Influencer swears by carnivore diet but experts are not fans

January 3, 2024

Try to sink your teeth into this diet.

A fitness TikToker has gone viral for preaching her controversial carnivorous ways — she relies on raw liver, butter, and bone broth for sustenance.

Meet Mackenzie Merriott, better known on TikTok as MACK Z, whose bizarre approach to wellness — which includes a 2:55 a.m. wake-up call — has amassed online fame.

“If you feed your gut with whole foods, all your problems disappear,” she says in a viral November clip while making a post-workout shake of raw eggs, butter, salt, bone broth and other ingredients that would make Rocky Balboa weak in the knees.

Of course, Merriott chases the shake down with a helping of raw liver — an unusual choice popularized by the scandal-embattled social media star Liver King, a k a Brian Johnson.

The Post reached out to Merriott for comment.

She follows what’s been dubbed online as the carnivore diet by primarily consuming eggs, red meat, fish and chicken.

Acolytes appear to be, not so shockingly, prone to diarrhea.

New research has also tied the consumption of red meat to a higher risk of Type 2 diabetes.

Jacob Mey, a nutrition scientist and dietitian at Louisiana State University, suggests simply saving your stomach the agony. He told the Daily Beast, “We would typically not recommend the carnivore diet.”

Mey argues that there is not a wealth of evidence proving its efficacy.

“We have other diets that have decades of research that do very well, so why would we recommend something that’s so new and different and unproven?” Mey added, noting that he’s “not a fan.”

Adding insult to injury, Merriott’s ultra-early riser habits likely disrupt her 24-hour biological clock, Mey said.

She typically drinks coffee mixed with butter, mushroom powder and collagen at 3 a.m.

Before 7 a.m., Merriott is usually devouring her first course of raw liver in addition to grass-fed beef.

“When we look at large-scale dietary patterns, fruits and veggies tend to be very protective toward having a healthy body weight, reducing risks of diabetes, high cholesterol, heart disease, and high blood pressure,” said Mey.

“Does liver consumption replace those benefits? Not to any of the information that I’ve seen,” he added, also expressing concerns about followers of the carnivore diet developing scurvy, a Vitamin C deficiency.

After reviewing Merriott’s meat-loving ways, Mey is not sold on the approach.

“I don’t think there’s any unique benefit to the lifestyle that I’ve seen in these videos,” he lamented, adding, “Seeing these influencers do these weird things… It makes me nervous for people who dive too deeply into these alternative approaches.”

Recently, a young influencer in Atlanta gave up veganism and its, as she called it, “propaganda” to go all in on the carnivore lifestyle.