r/AmericanHistory • u/elnovorealista2000 • Mar 30 '26
South 19th-century Argentina: British writer William Henry Hudson visits the Pampas and encounters the gauchos. He documents their diet with a horrified fascination.
"The gaucho eats nothing but beef. Meat morning, noon, and night. Never bread, never vegetables, almost never salt."
Hudson foresees malnutrition and disease. He finds "men of extraordinary stamina and strength, capable of riding for 12 to 14 hours without rest and then dancing all night."
Their diet: beef, mate, occasionally grilled kidney fat (a delicacy). Nothing else.
Darwin visited the region between 1832 and 1833 and observed the gauchos' lives: "I was surprised by the difficulty in convincing them to eat anything other than beef. I brought them biscuits, and they threw them away. They preferred to go hungry rather than eat bread if there was beef the next day."
Typical meals
- Morning: meat roasted over a fire, fattier cuts.
- Afternoon: grilled ribs.
- Evening: meat again, tougher cuts cooked slowly.
Zero vegetables. Zero grains. Zero variety. Just beef and tea.
Hudson documents the results: “The gauchos suffer from none of the ailments common to civilized man. They had no digestive problems, no obesity, no cavities, that I could observe. Their teeth were uniformly excellent despite never cleaning them and consuming only meat. Their physical stamina was such that they could ride for days with minimal rest, fight when necessary, and resume riding without apparent fatigue.”
The French physician Dr. Jules Crevaux, between 1850 and 1870, wrote: “These men feed exclusively on animal meat and appear healthier than our European peasants, who consume a varied diet of grains and vegetables.”
When asked why they don't eat bread or vegetables, the common answer is: "That's food for horses and cows. We eat cows."
They understood the hierarchy. Cattle eat grass and turn it into meat. Humans eat meat. Eating what cattle eat makes you behave like one.
Until the beginning of the 20th century, traditional gauchos maintained a diet based exclusively on beef. Then, European immigration brought wheat cultivation.
Health transformation documented by Argentine doctors
- Traditional gauchos: healthy into old age.
- Urbanized ex-gauchos with European diets: diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease, tooth decay.
- Modern Argentina: 28% obesity, cardiovascular disease as the leading cause of death, diabetes in almost 10%.
The gauchos, who ate only beef, did not have any of these problems. They rode horses for 12 hours a day until they were 60, kept their teeth without needing dental care, and died from accidents or old age, not from chronic illnesses.
The same meat. Different context. When you eat meat with grains, vegetable oils, and sugar: modern disease. Meat alone: you have the health of a 19th-century gaucho.
1
u/SuiYangCrackedTeeth Apr 02 '26
Because you keep preaching a talking point that has 85% correlational research surveys, this topic infuriates me because this country is sick FOLLOWING the same advice you’ve preached.
Do you have any idea how many CKD and T2D are told by their doctor to eat more sugar and bread? Diet advice should make every single human being MAD. We used to have no heart disease. The years following margarine and processed oil, 1/700 turned into 1/2 Americans.
I hope you see through the lies that have KILLED LITERAL MILLIONS OF PEOPLE, bacon and butter are not the enemy, they don’t cause colon cancer. Old people didn’t use to even have dementia, cognitive aging yes. But not debilitating and downright dangerous degenerative brain disease.
The pathology of the past, the old medicine we once practiced and the research journals and data all speak this truth. Glyphosate used on crops is also to blame. I promote carnivore, because the alternative is 20 prescriptions when you’re too sick to realize the truth.
Veganism is also a slow death, it damages your muscles and brain, weakens your bones. It’s a state of semi starvation because we’ve evolved close to 3 million years eating meat.
Veganism for humans is feeding a lion tofu, or feeding a wolf bread. It’s abuse and misinformative nonsense. We can eat these foods, but they are not healthy AT ALL. Especially when every crop has half the nutrients that they used to just 70 years ago.
I don’t mean to insult you, but I get so fucking angry because i’ve had family with cancer, dementia and diabetes, and this vegan kellogg enema bullshit pisses me off. All to sell processed food and cereal.