The Carnivore Diet of the World’s Greatest Fighting Force

The greatest military fighting force the world has ever seen, the Mongols, conquered an area of land the size of Africa at their peak. What they eat has played a large part in this success, and is mostly unchanged today. Their diet? Mainly just two things: meat and dairy.

In Mongolia, in a grassland area of around 340,000 square miles where temperatures regularly drop to -40F, hundreds of nomads have lived and subsisted in similar ways for millennia. They live in small, portable yurts, moving across the steppe several times per year.

Due to this nomadic lifestyle, far away from conveniences like grocery stores, they have few comforts in the way of food and don’t spend enough time in one place to tend gardens or grow their own food. They live off two main food groups, meat and dairy, providing all their needs.

The diet in Mongolia is essentially based on animal products: meat, considered as "red food", and dairy products, "white food". These are not eaten at the same period of the year. Mongolian nomads look after their own animals, who travel with them across the steppe.

Summer months are the "white" ones, dedicated to dairy products. Due to the animals being born in this season and raising their young just afterwards, the female animals are in states of lactation, making them ideal times for creating dairy products.

Cheese, butter, fermented mare & donkey milk, yoghurts are then the basis of the traditional nomadic diet during these times. Due to the warmer temperatures in summer, fewer calories are needed for general survival, and the food corresponds to this.

The winter months, however, are considered the “red” months, and are dedicated mostly to the consumption of meat. Any meat will easily last all throughout the winter as temperatures outside the yurt are cold enough to act as a huge freezer.

This kind of food supplies to all the necessary calories to bear the extremely cold weather during winter in the steppes of Mongolia. The meat is generally boiled, and any liquids can be drank to ensure no nutrients are lost. 

Many animals are kept in herds and used for both their meat and/or dairy, depending on the month of the year, and include sheep, horses, reindeer, and yaks. Early mongols were also adept hunters, with animals such as marmots being eaten semi-regularly.

Wild fruits and vegetables were usually only consumed out of necessity, such as when Ghengis Khan’s mother resorted to feeding her children from the pastures after the Tatars poisoned her husband’s food. There may be a lesson we should take in this.