Dr. Darren Schmidt on Keto, Carnivore, & Vegan Diets
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You can read a hundred diet debates and still feel stuck. One person swears grains are fine. Another says plants wreck their gut. Then you hear “it’s all calories” and wonder why your body never got that memo.
In this episode, Dr. Darren Schmidt sits down to talk through the messy middle. Not as an influencer doing hot takes, but as someone who has been working with nutrition in a clinical setting since the late 90s. The conversation covers vegan, keto, and carnivore diets, plus the part most people skip. Why food quality and food tolerance can matter more than winning an argument online.
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Meet the Guest
Dr. Darren Schmidt is a chiropractor and founder of the Nutritional Healing Center of Ann Arbor. He’s been focused on holistic nutrition since 1998, with a simple goal. See how much good can be done with food and nutrients before jumping to medication.
Connect with Dr. Darren Schmidt on YouTube or his personal website. You can also find him on Instagram @drdarrenschmidt or X @DrDarrenSchmidt.
Episode Highlights
Dr. Darren Schmidt shares how he ended up in chiropractic after originally aiming for medical school. While at Ohio State, he interviewed 12 doctors and medical students and none of them encouraged him to go into medicine. Between burnout, paperwork, and the general mood, he decided to take a different route. A few hours shadowing a chiropractor in his hometown clicked with him, and he started practice in 1997.
Within a year, he was focused heavily on nutrition and has been building his work around food and nutrients since 1998. In this conversation, he walks through his own diet experiments, including a short-lived vegetarian phase that left him tired and run down, and how returning to more animal-based meals changed things fast. From there, he breaks down how he thinks about keto, carnivore, vegan diets, and why people can have very different reactions to grains, plants, and carbs.
In this episode:
- Why “just eat Moon Pies for a year” is a useful reality check for the “food doesn’t matter” crowd.
- Why Dr. Schmidt chose chiropractic over medical school after talking to 12 doctors.
- What pushed him toward nutrition as the main lever for health.
- His vegetarian experiment, what went wrong, and what improved when meat came back.
- How Weston A. Price ideas changed his view of fat and carbs.
- A practical framework for thinking about grains: quantity vs quality.
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Meet Our Sponsor
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Disclaimer: These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. The contents of this podcast are for informational purposes only and do not constitute medical advice. The content presented here is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Always seek the advice of a qualified healthcare provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition or dietary changes. Reliance on any information provided by this article is solely at your own risk.
