When a man in his 40s turned up with yellow lumps on his palms after eight months of eating almost nothing but animal foods, his cholesterol reading above 1,000 milligrams per deciliter made headlines. Since then, a quieter set of studies has asked a more useful question: what happens to the cholesterol of ordinary people who eat this way?
The answer so far points in one direction. In a small German study, median LDL cholesterol, the so-called bad cholesterol, rose by nearly 100 points after people switched to a carnivore diet. And a scoping review published in January 2026 concluded that, based on current evidence, sticking with the diet long term cannot be recommended.
