The Original Carnivore Family: Charlene Andersen on Going Viral Before "Carnivore" Was Even a Word

TakeawaysCharlene Andersen has followed a carnivore diet since 1998, and specifically an all-red-meat diet, after discovering it was the only thing that fully resolved a lifetime of health issues including asthma, severe allergies, trichotillomania, amenorrhea, degenerative disc disease, and chronic Lyme disease.Charlene's family went viral in 2014 and 2015 after being interviewed as one of the original zero-carb, all-meat families online, and the backlash that followed, including tabloid interest and a Child Protective Services threat, led them to go quiet about their diet for nearly a decade before Charlene stepped back into the community after meeting Amanda at Meat Stock.In this episode of Sizzle, Amanda Radke sits down with Charlene Andersen, a carnivore since 1998 whose health journey started long before she ever knew there was a word for what she was doing. Charlene walks through a childhood defined by chronic illness: severe allergies and asthma from infancy, a formula reaction as a newborn, trichotillomania that started in second grade, cystic acne and amenorrhea as a teenager, and degenerative disc disease diagnosed in her twenties. She tried the medical system for years, including allergy shots that repeatedly left her partially paralyzed, before she and her husband Joe decided to experiment with an all-meat diet in August 1998, inspired by old-school bodybuilders and Hollywood stars who used steak-and-egg diets to perform at their best.What started as trial and error turned into a six-year process of narrowing down exactly what worked for Charlene's body, eventually landing on a strict all-red-meat diet with no ground meat, no pork, and no chicken. The changes were dramatic: her cycles returned, she carried and delivered two healthy babies, her back pain and sciatic nerve pain resolved, and her trichotillomania stopped. Charlene and her family, including her husband and two sons, went on to become part of the earliest online carnivore community, Zeroing In On Health, and were featured in a 2015 interview that went viral. The attention turned hostile fast: tabloids wanted the story, a Japanese TV crew wanted to film them, and Child Protective Services was called on the family. They made the decision to go quiet to protect their kids, staying involved in the background of the movement as it grew around figures like Dr. Shawn Baker, whose interest in "the guy in the picture" turned out to be Charlene's husband, Joe.Presented by Redmond Real Salt and Bid on BeefUse code RADKE for $10 off your next All American Angus Beef order at www.BidOnBeef.comSave on Redmond Real Salt with code RADKE at https://shop.redmondagriculture.com/Check out Amanda's agricultural children's books here: https://amandaradke.com/collections/amandas-booksLearn more about Bulletproofing Your Direct-To-Consumer Beef Enterprise: https://amandaradke.com/products/bulletproof-your-beef-business