Paul Saladino Eats Vegetables!? | What the Fitness | Biolayne

Norton argues that the way you change your message determines whether people can take you seriously. He points to Saladino's pattern as a cautionary tale: changing diets is fine, but each time he declared it optimal without admitting the previous optimal was wrong. In contrast, Norton describes his own protocol: he explicitly says, 'I said this before. I got it wrong.' This, he says, is not just an ethical obligation but also a trust-building mechanism. By acknowledging error, he invites the audience to follow his learning process, making them more likely to accept his corrected advice. He believes this is the responsible way to handle the evolving nature of nutritional science.

Norton walks through Saladino's arc: raw vegan to carnivore, then adding honey and fruit to become 'animal-based,' and now asparagus and starches. At every stage, Saladino made strong, absolutist claims that his current diet was optimal for human health, often contradicting the scientific literature. Norton applauds the willingness to experiment but argues the real issue is the lack of intellectual humility. When Saladino felt bad on carnivore, he didn't publicly say 'I was wrong,' he simply pivoted to the next 'optimal' diet. This latest vegetable addition suggests he may have sensed something was missing in his fruit-heavy animal-based approach, yet there's no hat-in-hand admission that his prior anti-vegetable stance was incorrect. The result, according to Norton, is a credibility gap for anyone who bought his book or followed his advice.

Norton details that even with a fast publisher, it takes many months from final manuscript to printed book. Saladino's symptoms on carnivore—feeling unwell—would have started well before the book hit shelves. If Saladino was already experiencing those problems while crafting the arguments that carnivore is the optimal human diet, then the book was, in Norton's view, promoting a diet he knew made him feel bad. Norton finds this deeply problematic because consumers of that advice trusted Saladino's personal testimony, which was misaligned with reality. No correction or apology followed, making it a case study in how health influencers can prioritize narrative over truth.