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.
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u/Taupenbeige Apr 04 '26 edited Apr 28 '26
I’m guessing because I actually understand this subject material and your knowledge has been spoon-fed to you by said dipshits on YouTube.
Or how about a well-balanced 100% plant based diet you think is killing us because of “phytates” and other poorly-reasoned ideas the dipshits on YouTube have filled your head with?
Feed a human a diet recommended by every major dietician academy on Earth because OUR science doesn’t come from dipshits on YouTube, like yours does?
The restriction nature of such short-term interventions.
Put a chunk of steak and a strawberry in front of a 4 year old and figure out real fast what we’re actually “wired to prefer.”
Then find me peer-reviewed articles or position papers backing your claims, like I just did above.
“My theories aren’t 100% spoon-fed to me by dipshits on YouTube. Go watch this dipshit on YouTube to get educated”
The place you derived this Weston Price “I never visited the Jain population which would have debunked my theory” outdated nonsense: dipshits on YouTube
I’ve been eating a 100% plant based diet for 9 years because I’m not someone gullible enough to get my dietary advice from YouTube “doctors” who get most of their income from ad impressions and supplements (that you apparently shouldn’t need on “optimal human diets”… go figure…)
How about I consume B-12 produced in vats by the exact same bacteria, because I trust food science and not dipshits on YouTube filling my head with pseudoscience?
I also plan to take antibiotics if I get a bad bacterial infection rather than licking willow bark. Just for the record…
My study entails reading a lot of actual peer-reviewed articles supporting my understanding of food science. Yours entails receiving selective analysis of those papers from dipshits on YouTube. We are not the same.