A film like this lives or dies on who’s willing to sit in front of the camera and put their name next to the words “600 burgers.” When I started making calls, I expected most people to say no. Most people said yes. This is the full roster, in roughly the order you meet them, and the one idea each of them left me with. These are my paraphrases of what they argued in the film, not quotations; go watch them make the case in their own words.
Dr. Michael Brandon, the subject
Mike is a chiropractic physician, a lifelong athlete, and the reason there is a film. He is the one who ate the burgers. What stuck with me from Mike is how quickly the experiment stopped being about willpower. By the second week the challenge wasn’t eating twenty burgers; it was eating them and still showing up to train, to work, to be a functional human being. His diary from the month became the spine of the book, 600 Burgers in 30 Days, and that’s where you’ll find the day-by-day version.
Dr. Dom D’Agostino
Dom is a research scientist whose career has been ketone metabolism: what happens when the body runs on fat instead of sugar, and what that does to the brain, to endurance and to disease. His theme in the film is precision. Ketosis is a measurable state, not a vibe, and the interesting question about Mike’s month was never “is meat good or bad” but “what is his body actually running on, and can we see it in the numbers.” He is also the person who made me care about the difference between a diet that sounds keto and one that measures keto.
Dr. Shawn Baker
If you’ve heard of the carnivore diet, you’ve heard of Shawn. Orthopedic surgeon, world-record rower, and the most visible advocate for a meat-based diet on the planet. His theme is confidence: the fear of red meat, in his telling, is decades of nutrition advice built on weak evidence, and a month of beef is not the danger people think it is. He was the calmest person on the set. We wrote up his side of the argument in Carnivore diet: Shawn Baker, MD and Exploring the carnivore diet with Dr. Baker.
Ron McKeefery PhD, CSCS*D
Ron is a strength and conditioning coach who has run programs for college and professional athletes for decades and holds a PhD on top of it. His theme is performance. He didn’t care about the labs as much as the rest of us; he cared whether Mike could still lift, run, and recover. Athletes, in Ron’s world, are the ultimate stress test for a diet, because you can’t hide a bad fuel source from a stopwatch. He’s also the reason we kept Mike training the whole month instead of resting.
Antonio Tarver Jr
A WBC NABF champion, a fighter from a fighting family, and the person in the film with the least patience for theory. Antonio’s theme is the body as evidence. Fighters eat for a reason: to make weight and to hit hard, and they find out fast whether a diet works. His take on a month of beef is blunt and practical, and it’s one of the scenes audiences bring up most at screenings.
Dr. Richard Shaker
Dr. Shaker is the physician who takes the labs seriously in the way you’d want your own doctor to. His theme is caution. Someone in the film had to be the one saying “watch the liver, watch the kidneys, watch the inflammation,” and he does it without theatrics. When the weekly panels came in, he was the person I wanted reading them. The section of the film where he walks through what the markers mean is the part I’d show to a skeptic first.
Jason Arntz
Jason is an IFBB Pro bodybuilder, which means he has spent his adult life manipulating food to change what his body looks like on a stage. His theme is discipline as a tool, not a virtue. Bodybuilders know things about protein, about fat, and about how the body responds to extremes that the rest of us learn by accident. He looked at Mike’s month the way a pro looks at a prep: what’s the plan, what’s the target, what’s the exit.
Seth Kaelin
Seth brought the perspective of someone living the diet rather than studying it, and his theme is sustainability. Anyone can do anything for thirty days with a camera on them. What happens on day 31, and day 365, is the question most diet content never answers. He’s the reason there’s a section of the film about what Mike would keep and what he’d drop.
Chantea Goetz PhD(s)
Chantea is a psychologist, and yes, she’s my wife, which is why she’s in the film: she was there for the whole thing and had a professional opinion about it. Her theme is the mind. Cravings, habit, identity, the way a person talks to himself on day 19 when he can’t face another patty. The physical experiment gets the attention, but the psychological one ran alongside it, and she’s the one who names it.
Ming Chen
Ming is the outside voice: the audience’s representative, the person asking the questions a normal viewer would ask, and the person who made the experts explain themselves in plain language. His theme is skepticism as a service. Every documentary about food has a point of view. Ming’s job was to push on ours.
How the roster came together
None of these people were paid to appear. I cold-emailed most of them with a one-line pitch, “a fit doctor is going to eat 600 burgers in 30 days and we’ll track his blood weekly, will you tell us what you expect to see,” and the ones who found that interesting said yes. A few said yes on the condition that we’d show the results even if they were wrong. We did. Dom’s interview was done around his research schedule. Shawn’s was filmed on the West Coast. Antonio’s was in a gym, between rounds. Ron’s was on a training floor, which is where he’s most honest. Dr. Shaker’s was in a clinic with the panels on the desk in front of him.
The disagreement you’ll see in the film wasn’t manufactured in the edit. It was there from the first day, because I deliberately asked people who would predict opposite outcomes. If you’re looking for the film where everyone nods along, this isn’t it, and that’s the compliment I’m proudest of.
And the crew who don’t get a headshot
Michael Brandon and Ryan Duddy produced it with me. Matthew Schultz wrote the music. Athena, Xander and Alila Goetz put up with a father who talked about burgers for two years. The premiere was May 8, 2025 in Red Bank, New Jersey, and half the people on this list were in the room.
What they agreed on
Almost nothing, which is why the film works. The one thing everyone signed off on was the method: measure it, measure it often, and let the numbers argue. What the numbers said is the last act of the film, and I’ll leave it there.
Ten people put their reputations next to this experiment. Watch The Keto Project on Amazon and hear them make their cases in their own words.
Frequently asked questions
Who is in The Keto Project?
Dr. Michael Brandon (the subject), Dr. Dom D’Agostino, Dr. Shawn Baker, Ron McKeefery PhD CSCS*D, Antonio Tarver Jr, Dr. Richard Shaker, Jason Arntz, Seth Kaelin, Chantea Goetz PhD(s), Ming Chen and director Jim Goetz.
Is Dr. Shawn Baker in The Keto Project?
Yes. The carnivore-diet advocate and orthopedic surgeon is one of the film’s main expert voices.
Who directed The Keto Project?
Jim Goetz directed and produced it, with producers Michael Brandon and Ryan Duddy. Music by Matthew Schultz.
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