I went off protocol and ate meat. While traveling in Australia, I tried to fit in with social norms and ate animal protein for the first time in six years. Here’s what happened… It changed my gut microbiome: + good bacteria dropped 61% (the fiber-eating kind… Roseburia and Agathobacter) + fat handling, bile tolerant bacteria jumped 2.5x (+154%) It made for a good experiment. To be clear, I am not against meat. Plenty of omnivores have perfectly healthy microbiomes too. This only shows that in me, after six years of legumes, pea protein, hemp protein, vegetables, extra virgin olive oil, berries, nuts, seeds and collagen peptides, one week of animal food left this unfavorable signature. The scientific details of what we learned: 1) Gut bacteria digest fiber to make butyrate and SCFAs, which repair your gut lining and turn down inflammation. I had 61% less which means my gut wall was possibly more vulnerable and I had less protection against inflammation. 2) The animal food sources had my body generate more bile which acts a bit like a detergent, killing off sensitive good bacteria and enabling tougher, tolerant ones to take over. There's some early evidence these shifts can happen within a day of eating animal food. TO BE CLEAR: you eat what you want. I support you. I am not trying to get you to eat what I eat. I’m sharing experiment results from measuring my body.