Everyone remembers the burgers. Six hundred of them, twenty a day, thirty days, at fast-food counters across New Jersey. What people forget is that the burgers were never the point. The blood was the point. Without the labs, the whole thing is a stunt. With the labs, it’s an experiment.
This post is about what we measured, why we measured it weekly instead of just before and after, and what the experts told us to expect before Dr. Mike ate the first one. I’m not going to tell you how it ended. The final panel is the last act of the film and it should be seen, not read.
Who was on the table
Dr. Michael Brandon is a chiropractic physician who trains like an athlete. He was lean going in, with a clean baseline panel, which is exactly why we picked him. If you run this on someone who is already metabolically sick, every change gets blamed on the burgers or excused by the starting point. Mike gave us a clean slate, and he gave us informed consent from a clinician who understood what he was signing up for. Nobody sane signs off on this. Mike did.
The rules of the month
- Twenty fast-food burgers a day, thirty days, six hundred total.
- No buns, no fries, no soda, no dessert. Meat, cheese, and the toppings that fit a keto or carnivore framework.
- Water, coffee, and electrolytes allowed.
- Training continued. Mike did not become a couch experiment.
- A full blood panel before day one, every week during, and again after day thirty.
The “keto” in The Keto Project is not a marketing word. The meal design kept carbohydrates low enough that Mike was expected to be in ketosis for most of the month. Whether he stayed there, and what that did to the other numbers, is one of the threads the film follows. If you want the primer on the diet itself, Achieving ketosis on a carnivore diet is the place to start.
What a “burger” meant in practice
Because the rules matter, here is what a burger was and wasn’t. It was a fast-food beef patty with cheese, ordered without the bun, with whatever low-carb toppings the restaurant offered. It was not a homemade grass-fed patty on a plate. We chose fast food on purpose. If Mike had eaten thirty days of butcher-shop beef, every critic would have said “of course he was fine, that’s not what people actually eat.” Fast food is what people actually eat, and the whole argument of the film is about whether the beef is the problem or the bun, the fries and the soda are. Our early post on pink slime came out of exactly that question: what is really in the patty?
Twenty a day also meant logistics. Mike ate in the car, at his desk between patients, and at counters where the staff started to recognize him by week two. Some of the best scenes in the film are those counters. Nobody had a script for the moment a cashier asks why you’re back for the fourth time today.
What we actually measured
I want to be precise here, because “we did bloodwork” gets thrown around loosely. These are the categories of markers that went into the weekly draws. The specific values, and how they moved, are in the film and in the book.
Lipids
Total cholesterol, LDL, HDL and triglycerides. This is the panel everyone with an opinion about meat wants to see. It’s also the one most likely to be misread on a low-carb diet, which is why we asked the experts to interpret it on camera rather than leaving you with a number and a scary color. I wrote more about why these numbers move together on keto in Why keto and cholesterol numbers rise together.
Glucose and insulin markers
Fasting glucose and the related markers that tell you whether the body is handling sugar well. On a diet with almost no sugar in it, these were expected to stay quiet. Expected is the operative word.
Ketones
The confirmation that the diet was doing what the design said it would. Ketone readings are how you separate “he ate a lot of meat” from “he was in ketosis.”
Liver and kidney function
Liver enzymes and kidney markers. If you eat twenty burgers a day, this is where a physician looks first for trouble. Dr. Richard Shaker walks through these in the film with the care they deserve. Our earlier post on healthy liver tips covers the background.
Inflammation
Markers of systemic inflammation. Fast food has a reputation, and this is the panel that tests whether the reputation is about the meat or about everything served next to it.
Body composition and performance
Not blood, but measured all the same: weight, body composition, and how Mike performed in training. Ron McKeefery, a strength coach with a PhD and decades of athletes behind him, kept an eye on this side. Antonio Tarver Jr, a WBC NABF champion, had his own opinion about what a fighter’s body does on a month of beef.
Why weekly, not just before and after
A before-and-after panel gives you two dots and invites you to draw a straight line between them. Real bodies don’t move in straight lines. Some markers spike in week one and settle. Some drift for three weeks and then jump. If we had only drawn blood on day zero and day thirty, we would have missed the shape of the month, and the shape is the story.
Weekly draws also kept Mike safe. Every panel went to a physician before the next week started. If something had gone badly wrong, we would have stopped, and I would have made a very different film. I’m telling you this because people assume a documentary like this is reckless. It was closer to a supervised trial with a camera crew.
What the experts expected
Before day one, we asked each of them the same question: what do you think the labs will show?
Dr. Dom D’Agostino, who has spent his research career on ketone metabolism, was interested in whether the sheer volume of protein and fat would keep Mike in ketosis or push him out of it, and what that would mean for the rest of the panel.
Dr. Shawn Baker, the most visible name in the carnivore world, was the least surprised by the premise. Meat, in his framework, is not the problem, and he expected the month to look better than the fast-food label suggested. His conversation with us is in Carnivore diet: Shawn Baker, MD.
Others were more cautious. Twenty fast-food burgers a day is not a steak dinner. Processing, sodium, and what’s in the cheese and sauces are variables the clean-carnivore argument doesn’t have to answer for. That tension between the people who said “it’ll be fine” and the people who said “watch the liver” is the reason there’s a film at all.
What it felt like from the inside
The labs tell you what happened. The diary tells you how it felt. The headaches in the first week, the crash, the fixes we tried, and the moment Mike stopped dreading the next burger are all in the book, 600 Burgers in 30 Days, in his own words. Our post on headaches and ketosis came directly out of that first week.
What I can tell you without spoiling it
- Every panel came back. Nobody had to stop the experiment.
- Not every marker moved the way the internet would have predicted, in either direction.
- The final panel changed at least one expert’s mind on camera.
That’s where I stop. The last twenty minutes of the film are the results, read by the people qualified to read them, and it’s the part I’m proudest of.
If you want the numbers, they’re in the film, not in a blog post. Rent The Keto Project on Amazon and watch the final labs come in.
Frequently asked questions
How often was Dr. Mike’s blood tested?
A full panel before day one, once every week during the 30 days, and again after day 30. Every panel was reviewed by a physician before the next week started.
What markers were measured?
Lipids (total cholesterol, LDL, HDL, triglycerides), glucose and insulin-related markers, ketones, liver enzymes, kidney function, inflammation markers, plus weight, body composition and training performance.
Did he eat the buns and fries?
No. Twenty fast-food burgers a day without buns, fries, soda or dessert, inside a keto and carnivore framework.
What were the final results?
They’re the last act of the film and the closing chapters of the book. This post deliberately doesn’t spoil them.
The whole experiment is in the film. 600 burgers, 30 days, every blood test — and the ending we never post.
Watch The Keto Project on Amazon