Animal-Based Diet Recipes: A Guide to Nutrient-Dense Eating

The animal-based diet food list has gained popularity among individuals seeking to embrace a more natural, nutrient-dense way of eating. Rooted in animal-derived foods, this diet emphasizes high-quality proteins, fats, and essential nutrients supporting overall health. An animal-based diet prioritizes foods that come from animals, including meat, seafood, eggs, and dairy. This dietary approach often minimizes or excludes plant-based foods, depending on individual preferences or health goals. While some diet variations (like carnivores) strictly exclude all plant-derived foods, others may incorporate small amounts of fruits or non-starchy vegetables.

Core Components of an Animal-Based Diet

An animal-based diet revolves around several key food groups:

1. Meat: Meat forms the backbone of an animal-based diet, offering rich sources of protein, iron, zinc, and B vitamins. Your diet should focus primarily on grass-fed ruminant animals such as cattle, buffalo, goat, lamb, and deer. We suggest cutting out meat from animals that are primarily fed corn or soy. If including various animals in your diet is still desired, companies like Nourish Food Club or Nose To Tail intentionally sell low-PUFA options to alleviate this excess consumption.
2. Seafood: Seafood provides omega-3 fatty acids, iodine, selenium, and high-quality protein. Additionally, eating fish no more than twice a week (or less) is ideal, even if it’s wild-caught.
3. Eggs: Eggs are a versatile and nutrient-dense staple in an animal-based diet. Checkout Angel Acres Farm for Low Pufa, corn and soy free, pasture raised eggs.
4. Dairy: Raw, unpasteurized milk from grass-fed cows is one of the few things on this planet genuinely worthy of being called a superfood. Raw dairy isn’t always accessible. In our opinion, raw, unpasteurized milk from grass-fed cows is one of the few things on this planet genuinely worthy of being called a superfood. Raw dairy isn’t always accessible, but it’s our preferred dairy source, as Paul Saladino MD explains in this video. You can find raw milk in your area through RealMilk.com. When people react negatively to milk products, the offending component is often a protein called ‘casein.’ There are two varieties of milk out there; A1 and A2, which refer to the type of casein protein found in the milk.
5. Organs: We are huge fans of eating nose-to-tail and incorporating organs into our diets (surprising, we know). Fresh organs are amazing, but getting enough into the diet is challenging for many people. Some don’t like the taste or texture, while others have trouble sourcing or traveling with them. We suggest that people eat 1-3 ounces of organ meat daily.
6. Fruit and Honey: Carbohydrates from specific sources are a crucial component of the animal-based diet. Many also consume organic sweet potatoes and white rice without issue.
7. Low-Toxicity Carbohydrates: Some benefits many of our client’s experience when including low-toxicity carbs into their diet are proper and balanced hormones, improved sleep quality, consistent energy, and enhanced performance and recovery. We commonly work with people looking to improve autoimmune illness, lose weight, support a healthy pregnancy, or improve mental health. Many people come from ketogenic, carnivore, paleo, or plant-based diets because they can be too restrictive or haven’t yielded the intended results.

Tips for Success on an Animal-Based Diet

• Prioritize Quality: Always choose high-quality animal products like grass-fed beef, pasture-raised poultry, and wild-caught fish.
• Embrace Variety: Incorporate a range of meats, seafood, and organ meats into your diet to cover all essential nutrients.
• Plan Ahead: Meal prepping is a game-changer. Batch-cook your meats, prepare bone broth in advance, and store portions for easy access throughout the week.
• Listen to Your Body: Pay attention to how your body responds to different foods.
• Stay Hydrated: Drinking plenty of water is crucial, especially when consuming a protein-rich diet.
• Experiment with Cooking Techniques: Explore grilling, roasting, pan-searing, and slow-cooking to keep meals interesting.
• Start Simple: If you’re new to this diet, begin with staple proteins like eggs, beef, and chicken.
• Focus on Satiety: One of the benefits of this diet is its ability to keep you full for longer.
• Monitor Progress: Keep track of how the diet affects your energy, mood, and physical performance.

Animal-Based Diet Recipes

The animal-based diet food list offers a nutrient-dense approach to eating that can transform your health and well-being. Focusing on high-quality animal products and minimizing processed foods will fuel your body with everything it needs to thrive. We’ve rounded up some of the tastiest animal-based Christmas recipes from the animal-based community. Since there’s a lot of crossover between Thanksgiving and Christmas dishes, we won’t be duplicating the same recipes. If you’re worried that you’ll have to give up your favorite Christmas foods, don’t be. Most Christmas dishes are animal-based to begging with.

Appetizers

• Zucchini Boats with Ground Beef: This handheld appetizer combines well-raised ground beef with a low-toxicity carbohydrate option.
• Bacon-Wrapped Shrimp: If you can, we suggest sourcing wild-caught shrimp.

Main Dishes

• If you must stick to tradition and prepare a turkey, chicken, or pork dish, there are various options for purchasing cleaner meats.
• As mentioned earlier, we shared some recipes for gravy, cranberry sauce, and butternut squash soup in our article from Thanksgiving.
• Another simple side dish is glazed sweet potatoes. This recipe generally requires a saucepan or dutch oven but little prep time.
• Whipped squash takes about 30 minutes and only requires a few simple ingredients! All you need for this recipe is a julienne peeler, zucchini, and summer squash.

Desserts

• Animal-Based Eggnog: Animal-based eggnog can be made with eggs, raw milk/cream, maple syrup, and other simple ingredients.
• Cheesecake: With a few substitutions, you can also put together a delicious cheesecake. Instead of a traditional crust, line a pan with butter and organic dates.
• Homemade Raw Milk Ice Cream: One of our Animal-Based Community members shared her recipe for a homemade raw milk ice cream. It’s super simple and easily customizable.

Additional Animal-Based Recipes

Whether you're deep into the animal-based lifestyle or just exploring how to fuel your body with fewer plants and more powerful nutrients, this recipe roundup is for you. These dishes are simple, satisfying, and rich in the vitamins, minerals, and healthy fats your body was designed to thrive on.

DIY Grass-Fed Tallow (aka Liquid Gold)

One of the most affordable, versatile, and nutrient-rich animal fats you can use-for cooking and skincare. Plus, you can add these to your rotation of easy animal based diet recipes that prove eating well doesn’t need to be complicated.

Read also: Your Guide to an Animal-Based Diet

Ingredients

• Suet (I source mine fromWhite Oak Pastures - use code: BAE10)

Supplies

• Deep pot for rendering
• Fine strainer or cheesecloth
• Glass jars for storage

Instructions

1. Chop suet into small pieces.
2. Place in a pot over low heat and melt slowly, stirring occasionally.
3. Once fully rendered, strain the liquid tallow through a strainer or cheese cloth into jars.
4. Let it cool, then store either in the cupboard or refrigerator. Use for cooking, frying, or moisturizing. (Planning to use it as a moisturizer?

Hearty Carnivore Chili

A slow-cooked, bean-free, nightshade-free chili made for cozy days and batch cooking.

Ingredients

(all meats sourced from Shirttail Creek Farm - use code: BAE10)

• 1 package bacon (chopped) or pork bits
• ½ lb chuck roast, cubed
• ½ lb ground beef
• Optional: beef heart (cubed or chopped)
• 2 cups water

Instructions

In a Dutch oven or slow cooker (used on the stovetop), cook the chopped bacon or pork bits over medium-high heat until crispy.

Lemon Honey Chicken Legs

A sweet-and-savory dish that’s juicy, flavorful, and simple.

Ingredients

• 2 lbs pasture-raised chicken legs (White Oak Pastures - use code: BAE10)
• 1 tbsp honey
• Juice of ½ lemon
• 2 tbsp butter
• Salt, to taste

Instructions

1. Marinate chicken legs overnight with lemon juice and salt.
2. Heat butter in a pan over medium heat. Add chicken and cover.

Homemade Bone Broth

A mineral-rich elixir for gut health, joints, and immunity.

Read also: Are Animal Crackers Healthy?

Ingredients (makes 6-8 quarts)

• 4 lbs of soup bones (include at least 2 knuckle bones and I source mine from Northstar Bison - use code: BAE10)
• 2 gallons of filtered water
• 4 tbsp apple cider vinegar
• Salt, to taste

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Roast salted bones for 30 minutes.
2. Transfer bones to a stockpot with water and vinegar. Let it sit for 1 hour.
3. Bring to a boil, then simmer on low.
4. Skim foam in the first 2 hours.
5. Add salt.

Date + Plantain Energy Balls

An adult and kid-approved, nutrient-dense snack with whole ingredients and natural sweetness.

Ingredients

• 1.5 cups pitted Medjool dates
• 2 green plantains (fried) or 1 bag of plantain chips
• 3 tbsp ghee or coconut oil (plus more for frying)
• ½ cup dried berries (like golden berries or raisins)
• ½ tsp salt

Instructions

If using fresh plantains, fry until golden, smash, and fry again.

Homemade Animal-Based Tortilla Wraps

Flexible, grain-free wraps with just three ingredients.

Ingredients

• 1.5 cups plantain flour
• 1¼ cups warm water
• 2 eggs
• Pinch of salt

Instructions

1. Add flour to a bowl and slowly mix in warm water.
2. Add eggs and salt, mix until smooth.
3. Cover and let rest for 30 minutes.
4. Heat skillet, pour ¼ cup batter, and spread thin.
5. Cook 2-3 minutes per side.
6. Keep warm in a 200°F oven until ready to serve.

Perfect for tacos, breakfast burritos, or clean handheld meals-minus the junk. Consider this your no-stress animal based diet food list-every recipe delivers flavor and nutrients without compromise.

Lifestyle Considerations for Optimal Health

Diet is just a part of the equation, though. As important as it is to eat like our ancestors, it’s equally important to, within reason, live a lifestyle congruent with theirs.

Read also: A Guide to Animal Dietary Categories

1. Prioritize Sleep: Quality sleep is vital for our body to heal, recover, and build muscle. Our main suggestion is to ensure enough bone broth and connective tissue in the diet.
2. Engage in Physical Activity: If optimal health is what you are after, then it’s essential to perform physical activity daily. The minimum suggestion we give is two or three 15-minute walks pre/post-meals, as this can contribute to healthy blood glucose control (15).
3. Get Sunlight: Remember to get outside, play in the sun, and reconnect with nature. Exposure to direct sunlight and UV promotes Vitamin D and nitric oxide synthesis in the skin (16). Exposing your skin to the sun daily can also help your body enter its natural circadian rhythm cycle, which promotes sleep (18), recovery, muscle growth, and weight loss.
4. Manage Stress: Everyone experiences some levels of stress on a daily or weekly basis. This is entirely normal! We challenge everyone to engage in some stress management activity.
5. Practice Cold Therapy: It can also dramatically improve the immune system and vascular health (23, 24, 25, 26). The magic for vascular health comes with the expansion of blood vessels, production of growth factors, and delivery of nutrients within the micro capillaries (tiny blood vessels) that feed essential tissue. Cold therapy provides so many benefits to help strengthen the immune system and improve vascular health.

Navigating the Animal-Based Diet

Are you curious about the animal-based diet but need help figuring out where to start? There’s so much conflicting information out there when it comes to diet and lifestyle. Sifting through the noise and finding what works best for you can be incredibly confusing. The Carnivore Diet is a low or no-carb diet that primarily focuses on animal foods such as meat, eggs, and organs. A properly constructed, nose-to-tail, animal-based diet consists of high-quality meat, organs, fruit, honey, raw dairy (if tolerated) and eggs (checkout Angel Acres Farm for Low Pufa, corn and soy free, pasture raised eggs). These foods have been treasured throughout human history, and countless people have thrived on them!

At this point, you may be asking, what about vegetables? As Paul Saladino MD described throughout The Carnivore Code, many plant foods don’t want to be eaten. These compounds may contribute to autoimmunity, neurological issues, digestive issues, joint pain, and more.

A vital piece of the animal-based diet is avoiding vegetable oils that wreak havoc on the human body. This is a difficult task because they are everywhere within the modern Western diet. If you consume olive or avocado oil, make sure you purchase them from reputable sources.

Counting calories is not required, as our main focus tends to be macronutrients (protein, fat, and carbs). But if you wish to track your intake, Cronometer or MyFitnessPal are great tools to keep on hand. In most cases, you should aim for 1-1.2 grams of protein per pound of goal body weight. Your fats should ideally come from sources that contain stearic acid - a crucial fatty acid that will help turn those mitochondria “on” and shift them into a “fat-burning” mode. Regarding your fat and carbohydrate intake, if your total activity level is on the lower end, you might experiment with the lower end of the range, but if you are more active, you could try the higher end. * Please note: Those looking to correct metabolic dysfunction may benefit from 90-120g of carbohydrates daily (or less). Whole Foods Grocery Haul with Dr. Dr.

We routinely get asked about meal frequency and fasting on an animal-based diet. There’s no one size fits all approach for either. Meal frequency depends on many factors, such as activity level, schedule, and your individual goals. It can be challenging to dine at restaurants when following specific diets, especially when you’re seemingly the only one following that regimen. For starters, we suggest prioritizing a meat or seafood dish. Unfortunately, most restaurants use seed oils to prepare dishes, but you can ask to have your meal cooked in butter.

An additional piece of the equation is getting connective tissue for glycine to help balance the methionine found in muscle meat. Glycine is an amino acid that plays several roles in human physiology, such as promoting sleep quality and neurological functions (12). Most people find bone broth the easiest way to obtain glycine, but hydrolyzed collagen powder can also suffice. We suggest making your own bone broth in a pressure cooker (like an Instant Pot).

Next, calcium is often overlooked in carnivore or animal-based diets, as are other minerals like boron that concentrate in bones. Believe it or not, our ancestors ate bones (like those found in our Bone Matrix product) for calcium, and when cooked in a pressure cooker, the joint bones become soft enough for us to eat.

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