An expert has spoken out on the downsides of following an influencer’s extreme diet that has seen her apparently skip carbs completely for the last six years.

Social media influencer Bella, who goes by @steakandbuttergal on Instagram, is a musician – but her page largely documents what she eats as part of her unconventional diet.

Bella claims to have not eaten any carbs, fruit or vegetables in six years.

A woman has claimed that she’s not had a carb in six years (@steakandbuttergal/Instagram)

“I hate to break it to you, but you do not need to eat carbs,” she told her 420,000 followers in one video. “I have not eaten a single carb, piece of fruit or vegetable in six years and I’m not dying of low energy, nor have I wrecked my hormones.”

Ultimately Bella, who also says that she eats a whole block of butter a day, claims that the carnivore diet has helped her lose 25 pounds, made her periods ‘painless’ and made her taller.

She added that her body now burns fat for fuel.

In the wake of her outlandish claims, a PhD pharmacy student and fitness coach has spoken out and warned about the negative long-term affects this kind of diet can have on a person.

“You can believe some random influencer, we can believe the entire science community,” Angel began.

Bella follows a carnivore diet (@steakandbuttergal/Instagram)

“Carnivore diet might put you in a calorie deficit, so you might lose weight. Cool. [But] you could also just be in a regular calorie deficit, flexible dieting, eating chocolate, eating pasta and still having some balance there.”

She continued: “Over the long term, you might have a low fibre intake that will affect your gut. That is not good for you.

“You’ll also get less vitamins and minerals, for example vitamin C. So it might be well and good that you’re getting lots of iron from these meats, but if you don’t have any vitamin C to help you with absorption, you’re actually not going to be getting the benefits you think you are.”

Angel went on to warn about the issue of having too many saturated fats in your diet, which could lead to high cholesterol in the long-run.

Long story short, it’s good to have a diverse diet.

Explaining why, Love Your Gut’s website states: “Different foods are made up of varying amounts of protein, fat and carbohydrates as well as vitamins and minerals.

“All these nutrients provide your body with energy and elements to help it function at its best day after day.”

It adds: “How can you ensure you’re getting enough nutrients to fuel your body every day? Well, the answer is to have a diverse diet and to diversify your dietary choices.”

Before embarking on extreme diets such as the one Bella follows, it’s always important to consult a healthcare professional first.

A Texas jury has ordered a restaurant to pay over $2 million to a woman who filed a lawsuit accusing the chain of not warning how hot its sauce was.

On May 19, 2023, Genesis Monita and her sister visited Bill Miller BAR-B-Q in in the 8800 bock of SW Loop 410 in San Antonio.

The 19-year-old allegedly ended up suffering a second-degree burn after dropping one of the chain’s sauces on her lap, and accused the restaurant of making the sauce too hot and not having sufficiently warned her about its temperature.

A 19-year-old customer sued Bill Miller Bar-B-Q (Facebook/ Bill Miller Bar-B-Q)

The incident

The pair reportedly pulled into the restaurant’s drive-thru area and ordered four breakfast tacos before parking up in the lot to eat them.

Monita reportedly reached for a pot of the restaurant’s barbecue sauce but dropped it – allegedly as a result of its temperature – with the sauce ending up on her legs and allegedly causing her to suffer a second-degree burn.

Monita subsequently filed a lawsuit against the restaurant chain.

The lawsuit

The lawsuit alleged the sauce was ‘served at 189 degrees’ on the day Monita visited the restaurant with her sister and ‘when Monita took the container of bar-b-que sauce it was so hot that it caused her to drop the container and spill the sauce on her right thigh causing a second-degree burn,’ as stated by KSAT.

The lawsuit further claimed that the sauce was 54 degrees higher than the state’s guidelines, which is reportedly 135 degrees, and that the restaurant should’ve warned her it was hot.

Genesis Monita filed a lawsuit against the chain (YouTube/ News 4 (WOAI) San Antonio)

Bill Miller’s sauce policy also reportedly states the sauce is served at 165 degrees although, the Express News reported – as quoted by Law & Crime – with attorney for the chain, Barry McClenahan, saying the sauce is served at a minimum of 165 degrees as required by food safety rules.

McClenahan argued: “At Bill Miller’s, the sauce is always hot, and our customers know that. And that’s why it’s hot. What would we have warned Ms. Monita of that she did not already know?”

The lawsuit alleged Monita suffered not just physical but mental pain and sort damages for lost wages, medical and psychological expenses.

And on Friday (January 17), a jury ruled in favor of Monita.

A jury ruled in favor of Monita (YouTube/ News 4 (WOAI) San Antonio)

The outcome

Fox 4 News reports a jury of six people found the restaurant to be ‘grossly negligent’ in the incident involving Monita.

The restaurant chain has subsequently been ordered to pay a whopping $2.8 million dollars – $900,000 for mental and physical pain, over $25,000 for medical expenses and $1.9 million in punitive damages.

Monita’s lawyer, Lawrence Morales, told KSAT: “We feel very pleased by the results of this case. Genesis just wanted justice.”

UNILAD has contacted Bill Miller Bar-B-Q for further comment.

You may feel the effects of alcohol after a few drinks but do you know what’s really going on in your body?

While you may only start noticing alcohol having an effect on you about half-way through your drink, it actually begins impacting your insides minutes after you’ve sipped, glugged or shotted your drink.

You probably don’t want to know how alcohol impacts you after several minutes, 20 minutes on and each hour after that, but hey, maybe this will be the final push you need to committing to Dry January this year?

Alcohol begins impacting your body within minutes (Getty Stock Images)

Within the first hour

Northwestern Medicine explains: “Alcohol affects your body quickly. It is absorbed through the lining of your stomach into your bloodstream. Once there, it spreads into tissues throughout your body.

“Alcohol reaches your brain in only five minutes, and starts to affect you within 10 minutes.”

After 20 minutes, Healthline reports that 90 percent of the alcohol will have reached the small intestine, pancreas and your liver then starts processing the alcohol, metabolizing an average of one ounce of alcohol every hour.

The alcohol starts getting processed in your small intestine after 20 minutes (Getty Stock Images/ E4C)

One hour plus

Professor of hepatology and medical advisor to the British Liver Trust, Debbie Shawcross, tells Mail Online that ‘about a quarter’ of alcohol is ‘absorbed via the stomach’ and the rest is ‘further along your digestive tract’.

Most of the alcohol is broken down by a chemical called alcohol dehydrogenase which ‘can cause flushing of the skin, nausea and palpitations’, and then the alcohol can be broken down further and expelled through breath, sweat or urine.

Factors which impact alcohol absorption include the concentration of the drink i.e. if it’s a spirit with a higher percentage of alcohol versus a beer, alongside whether you’ve lined your stomach properly with a meal before consuming alcohol.

And if you’ve overdone it?

Well, sadly the liver ‘can’t speed up the detoxification process,’ Shawcross notes, so even if you stop drinking ‘alcohol can stay in your blood for up to six hours and in breath for 12 to 24 hours’.

You – or more likely others around you – will probably begin to notice the effects of the alcohol more after the two-hour mark.

You’ll probably feel great in the first hour – unless you really overdo it (Getty Stock Images/ John Rensten)

Two hours plus

Alongside your self-awareness slowly going out of the window, your speech may begin to slur, your movements may start to slow down and your balance may not be too great after you hit the two-hour mark of drinking alcohol.

This is because the brain stops producing as much of a chemical messenger called GABA when there’s alcohol in your system.

And we probably all know what begins to happen when you hit the four hour plus mark.

You may start showing physical signs after two hours (Getty Stock Images/ Peter Dazeley)

Four hours plus

Four hours plus of drinking alcohol and it’s probably time to get a taxi and head home.

Alcohol is a sedative so you’ll likely start feeling drowsy and it’s better to pass out in the comfort of your own home rather than in a club toilet cubicle or on the streets isn’t it?

Hours later, the dreaded hangover will kick in, you may throw up, have a headache, experience hangxiety, an aching body, tiredness and/ or crave junk food – we’ve all been there.

You may also struggle to sleep despite desperately knowing how much sleep is the only real cure for you.

So, make sure to drink responsibly and all that, eat a proper meal before you go out, alternate drinks if it’s a long night and down water before bed.

And may the odds be ever in your favor of escaping the dreaded hangover.

This article contains discussion of food habits and calorie counting that some may find distressing.

A dietitian has argued why ultra processed foods can be ‘part of a healthy diet’ after experiencing ‘surprising’ results from making them at least 80 percent of her diet for a month.

With ultra-processed foods often made out to be ‘something we’re supposed to avoid,’ dietitian Jessica Wilson decided to test out whether this ‘entire category of foods’ is really that bad for us.

What the dietician ate

The dietitian made at least 80 percent of her daily calorie intake ultra-processed for a whole month, eating soy chorizo instead of eggs as an example of an ultra-processed breakfast, TIME reports.

Instead of eating something like beans with avocado and hot sauce for lunch, Wilson grabbed a ready-to-eat tamales from Trader Joe’s.

Snacks consisted of cashew-nut yogurt with jam and dinners sometimes looked like chicken sausages with vegetables and Tater-Tots or Costco pupusas.

And after a whole month of at least 80 percent ultra-processed foods every single day, Wilson felt remarkably different – but not in the way you might think.

Dietician Jessica Wilson has weighed in on the discourse surrounding ultra-processed foods (Instagram/ @jessicawilson.msrd)

The results

In a post to Instagram, Wilson said she ‘surprisingly felt better’ after just ‘two weeks’ of the diet.

“At the end of my meal I have no idea what my hunger hormones were doing but it was great not to be hungry in an hour and to go longer periods without having to forage for food,” she said.

She added she thinks she wasn’t actually ‘eating enough’ food before embarking on her ultra-processed diet.

And despite multiple studies over recent years connecting a diet with more ultra-processed foods leading to a rise in anxiety and depression, Wilson told TIME she actually felt less anxious and had more energy – so much so, she didn’t feel the need to drink as much coffee.

And while she may’ve been bored of the ultra-processed foods she was eating by the fourth week, in an interview with Mail Online earlier this month she noted her wife noticed her ‘complaining less and doing more’. And while her weight didn’t change, she did see ‘an improvement in body composition’ with a more toned physique.

Wilson ensured her diet for the month was made up of 80 percent or higher ultra-processed foods (Instagram/ @jessicawilson.msrd)

The debate surrounding ultra-processed food

The dietitian reminds the definition for ‘ultra-processed food’ is still very conflicting, given there are ‘multiple definitions’ from many ‘different researchers and doctors’ – so how can anyone say the whole category of food is ‘bad’?

She argues: “If we look at the Nova classifications for foods, what is supposed to distinguish a category four: ultra-processed food from a category three: processed food it is not always clear.”

Wilson notes the term ‘additives’ – substances often added to processed foods for technical reasons such as helping them stay stored for longer – is often used as a ‘buzz word for what makes something unhealthy’.

However, one example of an additive is ‘egg lecithin’, which has some ‘beneficial properties’ and baby formula sometimes also contains additives too.

Wilson resolved: “There’s a lack of conclusive and comprehensive science and a lot of that comes from a lacking clear definition of an ultra-processed food.