The Doctor Who Invented Salisbury Steak (and Carnivore Diet)

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:10]The doctor who invented Salisbury steak called it muscle pulp of beef. His prescription was 2 to four pounds of beef per day, which he claimed would cure tuberculosis, cancer, and mental illness. Not to mention make you irresistible to women. My favorite part is probably when he locked six grown ass men in his crib with him and force-fed them beans for months on end, but we'll get there. This is the guy the now world famous TV dinner is named after. Why am I holding it like this? And somehow through two world wars and the invention of the aluminum tray, which is clearly now plastic, his weird little meat patties accidentally became one of the most infamous dishes in American history. This is the story of how one eccentric doctor invented America's saddest steak and how a 19th century health craze became a 20th century punch line and really an accidental biography on one specific country's lust for convenience. All, you know, smothered in brown gravy. Is it brown? Is it red?

[00:01:05]It's more of like an auburn. We're going to go with auburn.

[00:01:09]And of course, we cannot talk about the history of the Salbury steak without making one of these weirdo beef discs ourselves.

[00:01:17]Wow.

[00:01:20]Dr. James Henry Salisbury was born in New York in the early 1800s. He first started off as a chemist, then got his medical degree from Albany Medical College. Now, this guy had a bunch of questionable beliefs, which we will definitely get into. But, oddly enough, he was an early believer in germ theory, which at the time wasn't proven, and not everybody believed that germs were real, but this this guy did. However, that would later kind of be overshadowed by his obsession with the idea that diet was a key for curing basically anything, which is kind of funny and ironic because uh we all know that he wasn't completely wrong. The dude was kind of just focused on the wrong things, which again we're going to get into. And for context, this is the 19th century, right? We're talking about a time where doctors would literally feel your skull for bumps and lumps to diagnose your personality. Yeah. Half of the medical advice given in this time period was basically palm reading but with a medical degree. But here's where things get even more wild and crazy. In the mid 1800s, Salisbury began conducting single food diet experiments. First on himself and then on others. He started with only eating baked beans. And within 3 days, he reported becoming extremely gassy, constipated, dizzy with ringing ears and was completely unable to think straight.

[00:02:30]Right. Which beans or no beans? That might happen to a malnourished 19th century individual. But he didn't stop there. Of course he didn't because we wouldn't have a video if he did. Soon after his Percy bean mucking session, Salisbury, by the way, best name ever.

[00:02:44]Salis Berry. Salis Bri. Salis. So many ways to say it. We're going to have fun.

[00:02:48]We're going to have a good time. Soon after his Percy fart session with all those beans, Salisbury decided to get others involved. So he invited six dudes to live with him and eat nothing but baked beans and coffee for weeks on end.

[00:03:00]Which sounds like the most cursed and flatulent sleepover to ever go down.

[00:03:04]like, why not just land? Boys will be boys. Now, the following year, he actually did the same thing, but replaced the beans with oatmeal. And lo and behold, the men all claimed to become wobbly, dizzy, and extremely flatulent. Go figure. This is also a time period where literally drinking low ABV beer was considered safer than some of the drinking water available in large towns and cities. So, yeah, keep that in mind. These side effects could be anything. And what's even more insane is that these twisted bean hangs cost our good doctor nearly 40 grand, which in today's money is over a million bones.

[00:03:39]There's no doubt about it, our boy Salsbury was breaded. The punchline is that after all this suffering, when these men were given a big old steak for one of their meals, they immediately felt better, which, you know, feed a dude beans, grul, and caffeine for months on end. And of course, literally anything will make them feel better.

[00:03:55]Anyways, none of that mattered at all because Salbury got what he wanted. he got his answer and that is that meat, specifically beef, was the ultimate health food. Sidebar, he also had this hot water cure thing going on sort of alongside the beef thing, which as we all know is less a cure, but it can definitely aid digestion. Armed with his new findings, Salisbury would advocate that his patients should be eating two to four pounds of lean beef per day, drinking three to five pints of warm water per day, and do that for about four to 12 weeks to completely completely cleanse the digestive system.

[00:04:28]Meat is the cure. This, of course, made Salisbury arguably maybe the first ever sort of like proto Chad carnivore diet, bro. And I'd like your opinion on this.

[00:04:38]Potentially even the first member of the manosphere. Sorry, ROGAN.

[00:05:05]The American Civil War spanned from 1861 to 1865. And believe it or not, most soldiers didn't die in combat. They actually died from disease. Dysentery and diarrhea alone were responsible for an estimated 100,000 deaths. And soldiers on both sides were eating these things called hard tac biscuits, which had the general consistency of roof shingles and offered almost zero nutrition. And if you don't know what hard attack is, it's kind of like pilot bread, which was made famous by the Outdoor Boys. If you're familiar, it's basically just like a really, really hard biscuit that has an insanely long shelf life. A lot of people will like moisten it in a soup or a stew or like dip it in stuff or just eat it raw, but you might literally crack a tooth.

[00:05:41]Especially these dudes who are like definitely malnourished. And of course, our good old Doc Salisbury would not let a good war go to waste as they say. No, no. This was the perfect time to test out his theories on real life people, right? In the form of Union soldiers.

[00:05:56]But to be honest, the soldiers under his watch probably looked out because again, they went from eating these hard tac biscuits to Salisbury's special beef patties. And really, anything is an upgrade when you're talking about biscuits that you could literally build a dog house with. We touched on it briefly earlier, but Salisbury's prescription was pretty specific. Ground lean beef patties formed into cakes cooked slowly and seasoned simply with butter, salt, pepper, and worsture sauce. Right. Worster Mcderton sauce.

[00:06:23]It's also worth noting that not only did Salisbury like really team back meat, but he also believed that vegetables were poison and that starchy foods and veggies actually produced toxins in the digestive system that caused heart disease, tumors, mental illness, and even tuberculosis. Basically, the opposite of what his precious little boof cakes did. Salberry's all meat approach was actually part of this bigger 19th century trend where health food became a cultural force. This was the era of Sylvester Graham who pushed his crackers to suppress sexual appetite. Yes, that's where your Graham crackers come from. And of course, later on, John Harvey Kellogg, which you probably already know this one, promoted a bland vegetarian cereal at his sanitarium in part to curb masturbation.

[00:07:07]Frosted Flakes without the frost. Basically, Wheaties.

[00:07:12]Now, it was this nightmare blunt rotation of dusty old doctors that were all competing for top health guru of their time, and Salsbury was team meat.

[00:07:21]Then, to solidify his position on the Mount Olympus of Quackery, in 1888, he published his first ever book, Becoming a Sensation that kicked off one of America's first fad diets. Sound familiar?

[00:07:33]>> Liver King here. I've been working out for the last 35 years.

[00:07:36]>> Why is everyone fat and stupid? What's wrong is that we're eating way too many >> carbohydrates. Basically, the book argues that many illnesses that we already mentioned, you know, heart disease, tuberculosis, mental illness, all stem from toxic byproducts of fermented starches, fruits, and vegetables. Yeah. Next time you hear about somebody croaking from munching too much kimchi or sauerkraut, give me a buzz. Now, Dr. Salbury passed away in 1905, never knowing that his name was about to be plastered all over menus across America. Because all this time, these little patties, they weren't called Salbury steaks. They were basically just a variation of a hamburger. And it would take an entire world war to change that.

[00:08:30]During World War I, English-speaking nations wanted to replace German sounding food names like, you know, hamburger with stuff that's a little more patriotic. Sauerkraut became Liberty Cabbage. Hamburger became Liberty Steak, or you guessed it, Salbury steak.

[00:08:47]It's the same idea is freedom fries back in 2003. You know, remember that?

[00:08:51]Remember that? According to my analytics, at least 82% of you do. All right, so we're going to fast forward a handful of years and a few key war victories later to good old midcentury United States of America. Men were home from World War II, starting families.

[00:09:05]The economy was booming. The fences were white, and the future was wide open and full of potential. This was arguably the best time to be alive in American history, if you were the right kind of American. At this point, Salisbury steak had become a full-on bluecollar classic.

[00:09:21]It was hardy. It was cheap. It was easy to make in big batches. So, it showed up in diner menus, in church cookbooks, and in mess halls all across the country.

[00:09:30]Then came the TV dinner era. In 1953, Swanson introduced its first ever TV dinner, and more than 10 million trays were sold in the first year. And you already know it. Salbury Steak was one of the most popular varieties, sitting in its little aluminum tray on every TV stand across America. I can picture it now. Dad's in the recliner. Mom's on the couch. Golden Retriever and the kids are on the floor. Everyone's eyes are glued to the TV watching I Love Lucy while mucking sauced up beef patties that a 19th century mad scientist invented to cure tuberculosis.

[00:10:03]Yeah, Peak Empire. And here's the cruel irony. The TV dinner didn't just popularize Salsbury steak even more, but it also stripped it away of everything that made it real. What started as one doctor's obsessive, meticulously prepared beef patty made with lean meat, cooked slowly, and seasoned with care, got reduced to a frozen gray disc swimming in sodium laden gravy that neighbored a compartment of soggy corn and mushy green beans. This dish was primed to be a punchline before anyone realized it was a joke. But it wasn't just the freezer aisle that killed the Salisbury steak. It was a close relative. I guess family murder does happen outside of true crime podcasts.

[00:10:38]McDonald's went from a single location in 1955 to over 30,000 locations in the early 2000s. But we're not just talking about Whack Arnold's here, right? Think of all those popular fast food burger chains. I'm sure we're thinking of the same guys. These are the spots that made the beef patty a lot easier, cheaper, faster, and portable, which literally changed America's physical, cultural, and socioeconomic landscape. Think about it. Why would you wait 20 minutes when you could roll up to the drive-thru and get a Quarter Pounder in like less than 2 minutes flat? In post-war America, convenience was king. But then came the final nail. After a long and prosperous run that arguably defined American cuisine to the rest of the world, and by defined, I mean literally convinced the rest of the world that we were the humans from Wall-E.

[00:11:23]Americans turned against processed food.

[00:11:26]Organic farm to table, clean eating. The culture completely shifted and there was nobody left to defend Salsbury steak. It wasn't simple or nostalgic enough to be retro cool like you know mac and cheese or like meatloaf is kind of more like a ghost story about the rise and fall of one of the first food trends to ever exist and really the nature of American food culture as a whole which we're still you know living in today. Salbury steak is a dish that was born out of one man's obsession with meat, rebranded out of wartime paranoia, adopted by the working class just to be mass-produced into irrelevance, then finally ran out of town by its own brother. But I think the craziest part of all this is how Salisbury's ideas are back and they're stronger than ever. Influencers and independent media across all corners of the internet, specifically in the manosphere, targeting young and middle-aged men, are pushing all meat diets. They're eating raw organs on camera, and they're swearing that beef cured their depression. Dr. Salsbury was touting this exact philosophy over 150 years ago, and nobody remembers him for it. Instead, when we hear the name Salisbury, all we can think about is a cheap, sad plastic tray that resembles everything the doctor probably would have died to prevent. And look, man, eat meat, don't eat meat, eat beef, don't eat beef, it doesn't matter. Different strokes for different folks. Everyone's body needs different stuff. Every human is different. What works for one person might not work for another, and that's fine. Claiming a single food as a cure all is not a diet philosophy. It's 19th century quack. And what's going on today is actually strikingly similar, just with better lighting and sound engineers.

[00:13:20]Tada.

[00:13:22]All this Salsbury talk making me hungry for a Salsbury. I think this is an appropriate utensil. I think every adult in America should have sporks. Okay, we got ours and we got theirs. Probably should taste the origie. Oh yeah.

[00:13:37]I don't know what color that's like a reddish. It's like hardly a brown. Ooh.

[00:13:41]And I I'm not even sure this is fully beef. It does not. Uh so it goes beef water pork. So there's the most beef then water then there's pork added.

[00:13:49]Hilarious. Salbury would be upset, but I'm going to taste this anyways.

[00:13:54]Oh my. You know what? If you went to public school in the US, you know what this tastes like. It's that lunchroom cafeteria hamburger like meat vibe.

[00:14:03]>> Everybody gets enough food down here in the magical lady.

[00:14:10]>> Okay, I'm going to put that aside. Look at this thing. It's cute, man. It almost kind of looks like an 1800's mocha loco.

[00:14:17]All right, let's dig in. Serve this over white rice, potato, some like neutral starch, which we all know Salsbury would not approve of, but look at that. Got some nice color on it. I like the whole mushrooms, the whole sliced mushrooms.

[00:14:33]Wow, that is tasty if I don't say so myself.

[00:14:39]When it's smothered in gravy, it doesn't really matter how you cook the burger, but I think this is a nice medium. If we had gravy vision and we could see through that thick brown, hopefully we'd see a medium burger.

[00:14:49]This recipe is probably a far cry away from his original preparation, and he'd probably [ __ ] his pants if he knew that we put soy products in this. This version is tasty. Definitely brought into the 21st century. As I sit here and poke around in my beef patty, I can't help but to think, you know, what do we take seriously right now in this day and age that is going to be a complete joke in one generation? You know, what health trends are there out here that people are going to look back on and laugh at and chuckle at, you know?

[00:15:19]Salsbury. Also the most fun name ever.

[00:15:22]Salsbury. Salsbury. Salsbury. Salisbury.

[00:15:26]How do you pronounce it? Comment below.

[00:15:28]But yeah, definitely give this one a go.

[00:15:29]It's dang nice.

[00:15:32]Thanks for watching, guys. You know the vibe. Like the video if you liked it.

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[00:15:45]So, we're got a bunch of cool designs for you on there. I went with the beef theme today. I figured it was appropriate. Regardless, come say what's good in Discord. We're cooling chatting.

[00:15:52]I'm doing giveaways. We're We're talking shop, having a good time. So, come introduce yourself over there. That is all I got for today. So until next week, meet Tuteloo and Salsbury we trust.