Keto vs Carnivore: What the 600-Burger Experiment Tested

“Is it keto or carnivore?” is the second most common question I get about the film, right after “where can I watch it.” The honest answer is: it’s both, on purpose, and the difference between them is a big part of what the 600-burger month was testing. This post is my attempt to untangle the two words without taking a side, because the film’s job was to measure, not to preach.

Two words, two ideas

Keto is about a metabolic state. Keep carbohydrates low enough for long enough and the body switches from running on glucose to running on fat and the ketones the liver makes from it. You can be keto on a diet full of vegetables, nuts, oils and cheese. The defining feature is what you leave out, sugar and starch, not what you put in.

Carnivore is about a food list. Meat, fish, eggs, sometimes dairy, nothing from a plant. Most people on a carnivore diet end up in ketosis, because there’s almost nothing to make glucose from, but ketosis is a side effect of the list, not the goal. Dr. Shawn Baker, the most recognizable carnivore advocate in the world and one of our experts, would tell you the point is removing what he considers the problem foods, not chasing a ketone number.

So a keto person asks “am I in ketosis?” and a carnivore person asks “did I eat only animals?” They overlap most of the time. They are not the same question. I wrote a plainer version of the keto side in Keto diet secrets revealed, and the carnivore side in Achieving ketosis on a carnivore diet.

Where the 600-burger month sat

Dr. Mike ate twenty fast-food burgers a day for thirty days: beef, cheese, low-carb toppings, no bun, no fries, no soda. By the food-list definition that’s very close to carnivore. By the metabolic definition it was designed to be keto, and we checked ketones through the month to see whether it actually was.

Here’s the part that made it an experiment rather than a diet demo. Nobody on a clean carnivore diet eats twenty fast-food patties a day. The sodium, the processing, whatever is in the cheese and the sauces: those are variables the carnivore argument doesn’t usually have to defend, because the carnivore argument is usually made over a ribeye. We deliberately put the meat-is-fine argument in the least flattering place it could be tested. If the numbers held up on fast-food beef, that says something a steak dinner can’t.

What each camp predicted

Before day one, the people who lean keto and the people who lean carnivore made different predictions, and that gap is one of the threads of the film.

• The ketone-first view, closest to Dr. Dom D’Agostino’s research world, wanted to know whether that much protein would keep Mike in ketosis at all. Protein can be turned into glucose, and twenty burgers is a lot of protein. If ketones dropped, the “keto” label on the month would be a technicality.
• The food-list view, closest to Dr. Baker, expected the lipids and inflammation to look better than the fast-food reputation, because beef isn’t the villain in that framework and the buns, fries and soda were gone.
• The clinical view, Dr. Richard Shaker’s chair, didn’t care about the label. Liver, kidneys, inflammation, weekly. Whatever you call the diet, the organs report on it.

Everyone got something right and something wrong. That’s as far as I’ll go.

What the month could and couldn’t prove

Let me be careful, because this is where the internet gets sloppy. One person, thirty days, is a case study. It is not a trial. It can’t tell you what a year of this does, and it can’t tell you what it would do to someone who starts out metabolically sick instead of fit. We say this in the film and I’ll say it here.

What it can do is put numbers on a claim that usually gets argued with adjectives. “Fast food will wreck you” and “meat is fine” are both slogans until somebody draws blood every week. We drew blood every week. The full list of what we measured is in what happened to Dr. Mike’s bloodwork.

Keto vs carnivore in daily life, from the people who lived it

Mike went into the month eating a fairly standard low-carb diet with vegetables. He came out with a strong opinion about which parts he’d keep. Seth Kaelin, who lives a meat-based diet rather than studying it, was the voice for “what happens on day 31.” Chantea Goetz, a psychologist, tracked the part of the experiment neither camp talks about much: what the restriction does to your head. The first week’s headaches and the electrolyte fixes are covered in headaches and ketosis and, from a different angle, in why electrolytes on keto matter more than fat in week one.

Why we didn’t just pick one

A cleaner experiment would have been a pure carnivore month on good beef, or a textbook keto month with vegetables and oils, and I’d have had a simpler film to sell. I didn’t want simpler. The people arguing about these diets online mostly agree that sugar and starch are the problem; they split on whether the animal foods are the solution or just a bystander, and on whether it matters how processed the meat is. Fast-food burgers with the bun removed sit right on that fault line. It’s the one meal both camps have an opinion about and neither camp would choose. That made it the right test, and the least comfortable one for everybody involved, Mike most of all.

So which one is the film for?

Both, and for the people who think both camps are nuts. If you’re keto, you’ll watch a month-long stress test of the “protein kicks you out of ketosis” worry. If you’re carnivore, you’ll watch your argument defended on the worst beef in America. If you’re a skeptic, you’ll watch a clinician read the panels and decide for yourself. I made it so all three could sit in the same room and argue afterward. At the premiere in Red Bank, they did.

The three mistakes people make with these words

Calling any high-fat meal “keto.” A bacon cheeseburger with the bun and a large fries is not keto. Ketosis is a measurable state, and you are either in it or you aren’t. Mike’s month was designed around the measurement, not the vibe.

Assuming carnivore means grass-fed ribeye. The carnivore argument is usually made with the best beef available. We made it with the worst, on purpose, because that is what the argument actually has to survive if it’s going to matter to people who eat at a drive-through.

Reading one blood panel as a verdict. Cholesterol in particular moves around on a low-carb diet in ways a single draw can’t capture, which is why we drew weekly and why the experts read the trend, not the snapshot. Our post on why keto and cholesterol numbers rise together goes deeper on that one.

A short glossary, for anyone lost

• Ketosis: the state where the body runs mainly on fat and ketones instead of glucose.
• Ketones: molecules the liver makes from fat, measurable in blood, breath and urine.
• Keto diet: eating in a way that keeps you in ketosis, usually by keeping carbohydrates very low.
• Carnivore diet: eating only animal foods; ketosis is a common result but not the definition.
• Gluconeogenesis: the body making glucose from protein, the reason very high protein intake can lower ketones.

Frequently asked questions

Is The Keto Project a keto or carnivore diet film?

Both. The 600-burger month was meat-only by food list (carnivore) and designed to keep Dr. Mike in ketosis (keto); ketones were checked through the month.

What is the difference between keto and carnivore?

Keto is defined by a metabolic state (ketosis) reached by keeping carbs very low. Carnivore is defined by a food list (animal foods only); ketosis is a common side effect.

Can eating a lot of protein stop ketosis?

The body can make glucose from protein, so very high protein intake can lower ketones. Whether twenty burgers a day did that is one of the questions the film tracks.