A fad for consuming high-protein, high-fat food, while avoiding vegetables, has taken off online. Followers are doing themselves no favours

Once, it seemed that much of the world was intent on drastically cutting back on meat for health and environmental reasons. Vegetarian and vegan options appeared on restaurant menus and the very idea of a bloody red steak became almost unthinkable in liberal circles. And yet the carnivore diet is now all over Instagram and TikTok, prompting health bodies to start issuing warnings.

Followers of this diet eat meat, fat, seafood, eggs and butter, avoiding all vegetables, fruits, grains and legumes as if plants were, as Paul Saladino, an advocate of this diet alleged, “poison”. Dr Saladino is a US psychiatrist and health influencer with a range of supplements called Heart and Soil that contain dried animal organ meat. He appears shirtless on social media, denouncing vegetables, which he says will harm us. Other Instagrammers tuck into plates of huge steaks and seven or more eggs for breakfast. It’s not just for weight loss.

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

A fad for consuming high-protein, high-fat food, while avoiding vegetables, has taken off online. Followers are doing themselves no favours

Once, it seemed that much of the world was intent on drastically cutting back on meat for health and environmental reasons. Vegetarian and vegan options appeared on restaurant menus and the very idea of a bloody red steak became almost unthinkable in liberal circles. And yet the carnivore diet is now all over Instagram and TikTok, prompting health bodies to start issuing warnings.

Followers of this diet eat meat, fat, seafood, eggs and butter, avoiding all vegetables, fruits, grains and legumes as if plants were, as Paul Saladino, an advocate of this diet alleged, “poison”. Dr Saladino is a US psychiatrist and health influencer with a range of supplements called Heart and Soil that contain dried animal organ meat. He appears shirtless on social media, denouncing vegetables, which he says will harm us. Other Instagrammers tuck into plates of huge steaks and seven or more eggs for breakfast. It’s not just for weight loss.

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

Both British actors are let down by the overly glossy, romcom-y sheen of this update of Warren Adler’s 1980s novel about a spectacularly toxic marriage

Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch, the two most prestigious English screen actors in the world, resoundingly butt heads in this feel-bad movie; it is oddly, but not uninterestingly, composed throughout in feelgood romcom style. In casting terms, this is a Borg-McEnroe 10-set tie-break leading to play being suspended even as the leads bring every microlitre of their technique to the game.

They play Ivy and Theo, two high-achieving professionals whose marriage becomes a black-comic Chornobyl of toxic hate; it is adapted from the 1981 novel The War of the Roses by Warren Adler, which was previously filmed in 1989 with Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas. Tony McNamara writes this new version and the director is Jay Roach, known for Austin Powers and Meet the Parents. Colman and Cumberbatch are acting black-belts and they are never anything other than watchable, but as they shout and wince and snap and zing their way through the dialogue, it’s difficult to believe that they really love each other; and then later really hate each other. The film loses its nerve on this latter point.

Both British actors are let down by the overly glossy, romcom-y sheen of this update of Warren Adler’s 1980s novel about a spectacularly toxic marriage

Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch, the two most prestigious English screen actors in the world, resoundingly butt heads in this feel-bad movie; it is oddly, but not uninterestingly, composed throughout in feelgood romcom style. In casting terms, this is a Borg-McEnroe 10-set tie-break leading to play being suspended even as the leads bring every microlitre of their technique to the game.

They play Ivy and Theo, two high-achieving professionals whose marriage becomes a black-comic Chornobyl of toxic hate; it is adapted from the 1981 novel The War of the Roses by Warren Adler, which was previously filmed in 1989 with Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas. Tony McNamara writes this new version and the director is Jay Roach, known for Austin Powers and Meet the Parents. Colman and Cumberbatch are acting black-belts and they are never anything other than watchable, but as they shout and wince and snap and zing their way through the dialogue, it’s difficult to believe that they really love each other; and then later really hate each other. The film loses its nerve on this latter point.