kellogg’s writings on the dangers of animal protein. Lunch was zwieback, stewed prunes, and a nut cream that tasted faintly of sawdust. When he asked about the steak the other patients whispered about in the night, he was given a pamphlet titled “The Poison in the Pot.” In the afternoon came the electric light bath. He sat naked under banks of bulbs until he sweated freely, then was plunged into a cold shower while an attendant checked his pulse and noted “improved elimination.” That evening another enema. The nurse remarked that men who had previously lived on chops and roasts often required several weeks of this regimen before the craving for flesh subsided and the bowels regained their natural tone. Langley lasted nine days. On the tenth he slipped out after breakfast, found a diner two blocks from the sanitarium, and ordered a rare sirloin. He ate it slowly, then walked to the station. The yogurt, he later wrote to a friend, had done nothing a decent piece of meat and a night’s sleep could not accomplish more simply. The sanitarium records listed him as “discharged against advice—continued meat addiction.”

The Cool Hand Luke bet that ended at egg 42 On a November day in 2019, Subhash Yadav, 42, walked into the Bibiganj market in Jaunpur, Uttar Pradesh, with a friend. They were there for eggs. An argument flared—what it was about never became public—and the two men decided to settle it the way men sometimes do when pride is involved and cash is on the table. The wager: ₹2,000 (roughly $28 at the time) to whoever could eat 50 boiled eggs. Some accounts add that a bottle of liquor was part of the challenge. They bought the eggs from a vendor on the spot. Yadav started eating. He got through 41. When he began the 42nd, he suddenly collapsed and lost consciousness. Locals rushed him to the district hospital; from there he was transferred to the Sanjay Gandhi Post Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences in Lucknow. He never woke up and died hours later. Doctors attributed the death to overeating. Reports noted he had four daughters from a first marriage, had remarried, and that his second wife was pregnant with what would have been his fifth child. His family declined to comment. The story circulated widely because it so closely mirrored the famous Cool Hand Luke scene—an ordinary man trying to prove he could do what the movie made legendary. Competitive eaters have downed far more than 50 eggs in far less time, but Yadav was not one of them. For an untrained person, the sheer volume (roughly 2.5–3 liters), the protein load, and the rapid intake can overwhelm the system. In his case, the body simply stopped cooperating before the bet was finished. It’s a short, ugly real-world counterpoint to the film’s swaggering defiance: sometimes the stomach and the will both give out before the count is done.

The myth that wouldn’t flush In the late 1980s, a naturopath named Richard Anderson needed a product. He coined a phrase that sounded clinical and slightly alarming: mucoid plaque. He described it as a thick, rubbery, greenish film of mucus, undigested food, and toxins coating the intestines of almost everyone who ate “normal” food. The only way to get rid of it, he said, was his special cleanse kits—herbs, bentonite clay, and fiber blends sold under names like Arise and Shine. The idea traveled fast through raw-food and vegan circles. It slotted neatly into older “mucusless diet” teachings: animal products and cooked food supposedly left behind a toxic residue that pure fruit, fasting, or aggressive cleansing would finally purge. Forums filled with before-and-after photos of long, ropey strands people had passed. Each strand was treated as proof that years of “impure” eating had been coating their insides. Some people cycled through cleanse after cleanse, chasing the feeling of finally being empty and pure. Pathologists who had examined thousands of intestinal specimens never saw anything matching the description. Gastroenterologists called it a fabrication. Even some long-term raw vegans and fasting clinicians eventually pushed back, pointing out that the dramatic ropes usually appeared only after people swallowed the very ingredients that swell into gelatinous casts—clay, psyllium, and stimulant herbs. The “plaque” was, in most cases, the cleanse itself. The marketing worked anyway. It gave people a tangible enemy inside their bodies and a product that promised to defeat it. For a while, in certain corners of the wellness world, the goal wasn’t just to eat plants. It was to keep cleaning until the last invisible layer was gone—even if the layer had never been there to begin with.

106 years old and STILL breaking world records!!

Serge Nubret didn’t just build one of the most aesthetic physiques in bodybuilding history—he did it by eating like a predator. Known as “The Black Panther,” the Guadeloupe-born bodybuilder treated food the way a big cat treats a kill: infrequent, massive, and almost entirely animal. In the 1960s–80s golden era, while most competitors chased six small meals of chicken breast and rice, Nubret often ate only one to three large meals a day. The centerpiece was red meat—frequently horse meat, which was lean, iron-rich, and readily available near his gym in France. Accounts and his own statements put the intake at 3–6 pounds (roughly 1.5–3 kg) of meat in a day, sometimes in a single sitting. Off-season that came with rice, beans, or pasta; closer to a show he frequently dropped the carbs and lived on meat and fish alone. Protein totals were routinely estimated in the 400–600 g range. He believed any excess simply became fuel. The result was a tiny waist, dense muscle, and a physique that stayed strikingly similar from his late 30s into his 50s. He trained for hours with high-volume pump work, but the diet was the constant that kept him full and lean without the modern supplement stack. One of his reported lines captured the philosophy: cows graze all day; panthers eat once. Nubret never treated the extreme numbers as everyday dogma—some accounts say the highest intakes were peaks rather than a daily ritual—but the core pattern was clear and radical for its time: large quantities of meat, few meals, and a body that looked carved from marble. In an era obsessed with complicated plans, the Black Panther’s approach was almost brutally simple. Eat the animal, train hard, and stay lean enough that the muscle showed.

Make it make sense 😜

Dropping the hammer! Power is starting to come back! 1:14.7 at 33 SPM (5 x 20 sec, 3 min rest) -SPI of 25.3!💪

Concept2 is the only rowing machine I’d ever consider-they are the gold standard

What it’s like conversing with the big pharma sycophants!

30 years ago I would have never expected that at 60 years of age I’d be going to bed early because I have pole vault practice tomorrow!

In a hurry tonight -smoked salmon for dinner

It’s not as straightforward as some would have you believe