The Dark Nutrition Crowd Is Ditching Vegetables for Raw Buffalo Brains

The Trend: One influencer eats everything raw, including buffalo brains and the occasional roadkill rabbit. Another credits raw egg yolks for her great skin and hair. Welcome to dark nutrition, where the main premise is that most of what society has told us about food is all wrong. Most followers of the trend go to podcasts and social media for advice and distrust doctors and public health officials. So even previously undisputed advice (think “eat your vegetables”) is up for debate.

What People Are Saying: The movement has surged over the past five years alongside vaccine hesitancy and the Make America Healthy Again movement. Many followers turn to it after chronic illnesses and nagging symptoms that medication didn’t seem to fix, and they trust an approach where personal experiments show better results than big studies.

What to Know: Experts agree that nutrition science is tough to pin down. We do know plenty, however. For example, there’s lots of evidence that vegetables are broadly good for us and raw meat carries a serious risk of bacterial contamination. The attraction to dark nutrition may come down to wanting clear answers in a field where the honest response is often “it depends.”