As a (‘dirty’) carnivore, I shouldn’t be too fussed about opening a can of worms.

So here goes. It’s quick look at the issues around storing or breaking down fat, and under what circumstances. And I will be using the ‘k’ word!

Could something be stopping you from burning fat when you are to all intents and purposes zero carb? It could be that you want to get leaner, but it’s not happening.

Dairy? Caffeine? Volume/quantity? Silent, secret carbs? The dreaded macros – too much fat, or too much protein?

Dr Zsofia Clemens of Paleomedicina says you can be ‘zero carb’, total carnivore, and totally plant free and STILL run on glucose if your protein consumption is excessively high.

Amy Berger, author of ‘The Alzheimer’s Antidote’ and low-carb nutrition expert says that when it comes to fat loss, protein is your friend, and you mustn’t be scared of gluconeogenesis…

My mum looked at bit sheepish, and said: ‘22 cups‘.

I’d just asked her how much coffee she’d drunk each day when pregnant with me.

‘They were small cups,’ she added hopefully, as if my neonatal caffeine addiction would have been worse if they’d been large cups. When she breastfed the baby me without having first primed the system with coffee, apparently, baby me would go apeshit. And after a few slugs of the good stuff the next attempt at feeding would result in a happy, contented, caffeinated baby me.

So caffeine is addictive, to the extent that, with enough effort from your mother, you can even be born addicted to it. Don’t ask me for tips on giving up coffee either, because I have none. Not only am I addicted to consuming it, I fetishise it, in that I buy green beans and lovingly roast them myself…

Take my friend, oh what name shall I invent to hide his identity, Ignatius. Iggy, let’s call him, has chronic stress in certain areas of his life, and is a lot more rotund than would be thought healthy. His diet is standard western, hence rubbish, he drinks ad lib (good name for a drink, you heard it here first) and wears trainers but rarely exercises. Not only do the stairs seem a lot steeper these days, he sometimes has little memory lapses.

Iggy doesn’t know it, but he has chronic inflammation in lots of his cells, including plaques, or neurofibrillary tangles, in his brain. But he doesn’t think there are any real problems because, despite his belly and breathlessness, he can get through his working day just fine, and that’s what counts, isn’t it?

So there’s this thing called apoptosis, or the scheduled dying-off of cells. Under…

The internet is rife with vegan propaganda on the theme that if a plant-based diet is good for certain animals then it is good for humans. Here’s one.

Let’s forget for one moment that gorillas often eat insects and grubs and snails, making a mess of that ‘exclusively’ in the strapline, and move on to that word ‘vegetarian’ A gorilla is a herbivore. This is the word for an animal that only eats plants. A ‘vegetarian’ is a human who eats only fruit, vegetables and grains. BY CHOICE. (And cheese. And maybe a nice egg or two. But let’s skate over that inconsistency, they’re only human after all). A gorilla is a monogastric herbivore: a herbivore with a single-chambered stomach.

Calling a gorilla a vegetarian is cynically anthropomorphic. Representing an animal as a human in order to manipulate emotions. Implying that gorillas dither about whether to eat leaves…