I consider Dr. H. L. Newbold to be one of the great medical mind of the last century. To learn more about him, please read my page H. L. Newbold.
This is an excerpt from the above pictured book. I do not recommend buying this book, as it was a precursor to his later and better volume The Type A / Type B Weight Loss Diet. Nevertheless, he does share some interesting ideas and observations in this older book, as quoted below.
Dr. H. L. Newbold:
Do not eat ground meat. I know hamburgers are right up there with motherhood, milk, and the American flag, but we must face facts. Patients in my practice to not feel good after eating ground meat. Off-hand, it does not make sense that patients seem able to eat steak and not react to it, but have a reaction to ground beef. Still, I have checked my observations on hundreds of patients and must stand firm on what I have seen.
I don’t know why, but…my theory deals with rapidity of absorption. If you eat foods that still are relatively bulky, even after chewing (like steak), then the digestive enzymes must work on them a long time before they are broken down enough to pass through the intestinal walls into the bloodstream.
On the other hand, ground meat is rapidly digested and rapidly enters the bloodstream. We know that if you have a mild allergy to food, you will get a much stronger allergic reaction if that food is quickly digested and passed on into the system. Some people who have a mild allergy to beef do not react to steak (slow absorption), but do react to the ground beef (quick absorption). Patients are also more likely to react to other forms of commercially-ground meats, such as lamb, for example.
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I do not think this is an issue for everyone, but it is certainly good to be aware of the possibility. Most long term practitioners of Zero Carb appear to do just fine with ground beef. However, Samantha Taylor – who has followed an all meat diet for over 5 years now – has reported experiencing symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) every time she eats ground beef. So, as always, the best thing to do is experiment and see if you notice any difference in the way your own body responds to whole meat verses ground meat and then do whatever feels best to you.
Another thing to keep in mind is that for people with histamine intolerance, ground meat is much higher in histamines. Once meat is ground, histamines form much more quickly. So, if you do have histamine issues, it is important to have the meat ground fresh and then get it into the freezer as quickly as possible to stop histamine formation.
Eat Meat. Drink Water. 
Interesting article! Thanks for sharing.
~Karen
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Are comments and questions allowed here?
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Yes, Michael.
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In my first months of carnivore, complementing steaks with burgers really helped, because of the increased hunger, and it seemed to work fine for my body, probably because I was still adjusting from an omnivorous diet. Plain ground meat was never an option because I buy supermarket meat and it comes filled with non-carnivore ingredients such as wheat/corn starch. However, burgers were 100% meat and came frozen (less histamine).
Months later and even now, being a carnivore for 2 years, I developed intolerance to burgers, where I can eat some amount after months without, but if I keep eating them, even if just a couple times a week, I soon start getting indigestion (burping, reflux), as well as acute stomach pain.
I prefer steaks anyway and burgers were just a backup food, since they are cheaper and good to complement with, on a restricted budget. After 2 years, I’m eating a bit less (and luckily earning a bit more) so, I’m gonna remove any form of ground meat from my diet (also removed dairy and eggs recently).
I’m now testing fowl and fish (so far only water fowl – duck and goose – are in).
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Dr. Newbold didn’t know about histamines when he wrote is book over 30 years ago, but I strongly suspect that many of his patients were histamine intolerant, as ground meat is very high in histamines.
https://zerocarbzen.com/histamines/
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I agree that it all relates to histamines because I also get mild indigestion with canned fish (burping mostly, even more than 8 hours after consumption, meaning a low digestion rate). From your histamines page, I also get a number of the other histamine symptoms, sometimes less, sometimes more.
However, contradictorily, I don’t get any histamine intolerance symtpom with aged beef steaks (28-30 days).
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There is less surface area on a steak than there is with ground beef, so less opportunity for bacteria to proliferate and produce histamines. I also think there are a variety of “amines” that we label collectively as “histamines” and that different ones may produce different symptoms and may cause more or less trouble for individuals.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biogenic_amine
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