Paleo Diet: Raw Paleo Diet and Lifestyle Forum
Raw Paleo Diet Forums => Hot Topics => Topic started by: carnivore on December 27, 2009, 09:18:35 pm
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It has been stated on this forum that coconut oil contains high level of antinutrients (lectins, salicylates...) like all nuts, seeds, beans, grains, etc. I have failed to find any scientific evidence on the web.
Has anybody some online references on this subject ?
Thanks.
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I made a mistake in citing lectins a while back re coconut oil. It's the salicylates that are the problem in coconut oil, lectins are present in quite other foods.
Here's some vague links:-
http://www.salicylatesensitivity.com/food-guide
http://www.salicylatesensitivity.com/info2
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8656907
When checking for studies on subjects add the word "pubmed" to whatever you're searching for, and you'll usually get multiple useful links.
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I made a mistake in citing lectins a while back re coconut oil. It's the salicylates that are the problem in coconut oil, lectins are present in quite other foods.
Here's some vague links:-
http://www.salicylatesensitivity.com/food-guide
http://www.salicylatesensitivity.com/info2
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8656907
When checking for studies on subjects add the word "pubmed" to whatever you're searching for, and you'll usually get multiple useful links.
I have found this one : http://www.plantpoisonsandrottenstuff.info/content/elimination-diet/salicylates.aspx
which gives a number (0.26/100g for dessicated coconut).
Better than nothing but not very convincing.
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The available information seems to indicate that for most people small amounts of salicylates are fine(not for me and some rawpalaeos like Wodgina, though). But salicylates consumed in large, regular quantities seem quite lethal.
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So this could be why coconut cream makes me feel nauseous?
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So this could be why coconut cream makes me feel nauseous?
Salicylates are very common, including animal products (their flesh and organs, especially liver, can accumulate toxins from plant material they eat).
Ex : Raspberry has 20 times more salycitates than dessicated coconut, Date 14x more, watercress 3x more...
Coconut cream is full of fat and carbs, a nasty combination easy to overeat and very heavy to digest.
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Coconut cream is full of fat and carbs, a nasty combination easy to overeat and very heavy to digest.
What about fermented coconut cream. Is that edible?
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The available information seems to indicate that for most people small amounts of salicylates are fine(not for me and some rawpalaeos like Wodgina, though). But salicylates consumed in large, regular quantities seem quite lethal.
This seems like a pretty extraordinary statement. What constitutes large quantities, and how often must these be eaten to be regular? How many people have died from them? I gorge myself on wild and domestic raspberries (and other wild and domestic berries) all summer long and as far into fall as possible, and these seem to have quite high concentrations of salicylates based on the above posts. Yet I remain...
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... What constitutes large quantities, and how often must these be eaten to be regular? How many people have died from them? I gorge myself on wild and domestic raspberries (and other wild and domestic berries) all summer long and as far into fall as possible, and these seem to have quite high concentrations of salicylates based on the above posts. Yet I remain...
Maybe it depends on 1 if you're allergic to salicylates, 2 if you need salicylates and 3 how strong your kidneys are at the time (and what you ate with them if anything). Perhaps a majority of people who choose RPD came from growing up with salicylate allergies. I personally don't think I have any problem with salicylates. I love berries too.
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I too eat the shit out of the wild berries when they're in season but have problems with coconut oil.
Here is why i think it is not good for you.
I used it a lot while trying to kill candida, it 'worked' we got the 'detox' from it....
if i eat coconut oil now, i will still get 'detox' and feel like shit...
i think that its really just that coconut oil makes you feel like crap and since you believe its detox you endure it.
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Given a recent post by 1 of our French members, it seems that salicylates aren't the issue. I also can't tolerate coconut oil at all, but find all wild berries to be fine.
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I also don't get nauseous from even a large amount of organic berries (though they do exacerbate my dental plaque and give me dry skin), whereas a small amount of coconut oil does make me nauseous. I found many links indicating that medium chain triglycerides (MCTs) can cause nausea in many people and many commenters attested to this. I reported on this in the other thread. Coconuts also contain short chain triglycerides (SCTs), though I found less linking them to nausea. MCTs (and possibly SCTs) seem the most likely cause of most people's nausea from coconut oil nausea, since strong salycilate sensitivity is reported in only "a small percent of the population" (http://www.salicylatesensitivity.com/info2).
Granted, all plants contain their own toxins that they use as self defense against predators. Basically, they're natural insecticides, fungicides, etc. For example, "Salicylates in plants act as a natural immune hormone and preservative, protecting the plants against diseases, insects, fungi, and harmful bacteria." So in my view it's not a good idea to eat too much of any single plant food or of any group of plant foods that share the same type of toxin(s)--which is another reason why "30 bananas a day" and "banana island"-type monodiets don't seem wise for extended periods. At least not without at some point eating some edible clay, charcoal or other detoxicant to reduce the toxin load. Mono-eating of plants enables the toxins specific to that plant to build up in the body. This can lead to nausea, diarrhea and other symptoms, which some people want because they consider this a "detox" of poisons. But ironically, in many cases the poisons likely came from what they're eating, and not necessarily from what was already in their body.
On the other hand, the toxins and toxin levels in fruits are generally less dangerous for humans, apparently, than those in "vegetables" (which is not surprising, since plants tend to want some animal to eat its fruits, though humans may not be the original intended animal of its habitat). So when mono-eating fruits you're more likely to get symptoms from excess carbs before you get symptoms from the natural insecticides.
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I also don't get nauseous from even a large amount of organic berries (though they do exacerbate my dental plaque and give me dry skin), whereas a small amount of coconut oil does make me nauseous. I found many links indicating that medium chain triglycerides (MCTs) can cause nausea in many people and many commenters attested to this. I reported on this in the other thread. Coconuts also contain short chain triglycerides (SCTs), though I found less linking them to nausea. MCTs (and possibly SCTs) seem the most likely cause of most people's nausea from coconut oil nausea, since strong salycilate sensitivity is reported in only "a small percent of the population" (http://www.salicylatesensitivity.com/info2).
Granted, all plants contain their own toxins that they use as self defense against predators. Basically, they're natural insecticides, fungicides, etc. For example, "Salicylates in plants act as a natural immune hormone and preservative, protecting the plants against diseases, insects, fungi, and harmful bacteria." So in my view it's not a good idea to eat too much of any single plant food or of any group of plant foods that share the same type of toxin(s)--which is another reason why "30 bananas a day" and "banana island"-type monodiets don't seem wise for extended periods. At least not without at some point eating some edible clay, charcoal or other detoxicant to reduce the toxin load. Mono-eating of plants enables the toxins specific to that plant to build up in the body. This can lead to nausea, diarrhea and other symptoms, which some people want because they consider this a "detox" of poisons. But ironically, in many cases the poisons likely came from what they're eating, and not necessarily from what was already in their body.
On the other hand, the toxins and toxin levels in fruits are generally less dangerous for humans, apparently, than those in "vegetables" (which is not surprising, since plants tend to want some animal to eat its fruits, though humans may not be the original intended animal of its habitat). So when mono-eating fruits you're more likely to get symptoms from excess carbs before you get symptoms from the natural insecticides.
Can you give the links about MCT and nausea ?
I think your reasoning (eating always the same food can be dangerous) is also true for animal products. They too inevitably accumulate toxins and it is better to vary our toxins intake, whether from plant or animal.
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Thanks PP
I enjoy being proven wrong ie Coconut oil/salicylates
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I think your reasoning (eating always the same food can be dangerous) is also true for animal products. They too inevitably accumulate toxins and it is better to vary our toxins intake, whether from plant or animal.
But a plant is grounded to one spot so needs various thorns or toxins etc to defend itself in that way, whereas animals are equiped with speed and agility to outrun they're preditors, that being their defence.
I thought that was the case, although there are probably poisonous animals/insects to eat I' not sure what would be poisonous/toxic in something like wild bison or venison.
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I've not heard of animals "intentionally" accumulating toxins, but in many areas of the US the soil and thus plants have high and natural accumulations of different toxins, particularly heavy metals. Here in vermont, for instance, I'm told there are relatively high concentrations of cadmium in the soil so the state recommends we don't eat livers from large animals we hunt, like adult deer or moose because of the cadmium accumulation. I've heard similar things out west regarding arsenic. So it may be wise to eat the meat from a variety of species as well as age classes within each species to avoid consistently high doses of contaminants that tend to accumulate.
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Thank you for that answer, you make a good point. Slightly depressing the state of the world (at times) but you must of course play the hand you are delt, so to speak.
Any idea where the mentioned cadmium originates? My previous statement assumes a human source, yet I'm not even sure of what it is.
Thanks,
David
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I don't think it is a human source. Like I said, some regions have naturally high soil concentrations of different elements due to local geology.
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I've not heard of animals "intentionally" accumulating toxins, but in many areas of the US the soil and thus plants have high and natural accumulations of different toxins, particularly heavy metals. Here in vermont, for instance, I'm told there are relatively high concentrations of cadmium in the soil so the state recommends we don't eat livers from large animals we hunt, like adult deer or moose because of the cadmium accumulation. I've heard similar things out west regarding arsenic. So it may be wise to eat the meat from a variety of species as well as age classes within each species to avoid consistently high doses of contaminants that tend to accumulate.
If you eat plenty of selenium, from bioavailable sources such as fish, shellfish, chicken, turkey and pork, then you don't have much to worry about regarding heavy metals and mercury, according to the latest science:
Heavy Metal Toxicity
http://www.diagnose-me.com/cond/C15891.html
Selenium is able to combine with metals such as cadmium and mercury to reduce their toxicity.
Don't Worry About Mercury in Fish If....
By Jean Carper
Anti-Aging Expert, Best-Selling Author and USA Weekend Columnist
About the Author
August 27, 2006
http://www.stopagingnow.com/news/news_flashes/1761/Don-t-Worry-About-Mercury-in-Fish-If?print=1
If you're leery of eating fish because of a mercury hazard, here's some incredibly good news. Mercury in fish is not likely to harm you after all, say some leading experts.
The reason: Mercury's toxic hazards are neutralized when you also eat selenium, a trace mineral that, experts say, counters the toxicity of mercury. In fact, most fish are so rich in selenium that a threat of human mercury poisoning from eating fish is very remote, according to a new analysis by Dr. Nicholas Ralston, University of North Dakota.
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If you eat plenty of selenium, from bioavailable sources such as fish, shellfish, chicken, turkey and pork, then you don't have much to worry about regarding heavy metals and mercury, according to the latest science:
Heavy Metal Toxicity
http://www.diagnose-me.com/cond/C15891.html
Selenium is able to combine with metals such as cadmium and mercury to reduce their toxicity.
Don't Worry About Mercury in Fish If....
By Jean Carper
Anti-Aging Expert, Best-Selling Author and USA Weekend Columnist
About the Author
August 27, 2006
http://www.stopagingnow.com/news/news_flashes/1761/Don-t-Worry-About-Mercury-in-Fish-If?print=1
If you're leery of eating fish because of a mercury hazard, here's some incredibly good news. Mercury in fish is not likely to harm you after all, say some leading experts.
The reason: Mercury's toxic hazards are neutralized when you also eat selenium, a trace mineral that, experts say, counters the toxicity of mercury. In fact, most fish are so rich in selenium that a threat of human mercury poisoning from eating fish is very remote, according to a new analysis by Dr. Nicholas Ralston, University of North Dakota.
Well, better to choose the less polluted environment for marine food : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minamata_Bay
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I've not heard of animals "intentionally" accumulating toxins, but in many areas of the US the soil and thus plants have high and natural accumulations of different toxins, particularly heavy metals. Here in vermont, for instance, I'm told there are relatively high concentrations of cadmium in the soil so the state recommends we don't eat livers from large animals we hunt, like adult deer or moose because of the cadmium accumulation. I've heard similar things out west regarding arsenic. So it may be wise to eat the meat from a variety of species as well as age classes within each species to avoid consistently high doses of contaminants that tend to accumulate.
Animals accumulate in their flesh natural toxins from plant they ingest, especially captive animals because their choice is limited.
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Some poisonous frogs in South America deliberately eat a specific diet of plants in order to produce toxins in their skin.
As for the issue of antinutrients, humans are astonishingly adaptable. For example, it was mentioned that Austrian peasants from a couple of centuries ago were able to endure twice the fatal dose of arsenic in their bodies without health-issues simply because they'd been eating tiny amounts of it throughout their lives and had adapted to it.
I am going to have to do that raw food myths page soon, it's REALLY annoying to find people constantly referring to the mythical dangers of mercury in seafood.
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I am going to have to do that raw food myths page soon, it's REALLY annoying to find people constantly referring to the mythical dangers of mercury in seafood.
"Minimata disease [‚min·??mäd·? di‚z?z]
(medicine)
A disorder resulting from methyl mercury poisoning, which occurred in epidemic proportions in 1956 in Minimata Bay, a Japanese coastal town, where the inhabitants ate fish contaminated by industrial pollution; the most obvious symptoms are tremors and involuntary movements.
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific & Technical Terms, 6E, Copyright © 2003 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc."
What is outstanding with Minamata disease is that it had identifiable symptoms.
Mercury poisoning has no symptoms of its own, but rather shows as anything else such as cancer, heart disease, pneumonia, dental caries, hangnails etc.
Result is that it is denied and or ignored, unless this protocol actually works, in which case one will see the increase in mercury in the urine:
http://www.bioraynaturaldetox.com/where-do-i-start/detox-protocols/default.aspx
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"Minimata disease [‚min·??mäd·? di‚z?z]
(medicine)
A disorder resulting from methyl mercury poisoning, which occurred in epidemic proportions in 1956 in Minimata Bay, a Japanese coastal town, where the inhabitants ate fish contaminated by industrial pollution; the most obvious symptoms are tremors and involuntary movements.
This is one of the biggest lies among raw-foodists, that mercury in fish is supposedly harmful. In a way, William is useful in his ridiculous wrong-headedness, as he loves pointing out the many ludicrous, fallacious myths among RVAFers, such as the mercury-in-fish poisoning "theory", the absurd claims re smoking being supposedly "healthy" etc.
As anybody knows, there are definitive studies/observations completely denouncing the absurd claims about mercury in seafood etc.:-
http://www.urmc.rochester.edu/news/story/index.cfm?id=886
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This is one of the biggest lies among raw-foodists, that mercury in fish is supposedly harmful. In a way, William is useful in his ridiculous wrong-headedness, as he loves pointing out the many ludicrous, fallacious myths mong RVAFers, such as the mercury-in-fish poisoning "theory", the absurd claims re smoking being supposedly "healthy" etc.
As anybody knows, there are definitive studies/observations completely denouncing the absurd claims about mercury in seafood etc.:-
http://www.urmc.rochester.edu/news/story/index.cfm?id=886
Do you have other references to support your claim ?
"However, recent evidence in animals suggests that learning, memory and behavioral problems linked to mercury might begin in adolescence."
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The present levels of methylmercury in fish or seafood is usually by far not comparable to the levels reached in the Minimata Bay disaster in 1956.
However the conclusion of a definitive absence of toxicity at present levels is premature AFAIK . The truth is again that we really don't know yet for sure.
http://discovermagazine.com/2009/apr/19-how-to-tell-if-you.re-poisoning-yourself-with-fish/article_view?b_start:int=0&-C=
Main exposure to mercury comes usually not from fish but from dental amalgam fillings.
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Can you give the links about MCT and nausea ?
It's in the other coconut thread that inspired this one: http://www.rawpaleoforum.com/primal-diet/how-important-is-coconut-cream/msg23706/#msg23706
... William is useful in his ridiculous wrong-headedness, as he loves pointing out the many ludicrous, fallacious myths mong RVAFers, such as the mercury-in-fish poisoning "theory", the absurd claims re smoking being supposedly "healthy" etc.
As anybody knows, there are definitive studies/observations completely denouncing the absurd claims ....
Tyler, I agree with you on mercury, but must you write in such a rude manner about it with members here who happen to disagree with you on mercury? It's one thing to be rude with trolls, but another with non-troll members.
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Tyler, I agree with you on mercury, but must you write in such a rude manner about it with members here who happen to disagree with you on mercury? It's one thing to be rude with trolls, but another with non-troll members.
I was specifically critical of William as this isn't the only time he's gone against rawpalaeo ideas(re mentions of pemmican, smoking etc. etc.)
As for mercury-in-fish notions, these were originally started by vegan and Green movement campaigners with incredibly weak arguments and an obvious political motive to remove all animal flesh from peoples' diets, and so it is vitally important to demolish these absurd notions as many people in the RVAF community foolishly take such new-age notions at face-value and then limit their raw diet quite needlessly.
Even though I'm a sceptic of the mercury-in-amalgam theory, given my own personal experience, I'm happy to leave it alone, as it doesn't have an impact on peoples' diets, unlike the mercury-in-fish claims.
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Do you have other references to support your claim ?
"However, recent evidence in animals suggests that learning, memory and behavioral problems linked to mercury might begin in adolescence."
The above quotation was a vague unreferenced mention on some website. Not valid.
Here is a definitive page debunking all the various myths about mercury:-
http://fishscam.com/mercuryMyths.cfm
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The above quotation was a vague unreferenced mention on some website. Not valid.
Indeed, this study is not valid (see below)
Here is a definitive page debunking all the various myths about mercury:-
http://fishscam.com/mercuryMyths.cfm
Definitive ?
It references again the Seychelles study which is not convincing (hair samples less accurate, insufficient statistical power to detect small differences, relatively low-level continuous stream of mercury, etc.) while two other extensive studies of mercury impacts on foetal development have shown mercury to have deleterious effects : http://www.ourstolenfuture.org/NewScience/oncompounds/mercury/2003/2003-0515myersetal.htm
I would not be surprised that this organization has some interests to promote fish consumption :
"The Center for Consumer Freedom is supported by restaurants, food companies and more than 1,000 concerned individuals. From farm to fork, our friends and supporters include businesses, employees and consumers."
Unfortunately, mercury is only one among many other toxic components in our polluted oceans : http://library.thinkquest.org/CR0215471/ocean_pollution.htm
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Indeed, this study is not valid (see below)
Definitive ?
It references again the Seychelles study which is not convincing (hair samples less accurate, insufficient statistical power to detect small differences, relatively low-level continuous stream of mercury, etc.) while two other extensive studies of mercury impacts on foetal development have shown mercury to have deleterious effects : http://www.ourstolenfuture.org/NewScience/oncompounds/mercury/2003/2003-0515myersetal.htm
The Seychelles study is the longest-running study re mercury and the most respected one. No other study comes close in terms of rigorousness. The Faroes study is itself routinely criticised by fishscam and other websites since the author of the study refuses to allow other scientists to view his data etc.:-
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1513314/
http://newsletter.vitalchoice.com/e_article000709698.cfm?x=b8wQMPW,b67kwpM8,w
I would not be surprised that this organization is interested to promote fish consumption :
"The Center for Consumer Freedom is supported by restaurants, food companies and more than 1,000 concerned individuals. From farm to fork, our friends and supporters include businesses, employees and consumers."
It is understandable why such people might want to demolish the hysterical attacks on fish-consumption by vegans and Green campaigners. And, unlike the anti-mercury PETA etc. activists, the above website does at least provide solid science and standard everyday facts to support its position.
Unfortunately, mercury is only one among many other toxic components in our polluted oceans : http://library.thinkquest.org/CR0215471/ocean_pollution.htm
This is the exact point I've been making for years. The oceans are and have always been filled with tiny trace amounts of every element and compound imaginable from gold to mercury to uranium, so the claims re man-made mercury going into the world's oceans are ridiculous, given that man-made mercury, even after a couple of centuries of production, is still only a microscopic proportion of the natural levels of mercury always found in the world's oceans since time immemorial. One obvious point comes to mind, if mercury in the oceans was truly so harmful, one would expect all fish to have serious neurological defects - yet no such evidence exists, just 1 or 2 very suspect studies, such as the Faroes one which claimed a tiny 0.25 IQ point difference in humans eating seafood(which is easily explained given standard deviation and random chance)
Incidentally, uranium and lead are also found in trace amounts in the world's oceans(along with every other possible element and compound), but one never hears from anti-mercury campaigners any hysteria about eating "uranium-contaminated" fish etc. Perhaps because they would look a bit foolish since radiation from such tiny traces of uranium would be so negligible as to be ridiculous. Same goes for mercury, there has been no serious evidence to indicate that tiny trace amounts of mercury are remotely harmful(indeed the Seychelles study actually found a slight benefit in IQ from consuming all that mercury-rich fish, which fits in neatly with the theory of hormesis which states that tiny traces of compounds normally toxic at much higher levels can be beneficial in doses much lower than the toxic limit).
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I was specifically critical of William as this isn't the only time he's gone against rawpalaeo ideas(re mentions of pemmican, smoking etc. etc.)
Personal criticisms are forbidden everywhere.
Criticize my ideas all you like, (and I will bury you! :D ), but your epithets are insulting.
Finding what rawpaleo is is what we are here for; your denial of reasonable conjecture is not helping, and you are not the master of ideas.
Anyone who needs that kind of tyranny should join ZIOH.
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I was specifically critical of William as this isn't the only time he's gone against rawpalaeo ideas(re mentions of pemmican, smoking etc. etc.)
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I agree with you on mercury, and William doesn't tow the party line, it's true, but he isn't a troll, so I don't think he deserves such harsh treatment unless he really earns it, and I don't see that it adds anything to your points anyway.
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I agree with you on mercury, and William doesn't tow the party line, it's true, but he isn't a troll, so I don't think he deserves such harsh treatment unless he really earns it, and I don't see that it adds anything to your points anyway.
He behaves like one, regardless of what his intentions might be. Still, like I said, his decidedly unscientific approach is in a way indirectly helpful as it makes the pro-cooked argument look really bad on this forum. Thank god for Wrangham and William in this respect.
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.... Still, like I said, his decidedly unscientific approach is in a way indirectly helpful as it makes the pro-cooked argument look really bad on this forum. Thank god for Wrangham and William in this respect.
Good attitude [and I don't mean that ironically--I mean that it's good that you're regarding it positively as an opportunity]. Indeed, if someone makes ridiculous points it makes them look bad and their points should be easy to refute without using ridicule, as their are by definition ridiculous on their own and simply refuting them should make this clear.
Of course, I realize that flaming is a common technique on the Internet, and it seems to be very popular (the most enthusiastic compliment I've received here came when in frustration I broke from my standards and engaged in hostile style briefly myself--though I believe it was perceived as more hostile than I intended), so I can understand the temptation to do so. However, the few people who are aware of us RPDers tend to see us as strange and emotional/magical-thinking, so engaging in flaming-type debates instead of cool, rational discussion threatens to add to that perception. Imagine their surprise if they found us all behaving the opposite of their stereotypes of us? Flaming-type style tends to devolve into flame wars, which tend to distract from the actual discussion at hand and make it more difficult to share and learn.
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Given the decidedly overly-emotional arguments made by pro-cooked-advocates to me in the past on other forums(blithely ignoring any and all scientific evidence I've provided without any genuine grounds), I find the above claim rather unlikely. Actually, the general impression of raw-foodists is more positive than you make it appear, with people (albeit reluctantly) nearly all admitting that cooking more than lightly is harmful to one's food - after all, with the multitude of studies done on heat-created toxins formed by cooking and evidence re the hygiene hypothesis theory, the pro-cooked argument is pretty much dead-in-the-water on a scientific basis.
As regards arguments,from what I've observed in other non-diet-related areas, there is a tendency for some of those who don't have any real evidence to support their unscientific/illogical claims to repeatedly shout their views, no matter how ridiculous they may sound, with the notion that if they say them often enough, some people will be gullible enough to believe them. It's at this stage where it's necessary to counter-attack in a similiar way and stop such nonsense, before it makes the board look bad.
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Good attitude. Indeed, if someone makes ridiculous points it makes them look bad and their points should be easy to refute without using ridicule, as their are by definition ridiculous on their own and simply refuting them should make this clear.
Of course, I realize that flaming is a common technique on the Internet, and it seems to be very popular (the most enthusiastic compliment I've received here came when in frustration I broke from my standards and engaged in hostile style briefly myself--though I believe it was perceived as more hostile than I intended), so I can understand the temptation to do so. However, the few people who are aware of us RPDers tend to see us as strange and emotional/magical-thinking, so engaging in flaming-type debates instead of cool, rational discussion threatens to add to that perception. Imagine their surprise if they found us all behaving the opposite of their stereotypes of us? Flaming-type style tends to devolve into flame wars, which tend to distract from the actual discussion at hand and make it more difficult to share and learn.
+1
I abhor flaming-type responses particularly because I am so vulnerable to them myself. Though in a more broad sense, the benefit of flaming someone is almost never positive and there is almost surely a better way to get a point across. I think it takes a lot of courage, intelligence and patience to come up with a response to a disagreement that is neither insulting or one that further escalates emotions where little is accomplished. I agree that naturally it is tempting to automatically engage with defensive insults when your personal beliefs, no matter how much science there is to back them up, have been threatened. For me, setting aside this temptation to go on the attack is one of the hardest things to deal with every day.
Also to add.
For instance, Tyler, when you use abusive language as Phil has pointed out, I feel less inclined to want to even read what you have to say. My reptillian mind is giving me signals of retreat and I will want to be more dismissive of what is to come.
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He behaves like one
O what a whopper! Negative personal comments are a troll characteristic; only TD does this.
Still, like I said, his decidedly unscientific approach is in a way indirectly helpful as it makes the pro-cooked argument look really bad on this forum.
Written by one who clearly cannot tell the difference between science, which is supported by evidence, and religion which is supported by incessant propaganda.
Thank god for Wrangham and William in this respect.
It was William who outed Wrangham as a troll. Find more credible insults, as this one is easily disproved.
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O what a whopper! Negative personal comments are a troll characteristic; only TD does this.
There's hypocrisy. Incidentally, while negative comments(such as you make all the time and me quite often) are quite common among non-trolls too. What is rather more common as a trollish characteristic is to constantly make posts attacking the particular ideology of the forum(eg:- promoting pemmican/smoking/cooking or attacking darwinian evolution).
Written by one who clearly cannot tell the difference between science, which is supported by evidence, and religion which is supported by incessant propaganda.
I find it absolutely laughable that you demand scientific evidence from others who offer it much of the time anyway without asking, while you never provide anything remotely credible, such as your flat-earth-style promotion of Creationism.
It was William who outed Wrangham as a troll. Find more credible insults, as this one is easily disproved.
Well, you did condemn Wrangham on the cooked-palaeo list, give the devil his due, albeit scientific data was sadly lacking in those comments.
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What is rather more common as a trollish characteristic is to constantly make posts attacking the particular ideology of the forum.
This forum has an IDEOLOGY?!?
Holy s---! I didn't know. Mea culpa. Sob. (sarcasm)
Please enlighten us with the name of the person who has the God-like wisdom to define what it is that we are supposed to believe.
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Tyler, I agree with William and think that the word of "ideology" is really inappropriate. We don't know everything and parts of what we believe today might be proven wrong tomorrov. Absence of dogmatism and a large openmindedness are the basis of the scientific method.
On this forum we certainly share a sufficient number of beliefs so that we sometimes can disagree on specific issues. Nothing to worry about IMO. I disagree with William on some issues such as evolution but don't feel threatened by him. If he is right maybe he'll convince me and if I'm right maybe I'll convince him some day. I don't think he is a troll and like his posts in particular his remarkable sense of humor.
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Regardless of peoples' individual opinions on vaguer subjects, there are some basic principles behind the raw, palaeolithic diet concept. For example the words "raw" and "palaeo" imply, by definition, that this is not a pro-cooked or pro-grains/pro-dairy board, in an overall sense. Actually we do have specific forums for raw dairy(the Primal Diet, grains and raw dairy(the Weston-Price Diet forum) and even cooked food and raw veganism can be discussed in the hot topics forum, and that's where they should be confined.
Now, of course, we could allow free discussion of everything on all forums, in which case, we'd quickly end up with people writing in stating, for example, that they would much rather eat a junk-food diet, and asking members if they think a Burger King burger is healthier than a McDonald's burger or how many calories there are in a Haagen Dasz ice-cream pack, and other similiar rubbish. (I've actually occasionally had a number of questions very similiar to the above being asked by questioners on another raw-meat-related site, although I at least had the option of refusing to answer such moronic questions). Plus, newbies who come to the rawpaleoforum website are mostly not going to be interested in topics on cooked diets, or dairy etc., they come to this forum precisely because this forum offers a wholly different approach to that offered by those other diets they've previously tried and failed with. As soon as we clutter the forums with nonsense about pemmican or the supposed "benefits" of cooked foods etc., we will simply discourage such potential members from joining- after all, they can quite easily read about similiar pro-cooked rubbish etc. on other forums.
Another aspect:- most of the forums I know of which allow any and all discussion and which don't have a focal point on which most members agree, tend to end up with very few people posting(because no one cares about anything in particular, or because people are too polite to each other to want to cause controversy, so fewer posts get generated).
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Regardless of peoples' individual opinions on vaguer subjects, there are some basic principles behind the raw, palaeolithic diet concept.
Quite so, and they must be empirical.
One of those empirical principles is that a diet that includes carbohydrates such as fruit and veg. is not paleo.
Another is that a diet that achieves the desired result and has no conflict with archaeology must be paleo. This is pemmican.
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Can you render fat by leaving it out on a rock in the sun?
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Can you render fat by leaving it out on a rock in the sun?
No.
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William, do you think everyone will improve their health on a strict pemmican diet? Have you thought about why pemmican works so well for you and others? Dr. Kurt Harris constantly babbles about allergies to bovine serum albumin found in beef and says that the drying of the meat could denature these allergens. Perhaps you fall in this category. He goes on to say that ideally we would not have these allergies if we weren't exposed to so much grain consumption beforehand. I still don't see how pemmican would be a preferred food of someone who has always been fed raw meat from the get go. I do see it possible that it is magnitudes better for people who have compromised systems such as yourself.
Also, does anyone know of the first ever well documented case of pemmican being made?
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Quite so, and they must be empirical.
One of those empirical principles is that a diet that includes carbohydrates such as fruit and veg. is not paleo.
Another is that a diet that achieves the desired result and has no conflict with archaeology must be paleo. This is pemmican.
If I'm right you had serious cardiovascular ailments and pemmican works for you as a diet and cure.
Then this is by itself simply a fact of great interest and I personnaly recognize that and consider that we have to do so even if it seems at odds with the simple equation or rule heating=toxicity.
As pointed out by PaleoDonk it suggests that it is obviously not pertinent to put pemmican in the same bag of toxic neolithic foods such as cooked grains.
Nature is subtle.
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Can you render fat by leaving it out on a rock in the sun?
"Render" basically means to melt, so yes, you could do that, but it would spill out all over the place unless the rock had a big depression. :) Typically rendering is done at the higher temps that Lex talks about, but I melt my suet in a crock pot on the warm setting, which seems to be not much above room temperature (I can stick my finger in it during the melting without pain), which is well below the level of what is still considered raw at 40 degrees Celsius. So I guess you could call what I do "raw rendering."
One of those empirical principles is that a diet that includes carbohydrates such as fruit and veg. is not paleo.
This forum is free to do what it wants, but I take a big-tent view of RPD. I think the most empirically important aspect of raw seems to be that the foods not be heated above 40C and generally not be heavily processed. The most empirically important aspect of Paleo seems to be Eaton's hypothesis of biological discordance/adaptation, that is, we shouldn't eat the foods we are not adapted to. If the Paleo folks didn't eat them regularly, there's a good chance that they're not healthy for humans and we should be very cautious about introducing new foods or foods that we're not sure are ancestral. There is disagreement on what Paleo folks ate and how much of each type of food. There's also no guarantee that everything they ate was healthy. So we can disagree on which foods are both truly Paleo and truly healthy. As long as someone can support their reason for eating a food in the context of biological discordance in the context of the last 2.5 million years, I don't have a problem with them claiming that it's Paleo.
Also, since this is a dietary forum rather than a scientific forum, I would think a certain amount of leeway would be appropriate, as long as people acknowledge that what they are doing is cheating (or, again, if they at least try to defend it in terms of biological discordance). So someone could say, I'm just starting with RPD and I'm doing about 40% RPD so far," or "I'm mostly-RPD except for the cooked tallow in my pemmican." William could even say, "Heated pemmican works great for me," but I do think he goes too far when he implies that it would be optimal for everyone without substantial evidence to back it up beyond the experience of a few people. If it turns out that heated pemmican is actually superior to raw meat and fat, then objectively we might need to reconsider the definition of "raw" in RPD, or maybe even alter it to raw-and-low-cooked-Paleo Diet, but I don't see that happening any time soon here, if ever.
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"Render" basically means to melt, so yes, you could do that, but it would spill out all over the place unless the rock had a big depression. :) Typically rendering is done at the higher temps that Lex talks about, but I melt my suet in a crock pot on the warm setting, which seems to be not much above room temperature (I can stick my finger in it during the melting without pain), which is well below the level of what is still considered raw at 40 degrees Celsius. So I guess you could call what I do "raw rendering."
Not to be a stickler but you just melt or liquify fat. Rendering involves extracting the impurities by melting. One of those impurities as far as fat is concerned is water which is most definitely still in your melted fat.
Render: "to melt down; extract the impurities from by melting: to render fat." (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/render?jss=0)
Therefore, IMO, no you cannot render fat on a stone via sunlight. Honestly, there might be select areas it'd be theoretically possible such as a desert but not in most areas.
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William, do you think everyone will improve their health on a strict pemmican diet? Have you thought about why pemmican works so well for you and others? Dr. Kurt Harris constantly babbles about allergies to bovine serum albumin found in beef and says that the drying of the meat could denature these allergens. Perhaps you fall in this category. He goes on to say that ideally we would not have these allergies if we weren't exposed to so much grain consumption beforehand. I still don't see how pemmican would be a preferred food of someone who has always been fed raw meat from the get go. I do see it possible that it is magnitudes better for people who have compromised systems such as yourself.
Also, does anyone know of the first ever well documented case of pemmican being made?
Theoretically, yes, after the old saying "you are what you eat".
Thanks for Harris' idea of allergies to bovine serum albumin, this might explain why I get a stop when eating ground beef, although other allergies disappear after a year of complete mineralization and I still have it.
I can see pemmican as a preferred stored food, for the provident and the untrusting, as well as those who live in a climate where winter hunting varies from difficult to suicidal.
I don't know of any historical report on when pemmican was first made, but it is so simple and obvious that I see no reason that it would not have been made in the Paleolithic.
Basic human nature tells us of the sex drive, but a security drive comes before even that, and pemmican, because it lasts for so long, gives security.
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" William could even say, "Heated pemmican works great for me,"
Not. I have never heated pemmican over 37°C, and cannot imagine why anyone would do so.
but I do think he goes too far when he implies that it would be optimal for everyone without substantial evidence to back it up beyond the experience of a few people.
There must be some who gave it an honest and properly careful try, and failed, but we have not heard such, and can't really know. What I see are the glowing reports of success in the pemmican thread in ZIOH, the polar explorers, the voyageurs, and traditionally all northern Canadians.
That's more than a few people.
If it turns out that heated pemmican is actually superior to raw meat and fat, then objectively we might need to reconsider the definition of "raw" in RPD, or maybe even alter it to raw-and-low-cooked-Paleo Diet, but I don't see that happening any time soon here, if ever.
"Raw" means it contains all the original enzymes and whatever else is required for complete digestion.
"Cooked" means poisoned, for me.
"Render" means to separate the poisons both present and potential from the fat, retaining only the pure essential fat/lipids/tallow. This tallow is unaffected by heat.
I do not believe that pemmican is superior to raw fat meat, having lived on raw Black Angus porterhouse steaks for a few days while travelling in the northern U.S.A. and enjoyed it, but these are too expensive locally.
Pemmican is superior for a stored food, and for times when the right stuff is not available.
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Not. I have never heated pemmican over 37°C, and cannot imagine why anyone would do so.
I thought Lex recommended a temp that high.... In any case, that means your pemmican is raw by the standards here, so you could call it "raw pemmican" to put Tyler at ease. I hope this helps avoid arguments.
There must be some who gave it an honest and properly careful try, and failed, but we have not heard such,...
As I recall, some people here and at ZIOH said they tried it and didn't do well. I don't think it wasn't clear why, though. Maybe they heated it to higher temps?
What I see are the glowing reports of success in the pemmican thread in ZIOH, the polar explorers, the voyageurs, and traditionally all northern Canadians.
That's more than a few people.
Good point, but I meant among people who had also tried eating only raw. How many people claim pemmican is better than ordinary raw? For myself, I don't notice much difference between eating my raw pemmican and my ground beef with raw tallow, except that I get more of the euphoria feeling from the latter, but that could be because I use grassfed meats for the ground mix vs. grain-finished for the pemmican. Some day I hope I get a bunch of grass-fed muscle meat so I can try grass-fed pemmican and see if there's any difference.
"Render" means to separate the poisons both present and potential from the fat, retaining only the pure essential fat/lipids/tallow. This tallow is unaffected by heat.
Render for me means "melt," which results in separating out the connective tissue and off-tasting bits of meat.
I do not believe that pemmican is superior to raw fat meat, having lived on raw Black Angus porterhouse steaks for a few days while travelling in the northern U.S.A. and enjoyed it, but these are too expensive locally.
Pemmican is superior for a stored food, and for times when the right stuff is not available.
OK, thanks for the explanation. Why didn't you mention that to Tyler in the first place? Were you pulling his leg? :) When you make it for stored food do you heat it higher then, or just longer (to get all the water out)?
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Render for me means "melt," which results in separating out the connective tissue and off-tasting bits of meat.
OK, thanks for the explanation. Why didn't you mention that to Tyler in the first place? Were you pulling his leg? :)
The endless squabble is caused by TD's inability to distinguish between tallow and cooked fat, and a possible problem with fat digestion - note that he has been unable to kick the carbohydrates.
When you make it for stored food do you heat it higher then, or just longer (to get all the water out)?
I always heat fat to ~200°F for about 24 hours, relying on the vapour pressure to drive off all the water, then filter out the poisonous (due to heating) solids.
So the meat/jerky is raw, no argument, and it is irrelevant as to whether the tallow (no longer called fat), has been heated over 40°C because that is the temperature at which enzymes are destroyed, and there are no enzymes needed for digesting tallow. Mixed at =<100°F.
This has been proven by all the people who have lived on it.
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The endless squabble is caused by TD's inability to distinguish between tallow and cooked fat, and a possible problem with fat digestion - note that he has been unable to kick the carbohydrates.
I always heat fat to ~200°F for about 24 hours, relying on the vapour pressure to drive off all the water, then filter out the poisonous (due to heating) solids.
So the meat/jerky is raw, no argument, and it is irrelevant as to whether the tallow (no longer called fat), has been heated over 40°C because that is the temperature at which enzymes are destroyed....
Isn't 200°F ~ 93.3°C? That's higher than 40°C, which is 104°F.
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Isn't 200°F ~ 93.3°C? That's higher than 40°C, which is 104°F.
Yes, it is. If pemmican is to be stored for years, the water must be driven off the fat, so temps for rendering must be close to boiling.
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OK, then it's not generally considered raw, as I understand it, since it's heated over 40°C.
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OK, then it's not generally considered raw, as I understand it, since it's heated over 40°C.
If it's not raw, I'm dead and you are communicating with a ghost.
And the polar explorers, voyageurs, Indians etc. got scurvy and died too. Will you tell delfuego?
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I think I see where you are going with this. Do I have the following right: since the smoke temperature of saturated animal fat is higher than other tested fats, and since you observe no health problems in the examples you cited, you posit that no enzymes are destroyed by the heating of suet to 200 degrees F and it therefore can be considered raw, even above 104 degrees F?
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OK I confess - I don't give a faint fart if it's raw.
I eat the stuff because there isn't anything else that works.
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... the tallow (no longer called fat), has been heated over 40°C because that is the temperature at which enzymes are destroyed, and there are no enzymes needed for digesting tallow. ...
Then what is the purpose of lipase ?
Do you have any evidences, other than your experience, that enzymes are not needed to digest fat ?
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As I recall, some people here and at ZIOH said they tried it and didn't do well. I don't think it wasn't clear why, though. Maybe they heated it to higher temps?
Indeed, pemmican made from suet is harder to digest than pemmican made from muscle fat. Some have made this experience on ZIOH.
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One of those empirical principles is that a diet that includes carbohydrates such as fruit and veg. is not paleo.
Again, a false assumption and easily disproved as plant-matter was consumed in palaeo times, given past studies I've cited.
Another is that a diet that achieves the desired result and has no conflict with archaeology must be paleo. This is pemmican.
pemmican could never have been consumed until after the period cooking was introduced, c.250,000 years ago, in the last 10% of the Palaeolithic era. Even then, palaeo HGs were undoubtedly still consuming some raw meats given the traditional diets of palaeodiet-style HGs in the Neolithic era, such as the Inuit. And given the reports by many of the side-effects caused by pemmican, poorer digestion etc., it cannot be viewed as a health-food.
I also see you're posting more nonsense, claiming that cooked animal fat doesn't require enzymes for digestion. Of course, it does(re lipase), the body just has to produce more enzymes within its digestive system in order to make up for the fact that the enzymes in the raw fat were destroyed by rendering/heating it, thus speeding up aging of the relevant organs etc.
*Like PP said, I have no objection to people stating that they are consuming pemmican or some other cooked cr*p due to not being able to access higher quality foods or because they're just then transitioning to raw, or because they don't feel their health is that much ruined by its consumption by comparison to other foods so that they eat it for travel purposes/social reasons or whatever, as long as the reason is mentioned. But it is absolutely unacceptable to actively promote pemmican on this forum, since this is not a cooked-palaeo forum and especially since others have had major issues with cooked animal fat in the past..Given the unnecessary trollish nature of past postings about pemmican(such as a recent, irrelevant post promoting pemmican on my own journal, I think I'll just delete any such nonsense in future, if this continues. It's simply childish and immature).
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William, I think I've got the point of how you prepare your tallow by heating your fat to melt it and more importantly dry it at temperatures about 200 °F.
Do you mind telling us how you prepare the meat that goes into your pemmican? I guess it is dried. What is the drying temperature ?
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William, I think I've got the point of how you prepare your tallow by heating your fat to melt it and more importantly dry it at temperatures about 200 °F.
Do you mind telling us how you prepare the meat that goes into your pemmican? I guess it is dried. What is the drying temperature ?
I slice partly frozen beef to <6mm, then set the thermostat to 95°F, and leave it for 4 days.
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Again, a false assumption and easily disproved as plant-matter was consumed in palaeo times, given past studies I've cited.
pemmican could never have been consumed until after the period cooking was introduced, c.250,000 years ago, in the last 10% of the Palaeolithic era. Even then, palaeo HGs were undoubtedly still consuming some raw meats given the traditional diets of palaeodiet-style HGs in the Neolithic era, such as the Inuit. And given the reports by many of the side-effects caused by pemmican, poorer digestion etc., it cannot be viewed as a health-food.
I also see you're posting more nonsense, claiming that cooked animal fat doesn't require enzymes for digestion. Of course, it does(re lipase), the body just has to produce more enzymes within its digestive system in order to make up for the fact that the enzymes in the raw fat were destroyed by rendering/heating it, thus speeding up aging of the relevant organs etc.
*Like PP said, I have no objection to people stating that they are consuming pemmican or some other cooked cr*p due to not being able to access higher quality foods or because they're just then transitioning to raw, or because they don't feel their health is that much ruined by its consumption by comparison to other foods so that they eat it for travel purposes/social reasons or whatever, as long as the reason is mentioned. But it is absolutely unacceptable to actively promote pemmican on this forum, since this is not a cooked-palaeo forum and especially since others have had major issues with cooked animal fat in the past..Given the unnecessary trollish nature of past postings about pemmican(such as a recent, irrelevant post promoting pemmican on my own journal, I think I'll just delete any such nonsense in future, if this continues. It's simply childish and immature).
I think any extreme positions (pemmican is the best possible food for human, pemmican is cooked cr*p, carbs are the evil, etc.) only generates perpetual conflicts that lead to nowhere. The truth is often between these extreme positions.
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plant-matter was consumed in palaeo times, given past studies I've cited.
The fruit and veg. available were not eaten in the paleolithic, as you know.
We would all be interested if you would experiment by eating the same plant-matter that paleoman might have eaten.
Until you have tried such a paleolithic diet your opinions are deprecated.
Given the unnecessary trollish nature of past postings about pemmican(such as a recent, irrelevant post promoting pemmican on my own journal, I think I'll just delete any such nonsense in future, if this continues. It's simply childish and immature).
Would you consider learning the difference between the meaning of the word "cook" and the word "render"?
You might then be able to explain your attitude.
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*Like PP said, I have no objection to people stating that they are consuming pemmican or some other cooked cr*p due to not being able to access higher quality foods or because they're just then transitioning to raw, or because they don't feel their health is that much ruined by its consumption by comparison to other foods so that they eat it for travel purposes/social reasons or whatever, as long as the reason is mentioned. But it is absolutely unacceptable to actively promote pemmican on this forum, since this is not a cooked-palaeo forum and especially since others have had major issues with cooked animal fat in the past..Given the unnecessary trollish nature of past postings about pemmican(such as a recent, irrelevant post promoting pemmican on my own journal, I think I'll just delete any such nonsense in future, if this continues. It's simply childish and immature).
Tyler, I'm afraid it is just your reaction that is childish and immature. I would like to discuss quietly the pemmican issue and find out why this food has cured the ailments William suffered from and why he does fairly well with it. Because this is of high scientific interest and your dogmatic position is just ridiculous and highly sterile. If you don't mind.
I notice the following features:
-William tells us that the meat is dried at 95°F (35°C). No problem this is perfectly raw non denaturated protein. Moreover this "aging" of the meat during 4 days produces a lot of interesting probiotic fungi and bacteria.
-William tells us that he uses beef fat rendered at 200°F (94°C). Beef fat is typically 97% saturated and monounsaturated fatty acids. Theses fatty acids are perfectly stable upon heating up to 150- 200°C. No problem with them. Only the 3% polyunsaturated fatty acids are less stable above about 100°C and so here generate only a very tiny quantity of degradation products.
-Enzymes are proteins and proteins are made inactive by denaturation in stomacal acidic environment anyway so their denaturation upon rendering is essentially irrelevant. Fat is necessarily digested by means of our own enzyme production even if raw.
-Preformed vitamin A, vitamin D and other fat soluble nutriments are fairly stable as compared to other vitamins but some degradation and destruction is expected around 94°C.
Obviously it is quite absurd and pure non-sense to compare in terms of toxicity pemmican prepared according to William's recipe to grilled, broiled, boiled etc...cooked meat, as Tyler does, where the amount of heat generated toxins is tremendously higher (both protein and fat with usually much more PUFAs heated at or above 100°C). Nothing to do a priori re toxicity.
So I'm not so surprised from a scientific point of view that William does well with it and has cured his ailments.
I've never eaten pemmican and enjoy my meat and fat as it is without any processing or heating. But I am not reluctant to consider this food as quite acceptable on travel because it's dry and keeps so well. I would however try to render the fat at even lower temperature (50°C might work even if drying is then a lengthier process).
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This is inaccurate, of course. First off, the fact that the body produces its own enzymes is irrelevant as we all know full well that people on SAD diets commonly end up with digestive issues as they get older, routinely requiring enzyme supplements as they age. If their bodies always provided enough enzymes, they wouldn't require enzyme supplements.
Secondly, the claims re saturated fat are rather bogus. For example, as I pointed out on the rawpaleodiet yahoo group, the foods highest in cooked saturated fats are often the foods highest in heat-created toxins(butter being a perfect example thereof, being very high in saturated fat):-
http://www.newcastleyoga.com.au/links/Food%20AGEs%20text.pdf
As regards toxicity, one can quibble about the levels of toxicity in mcdonald's hamburger's, pemmican, grains or any other food, and not only are there varying degrees of toxicity in foods but also different individuals have different resistances to the various food. But the point is that they have nothing whatsoever to do with rawpaleoforum(to give an example, I am far less affected by some cooked foods than others(cooked plant foods have a negligible, immediate effect on me by comparison to cooked animal foods, but I don't go round promoting the former as a health food. I don't mind members discussing such things in a thread specifically connected to some anti-rawpalaeo theme, on occasion, if in the Hot Topics forum, but hijacking threads constantly on other forums , purely to promote an anti-RPD claim as William does routinely is totally unacceptable on any level. I mean, we've had trolls like metallica and superinfinity constantly promoting the consumption of cooked/processed foods, or raw vegan/fruitarian diets with the usual nonsensical posts and William is no different from them in his approach.
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The fruit and veg. available were not eaten in the paleolithic, as you know.
We would all be interested if you would experiment by eating the same plant-matter that paleoman might have eaten.
I could just as well say the same nonsensical thing, that you can't claim to be palaeo unless you've eaten mammoths or aurochs, a staple in palaeo times. A meaningless statement as usual.
And, as for the fruit/veg issue in palaeo times,I've debunked the notion that plants weren't part of palaeolithic diets a dozen times already with scientific papers , as shown below:-
http://www.pnas.org/content/98/19/10972.full
http://www.springerlink.com/content/u386383180288602/
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VBC-4XX26J5-2&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1162367940&_rerunOrigin=google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=d26091c15d4b5ecac5ac6b29afd36afb
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There must be some who gave it an honest and properly careful try, and failed, but we have not heard such, and can't really know. What I see are the glowing reports of success in the pemmican thread in ZIOH, the polar explorers, the voyageurs, and traditionally all northern Canadians.
That's more than a few people.
I don't think there were very many people (perhaps 5ish) in the first place to switch over to only pemmican. I do remember though that Larry, from ZIOH, tried pemmican only for 6 weeks. He did alright and IIRC it did not work as well as his normal meat and has since ditched the pemmican.
"Raw" means it contains all the original enzymes and whatever else is required for complete digestion.
"Cooked" means poisoned, for me.
"Render" means to separate the poisons both present and potential from the fat, retaining only the pure essential fat/lipids/tallow. This tallow is unaffected by heat.
I do not believe that pemmican is superior to raw fat meat, having lived on raw Black Angus porterhouse steaks for a few days while travelling in the northern U.S.A. and enjoyed it, but these are too expensive locally.
Pemmican is superior for a stored food, and for times when the right stuff is not available.
There clearly seems to be a substantial difference between rendering and cooking. It seems only Tyler has a problem with this.
I completely agree with Phil, that you should have given the board full disclosure about pemmican vs raw meat. Why did you withhold the very valuable information that pemmican is indeed not superior to raw beef? Why then do you eat pemmican? Is cost really that big of an issue? It is your health. It seems you haven’t given raw grass-fed beef a fair try and that you had a mislead agenda with pemmican by covering up some of the story.
I also don’t see how you can conclude that evolution, Paleolithic eating of vegetation, big bang theory, etc.. don’t exist, even though there is a preponderance of evidence for all of these things and then say that paleo man ate pemmican on exactly no evidence whatsoever. You may actually be the sole person who believes paleo man ate pemmican. Your reasoning is that pemmican is simple to make is enough for you??? I don’t understand how you evaluate evidence.
I will say again though that pemmican actualy might be superior for those withallergies to rw meat s Dr.Harris has pointed out.
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I think any extreme positions (pemmican is the best possible food for human, pemmican is cooked cr*p, carbs are the evil, etc.) only generates perpetual conflicts that lead to nowhere. The truth is often between these extreme positions.
I agree. It's better to keep things calm and rational. Such extremely emotional arguments make this forum look like a bunch of disturbed fanatics, which is the sort of thing a few people have already described it as. In my experience, extreme positions are best applied to oneself. I don't have a problem with people claiming that pemmican or carbs are pure crap for them. It's when they try to apply their own personal experience to everyone else that I think they stray into magical thinking that's anti-science. The best one can do with one's personal experience is hypothesize that it might apply to others. It is not proof of how others will do.
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What do you guys mean by "cooking?" Rendering is a type of cooking, unless you don't consider boiling cooking. Soup is cooked, correct? Maybe if you said rendering is different than baking, or frying, or grilling, that might make more sense.
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The result of cooking is a food containing toxins.
The result of rendering is tallow,containing no toxins.
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Let's assume that's true. That's the result, but what causes there to be a different result?
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I may as well jump into the fray - at least the pemmican part.
There is no one that I know of that is doing well on a pemmican-only diet over the long term, especially if the pemmican is composed of just meat and fat. Throughout history there have been many people and groups that have used pemmican as the majority of their diet for several months at a time, but none that I know of that don't add, or revert to fresh foods when available. I also have had extensive communications with about a dozen people from various forums that thought pemmican would be the Holy Grail, but most developed problems as the months progressed when it was the only food eaten. The ones that had the most success were the ones that added between 5% and 10% by weight of dried berries (strawberries, blueberries, cranberries, etc) to their mix.
Yes, I know about Delfuego, and in my past communications with him he seems to have been far more concerned with maintaining the image he has created on ZIOH than being fully forthcoming about what he is actually doing. Even on the ZIOH forum he's been asked repeatedly for specifics, but provides little in the way of detailed information. Long ago I gave up trusting the self proclaimed gurus without verification.
People are free to argue over whether pemmican is a true paleo food or not. I have no axe to grind either way. I've found pemmican useful as a supplement to my normal diet, especially when traveling and as an emergency food. This seems to be in line with how it has been used throughout history. I've seen no evidence that pemmican has ever been used by the North American Natives that invented it, as the only food eaten.
Lex
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Yes, I know about Delfuego, and in my past communications with him he seems to have been far more concerned with maintaining the image he has created on ZIOH than being fully forthcoming about what he is actually doing. Even on the ZIOH forum he's been asked repeatedly for specifics, but provides little in the way of detailed information. Long ago I gave up trusting the self proclaimed gurus without verification.
It sounds like Del Fuego is the ZC version of the raw vegan gurus. Neither raw, nor vegan, just pretending. It's a good thing that there are hobbyists like many of us, who are actually telling the truth about what we're eating, and what it's doing to us...people with fact/truth as our #1 agenda, not dogma or money/followers.
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I completely agree with Phil, that you should have given the board full disclosure about pemmican vs raw meat.
Because I can't - never ate fat raw meat zero carb long enough to make a fair comparison, for the reason that sometimes I got a stop from it, sometimes diarrhea. We've been over this before, should be in the archives if you look.
BTW I usually eat raw egg yolk(s) with the pemmican, and sometime even a piece of store meat, browned. How's that for full disclosure.
Why did you withhold the very valuable information that pemmican is indeed not superior to raw beef?
Eh?
Why then do you eat pemmican?
See the first answer.
Is cost really that big of an issue?
Yes.
It is your health. It seems you haven’t given raw grass-fed beef a fair try and that you had a mislead agenda with pemmican by covering up some of the story.
See answer 1 again. It is best to read the archive before accusing someone of deception
I also don’t see how you can conclude that evolution, Paleolithic eating of vegetation, big bang theory, etc.. don’t exist, even though there is a preponderance of evidence for all of these things and then say that paleo man ate pemmican on exactly no evidence whatsoever. You may actually be the sole person who believes paleo man ate pemmican. Your reasoning is that pemmican is simple to make is enough for you??? I don’t understand how you evaluate evidence.
I will say again though that pemmican actualy might be superior for those withallergies to rw meat s Dr.Harris has pointed out.
Your standard of evidence differs from that of the scientists I read.
Conclusion, evidence, belief, reason, logic and understanding are all different things, and it seems that you have confused some of them. You seem to be reading something into my words that I did not write.
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... I also have had extensive communications with about a dozen people from various forums that thought pemmican would be the Holy Grail, but most developed problems as the months progressed when it was the only food eaten. The ones that had the most success were the ones that added between 5% and 10% by weight of dried berries (strawberries, blueberries, cranberries, etc) to their mix.
....
That's interesting. I have noticed that many of the observational reports of early-contact Native Americans reported them adding berries to their pemmican, despite what William has said about that. Do you have any hypotheses as to why this helped those people?
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That's interesting. I have noticed that many of the observational reports of early-contact Native Americans reported them adding berries to their pemmican, despite what William has said about that. Do you have any hypotheses as to why this helped those people?
Easy, Phil.
Wasn't me who said that, it was IIRC part of historical piece, written by a historian, saying that the Indians made their pemmican plain, but mixed dried berries with that made for white men, because they believed that white men could not live on plain pemmican.
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That's interesting. I have noticed that many of the observational reports of early-contact Native Americans reported them adding berries to their pemmican, despite what William has said about that. Do you have any hypotheses as to why this helped those people?
Not a clue, but I can make something up. It seems pretty clear that something is missing from pemmican made from muscle meat and fat only, and the berries are filling in at least part of what is missing.
People that try a ZC diet with no organ meats tend to experience long term problems as well, so this is probably a good place to start. I suppose it is possible to include organ meats in pemmican but the experiments that I've done in this area show that it is difficult to get a wide variety and the keeping qualities of the pemmican suffers.
Lex
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Let's assume that's true. That's the result, but what causes there to be a different result?
Filtering.
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The result of cooking is a food containing toxins.
The result of rendering is tallow,containing no toxins.
Let's assume that's true. That's the result, but what causes there to be a different result?
Filtering.
I'd be fascinated to know what type of filter you are using to filter out molecular sized particles. I want one! Nothing I have in my kitchen will do it.
Lex
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Yes, William, that's what I was referring to. Sorry I wasn't more clear. I happen to disagree with your interpretation, but it's not a major issue for me anyway, since I eat raw organs and eggs.
Lex, you're still eating your pet food organ mix, right?
I'd be fascinated to know what type of filter you are using to filter out molecular sized particles. I want one! Nothing I have in my kitchen will do it.
Heh, heh. Both you guys are good with the jokes. Lex, you've probably been told things like this before, but if you work out the kidney stone issue and your health is still in excellent shape you should write a book about your experiences and be sure to include your humor in it. Even if it's just for family and friends to read.
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Lex, you're still eating your pet food organ mix, right?
Yup, I think it's the secret to my success, but please don't tell anyone as then it would no longer be a secret!
Lex
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This is inaccurate, of course. First off, the fact that the body produces its own enzymes is irrelevant as we all know full well that people on SAD diets commonly end up with digestive issues as they get older, routinely requiring enzyme supplements as they age. If their bodies always provided enough enzymes, they wouldn't require enzyme supplements.
This is irrelevant. The enzymes in supplements are not the same as those found in raw food.
Secondly, the claims re saturated fat are rather bogus. For example, as I pointed out on the rawpaleodiet yahoo group, the foods highest in cooked saturated fats are often the foods highest in heat-created toxins(butter being a perfect example thereof, being very high in saturated fat):-
http://www.newcastleyoga.com.au/links/Food%20AGEs%20text.pdf
Here again your argument is quite irrelevant. Cooked fats contain indeed a lot of heat generated toxins because the fat whether saturated or not reacts with other food components such as protein and sugars always present in cooked meats or dishes. And the whole toxic mix is then eaten as it is.
Butter is thus the perfect exemple of nothing relevant in this respect. If pasteurized, as it is most likely in the well known work you refer to, the toxins are formed by reaction with the residual milk sugar and protein always present in butter.
Rendering is heating for sure but it is not akin to cooking because it is also phase separation (as done in a chemistry lab to get pure chemicals) where one chooses to keep only the low temperature melting fatty acids and discards precisely the remaining solid stuff as the reacted proteins and fats and carbs that do not melt at such temperatures and necessarily contain the bulk of the heat generated toxins. In this respect William is right when he claims that his tallow is purified fat.
Nature is subtle and if we want to progress and not to be fooled by oversimplified views and dogma we must adopt a rational attitude and careful scientific reasoning.
I would certainly not adopt pemmican as the basis of my diet but it is a priori a very interesting second class food under certain circumstances not to be confused with cooked meat.
If our sailor ancestors of the five past centuries had embarked pemmican (with some berries) rather than salted pork and biscuit it is very likely that their terrible suffering from scurvy and others diseases during their long voyages wouldn't have existed.
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I may as well jump into the fray - at least the pemmican part.
There is no one that I know of that is doing well on a pemmican-only diet over the long term, especially if the pemmican is composed of just meat and fat. Throughout history there have been many people and groups that have used pemmican as the majority of their diet for several months at a time, but none that I know of that don't add, or revert to fresh foods when available. I also have had extensive communications with about a dozen people from various forums that thought pemmican would be the Holy Grail, but most developed problems as the months progressed when it was the only food eaten. The ones that had the most success were the ones that added between 5% and 10% by weight of dried berries (strawberries, blueberries, cranberries, etc) to their mix.
Yes, I know about Delfuego, and in my past communications with him he seems to have been far more concerned with maintaining the image he has created on ZIOH than being fully forthcoming about what he is actually doing. Even on the ZIOH forum he's been asked repeatedly for specifics, but provides little in the way of detailed information. Long ago I gave up trusting the self proclaimed gurus without verification.
People are free to argue over whether pemmican is a true paleo food or not. I have no axe to grind either way. I've found pemmican useful as a supplement to my normal diet, especially when traveling and as an emergency food. This seems to be in line with how it has been used throughout history. I've seen no evidence that pemmican has ever been used by the North American Natives that invented it, as the only food eaten.
Lex
Lex, been as you don't go into detail it would be only correct that Delfuego could give his "doing" or "not doing" himself - assumtions can be very missleading. Your words are "harmfull" to those who are not eating your mix...and after all a few months back you said the following:
I received a note from another raw meat eater on another forum stating that when he eats a food mix of Slanker Dog and Cat food, Ground beef, and fat, he soon experiences a very loose and smelly bowel movement.
Unfortunatley I've noticed the exact same thing since Slankers changed processing plants. They used to use Kilgor and now they use Four Star. I've spent the last few weeks tracing down the problem and find that is is caused by the Dog and Cat food. If I leave the D & C out and just eat the regular meat everything is fine. If I add even a small amount of D&C to the mix (4 oz D&C to 2 lbs Chili meat) the problem reoccurs.
It appears that the D&C is now contaminated in some way - probably with an unfriendly bacteria.
Since the D&C is not USDA inspected and approved for human consumption there is little that I can do. Slankers has made it clear that their pet food is not for human consumption and if I chose to eat it, that is my problem.
What I have found out is that Four Star is a much larger processor than Kilgor and so they may have separate facilities and equipment for the non-inspected products. This means they wouldn't have to follow USDA health standards in that part of the plant as the equipment is never used for products that require inspection. Just speculation but certainly a possibility.
It looks like I'll be eating just the regular ground meat and fat products as the loose bowl problem is very annoying. This will also give me the opportunity to see just how important organ meats are to health. I’ve been eating the D&C just to make sure I get a good variety of organ meats. However, other long term zero carb raw meat eaters have eaten only muscle meats and experienced no problems whatsoever. I’ll be leaving the organ meats out of my diet for the next 6 months to 1 year and we’ll see how I feel and how my lab results change.
Lex
I had about 4 days of food mix (the one with the 4oz D&C per pound of regular ground meat), so I decided to finish this off rather than waste it. For the last two days I haven't experienced the loose bowel problem at all. Not sure what's going on now. The mix is from the same batch of D&C that was causing the issue before so I have no idea why the problem should go away unless it is a stronger immune system response or something. We'll see. I think I'll continue with the lighter mix of D&C and monitor what happens.
As I've written before, I'm no longer convinced that organ meats are critical to maintianing health, but have continued with my mix of pet food and regular ground meat as 'insurance'. I'll plod along with a lighter mix of D&C and if all goes well, I'll ramp back up to the heavier mixture and see what happens. Will report what I find in my journal along the way.
Lex
So let Delfuego speek for himself and you try only muscle meat and fat and we will all be :o
Nicola
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I'd be fascinated to know what type of filter you are using to filter out molecular sized particles. I want one! Nothing I have in my kitchen will do it.
Lex
As I said in my previous post the bulk of the toxins such as AGEs or ALEs or racemized proteins must be attached to the solid material that is discarded in rendering. This is just phase separation by melting. Of course some fat soluble degradation products such as damaged vitamins or some low molecular weight glycotoxins go with the rendered fat (and cannot of course be "filtered") but this is a priori a much smaller quantity than in the whole mix with the solid parts.
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Stirring the pot Nicola!
I was pro muscle meats for a while there but have changed my mind, the energy and clarity raw liver gives me just can't be replaced by muscle meats.
I felt unstoppable/powerful on raw liver and ever so slowly lost that feeling during my muscle meat phase. It didn't happen immediately so I thought I was fine but now I know. A friend mentioned the same thing to me recently and now were both back on it.
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This is irrelevant. The enzymes in supplements are not the same as those found in raw food.
On the contrary, YOUR statement is irrelevant. I was pointing out that older people frequently need to take artificial enzyme supplements precisely because they've been eating cooked foods totally lacking in natural enzymes , just like pemmican for decades, thus aging their bodies and making their own production of natural enzymes decline drastically via damage to organs/glands.
Here again your argument is quite irrelevant. Cooked fats contain indeed a lot of heat generated toxins because the fat whether saturated or not reacts with other food components such as protein and sugars always present in cooked meats or dishes. And the whole toxic mix is then eaten as it is.
If you're suggesting that the fat is completely unaffected by itself, then that's just foolish. Every single substance in Nature is ultimately affected by heat. And one only has to look at what pemmican looks like to see that it is quite different in texture etc. to standard raw meat/fat,so that it's obvious that substantial changes have occurred to it.
This is largely irrelevant. We are all perfectly well aware that there are various processes by which we can limit the amounts of heat-created toxins in cooked foods(for example boiling in water, so as to minimise AGE-creation and retaining water-soluble vitamins leached into the water). That, however, does not make boiled food healthy by any stretch of the imagination, it merely is a 2nd-rate compromise designed to limit damage to one's body, nothing more.
I would certainly not adopt pemmican as the basis of my diet but it is a priori a very interesting second class food under certain circumstances not to be confused with cooked meat.
I have no problem with pemmican being designated as a 2nd-rate food that can be used instead of, say, being forced to eat junk food, when travelling abroad for weeks. but it by no means can be compared to raw meats on any level.
If our sailor ancestors of the five past centuries had embarked pemmican (with some berries) rather than salted pork and biscuit it is very likely that their terrible suffering from scurvy and others diseases during their long voyages wouldn't have existed
However, they ultimately had the sense to go in for a more useful approach which was to use limes/oranges etc., instead.
Incidentally, according to the wikipedia entry for the history of scurvy, pemmican/animal fat might have not been a good idea:-
"The most effective regime implemented by Cook was his prohibition against the consumption of fat scrubbed from the ship's copper pans, then a common practice in the Navy. In contact with the hot copper, this fat acquired substances which possibly irritated the gut and prevented proper absorption of vitamins. " and it's also mentioned that it was highly refined carbohydrates that speeded up the loss of vitamin C from the body(such as those ghastly navy biscuits sailors used to eat).
[/quote]
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There have been plenty of posts which generously attempted to shine the mighty light of Truth in the mind of TD - all of them futile.
Reason, logic, the best of science all failed.
So what remains is damage control.
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I was pointing out that older people frequently need to take artificial enzyme supplements precisely because they've been eating cooked foods totally lacking in natural enzymes , just like pemmican for decades, thus aging their bodies and making their own production of natural enzymes decline drastically via damage to organs/glands.
Yes sure I noticed. And your point ist just ridiculous babble of worst type namely of the ones who are "not even wrong" in Pauli's sense. So I didn't comment for charity's sake. Impossible to falsify and thus useless. The scientific work (as opposed to outsiders unsupported babble) that demonstrates that it is the destruction of enzymes in cooked food once more quite different from our own digestive enzymes and made inactive anyway in stomacal acid environment that is responsible of digestive problems in older SAD people simply does not and cannot even exist. Period.
If you're suggesting that the fat is completely unaffected by itself, then that's just foolish. Every single substance in Nature is ultimately affected by heat. And one only has to look at what pemmican looks like to see that it is quite different in texture etc. to standard raw meat/fat,so that it's obvious that substantial changes have occurred to it.
I do not suggest but claim that rendered beef fat at 94°C is essentially (not completely please do not distort my phrasing) unaffected by heat. Again nothing to do with fat and muscle cooked in mix and the whole stuff eventually eaten.
And whether you like it or not something may have been modified by heat and nervertheless may not become toxic. Heat may change many things but leave precisly the molecules essentially intact. Heating ice and melting it does not make water toxic. Boiling water and converting into in vapor or leaving it cool again does not make water toxic i.e. degrade in any sizable degree the water molecules. SFAs and MUFAs are precisely as stable as vater molecule at 94°C. Proteins, amino acids, sugar and other biomolecules are not.
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Yes sure I noticed. And your point ist just ridiculous babble of worst type namely of the ones who are "not even wrong" in Pauli's sense. So I didn't comment for charity's sake. Impossible to falsify and thus useless. The scientific work (as opposed to outsiders unsupported babble) that demonstrates that it is the destruction of enzymes in cooked food once more quite different from our own digestive enzymes and made inactive anyway in stomacal acid environment that is responsible of digestive problems in older SAD people simply does not and cannot even exist. Period.
1 of the many dead-on-target criticisms of scientists has always been that of people who are supposed geniuses in their own field, but who deign to offer decidedly unexpert opinions as regards other fields of science in which they are hopelessly unqualified. Linus Pauling was one such example, who was an expert chemist, who told us all
all to ingest vast amounts of highly processed vitamin C tablets in order to regain health, and, was , inevitably, proven dead wrong. Shockley etc are just more examples thereof, and the above.
Besides, you've already been proven wrong by the WAPF and others. As has been pointed out by them and others, the enzymes in raw foods do not get somehow magically and instantly
destroyed as soon as they get swallowed down the throat, it takes time(c.30 minutes) before they go from the upper stomach to the lower, where they get fully destroyed over time. So, in other words, enzymes in raw foods are useful, and enzyme-deficient cooked foods progressively wear down the body's systems, re enzyme production etc., thus speeding up aging , wearing down the pancreas etc.
t suggest but claim that rendered beef fat at 94°C is essentially (not completely please do not distort my phrasing) unaffected by heat. Again nothing to do with fat and muscle cooked in mix and the whole stuff eventually eaten.
And whether you like it or not something may have been modified by heat and nervertheless may not become toxic. Heat may change many things but leave precisly the molecules essentially intact. Heating ice and melting it does not make water toxic. Boiling water and converting into in vapor or leaving it cool again does not make water toxic i.e. degrade in any sizable degree the water molecules. SFAs and MUFAs are precisely as stable as vater molecule at 94°C. Proteins, amino acids, sugar and other biomolecules are not.
Again, this is a worthless, decidedly unscientific comparison between water and animal fat. They are quite different things, as you very well know, on a scientific level.
. And the claims by pro-SFA advocates are decidedly meaningless as regards the stability of SFAs at high temperature. We already know for a fact, that foods very high in cooked SFAs, such as pasteurised butter, are highly injurious to human health re heat-created toxins. Now, granted, there is much less evidence re rendered fats than cooked fats, solely because hardly anyone eats rendered fats any more,
, but as we all know re science, "absence of evidence does NOT mean evidence of absence". We already know from numerous anecdotal reports among RVAFers,
that pemmican is by no means a superior "health food" and can create rather unpleasant negative side-effects, so it is patently absurd to call pemmican a "health-food".
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1 of the many dead-on-target criticisms of scientists has always been that of people who are supposed geniuses in their own field, but who deign to offer decidedly unexpert opinions as regards other fields of science in which they are hopelessly unqualified. Linus Pauling was one such example, who was an expert chemist, who told us all
all to ingest vast amounts of highly processed vitamin C tablets in order to regain health, and, was , inevitably, proven dead wrong.
Can you elaborate more on Linus Pauling being wrong and why? Give me some links if you can. I know some people who swear by vitamin C.
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At this time I think that some of Bear's words of wisdom apply:
"I must warn all of you that it is very unlikely that very many will be able to eat as I do over the long term, or in fact, to follow any diet for long which is much different from the one you were trained to as a baby/child. This is because diet is learned much the same way language, dress and behaviour is, and is buried deep and inaccessible, a part of your acculturation/socialisation. The very thing which makes us human is that deep and almost instinctive complex of behaviour.
It requires a powerful will and a determination to change, in order to succeed in adopting the 'extreme' diet which this website is based on. Even those who are morbidly obese, as powerful a motivation as any I can imagine will have 'cravings' for what I call 'non-food' (all vegetation and carbs) which will eventually prove irresistible. A few may manage to stay on the diet for years, but unless you are prepared to stick with it for maybe ten or more years, you will drift back into eating what I consider poison."
http://magicbus.myfreeforum.org/Bear_s_Words_of_Wisdom_about63.html
Bear and Ray Audette have both found the way, and no longer try to show the way to the unwilling.
BTW Bear writes that carbohydrates are poison. My experience supports that idea.
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Lex, been as you don't go into detail it would be only correct that Delfuego could give his "doing" or "not doing" himself - assumtions can be very missleading. Your words are "harmfull" to those who are not eating your mix...and after all a few months back you said the following:
I received a note from another raw meat eater on another forum stating that when he eats a food mix of Slanker Dog and Cat food, Ground beef, and fat, he soon experiences a very loose and smelly bowel movement.
Unfortunatley I've noticed the exact same thing since Slankers changed processing plants. They used to use Kilgor and now they use Four Star. I've spent the last few weeks tracing down the problem and find that is is caused by the Dog and Cat food. If I leave the D & C out and just eat the regular meat everything is fine. If I add even a small amount of D&C to the mix (4 oz D&C to 2 lbs Chili meat) the problem reoccurs.
It appears that the D&C is now contaminated in some way - probably with an unfriendly bacteria.
Since the D&C is not USDA inspected and approved for human consumption there is little that I can do. Slankers has made it clear that their pet food is not for human consumption and if I chose to eat it, that is my problem.
What I have found out is that Four Star is a much larger processor than Kilgor and so they may have separate facilities and equipment for the non-inspected products. This means they wouldn't have to follow USDA health standards in that part of the plant as the equipment is never used for products that require inspection. Just speculation but certainly a possibility.
It looks like I'll be eating just the regular ground meat and fat products as the loose bowl problem is very annoying. This will also give me the opportunity to see just how important organ meats are to health. I’ve been eating the D&C just to make sure I get a good variety of organ meats. However, other long term zero carb raw meat eaters have eaten only muscle meats and experienced no problems whatsoever. I’ll be leaving the organ meats out of my diet for the next 6 months to 1 year and we’ll see how I feel and how my lab results change.
Lex
I had about 4 days of food mix (the one with the 4oz D&C per pound of regular ground meat), so I decided to finish this off rather than waste it. For the last two days I haven't experienced the loose bowel problem at all. Not sure what's going on now. The mix is from the same batch of D&C that was causing the issue before so I have no idea why the problem should go away unless it is a stronger immune system response or something. We'll see. I think I'll continue with the lighter mix of D&C and monitor what happens.
As I've written before, I'm no longer convinced that organ meats are critical to maintianing health, but have continued with my mix of pet food and regular ground meat as 'insurance'. I'll plod along with a lighter mix of D&C and if all goes well, I'll ramp back up to the heavier mixture and see what happens. Will report what I find in my journal along the way.
Lex
So let Delfuego speek for himself and you try only muscle meat and fat and we will all be :o
Nicola
Nicola,
I never attributed any specific statement to Delfuego in my post. I only stated that he seldom provides details even when asked. The quotes of mine that you posted above are full of details. They state exactly what I’m doing and why. Thanks for reinforcing my point.
Lex
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At this time I think that some of Bear's words of wisdom apply:
"I must warn all of you that it is very unlikely that very many will be able to eat as I do over the long term, or in fact, to follow any diet for long which is much different from the one you were trained to as a baby/child. This is because diet is learned much the same way language, dress and behaviour is, and is buried deep and inaccessible, a part of your acculturation/socialisation. The very thing which makes us human is that deep and almost instinctive complex of behaviour.
It requires a powerful will and a determination to change, in order to succeed in adopting the 'extreme' diet which this website is based on. Even those who are morbidly obese, as powerful a motivation as any I can imagine will have 'cravings' for what I call 'non-food' (all vegetation and carbs) which will eventually prove irresistible. A few may manage to stay on the diet for years, but unless you are prepared to stick with it for maybe ten or more years, you will drift back into eating what I consider poison."
http://magicbus.myfreeforum.org/Bear_s_Words_of_Wisdom_about63.html
Bear and Ray Audette have both found the way, and no longer try to show the way to the unwilling.
BTW Bear writes that carbohydrates are poison. My experience supports that idea.
I see it is very difficult to not fall into extreme dogmas, like carbs are poison.
And it is also a common tendency to refer to guru.
As I have stated, Bear is not a good example to follow as he does not look particularly healthy and got cancer. In addition, he made several claims (ex: "The body cannot store dietary fat, there is no mechanism for transport across the adipose cell's wal", "You do not need variety in animals nor any organ meats unless you like them", "Grass fed or grain fed beef, nutritionally there is no difference", "You do not have to eat any organ meats other than the occasional bit of liver. In fact, they are inferior to the muscles in food value. Tongue most be over-cooked to be edible.", "Fat is ok cooked at any temp", etc.) that are simply wrong and does not work for many of us. Not surprising many can't follow his dangerous diet. He also "lost" the scientific papers proving many of his unsupported claims...("I have a set of interesting metabolic papers which for some reason have gotten misplaced", "I have misplaced many of my research papers and at the present I am unable to ref the authors and pubs"). His deficient cooked diet does not seem to help to maintain memory... I find his excuse very funny ("I am spending all (too much) of my spare time dealing with the thread and thus cannot search for the papers.") as he is still unable to provide any of these "interesting papers" 3 years later!
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1 of the many dead-on-target criticisms of scientists has always been that of people who are supposed geniuses in their own field, but who deign to offer decidedly unexpert opinions as regards other fields of science in which they are hopelessly unqualified. Linus Pauling was one such example, who was an expert chemist, who told us all
all to ingest vast amounts of highly processed vitamin C tablets in order to regain health, and, was , inevitably, proven dead wrong. Shockley etc are just more examples thereof, and the above.
When TD runs out of arguments he merely diverts from the relevant line of reasoning, gets completetly out of topic and moreover switchs heavily to ad hominem attacks. Very funny and absolutely sterile
Besides, you've already been proven wrong by the WAPF and others. As has been pointed out by them and others, the enzymes in raw foods do not get somehow magically and instantly
destroyed as soon as they get swallowed down the throat, it takes time(c.30 minutes) before they go from the upper stomach to the lower, where they get fully destroyed over time. So, in other words, enzymes in raw foods are useful, and enzyme-deficient cooked foods progressively wear down the body's systems, re enzyme production etc., thus speeding up aging , wearing down the pancreas etc.
Again, this is a worthless, decidedly unscientific comparison between water and animal fat. They are quite different things, as you very well know, on a scientific level.
The enzymes in food, meat for instance, are just the enzymes involved in the cellular biochemistry of the animal the meat comes from. These enzymes cannot digest the meat. Nothing to do with digestive enzymes. Absolutely nothing. Just pseudoscientific babble of people who don't know what an enzyme is.
I challenge you to provide just one scientific paper or work that supports your ridiculous claims. Just one.
. And the claims by pro-SFA advocates are decidedly meaningless as regards the stability of SFAs at high temperature. We already know for a fact, that foods very high in cooked SFAs, such as pasteurised butter, are highly injurious to human health re heat-created toxins. Now, granted, there is much less evidence re rendered fats than cooked fats, solely because hardly anyone eats rendered fats any more,
, but as we all know re science, "absence of evidence does NOT mean evidence of absence". We already know from numerous anecdotal reports among RVAFers,
that pemmican is by no means a superior "health food" and can create rather unpleasant negative side-effects, so it is patently absurd to call pemmican a "health-food".
When TD runs out of arguments he heavily distorts the ideas conveyed by its interlocutor. Very funny and completely sterile.
Unfortunately.
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Stirring the pot Nicola!
I was pro muscle meats for a while there but have changed my mind, the energy and clarity raw liver gives me just can't be replaced by muscle meats.
I felt unstoppable/powerful on raw liver and ever so slowly lost that feeling during my muscle meat phase. It didn't happen immediately so I thought I was fine but now I know. A friend mentioned the same thing to me recently and now were both back on it.
This is a hot pot! Liver is not the only organ - I still think it's better to mix perhaps a few organs every now and then. Many have mentioned liver just going threw - so if you run I would -[
Nicola
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When TD runs out of arguments he merely diverts from the relevant line of reasoning, gets completetly out of topic and moreover switchs heavily to ad hominem attacks. Very funny and absolutely sterile
Sheer hypocrisy, there. But you're right on one thing, this argument is so sterile that there's little point in continuing beyond this. Since you asked re papers, here's some stuff below your other comment.
The enzymes in food, meat for instance, are just the enzymes involved in the cellular biochemistry of the animal the meat comes from. These enzymes cannot digest the meat. Nothing to do with digestive enzymes. Absolutely nothing. Just pseudoscientific babble of people who don't know what an enzyme is.
I challenge you to provide just one scientific paper or work that supports your ridiculous claims. Just one.
Denying the value of enzymes in raw foods re digestion is just wholly wrong. I can name 2 enzyme supplements derived from enzymes in raw foods, bromelain (from pineapples) and papain(from papayas) which older people commonly use to help digest foods when their own digestive enzymes are too low to do the job. I don't think you can seriously claim that these do not work. Besides, there's Dr Howell's research who provided various papers on the subject of enzymes in raw foods.
Here's an article, with bibilography of multiple studies which you can click on at the bottom:-
http://purehealthsystems.com/enzyme-research.html
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I see it is very difficult to not fall into extreme dogmas, like carbs are poison.
And it is also a common tendency to refer to guru.
As I have stated, Bear is not a good example to follow as he does not look particularly healthy and got cancer. In addition, he made several claims (ex: "The body cannot store dietary fat, there is no mechanism for transport across the adipose cell's wal", "You do not need variety in animals nor any organ meats unless you like them", "Grass fed or grain fed beef, nutritionally there is no difference", "You do not have to eat any organ meats other than the occasional bit of liver. In fact, they are inferior to the muscles in food value. Tongue most be over-cooked to be edible.", "Fat is ok cooked at any temp", etc.) that are simply wrong and does not work for many of us. Not surprising many can't follow his dangerous diet. He also "lost" the scientific papers proving many of his unsupported claims...("I have a set of interesting metabolic papers which for some reason have gotten misplaced", "I have misplaced many of my research papers and at the present I am unable to ref the authors and pubs"). His deficient cooked diet does not seem to help to maintain memory... I find his excuse very funny ("I am spending all (too much) of my spare time dealing with the thread and thus cannot search for the papers.") as he is still unable to provide any of these "interesting papers" 3 years later!
Bear seems to be very much like Aajonus in this respect. AV always tells people who ask for his lab results that he needs a million dollars(or was that 10 million dollars?) for the results to be published because some other company owns the papers.
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I see it is very difficult to not fall into extreme dogmas, like carbs are poison.
I wrote "experience". Experience is not dogma.
And it is also a common tendency to refer to guru.
Bear's words command respect from the wise, who see that he has more experience than any of us.
As I have stated, Bear is not a good example to follow as he does not look particularly healthy and got cancer.
He is a neolithic man living in a neolithic (poisoned) earth. If you expect an image of God-like perfection, you expect too much.
In addition, he made several claims
Who doesn't? If you have credible evidence that his claims are false, let us know.
Otherwise, you just help TD's disinformation campaign.
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The enzymes in food, meat for instance, are just the enzymes involved in the cellular biochemistry of the animal the meat comes from. These enzymes cannot digest the meat. Nothing to do with digestive enzymes. Absolutely nothing. Just pseudoscientific babble of people who don't know what an enzyme is.
Hm. This has the smell of truth.
It looks like I can discard Howell's enzyme theory, and, in accordance with the engineering principle K.I.S.S., use the Hippocratic approach.
Thanks to alphagruis for writing this so well that I can get a grip on it.
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I wrote "experience". Experience is not dogma.
So why do you generalize ?
Bear's words command respect from the wise, who see that he has more experience than any of us.
50 years of cooked grainfed meat with spice and cheese is of poor value to me...
He is a neolithic man living in a neolithic (poisoned) earth. If you expect an image of God-like perfection, you expect too much.
I expect that with the correct diet, I won't have cancer and look and be healthy.
Who doesn't? If you have credible evidence that his claims are false, let us know.
Otherwise, you just help TD's disinformation campaign.
This forum is the proof that many of his excessive claims are false.
I don't agree with all what TD said, but he has the merit to be consistent with the ideas of the rawpaleo eating.
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William, i think you gave us all the impression that you were saying that pemmican is just as good as raw meat and fat.
I also dont see how pemmican works out to be less expensive than raw? I mean you still have to buy the meat and fat, where I would just eat it, you're processing it into a different form for some reason.
Now if you dont have access to anything except mabye a fire... like.. how did the indians boil down their tallow? Drying meat is easy you just hang it up in strips and leave it (i find its best after drying for like 3-4 weeks). I will be needing to make pemmican for the winters but i am not going to have access to pots and pans or anything that you cant find in the middle of the woods so how do i go about doing the fat part?
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I may as well jump into the fray - at least the pemmican part.
There is no one that I know of that is doing well on a pemmican-only diet over the long term, especially if the pemmican is composed of just meat and fat. Throughout history there have been many people and groups that have used pemmican as the majority of their diet for several months at a time, but none that I know of that don't add, or revert to fresh foods when available. I also have had extensive communications with about a dozen people from various forums that thought pemmican would be the Holy Grail, but most developed problems as the months progressed when it was the only food eaten. The ones that had the most success were the ones that added between 5% and 10% by weight of dried berries (strawberries, blueberries, cranberries, etc) to their mix.
Yes, I know about Delfuego, and in my past communications with him he seems to have been far more concerned with maintaining the image he has created on ZIOH than being fully forthcoming about what he is actually doing. Even on the ZIOH forum he's been asked repeatedly for specifics, but provides little in the way of detailed information. Long ago I gave up trusting the self proclaimed gurus without verification.
People are free to argue over whether pemmican is a true paleo food or not. I have no axe to grind either way. I've found pemmican useful as a supplement to my normal diet, especially when traveling and as an emergency food. This seems to be in line with how it has been used throughout history. I've seen no evidence that pemmican has ever been used by the North American Natives that invented it, as the only food eaten.
Lex
Here is Delfuego's answer :
"We really do eat an all pemmican diet. My wife was able to retrieve her life with this amazing food. At first I was just along for the ride fully planning on returning to a more normal zc diet after pemmican (hopefully) helped her. I was amazed at how pemmican altered my life as well and have readily stayed with it all these years!
Lex points out that I haven't been forthcoming in giving specific details (about our diet I presume). On the contrary I have posted repeatedly What it is we eat and how it's prepared. I have answered every single pm, e-mail and phone call with courtesy, patience and full divergence as to how we live and what we eat.
For those who haven't been following this thread we eat your basic traditional pemmican made in with lean bison or beef dried at 100-115 degrees. We use rendered lamb, beef or bison fat at a ratio of 3 or 4 parts suet to 1 part soft fat. We render the fat at 250 degrees for a day. We experimented with a more raw version last year that, in my view, was unsuccessful. This is also fully chronicled in the pemmican thread. The only new addition to our pemmican making came this last December when I built several of Lex's light boxes. (Love, love, love these things!!)
We were zc for 5 years before going all pemmican. This may or may not explain why we are able to do this while others cannot. I don't know. I've had three people tell me that they've had success acclimating to an all pemmican diet by tempering. They added small amounts of other foods here and there to slow the bodies healing. One person used white chocolate, another used rib -eye steaks and another used small amounts of fruit juice.
I'm open to trying to fully understand how pemmican works and how it doesn't work. I'm not especially open to having my integrity questioned however!"
http://forum.zeroinginonhealth.com/showthread.php?tid=81&pid=185574#pid185574
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William, i think you gave us all the impression that you were saying that pemmican is just as good as raw meat and fat.
Certainly not intended, and I tried to make it clear that I eat pemmican because I can not get the right grass-finished fat meat. Fact is, I have no basis for comparison and neither has anyone else here.
What I have tried to convey is that pemmican does no harm. This has been proven by countless thousands.
I also dont see how pemmican works out to be less expensive than raw? I mean you still have to buy the meat and fat, where I would just eat it, you're processing it into a different form for some reason.
$2.75/lb. grassfed muscle sections, 50¢/lb. unclean back fat. Eggs ~$4/dozen - I eat only the expensive ones with deep yellow yolks, and chuck the whites.
I could never eat enough yucky fat with raw meat, so pemmican is it. No choice.
Now if you dont have access to anything except mabye a fire... like.. how did the indians boil down their tallow? Drying meat is easy you just hang it up in strips and leave it (i find its best after drying for like 3-4 weeks). I will be needing to make pemmican for the winters but i am not going to have access to pots and pans or anything that you cant find in the middle of the woods so how do i go about doing the fat part?
The story is the people would dig a hole, line it with a skin, drop hot rocks in it to boil water or render fat.
In the movie "The Snow Walker" (you've gotta see this! Some real Inuit lore, probably closest that anyone has ever seen to paleo tricks)(and at least one big fat lie that I spotted) an Inuk rendered caribou fat in a crude metal pot made out of the crashed aircraft and very carefully poured off the top liquid. Note that the first thing the natives acquired from europeans was pots. I bet because it's a lot easier than the hole-in-the-ground thing.
And how could you make coffee without a pot? Everybody who lives in the bush drinks coffee, so what do you offer the guest? The guest-rite is super important.
No matter how isolated and remote, someone always shows up. Eventually. ;)
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I don't agree with all what TD said, but he has the merit to be consistent with the ideas of the rawpaleo eating.
TD does not eat a paleolithic diet.
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TD does not eat a paleolithic diet.
Can you elaborate ?
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What I have tried to convey is that pemmican does no harm. This has been proven by countless thousands.
This is the one part of your statement that I disagree with. I think it is correct to say that there is evidence that no harm is done in the short term for people eating only pemmican. I think Delfuego is the only "documented" person that has done pemmican only for a somewhat lengthy time (even 5 years isn't long term). If you had other sources we'd all like to hear about it. Like Lex said, pemmican was always used as a substitute and never as an indefinite food source.
Saying that there is no evidence of harm done by pemmican is incomplete and in my opinion needs a further statement clarifying over what time period we have observed people eating stricly pemmican. Again, Lex has noted that many people have indeed had poor results long term. Perhaps, we can get more information from him.
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Sheer hypocrisy, there. But you're right on one thing, this argument is so sterile that there's little point in continuing beyond this.
Nice comment on the content of your previous post.
Since you asked re papers, here's some stuff below your other comment.
Denying the value of enzymes in raw foods re digestion is just wholly wrong. I can name 2 enzyme supplements derived from enzymes in raw foods, bromelain (from pineapples) and papain(from papayas) which older people commonly use to help digest foods when their own digestive enzymes are too low to do the job. I don't think you can seriously claim that these do not work. Besides, there's Dr Howell's research who provided various papers on the subject of enzymes in raw foods.
Here's an article, with bibilography of multiple studies which you can click on at the bottom:-
http://purehealthsystems.com/enzyme-research.html
Ridiculous and pretentious babble. Still completely out off topic.
Papain or bromelain help digest protein? Sure ! Unfortunately meat naturally contains neither papain nor bromelain and fortunately the natural enzymes in meat don't digest it. :)
As bromelain (papain) does not digest pineapples (papayas) for obvious reasons.
These plants are not so stupid to produce enzymes capable to digest their own fruits or tissues. Similarly animals are not so stupid to produce enzymes that digest their own tissues, organs, muscles etc.
Yet there are obviously people who are so stupid to believe such non-sense. Breathtaking and so amusing.
Once more Tyler which enzymes are there is the raw meat and fat we are talking of and that would help digest them ? Name them please.
Please do it :)
There are of course none. Absolutely none.
Again if there were any, meat would actually just digest by itself when left on butcher's shelf or in fridge within a few hours :)
Howard is certainly right about the remarkable fact he observed that raw food is far easier to digest than cooked food. But his interpretation is wrong. This has actually very little to do with raw food enzyme inactivation by heat. This "explanation" doesn't become true just because it has spread in alternative medicine circles....
It has essentially to do with the absence of heat generated damage and toxins. Damaged proteins for instance by racemization or glycation are much harder to digest than intact proteins because of the fairly high stereospecificity of our own digestive enzymes The key (enzyme) no longer fits well into the damaged lock (heated protein)
Your link supposed to provide support to the naive enzyme babble is also irrelevant. I didn't ask for a link advertising enzymes supplements for sale....
I just asked for the reference (journal,year, authors, page etc) of a scientific paper in peer reviewed journals supporting your claim that enzymes in a given raw food are capable to digest that same food.
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Can you elaborate ?
On what?
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Once more Tyler which enzymes are there is the raw meat and fat we are talking of and that would help digest them ? Name them please.
Please do it :)
There are of course none. Absolutely none.
Again if there were any, meat would actually just digest by itself when left on butcher's shelf or in fridge within a few hours :)
im definitely not an expert, but i did just take a biology class at university and i do know that all cells have enzymes. once the cell dies, the enzymes in the lysosomes start to 'digest' the cell so that the cell's molecules can be used by other cells (not necessarily from the same organism). so, just off the top of my head, there are many proteases and lipases that unravel proteins and fats. that's exactly why meat ages, just not within a 'few hours'. enzyme reactions occur on different time scales according to its environment (temp, acidity, etc) so the molecular break down that usually occurs rapidly inside a living body takes much longer when dead and cold. maybe im missing something...
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im definitely not an expert, but i did just take a biology class at university and i do know that all cells have enzymes. once the cell dies, the enzymes in the lysosomes start to 'digest' the cell so that the cell's molecules can be used by other cells (not necessarily from the same organism). so, just off the top of my head, there are many proteases and lipases that unravel proteins and fats. that's exactly why meat ages, just not within a 'few hours'. enzyme reactions occur on different time scales according to its environment (temp, acidity, etc) so the molecular break down that usually occurs rapidly inside a living body takes much longer when dead and cold. maybe im missing something...
The enzymes present in cells at death are those involved in the cell's normal biochemistry. No new ones are synthesized after death. Many enzymes are involved in specific pathways such as those that produce energy or synthetise important cell components (anabolism). Others are indeed related to catabolism and recycling of cell components. There are for instance proteases that recycle specific proteins but in the very tiny quantities required to maintain normal cell structure and that cannot be seriously compared with those of digestive enzymes during the digestive process.
I agree that these proteases still hydrolyse some protein after death and contribute a little bit to "age" the meat but this is a very limited process that stops anyway after a while because there is no more active transport of protons through lysosome membrane to maintain the appropriate pH that allows these enzymes to be active. Protein and other biomolecule transport stops too and so the "recycling factory" eventually blocks. Because the needed energy is no longer produced by the cell. Aging of meat is a complex process that certainly includes also many non enzymatic chemical reactions and is largely the effect of active bacteria and fungi with their own enzymes. It is probably not well understood.
However what is clear is that meat left a few hours at room temperature or even body temperature has by no means been "digested" to any similar degree and by far as the same meat a few hours after ingestion and digestion by our own enzyme production in digestive tract. The effect of intrinsic meat enzymes such as lysosome proteases must therefore be quite negligible in digestion. Not to mention the fact that the meat enzymes tend to be denaturated in stomacal acid environment as all other proteins to permits action of digestive enzymes.
Well maybe I'm missing something too but I can't see any serious role of natural enzymes in a raw food during digestion of that same food. If anything helps in digestion of raw meat it has perhaps more to do with the effect of bacteria and fungi that predigest the food.
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Here is Delfuego's answer :
.......Lex points out that I haven't been forthcoming in giving specific details (about our diet I presume). On the contrary I have posted repeatedly What it is we eat and how it's prepared. I have answered every single pm, e-mail and phone call with courtesy, patience and full divergence as to how we live and what we eat.
For those who haven't been following this thread we eat your basic traditional pemmican made in with lean bison or beef dried at 100-115 degrees. We use rendered lamb, beef or bison fat at a ratio of 3 or 4 parts suet to 1 part soft fat. We render the fat at 250 degrees for a day. We experimented with a more raw version last year that, in my view, was unsuccessful. …….
I must plead guilty to not staying current on the ZIOH Pemmican thread. It may be true that Delfuego has provided more detailed information in recent months, I can’t say. I can say that while I was active on the thread, little of the above information was disclosed and I was disappointed in the level of information offered, however, this is only my opinion. Also, please note that I made no suggestion whatever that anything Delfuego said was incorrect, only that I felt detail was lacking. Each of us is free to follow up and make our own decisions on the matter.
My point in making the statement in the first place was to suggest that we shouldn’t rely too heavily on one person’s claims – the Bear’s, Delfuego’s, or mine. Each of us has our bias and/or agenda. It is important that we insist on more than one source to validate a premise, and try to uncover the potential bias of each source if we wish to create a true picture – this applies to peer reviewed research as well. To that end I do my best to acknowledge and clearly state my own biases, (at least the ones I’m aware of), as well as my thought processes, so that people can best decide how much weight to give my opinions. As anyone who has followed my postings on this forum knows, I’ve been shown to be wrong on a number of occasions. I accept it as part of the learning process.
Lex
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Saying that there is no evidence of harm done by pemmican is incomplete and in my opinion needs a further statement clarifying over what time period we have observed people eating strictly pemmican. Again, Lex has noted that many people have indeed had poor results long term. Perhaps, we can get more information from him.
Yes, several people that have tried a pemmican-only diet have reported long term problems, especially pemmican made only with muscle meat and fat. I certainly wouldn’t say that pemmican is “harmful”, only that pemmican made with just muscle meat and fat might be nutritionally incomplete. Just because something doesn’t satisfy ALL nutritional needs doesn’t mean it is harmful. If this were the case, then water would have to be declared harmful as would every other individual food.
I eat pemmican and find it a remarkable food. However, I don’t use pemmican as my only food. It is my opinion that raw fresh meats, (including a small amount of a wide variety of organ meats), are preferable when available.
Lex
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Yes, several people that have tried a pemmican-only diet have reported long term problems, especially pemmican made only with muscle meat and fat. Just because something doesn’t satisfy ALL nutritional needs doesn’t mean it is harmful. If this were the case, then water would have to be declared harmful as would every other individual food.
I, and others, have had problems with raw fresh ground beef. I think that this might be idiosyncratic, but if one were to use the reasoning (?) of the anti-pemmican complainers, then it logically follows that raw fresh ground beef must be harmful. It's not paleo either.
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thanks for the response alphagruis
Well maybe I'm missing something too but I can't see any serious role of natural enzymes in a raw food during digestion of that same food. If anything helps in digestion of raw meat it has perhaps more to do with the effect of bacteria and fungi that predigest the food.
i suspect this is the case too. the bacteria has to be doing something if the food's enzymes are not. i mean it's quite obvious that raw foods are easier to digest than cooked and there's gotta be some logical reasoning. perhaps the bacterial enzymes are the key, not the enzymes in meat. i dont know though, this is all just kind of a pointless conversation though. we already know raw is better, who cares how or why. i feel good eating raw so im gonna keep it up
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I, and others, have had problems with raw fresh ground beef. I think that this might be idiosyncratic, but if one were to use the reasoning (?) of the anti-pemmican complainers, then it logically follows that raw fresh ground beef must be harmful. It's not paleo either.
Suit yourself. I report. You decide.
Lex
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i suspect this is the case too. the bacteria has to be doing something if the food's enzymes are not. i mean it's quite obvious that raw foods are easier to digest than cooked and there's gotta be some logical reasoning. perhaps the bacterial enzymes are the key, not the enzymes in meat. i dont know though, this is all just kind of a pointless conversation though. we already know raw is better, who cares how or why. i feel good eating raw so im gonna keep it up
I agree. Raw meat is by far much easier to digest and much better food than cooked meat. This is just a fact and I hope nobody believed that I do advocate eating cooked meat. :)
I eat everything plain raw, of course.
Yet I think it is of great interest to understand why and how. My present view is that:
1/ digestion is basically much easier raw than cooked because our digestive enzymes are designed by evolution to be most active on raw meat i.e. intact proteins or biomolecules. As I said in a previous post this must have to do with their stereospecificity i.e. their spatial structure that does not fit well the heat damaged proteins which results in strong reduction in enzyme activity and consequently the rate of hydrolysis and thus digestion.
This is a priori by far the main reason. Predigestion by bacteria and fungi is probably an other reason but it can't be the main reason since fresh meat just after kill is as far as I know and have experienced basically as easily digested than aged meat.
2/ natural enzymes present in meat play only a negligible role in its digestion in spite of what is believed by many rawfoodists and Howell's theories . This is not to dismiss Edward Howell's entire work. I agree with his most interesting and revolutionary finding that raw food is much easier to digest than cooked. But I think its explanation of this fact in terms of intrinsic food enzymes is wrong. By Howell's time molecular biology was not yet invented nor were really known the biochemical reaction mechanisms and such things as stereospecificity involved in the real cause sketched in 1/
3/ raw food is far better because eating cooked food with its various heat generated toxins progressively poisens our organism in general and as a consequence eventually impairs our digestive enzyme production in particular.
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Papain or bromelain help digest protein? Sure ! Unfortunately meat naturally contains neither papain nor bromelain and fortunately the natural enzymes in meat don't digest it. :)
I see, so you very , very grudgingly admit that enzymes in raw plant foods can help digestion. Well, it's a start, I suppose.
These plants are not so stupid to produce enzymes capable to digest their own fruits or tissues. Similarly animals are not so stupid to produce enzymes that digest their own tissues, organs, muscles etc.
You're missing the point. Dr Howell and others were purely suggesting that the work of enzymes occurs after ingestion. There are plenty of substances/catalysts that only act when exposed to specific conditions. In the case of a plant, it would not be beneficial for a plant for its fruit to digest itself while on the stalk, but it would be beneficial for the plant if the fruit digested itself while in the gut of some animal.
Again if there were any, meat would actually just digest by itself when left on butcher's shelf or in fridge within a few hours :)
That's not what Howell and co were suggesting. They were stating that the enzymes in raw foods start working after ingestion into the body. And besides, not even Howell or others contend that enzymes in raw foods are a major component of digestion only a minor one with issues only appearing in the long-term if enzyme-deficient foods are constantly ingested.
It has essentially to do with the absence of heat generated damage and toxins. Damaged proteins for instance by racemization or glycation are much harder to digest than intact proteins because of the fairly high stereospecificity of our own digestive enzymes The key (enzyme) no longer fits well into the damaged lock (heated protein)
Well that at least is slightly better than previous claims re pemmican.
I just asked for the reference (journal,year, authors, page etc) of a scientific paper in peer reviewed journals supporting your claim that enzymes in a given raw food are capable to digest that same food.
I provided you at the bottom of that article with a bibilography of numerous scientific papers showing the benefit of enzymes in raw foods re digestion. You conveniently chose to ignore it.
Here are some mentions of enzymes in raw meats, helping to predigest the meat:-
"According to the Food Enzyme Concept, “There is a mechanism operating in all creatures
permitting food enzymes to digest a particular fraction of the food in which they are
contained.” For example, raw meat contains an enzyme known as cathepsin, which is
widely distributed in muscles and organs. After the death of an animal, their tissues
become acidic and this promotes catheptic activity. This enzyme, therefore, promotes
autolysis and aids in pre-digestion by animals that consume this raw flesh."
The clincher, in my view, that really debunks the notion that enzymes in raw foods are wholly unessential is the fact that the rich enzyme-content of human mothers' milk, is specifically designed to make sure the infant almost perfectly digests the milk, to an extent far greater than with other kinds of raw food:-
"For example, human milk has a good amount of
lipase which assists the baby in digesting the high fat content of milk, which it certainly
needs. Bovine milk also contains scores of enzymes (35+ different known enzymes),
most of which are destroyed by pasteurization, that are health promoting." taken from:-
http://www.aruraclinic.com/listing/EnzymeNutrition.pdf
What I am more concerned about is the fact that the vast majority of RVAFers report that "high-meat" is so much, much easier to digest than standard fresh raw meats. Now, of course, one can equivocate and state that bacteria in the high-meat is the sole reason for such easier digestion, but it is just as possible that enzymes in the aged raw meat and enzymes produced by bacteria within the high meat are responsible for that, too. *At any rate, the only way to verify all this would be to remove all enzymes from raw foods without harming them via heat, and then doing a decades-long study with such foods to see if the enzyme-producing glands suffered as a result by comparison to rawists eating enzyme-rich raw foods. An unlikely scenario.
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I, and others, have had problems with raw fresh ground beef. I think that this might be idiosyncratic, but if one were to use the reasoning (?) of the anti-pemmican complainers, then it logically follows that raw fresh ground beef must be harmful. It's not paleo either.
The trouble is that the majority of RVAFers actually find pemmican and other heated foods to be rather harmful and less digestible than raw foods. There are always going to be unusual outliers in any example, given people's various former health-problems, and there are bound to be exceptions to the rule. For example, I get negligible effect from eating many cooked plant foods, and could in theory claim that they were OK as a result, but, because the majority of RVAFers don't do well on them, naturally, I can't realistically make such a claim.
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TD does not eat a paleolithic diet.
There's a lie, and is hypocritical since you certainly don't follow a raw diet given your mentions of pemmican and don't appear to be following a palaeo diet either given your past mentions of consuming grainfed meats.
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Can you elaborate more on Linus Pauling being wrong and why? Give me some links if you can. I know some people who swear by vitamin C.
Here's a link which does a rather good job at debunking Linus Paulings' ideas:-
http://www.quackwatch.com/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/pauling.html
I tried the whole vitamin c-megadosing thing during my supplement-phase pre-rawpalaeo. It was a total waste of time and just led to frequent urination, at best. Aajonus has mentioned how people get a 24-hour-lasting effect from processed supplements, which he claims boost one's adrenaline so that one temporarily feels good, but that, in the long-term your health just drains away. I also experienced this temporary effect, but I think it had more to do with the placebo-effect than any adrenaline-boost as such. Unfortunately, the effect was always temporary and I realised after years of such supplementation that I was actually worse off, healthwise thanbefore that phase, despite taking dozens of processed supplements a day.
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These plants are not so stupid to produce enzymes capable to digest their own fruits or tissues. Similarly animals are not so stupid to produce enzymes that digest their own tissues, organs, muscles etc.
First off, I know virtually nothing and am just a curious bystander with questions. Even if the enzymes in muscle meat could digest the meat, how does this imply that digestion would take place in the muscle. Don't you need several other biological components, like contents of the stomach, for digestion to take place? If you injected my buttocks with digestive enzymes and only the enzymes right now what would anything happen?
Yet there are obviously people who are so stupid to believe such non-sense. Breathtaking and so amusing.
Once more Tyler which enzymes are there is the raw meat and fat we are talking of and that would help digest them ? Name them please.
Please do it :)
There are of course none. Absolutely none.
Again if there were any, meat would actually just digest by itself when left on butcher's shelf or in fridge within a few hours :)
Howard is certainly right about the remarkable fact he observed that raw food is far easier to digest than cooked food. But his interpretation is wrong. This has actually very little to do with raw food enzyme inactivation by heat. This "explanation" doesn't become true just because it has spread in alternative medicine circles....
It has essentially to do with the absence of heat generated damage and toxins. Damaged proteins for instance by racemization or glycation are much harder to digest than intact proteins because of the fairly high stereospecificity of our own digestive enzymes The key (enzyme) no longer fits well into the damaged lock (heated protein)
Your link supposed to provide support to the naive enzyme babble is also irrelevant. I didn't ask for a link advertising enzymes supplements for sale....
I like what you've said but you didn't mention anything about the role of the undamaged enzymes in raw meat. What role do they play in digestion? Could they be quickly transformed to ease digestion? If you could somehow remove all the enzymes in the muscle meat before digestion, would there be any effect?
I would guess they play some role for the betterment of digestion. Are you suggesting this role is nothing? Perhaps they don't directly digest the meat but did we evolve to not use these enzymes at all? Could they be useful elsewhere in the body?
Isn't all protein denatured in the stomach upon digestion? You are saying that cooking denatures protein in a way differently than than the way stomach acids denature protein. Because of the differences in denaturation the lock and key method of the enzymes naturally produced by the body is distorted enough that different enzymes must be produced by the body to break down the protein. Because of the difficulty to produce these enzymes for cooked proteins our bodies work harder and eventually succumb to disease faster. ? That sounds good to me.
Also, technically nobody has eaten a paleolithic diet since paleolithic times.
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Well that at least is slightly better than previous claims re pemmican.
Please show us where anyone has made a credible claim that pemmican contains heat generated damage and toxins.
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Please show us where anyone has made a credible claim that pemmican contains heat generated damage and toxins.
You know as well as I do that all the studies focus on cooked animal fats in general, simply because hardly anyone eats pemmican, these days. There are no official studies focusing on the supposed positive or negative effects of pemmican. Which basically leaves us with common-sense, namely that pemmican is a food harshly altered from its previous state, so that there is no question that some toxins are created along with viamin-losses, then there's the well-known fact that PUFAs are easily destroyed by heat etc.. The best claim pro-pemmican advocates can make, therefore, and a lame one at best, is that pemmican "isn't all that bad".
Oh, that reminds me there is an exception to the above rule. Apparently one of the major causes of BSE was the feeding of rendered (grainfed?) meat products to cattle:-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rendering_(food_processing)#Advantages_and_disadvantages_of_rendering
The interesting thing is that domestic pets, such as cats and dogs are routinely fed on rendered fats too, with the rendered fats/grease being used routinely as a way to flavour the kibble and make it seem tasty to the animal - :-
http://www.rense.com/general70/dead.htm
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yes Tyler your wikipedia studies are great and all but I can't help looking at the videos of Delfuego's kids and seeing how healthy and happy they are on a diet of nothing more than pemmican their whole lives (well besides the obvious breast milk)
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First off, I know virtually nothing and am just a curious bystander with questions. Even if the enzymes in muscle meat could digest the meat, how does this imply that digestion would take place in the muscle. Don't you need several other biological components, like contents of the stomach, for digestion to take place? If you injected my buttocks with digestive enzymes and only the enzymes right now what would anything happen?
My point was actually to strongly underline that there cannot be "digestive" or lytic enzymes in quantities that could potentially under appropriate conditions really seriously help to digest the cell content.
An enzyme is not a mysterious entity with magic properties. It's just a macromolecule (protein) that speeds up biochemical reactions upon binding temporarily to the reactants in way that favors the formation of the reaction products. There are lytic enzymes but in tiny quantities and only in a special organelle of the cells named lysosome, for instance proteases that help to hydrolyse (split into the amino acids) those proteins to be destroyed or recycled by the cell. They work in this "recycling factory" where appropriate conditions are maintained only and thus "digest" this waste and only this waste as soon as they exist. And the cell normally synthesizes them in very limited and controled quantities to do this job and nothing more such as digesting possibly the whole cell. The remainder and by far largest part of the cell cannot contain this type of enzymes. Even if the whole cell content were really mixed up their lytic effect could only be marginal. In fact chunks of meat are swallowed upon ingestion containing a huge number of intact cells and the whole thing is essentially attacked by stomacal enzymes and acid at its surface.
You're probably right. Injecting your buttock with lytic enzymes would probably do little harm because the pH is buffered and not low enough (4-5) making the enzymes essentially inactive. Your immune system would also destroy them.
I like what you've said but you didn't mention anything about the role of the undamaged enzymes in raw meat. What role do they play in digestion? Could they be quickly transformed to ease digestion? If you could somehow remove all the enzymes in the muscle meat before digestion, would there be any effect?
As I said above the role of intrinsic lytic enzymes must essentially be negligible as compared to our own enzymes. Note also that the very large majority of enzymes in raw food are not lytic and hence cannot digest anything. They are just protein and thus food as protein from muscle fibers. If it were possible to remove them there would be less protein in the food but I can't see an effect on digestion.
I would guess they play some role for the betterment of digestion. Are you suggesting this role is nothing? Perhaps they don't directly digest the meat but did we evolve to not use these enzymes at all? Could they be useful elsewhere in the body?
We use them as food anyway, namely as protein which is what enzymes are. They are digested by our own enzymes and converted into amino acids.
Isn't all protein denatured in the stomach upon digestion? You are saying that cooking denatures protein in a way differently than than the way stomach acids denature protein. Because of the differences in denaturation the lock and key method of the enzymes naturally produced by the body is distorted enough that different enzymes must be produced by the body to break down the protein. Because of the difficulty to produce these enzymes for cooked proteins our bodies work harder and eventually succumb to disease faster. ? That sounds good to me.
You got the idea I wanted to convey. More precisely denaturation (of protein in stomach) is a technical term used in biochemistry that makes unfortunately things ambiguous in present context because it suggests that is not a normal entirely natural phenomenon in stomach with intact raw proteins. A protein in a cell is a long chain of amino acids that folds in a very specific 3-dimensional structure in its active form (as an enzyme or an hormone receptor for instance). In stomacal acid environment (pH as low as 1.5) this chain usually unfolds so that it can bind to the digestive enzymes and be cut into its amino acid pieces.
This kind of denaturation is just unfolding. It's used by biochemists because the protein loses its "nature" i.e. its 3-dimensional structure that makes it active (as an enzyme for instance)
This must be carefully distinguished from what heat does to the same protein which is much much more. Heat unfolds the protein , sure but it also damages heavily the protein by binding it to other biomolecules such as sugars, damaging the various amino acids by cutting off or pasting to other things, racemizing and isomerizing them (same formula but different atomic arrangement) etc. The result no longer fits well to the enzymes designed for intact protein chain handling on the one hand (impaired digestion) and once more or less digested the free amino acids are damaged (impaired future utilization in protein synthesis or neoglucogenesis).
I hope this helps.
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I provided you at the bottom of that article with a bibilography of numerous scientific papers showing the benefit of enzymes in raw foods re digestion. You conveniently chose to ignore it.
As to this part of your reply (the rest of it doesn't deserve any comment, just sterile polemic)
I didn't "ignore conveniently" this bibliography, of course, but none of those papers demonstrates that the intrinsic lytic enzyms in a given food play a substantial role in the digestion of that same food . None.
They are just papers where enzymes are added deliberately which is, once more, out of topic here but of course of great interest for those who sell enzyme supplements.
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There are no official studies focusing on the supposed positive or negative effects of pemmican. Which basically leaves us with common-sense, namely that pemmican is a food harshly altered from its previous state, so that there is no question that some toxins are created along with viamin-losses, then there's the well-known fact that PUFAs are easily destroyed by heat etc..
Neither common nor sense.
While most of us are here to learn, and is possible help others, you have the unique ability to learn nothing from the best explanation of what happens when pemmican is created.
I refer to alphagruis' posts, including what he calls "phase separation by melting".
Oh, that reminds me there is an exception to the above rule. Apparently one of the major causes of BSE was the feeding of rendered (grainfed?) meat products to cattle:-
That product was dried cooked beef, of course it makes sick. That's why I discard it when I make pemmican.
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Alpha, thanks a bunch. That explanation was great. Clarifying the ambigiouity of protein denaturation is something I hadn't seen before.
William, theres no point in continuing the argument. There is no evidence whatsoever that pemmican has significant toxins. At the same time nobody has consumed it for more than months at a time except a handful of people with only Delfuego leading the pack at 6 years.
As for Delfuego, he seems pretty genuine and I would not classify him as a guru, at least hes no where near the level that 'the bear' seems to be. There have been a few things he's said that struck me rather odd, but hes never really encouraged anyone to try his diet hes mainly reported his experience. Hes very positive and dont think Ive ever seen him put anyone down. Whether I believe him completely is another matter. Like anyone's extraordinary claims, they require extraordinary evidence and I can't get myself to trust everything he says. At least not now.
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There's a lie
List the paleolithic fruits and vegetables available to you.
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William, theres no point in continuing the argument. There is no evidence whatsoever that pemmican has significant toxins. At the same time nobody has consumed it for more than months at a time except a handful of people with only Delfuego leading the pack at 6 years.
Yes, it's futile to squabble with TD.
However, Tyler Durden/Geoffry Purcell posts so often and in other forums that he has probably frightened people away from an acceptable way of doing raw zero carb that might have been the answer to their very serious problems, as it was to me. Result could be years of sickness, maybe death.
I wrote days ago that this is wicked, and meant it.
My replies to his nuttiness is intended as damage control.
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william's recovery is entirely remarkable, much attributed to pemmican, i think?
my intestines are apparently extremely sensitive, there are very few foods i can eat and not have horrible pains that leave me afraid to eat. i've tried pemmican after reading that it is among the easiest to digest/absorb, supposedly even a baby can eat as a beginning food. it is a horribly deleterious food for me... idk, i wish it weren't, it's so convenient and i think it tastes good too. pemmican tears my insides horribly.
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my intestines are apparently extremely sensitive, there are very few foods i can eat and not have horrible pains that leave me afraid to eat. i've tried pemmican after reading that it is among the easiest to digest/absorb, supposedly even a baby can eat as a beginning food. it is a horribly deleterious food for me... idk, i wish it weren't, it's so convenient and i think it tastes good too. pemmican tears my insides horribly.
This is precisely why I'm so concerned re the issue of pemmican. Despite protestations from 1 or 2 individuals like William, most rawpalaeos find pemmican to damage their health to a slight or serious extent, in the long term, indicating strongly that it is not a healthy food, in any way.
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william's recovery is entirely remarkable, much attributed to pemmican, i think?
my intestines are apparently extremely sensitive, there are very few foods i can eat and not have horrible pains that leave me afraid to eat. i've tried pemmican after reading that it is among the easiest to digest/absorb, supposedly even a baby can eat as a beginning food. it is a horribly deleterious food for me... idk, i wish it weren't, it's so convenient and i think it tastes good too. pemmican tears my insides horribly.
It seems that very sensitive people can't tolerate any processing at all. For me, I can't eat pemmican or ground beef for a prolonged time without having troubles. I need to vary my food (different animal, different cut, organ, fish, seafood), and the way it is preserved (fresh, aged, matured, half dried, etc.). I have not yet tried high meat but will do ASAP.
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william's recovery is entirely remarkable, much attributed to pemmican, i think?
my intestines are apparently extremely sensitive, there are very few foods i can eat and not have horrible pains that leave me afraid to eat. i've tried pemmican after reading that it is among the easiest to digest/absorb, supposedly even a baby can eat as a beginning food. it is a horribly deleterious food for me... idk, i wish it weren't, it's so convenient and i think it tastes good too. pemmican tears my insides horribly.
Very strange that the most easily digested and safest food I have tried could cause any distress.
Guesses why: Meat - I get grass-fed organic grass-finished beef from a farmer who tells me that unlike his so-called organic neighbours, he controls weeds in the pasture by plowing and seeding. They spray herbicides. Normally, you must ask, because they won't volunteer this kind of info.
The oxen look healthy and lean. I don't know what breed they are.
The meat comes wrapped in 5 to 8 lb. muscle sections. I ate lots of pemmican made of ground beef, but I'd rather not. Taste.
the grind - presently I grind jerky with a Tasin 108 grinder and a small-hole plate, which makes jerky into a fluffy powder. It was gritty when I first made it in a Green Life juicer. I recently read on ZIOH that traditional pounding with rocks is easy and quick, and makes a mostly fluffy powder. This might be the best way.
The drying conditions - traditionally slices of meat were flung over tree branches, or sticks, (peeled or not I don't know - it might make a difference) in the warm dry outside air of the area of Rocky Mountain House, presently Alberta. I don't think that temperatures there ever go over 100°F. Other parameters such as air pressure, electrical field density or character etc. will have an effect on what kind of microbes and fungi/yeast grow on the jerky. I sometimes see a white "bloom" on some of the jerky, looks the same as on grapes or wild blueberries. Emotional/mental/spiritual attitudes while drying might have an influence - Amerindians had ceremonial ritual for lots of things - and they didn't do them because they were stupid.
Rate of air flow.
Most people don't dry the meat enough in the beginning.
Is all the fat gone from the meat? When I grind it, I eat the rare fatty ends, never grind them. Tasty!
Tools - I use a plain high-carbon knife for cutting partly frozen solid muscle sections. I have stainless steel knives, but do not use them for this because I've read that they leave molecules of the alloy in the cut surface of the meat. The component metals include chromium, a poison, and nickel, a very serious poison. (this from a blurb by a seller of stone (flint or obsidian) surgical scalpels. It also claimed that incisions made with stone scalpels heal significantly quicker than those made with metal scalpels).
Air quality - Duh! (meaning I don't know what's in it) - I live downwind of thousands of miles of the vast boreal forest of Canada, which stretches all the way to the Beaufort Sea. Must be cleaner even than high Arctic air, because the snow water does not taste of cat piss, as it always did there.
Fat - I get grass-finished fat (yellow) maybe once/year, otherwise it's back fat from cattle fed who-knows-what that the butcher near a small town in the Ottawa valley gets. I don't know what he does to it, but it gave me the shits when I ate it raw.
Cut into ~1" chunks with the same plain steel high-carbon knife,
put in big enamel pot
electric oven at ~200°F
ignore for ~24 hours
pour off tallow through a sieve lined with a double layer of paper towel
(squeeze,squash poke and abuse to get the last of the precious tallow out of the solids)
pour into another big enamel pot.
Burn the solids in my wood furnace. I tried eating some after someone at ZIOH said they tasted good - I put a squeeze of lemon juice and and little salt on and it tasted OK and make me seriously sick.
Store in glass jars, covered with evil plastic lids, re-heat to liquid <104°F
Mix in enamel bowl with a wooden spoon.
Tried this on a family cat (no fool I! ;) ); he loves it and bugs me for it every time I visit; I feed him a little and he then eats all his crappy commercial cat-food breakfast. He has diabetes.
So when pemmican bothers someone, I wonder what was done to it. Pity that there isn't any standardized that we could all try.
It is not simple stuff.
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William; As you know no two people are alike. While pemmican has worked wonders for you it's been a disservice to me each time I've attempted it. Frankly, I'd love it if my body could tolerate it as I'd have a very handy survival food to store. I also surprisingly liked both the flavor and texture so it'd be a nice change of pace when I had to eat it.
The pemmican I've made has given me a bloat in my stomach as well as gas. Then I am constipated for a day or two, then get diarrhea. This has happened each and every time I've had it. All I can ascertain from this is that my body cannot tolerate pemmican, at least how I have prepared it.
All of the jerky I make for the pemmican is from grassfed meat which I tolerate fine. I've also eaten jerky from the same batch and did fine with this as well.
All of the fat rendered for my pemmican was done so with pure grassfed fat. I did render more quickly than you (higher heat so I can render in ~2-3 hours) which I will concede may exacerbate my symptoms. At some point I will make a small batch rendering like you have (I'll use a crockpot) and will post my personal experiences in my journal at the time.
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So it looks like the tallow is doing the dirty.
The bloat makes me think that some of the solids are still there in your tallow; when I tried them they made me feel like I'd eaten well-done beef, except worse.
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Seriously, William how about sending some of your pemican to DJR. YOu might have a customs problem. But I would love to see what happens when he eats yours. Thanks for the details about how you make it.
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Seriously, William how about sending some of your pemican to DJR. YOu might have a customs problem. But I would love to see what happens when he eats yours. Thanks for the details about how you make it.
No. The grainfed fat will definitely elicit a reaction from my immune system. I need to make it with grassfed fat.
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Wow, quite a few posts since I last checked this thread. Heh, heh, I guess Tyler's semi-shock-jock style is at least good for generating tons of posts. ;)
...It may be true that Delfuego has provided more detailed information in recent months, I can’t say. I can say that while I was active on the thread, little of the above information was disclosed and I was disappointed in the level of information offered, however, this is only my opinion.
I can confirm that Delfuego went into deeper detail after you became inactive on the thread, Lex. If anything, the level of detail became probably more than many average people would care for. Admittedly, Delfuego's enthusiasm for pemmican may go overboard, but that's understandable given the benefits he and his family have experienced (his sons look particularly healthy), and he seems quite honest and forthcoming.
Maybe you'll be flattered to know that the Zero carbers still refer to you and your pemmican cooker often. You seem to have left quite an impression. Even Charles still mentions you now and then, such as when someone makes a false claim about how deadly raw meats are and such.
My point in making the statement in the first place was to suggest that we shouldn’t rely too heavily on one person’s claims – the Bear’s, Delfuego’s, or mine.
Yes, I agree.
Yes, several people that have tried a pemmican-only diet have reported long term problems, especially pemmican made only with muscle meat and fat. I certainly wouldn’t say that pemmican is “harmful”, only that pemmican made with just muscle meat and fat might be nutritionally incomplete.
I think vitamin D is one of those key missing nutrients. Many of the photos that Delfuego posts of him and his family show them outdoors in the sun. This is just speculation, but I wonder if he and his family get more sunlight than some of the failed pemmican eaters? He may also not have been as deficient in vitamin D to start with as some folks. Plus, as he said, he had done ZC for 5 years before pemmican, so he probably had adapted to eating lots of fat already. Switching from SAD to high-fat can be tough. I'm still not fully adapted to digesting saturated fat myself, but I'm improving.
I, and others, have had problems with raw fresh ground beef. I think that this might be idiosyncratic, but if one were to use the reasoning (?) of the anti-pemmican complainers, then it logically follows that raw fresh ground beef must be harmful. It's not paleo either.
Hmmm, good point, William. On the other hand, grinding beef seems like a less dramatic way of processing than drying and standard rendering.
yes Tyler your wikipedia studies are great and all but I can't help looking at the videos of Delfuego's kids and seeing how healthy and happy they are on a diet of nothing more than pemmican their whole lives (well besides the obvious breast milk)
Bingo! They are some of the healthiest and happiest looking kids I've ever seen. My Paleo-nephews are also very happy and smiley since they went Paleo, and much healthier than they were. I predict there will be many more happy and healthy Paleo kids to come as more people try Paleo and RPD. I predict they will also have intelligence and athletic ability well above the average. Pemmican is not a "perfect" food, as some claim, but it's certainly a damn good bit better than the SAD diet--especially with plenty of sunlight (and vitamin D3 foodlements, if necessary).
Quote from: van on Today at 12:37:03 PM
Seriously, William how about sending some of your pemican to DJR. YOu might have a customs problem. But I would love to see what happens when he eats yours. Thanks for the details about how you make it.
No. The grainfed fat will definitely elicit a reaction from my immune system. I need to make it with grassfed fat.
It's a constructive idea, however. You could try using grassfed fat and William's recipe, to see if it makes any difference. Maybe that would satisfy William and advance science. But not if you feel it would do serious harm to you, of course.
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It's a constructive idea, however. You could try using grassfed fat and William's recipe, to see if it makes any difference. Maybe that would satisfy William and advance science. But not if you feel it would do serious harm to you, of course.
I will be doing two separate experiments on myself.
Lex has graciously offered to ship me a pound of his pemmican to try so I have accepted and will be eating this one day.
I will also be making a batch myself following William's recommended "low and slow" method of rendering.
I've been thinking; I had read someone's suggestion to filter the fat with multiple layers of paper towel as it traps much of the protein debris. Upon reflection of this I wonder if something in the towel has tainted my experiences as well (I am allergic to so many thing that something is bound to be in the towels). Has anyone had good luck with cheesecloth or does anyone have an alternative suggestion?
Lastly; I have no qualms experimenting within acceptable mediums for my body. I've already exhibited increasingly negative responses to fruits and vegetables prior to RAF so will not be testing those waters any time soon but I'm perfectly game for this test. :)
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I render my suet at even lower temps than William (I use the "warm" setting on my crock pot). The most difficult thing for me to digest in pemmican and tallow is the suet, though raw tallow seems to be easier for me to digest than unaltered suet (maybe because connective tissue is pretty tough). Still, small bits of the suet pass through me undigested and if I eat lots of it I get increasing levels of burping, and Danny of the carnivore blog reported getting reflux if he eats too much suet. I think saturated fats are a bit difficult for SAD dieters to digest at first. Coconut oil is even more difficult for me to digest. I think I have problems digesting fat because of my history of stomach and GI issues.
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I render my suet at even lower temps than William (I use the "warm" setting on my crock pot). The most difficult thing for me to digest in pemmican and tallow is the suet, though raw tallow seems to be easier for me to digest than unaltered suet (maybe because connective tissue is pretty tough). Still, small bits of the suet pass through me undigested and if I eat lots of it I get increasing levels of burping, and Danny of the carnivore blog reported getting reflux if he eats too much suet. I think saturated fats are a bit difficult for SAD dieters to digest at first. Coconut oil is even more difficult for me to digest. I think I have problems digesting fat because of my history of stomach and GI issues.
And there's another wrench in the works regarding my ass-backwards body.
I seem to do best on suet fat. I love the stuff and have eaten up to 1/3 pound of the stuff with a pound of fatty meat. It doesn't give me any distress unless I really overdo it and then I just get diarrhea without any other issues.
It seems the less saturated the fat I eat the more stomach distress it causes. The ground up fat in the Slanker's high-fat grind I've been eating since yesterday elicited a foul and sudden BM last night as well (it also gives me a lot more sudden energy but isn't as sustaining as the suet). I'm really tempted to chalk this all up to an internal issue, maybe the Candida, that is compounded with more available fat in my GI tract. Maybe this explains a lot of my problems with pemmican. -\
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I've been thinking; I had read someone's suggestion to filter the fat with multiple layers of paper towel as it traps much of the protein debris. Upon reflection of this I wonder if something in the towel has tainted my experiences as well (I am allergic to so many thing that something is bound to be in the towels). Has anyone had good luck with cheesecloth or does anyone have an alternative suggestion?
While there is no longer supposed to be any dioxin in my coffee filters, I don't know if they use the same oxygen process to bleach paper towels. You might ask the manufacturer about possible allergens - I've had good luck with some such questions.
I don't know about cheesecloth, just no experience.
Is there a paper air filter called HEPA or something like that? IIRC they are sold at hardware stores for vacuum cleaners, but I don't know if they are food safe.
In the movie "The Snow Walker" she just very carefully tipped the container, and poured off the top liquid.
Might check if coffee filters could filters could be OK.
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I'll have to look into coffee filters then. I'm not as concerned about the bleaching agents as I am with the possibility of soy, corn, etc. in the pulp used to make the filter.
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Ionna and Frederic, have you tried eating the separate components of your pemmican (the dried meat vs. the rendered fat) to see which is the source of your problems with it?
...Now if you dont have access to anything except mabye a fire... like.. how did the indians boil down their tallow? ... I will be needing to make pemmican for the winters but i am not going to have access to pots and pans or anything that you cant find in the middle of the woods so how do i go about doing the fat part?
I believe the Indians used bags made of hide to cook and store pemmican, tallow and meat in.
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Hey hey I think I'll jump into the fray :D
Lots of topics here in the longest thread in the forum. The one I was interested in was the mercury discussion. Very interesting indeed!
I used to work a a large hydroelectric power development. Long story but I found out that when land is flooded by a dam for instance, the mercury in the trees that are drowned, comes out into the water and the fish eat the decaying matter so mercury levels in the larger fish in the food chain are very high.
My lady and I have had mercury fillings removed and we both noticed an improved feeling after it was done. Not sure exactly how to quantify it but I always heard that dentists had the highest rate of suicide and indeed I knew a dentist who committed suicide. This has been traced back to use of mercury in making amalgam fillings. I know dentists who have said that they noticed infertility in female dentists who worked with mercury until they decided to give up working with it.
However I think that mercury that is has been processed by a living thing has changed into a biologically effective item, either neutralized or maybe even useful. (bit of an educated guess which is pretty much what "scientific" studies are).
The reason that I say this is that in Ayurveda, mercury is represented by Shiva. It is supposedly related to having progeny or to strength of procreative power. Ayurveda went through a stage in the 15th or so century where methods of processing various minerals and heavy metals was perfected and used (successfully for some very serious illnesses. These refining processes are very involved, detailed and include some very curious processes involving such things as cooking with cow dung 1000 times. Now this seems quaint to modern ears but when you examine this closely you find out that cow dung is very energy intensive and the heat of the fire produced by it is extremely high. The bad effects of the mercury (or depending on the medicinal metals etc being used and the recipe) are mitigated and the good effects of the material are utilized. In India these heavy metals are understood and used in highly effective medicinals. The heavy metals are not understood in first world countries so they are dismissed.
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"This has been traced back to use of mercury in making amalgam fillings."
Interesting, where and how was this traced?
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My dentist told me a story (she had plenty of these but this was the most powerful one) about a girl she knew who was a dental hygienist in a practice using mercury. The girl was trying to get pregnant for a long time with no luck. She also had illnesses which were persistent. My dentist suggested to her that she get away from the place she worked where mercury was used. Eventually the girl decided to do so and the illnesses cleared up and she got pregnant.
Mercury actually off gasses in its normal state, so you don't even have to touch it to be affected.
Use of mercury amalgam goes way back in history to the Chinese. It was resurrected by some dentists in the US in the mid 1800s and the dental association at the time banned it due to it's known issues, so these dentists simply started their own association which is the current American Dental Association because mercury is such an easy and cheap thing to make fillings with.
Mercury was the forerunner of antibiotics. As such it was used to fight infections as it is a bactericide and will kill anything in it's path.
This ADA became the dominant force in the industry presumably because it was in essence the easy way out for the dentists at the time and it still is and once you have told patients this story all your professional life (Mercury is safe) it becomes difficult to back out and say..... "gee I'm sorry I was wrong all those years." Think of all the lawsuits... It would put most dentists out of work and into bankruptcy. Goodbye (the Volvo on) the yellow brick road. Dentists are like the rest of us in that they don't want to lose their jobs.
http://www.iaomt.org/ check out the youtube on the mercury off gassing... and the youtubes on the dentist who explains about his history with mercury and a number of other youtubes on the topic.
This industry generates a lot of money for a lot of people and so the vested interest is extremely high. Why rock the boat? The current ADA is very adamant that mercury is safe despite the science in other countries and the outright banning in some countries and the government in one country that banned it and is paying dentists to remove it from patients. There is a lotta moolah and egos involved and so the apologies that would have to happen in the US to change this mess are too much so dentists just duke it out in court and hope they can use their considerable financial clout to fund the dirtiest lawyers they can find. Also they duke it out with the dentists who are breaking the bad news about amalgam. This is where the dirtiest stuff is going on both in Canada and the US.
Fortunately with the internet it is difficult for people to lie in public. It is too easy for people to check out the story and decide for themselves.
There are some interesting court cases on the subject in the US and the ADA has had to back off on some it's claims. I haven't kept up on the developments as we got rid of the crap in our mouths. The mercury wall is crumbling.
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Personally I have started to believe that the reason for dental problems in the first place is eating cooked foods, pasteurized dairy and grains and that the story on brushing teeth is actually just nonsense.
I arrived at this after reading about Weston Price and Pottenger's work on the topic.
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http://iaomt.org/videos/
http://www.iaomt.org/news/archive.asp?intReleaseID=336
http://www.iaomt.org/news/archive.asp?intReleaseID=335
http://www.iaomt.org/news/archive.asp?intReleaseID=334
http://www.iaomt.org/articles/category_view.asp?intReleaseID=288&catid=30
http://www.iaomt.org/articles/category_view.asp?intReleaseID=317&catid=30
http://www.iaomt.org/articles/category_view.asp?intReleaseID=314&catid=30
http://www.iaomt.org/articles/category_view.asp?intReleaseID=314&catid=30
http://www.iaomt.org/articles/category_view.asp?intReleaseID=314&catid=30
http://www.iaomt.org/news/archive.asp?intReleaseID=336&month=6&year=2010
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgIUrj7s3PA
The list goes on but if you just go to the resources section of this link http://www.iaomt.org/ you can read “till your eyes rattle out of your head”
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If you eat plenty of selenium, from bioavailable sources such as fish, shellfish, chicken, turkey and pork, then you don't have much to worry about regarding heavy metals and mercury, according to the latest science:
Heavy Metal Toxicity
http://www.diagnose-me.com/cond/C15891.html (http://www.diagnose-me.com/cond/C15891.html)
Selenium is able to combine with metals such as cadmium and mercury to reduce their toxicity.
Don't Worry About Mercury in Fish If....
By Jean Carper
Anti-Aging Expert, Best-Selling Author and USA Weekend Columnist
About the Author
August 27, 2006
http://www.stopagingnow.com/news/news_flashes/1761/Don-t-Worry-About-Mercury-in-Fish-If?print=1 (http://www.stopagingnow.com/news/news_flashes/1761/Don-t-Worry-About-Mercury-in-Fish-If?print=1)
If you're leery of eating fish because of a mercury hazard, here's some incredibly good news. Mercury in fish is not likely to harm you after all, say some leading experts.
The reason: Mercury's toxic hazards are neutralized when you also eat selenium, a trace mineral that, experts say, counters the toxicity of mercury. In fact, most fish are so rich in selenium that a threat of human mercury poisoning from eating fish is very remote, according to a new analysis by Dr. Nicholas Ralston, University of North Dakota.
This is extremely good scientific support for Aajonus's claims that 98% of mercury from raw wild-caught fish (or seafood? forgot...) is excreted:
"Aajonus Vonderplanitz paid for standard laboratory tests, which
*showed* that 98% of mercury from raw seafood is excreted, while 98%
of the mrcury from cooked fish is retained in the body."
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Some poisonous frogs in South America deliberately eat a specific diet of plants in order to produce toxins in their skin.
As for the issue of antinutrients, humans are astonishingly adaptable. For example, it was mentioned that Austrian peasants from a couple of centuries ago were able to endure twice the fatal dose of arsenic in their bodies without health-issues simply because they'd been eating tiny amounts of it throughout their lives and had adapted to it.
I am going to have to do that raw food myths page soon, it's REALLY annoying to find people constantly referring to the mythical dangers of mercury in seafood.
I am not aware of the 170 + or - species of frogs with a vegetarian diet. Frogs eat animal protein - even to the point of consuming eggs and tagpoles of other frogs. At times, females will lay legs to supplement the diets of their tadpoles. About 28 structural classes of alkaloids are known in poison frogs. The most toxic of poison dart frog species is Phyllobates terribilis. It is argued that dart frogs do not synthesize their poisons, but sequester the chemicals from arthropod prey items, such as ants, centipedes and mites – the diet-toxicity hypothesis.
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Interesting thread.
I've consumed plenty of coconut oil in the past but don't use much of the stuff lately since I started trying totally raw. I bought some MCT oil to try a few years ago and most of the bottle is still sitting in my refrigerator. Seems like it upset me. I remember reading that too much gave you a cleansing reaction. I recently came to the conclusion that all the talk about cleansing reactions and healing crises are rubbish and that anything that makes you sick isn't good for you and any perceived benefit from it is placebo. That being said I think a balanced amount of antinutrients are fine because it's the dose that makes the poison. Only eating too much to throw you out of balance. Maybe MCT oil is fine but not in the same doses as coconut oil.
I make a raw type pemican without rendering the fat and so far have only eaten it fresh but this last time I did 10 pounds of beef heart and have been wondering if I should freeze it because I know the fat will go rancid if I don't eat it quick enough. Do you think a week or ten days in a refrigerator will be OK?