Some parents are swapping puréed fruits and vegetables, oatmeal and yogurt for butter, bone broth, sardines and chicken liver as part of a controversial new "carnivore baby" trend – but experts are urging caution.
As carnivore and protein-packed diets gain popularity among adults, many of whom are rejecting ultra-processed foods, some are passing them on to their kids. Some doctors are even sharing that they feed their babies meat-forward meals, The Wall Street Journal recently reported.
Facebook groups are catering to carnivore families and parents are sharing tips on school lunches – rotisserie chicken, pork rinds and hard-boiled eggs among them. Meanwhile, others seek insight on trying to conceive while eating only meat.
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Dariya Quenneville, a mother in Ontario, Canada, told the publication that she started feeding her daughter raw egg yolks and puréed chicken liver as soon as she could eat solid foods and then moved on to sardines, bone broth ice pops, leg of lamb, beef heart and tongue.
Lorraine Bonkowski, a registered dietitian from Michigan, and her one-year-old daughter are both on carnivore diets, Bonkowski told The Wall Street Journal.
The little girl licks butter off a spoon, gets a bottle full of bone broth and uses her four teeth to gum ribeye steak.
Bonkowski said she introduced fruit to her daughter's diet because her baby was getting constipated from all the meat.
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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends feeding children over 12 months a variety of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, proteins and dairy products.
While the carnivore trend has been firing up – U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recently shared that he follows it – others have been pushing it for years.
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In 2021, Dr. Robert Cywes, a Florida-based pediatrician, and his wife, Janae, said in a YouTube video that they started giving their son meat at 4 months old.
His first real meal, they said, was a ribeye steak.
"From a functional perspective, from a milestone perspective, he's right on target," Cywes claimed at the time.
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Dr. Shawn Baker, the Washington-based author of the book "The Carnivore Diet," boasted in a YouTube video last year that his baby ate a carnivore diet for six months, was walking at 10 months old and grew to be "strong and tall."
Some doctors claim the practice has been used for centuries.
"This is actually the original way that humans fed their babies 100 years ago, 500 years ago, 5,000 years ago," Dr. Ken Berry, a family physician in Tennessee, told Fox News' Dana Perino on "America's Newsroom."
"The first food for a baby, when it was ready to wean off the breast, was meat … gnawing on a bone," Berry said.
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Meat ensures that babies get certain nutrients, vitamins, minerals, fatty acids and amino acids, he added, slamming puffs and other kids' snacks as "junk."
However, Berry did recommend moderation by pairing meat with whole foods like berries.
Fox News' senior medical analyst Dr. Marc Siegel said introducing kids to meat gets them plenty of protein and iron, yet without fruits and vegetables, the diet can become an "addiction."
"It's a high-inflammation diet, which means later on, when you get to be an adult, you end up with heart disease, you end up with cancer, you end up with diabetes and you end up with obesity," Siegel said on "The Faulkner Focus."
"This is a very bad diet to get addicted to as a kid," he said.
Lauren Manaker, a registered dietitian nutritionist and mom in South Carolina, told Fox News Digital that while the carnivore diet provides "many options" that are "fantastic for babies," she said it "isn't ideal for little ones."
"Babies need a variety of nutrients to grow and thrive, and a diet that cuts out or limits plant-based foods like fruits, veggies and grains can leave some big nutritional gaps," she cautioned.
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