Max Lugavere

Max Lugavere is an American anti-vegan activistDebunking Netflix's Vegan Documentary Series: 'You Are What You Eat" with Luke Cook. youtube.com.https://x.com/maxlugavere/status/1708234045534953683 and low-carbohydrate high fat diet advocate who promotes misinformation and pseudoscience about nutrition.#397: Dietary Nitrates & Nitrites. sigmanutrition.com. Lugavere campaigns against grains, seed oils, sugar and anything "processed" to the point of dietary extremism. One of his odd claims is that corn, rice and wheat have fuelled the obesity crisis in the United States and are responsible for increasing Alzheimer's disease risk.Genius Foods Summary. quickread.com.The Genius Life. Max Lugavere.https://getwellbe.com/max-lugavere-dementia-prevention/
Lugavere has identified as a low-carb and paleo diet advocate. In his book Genius Foods he promoted a ketogenic diet.https://archive.is/0u308 In 2024, he re-packaged his low-carb diet pretending to be "evidence-based". Lugavere describes plant-based, vegan and vegetarian diets as a "scam".Max Lugavere: The Problem W/ Plant Based Diets, How to Prevent Disease, The US Food Industry & The Importance Of Protein. podtail.com.https://x.com/maxlugavere/status/1619013672327872517https://x.com/maxlugavere/status/1653795244205576193
He has promoted his dietary pseudoscience on the Dr. Oz Show.https://pt-br.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1667959390177147https://pt-br.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1596288230677597https://pt-br.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1579324702373950 Lugavere is a promoter of , a type of alternative medicine pseudoscience.What is Functional Medicine? Interview with Jeffrey Bland. youtube.com. He describes himself as a "science journalist".https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/317-cutting-edge-strategies-to-boost-brain-health-and/id1379050662?i=1000624370620 Pseudoscientists featured on Lugavere's podcast include Shawn Baker, James DiNicolantonio and Paul Saladino.
==Low-carb diet advocacy==
Lugavere has 1000s of posts on social media going back a decade promoting a meat-based and paleo diet. He used to tag all his posts with "#lchf #keto #lowcarb #ketogenic #lowcarbhighfat #paleo #ketosis #primal #ketodiet #paleodiet #carnivore #beef #meat #paleolifestyle #atkins".https://archive.is/pRqPe
Similar to Jason Fung, Lugavere has heavily promoted intermittent fasting.https://archive.is/8xC2k He spends his time attacking sugary foods, fruit juice and vegetable oils.https://archive.is/wwQihhttps://archive.is/BGCpyhttps://archive.is/JVcazhttps://archive.is/oxsFqhttps://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1754924181480667&set=a.1444985859141169https://pt-br.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1454427994863622
In 2023, Lugavere described his five favourite foods as beef liver, eggs, sardines, dark leafy greens and nutritional yeast.https://archive.is/ajAni He claims to eat 4 eggs a day.Why I EAT 4 EGGS A Day & Why You SHOULD TOO! | Max Lugavere. youtube.com.
On his website, Lugavere claims that "ketogenic/paleo/low carb/Atkins/Bulletproof/LCHF diets" are "healthful". He claims incorrectly that "saturated fat... has been largely exonerated, at least for the general population".5 Reasons You May (Still) Want to Chill With the Saturated Fat. maxlugavere.com.
===Anti-grain pseudoscience===
Lugavere opposes refined and whole grain consumption which has tried to link to Alzheimer's disease and obesity risk. He has argued on Vinnie Tortorich's podcast that grains are bad for brain health and increase memory loss.Grains and Memory Loss with Max Lugavere. vinnietortorich.com. He didn't provide any good evidence for these claims. Contrary to what Lugavere claims there is a consistent finding in the epidemiological literature that shows whole grains are associated with a slower rate of cognitive decline.https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/pcn.13509https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37993270/https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2475299123207593
He has spoken at events with other low-carb pseudoscientists such as David Perlmutter and promotes his Grain Brain nonsense.https://pt-br.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1670461009926985https://pt-br.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1602242476748839 On his own podcast, Lugavere has interviewed William Davis another anti-grain crackpot who bizarrely claims whole grains destroy people's heart health.The Genius Life 93: How Wheat, Grains, and Sugar Are Destroying Your Heart | William Davis, MD. maxlugavere.com.
Lugavere has cited a meta-analysis of short-term trials to suggest there is no positive health outcome data for whole grains.Max Lugavere on Foods that Prevent Alzehimer's & Other Ways to Prevent Dementia. getwellbe.com. However, the meta-analysis only looked at cardiovascular disease and the author's concluded the trials had a "high risk of bias with small sample sizes and relatively short-term interventions, and the overall quality of the evidence was low".https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28836672/ A consistent finding from reviews of epidemiological studies is that whole grain consumption is associated with a decreased risk of colon cancer.https://www.bmj.com/content/343/bmj.d6617https://www.aicr.org/cancer-prevention/food-facts/whole-grains/https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/319338https://wcrf.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Colorectal-cancer-report.pdf
===Anti-seed oil pseudoscience===
Similar to others from the low-carb community, Lugavere opposes the consumption of seed oils as they are processed. He claims without providing any evidence that seed oils are "cancer causing".https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IiTZRfB_JDMhttps://www.instagram.com/p/CkbLKFtA-VG/[https://www.instagram.com/maxlugavere/reel/CmZp8qJAiEd/
Lugavere describes canola oil as "very damaging" to health as it is a "highly industrialized" chemical. He goes as far to say it shouldn't be classified as a food, it is only a "food-like product".Deadly Fats Vs. Healthy Fats & Essential Brain Nutrients - With Guest Max Lugavere. youtube.com. In reality, there is no evidence from the medical literature that canola oil is harmful for health. Reviews have found that it is beneficial on the lipid profile and improves cardiometabolic risk factors.https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30381009/https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33127255/ Contrary to what Lugavere claims, there is no evidence that canola oil causes cancer. Leading health organizations around the world recommend canola oil as part of a heart healthy diet.https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/CIR.0000000000000510http://www.australianoilseeds.com/__data/assets/pdf_file/0010/8893/Canola_and_Cancer_-_The_Facts_May_2012.pdf
===Carnivore diet===
 
Although he doesn't practice it himself, Lugavere is a supporter of the carnivore diet. He interviewed Shawn Baker on his podcast and promotes his pseudoscience on Twitter.https://x.com/maxlugavere/status/1769760412830929132https://x.com/maxlugavere/status/1728245876555223360https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0G6b1aVam28
==Anti-veganism==
Lugavere firmly opposes vegan and vegetarian diets but doesn't understand the definition of these terms. He says incorrectly that his mother was vegetarian as she "rarely" consumed chicken and fish.https://archive.is/Cvvdk She was still eating chicken and fish so she was not a vegetarian by definition. Lugavere spends time on his social media accounts attacking vegans and what he calls "vegan propaganda".https://archive.is/VB43e
He has described veganism as a "cult" and a "scam". Lugavere also criticizes plant-based diets in general claiming they are based on ultra-processed foods.https://twitter.com/maxlugavere/status/1644757755448926208https://archive.is/rs8Tt He also says the vegan community are promoting ultra-processed foods.https://twitter.com/maxlugavere/status/1645858982635143168 Lugavere's anti-vegan tweets are promoted by carnivore diet advocates such as Shawn Baker.https://twitter.com/SBakerMD/status/1644850082624475136
He has described vegans giving cats and dogs a plant-based diet as "animal abuse".https://twitter.com/maxlugavere/status/1702428318010872147https://twitter.com/maxlugavere/status/1781780297954074772 He also says parents giving children a vegan diet is "child abuse".https://twitter.com/maxlugavere/status/1708232308900159555
He claims that the American College of Lifestyle Medicine is a "vegetarian organization" and its journal is not trustworthy.https://twitter.com/maxlugavere/status/1750581647802798581
==Misunderstanding of evidence based-medicine==
Lugavere misunderstands how evidence-based medicine works. To back up his claims, he will often cite a single animal study or cohort study. He has made many unreliable claims about diet and chronic disease risk:
*Consuming saturated fat slows down aging.
*Grains increase memory loss.
*Plant-based diets increase dementia risk.
*Red meat does not increase cancer risk and the red-meat cancer connection is a "myth".The Meat Cancer Myth by Max Lugavere. Archived.
*Seed oils cause cancer.
*Stearic acid is beneficial to "overall health".
*Creatine from red meat decreases cancer risk and this debunks the evidence that red meat increases risk.https://archive.is/4mlnu
*Eating an egg a day will keep the doctor away.https://www.facebook.com/MaxLugavere/posts/an-egg-a-day-keeps-the-doctor-away-in-one-2020-meta-analysis-titled-egg-consumpt/575762470580592/
*Fresh fruit juice and smoothies are "not healthy" as they are "sugar bombs".https://www.facebook.com/reel/590335826245277https://x.com/maxlugavere/status/1015704623867285504?lang=en-GBMax Lugavere. chasejarvis.com.
Lugavere will often cite a single animal model or case study and then make sweeping statements about chronic disease risk. He has been described as a "naïve believer in anything that has a study behind it".Brain Health: Max Lugavere and the Bait-and-Switch Maneuver. mcgill.ca. There are many examples of this:
 
Lugavere ignores the for causation. Consistent results from many different studies including Mendelian randomization studies are needed to make judgements about disease risk. Epidemiologists do not make causal inferences from one study. Alan Flanagan a nutritional scientist and member of the Medical, Scientific and Research Committee of Heart UK has commented that Lugavere misunderstands nutritional epidemiology and much of his content is unreliable.
==Opposition to plastic==
Lugavere is opposed to any food contained in plastic. He claims that drinking from plastic cups is "toxic".
Although microplastics have been found in many foods, at present it is not possible to quantify health risks due to microplastics because dose-response and toxicity assessments are not available. Much more research is needed. Lugavere's statement is not evidence-based but based on fear-mongering to get social media clicks.
==Podcast==
Lugavere is the host of The Genius Life, a podcast that has featured all kinds of functional medicine, low-carb pseudoscientists and cholesterol denialists such as:
==Re-inventing his low-carb diet as "evidence-based"==
Since February 2024, Lugavere began denying his decade of online posts advocating low-carb and paleo diets and now claims to be "evidence-based" and not promote any particular diet.
This is despite the fact his 2018 book Genius Foods advocates a ketogenic diet and he has 1000s of posts promoting low-carb dieting. 
This grift has been seen recently with other low-carb and paleo diet influencers such as Steven Gundry, Mark Hyman and Thomas DeLauer. The keto community has become oversaturated with clone influencers so they are now repackaging their pseudoscience under a new guise.
==References==
Category:Authors
Category:Carnivore diet promoters
Category:Food woo promoters
Category:Living people
Category:Low-carb fanatics