Good points Zi. I think I will test myself and my oldest dog who's so miserable on fresh meat to see how we all do. The dogs already eat frozen meat so the next step up would be fresh. Tonight I bought some ground organic grass-fed meat at the store. SCORE! I'll take just a taste and give doggie with mange a taste. I used to give them all fresh meats from the store but not grass-fed and I had to go through bouts of diarrhea that weren't much fun. Maybe grass-fed will be different.

Eve - I've signed things like that before too - it's to get round the guvment - but the FARMER knew I was drinking the milk and not my dogs. I had to at one point to give a farmer a few dollars for a "share of a goat" - so that I legally owned one of the goats that she cared for. Such silliness. So, I would tell anyone else EXCEPT the butcher/farmer that I was giving it my dog. I would probably do a big wink and say with my utmost tone of sarcasm that OF COURSE it COULDN'T be for ME because I would never dream of eating that - and I would probably say out loud "wink, wink" or "a wink's as good as a nod - ya know?" And smack my lips or something - anything to let the person I'm buying from realize that I was going to be eating it - so don't go dragging it on the floor or whatever. But again - one day I might feel like my gut and immune system is so strong that such things wouldn't matter anyway.... hope so.

Phil - you are such a gem. That summary of Lex's journal will be extraordinarily helpful. Just one more question - did he come to the diet with serious health issues?

Hubbie and I were laughing at dinner tonight because he got a great fortune cookie. It was, "People come to conclusions when they're tired of thinking". Precious huh?

I feel like I want to spend more time on the Slankers site and looking around and planning before asking - just in case it's obvious and I just missed it - which is sadly way too likely and I absolutely refuse to ask Lex any questions without getting completely through his journal - so instead I bother you because I'm pretty sure you won't get TOO mad at me. 

I'll have a few days because our street is being repaved tomorrow so Here I will be researching and reading.... and we got lots and lots of salmon to last us.

Your idea though to be completely prepared for any outcome when eating this new food is EXCELLENT. I will make sure I have my nux vomica 30c, clay and ipecac ready. Ginger, peppermint and licorice are staples. I too have never been anything close to bulimic or anorexic so making myself throw up because of eating something my body can't handle makes a great deal of sense instead of having to wait it out and let my immune system deal with it.... which usually means sleeping it off for me. I wish I had thought of these things after the prosciutto incident! If I'm going to keep on experimenting on myself I have to be ready that such a thing might happen again. Thanks a million times over for that idea. I will feel much safer now experimenting on myself.

Oh - and Phil - what I meant by asking if it could be dangerous telling someone that the food is for a dog when it isn't ... referred to the brains discussion. I meant is it really safe to go to butcher for instance and tell them that you want the brains for your dog when you are going to be eating it yourself? I know that Slankers does not market their dog food for human consumption and people have decided to eat it anyway. I don't think I would tell my egg or milk vendors that I was going to only feed it to animals because I think they might handle the food in ways that I might not be comfortable with if I did that. I'd rather tell them what I will be really use it for and risk not getting the food. If it's just for a dog they might take the stuff that was say put out in the shed with paint cans or who knows what? Maybe I'm just still too much of newbie and overly concerned about such things.

I better go back and get through Lex's entire journal. I could barely get through the first posts of his medical lab reports and all his percentages of this and that though. Sigh. I wish he had a summary of his health history and progress. I'll suck it up and stick it out - if for nothing else to be able to come back to you Phil and say, "Did it!". 

Thank you Phil!

Right now it's the Dorothy makes herself into a guinea pig show!

I'm totally convinced that hubbie is highly allergic and that if I can get him on the right diet I can get him healed up pronto - no matter what anyone says.

If I can find meats that don't harm me - it is much more likely that they won't harm him. Just like I did with the dairy and eggs.

That's my assumption any way.

What I do after that is anyone's guess - but I am DETERMINED to figure this out!

And hey listen - if I happen to turn into a superbeing in the process that wouldn't be so bad. hee hee.

Maybe slightly skewed to the sattvic and yin is natural and feels right to me and that's why I feel so good vegan and so good raw vegan for a limited time? Who knows.

I guess after 17 years is when you started to feel a big change huh? Maybe I would eventually too. I will never know I guess.

But this experiment is interesting and exciting. I sure do hope that hubbie's sleep can be helped. It has gotten much better in recent years though. I wonder why.

Yes, it makes sense KD. To be more clear - as a cooked vegan and vegetarian I had way ABOVE average health with none of the sattvic feelings. It was only being on exclusively raw vegan for half a year or so would those feelings arise - but up to that point where the energy became what I felt to be unbalanced I felt more than above average - I felt truly amazing.

Here's the thing KD, the big problem as I see it is that meat in our society is very difficult to get in a healthy form. For me, it was better to not eat animal foods when the animal foods were cooked and of terrible quality. The meat that I knew about and had available to me was only the feed lot, hormoned, antibioticed. gmo, genetically modified kind.... and never did I even guess that meat COULD be eaten raw. Raw seems to be a key factor for me with any food, which makes me wonder if it is going to be the same thing with meat.

It is the taboos regarding foods in our society that is the problem as far as I see it. The irrational fear. All I could get to (perhaps until now? We will see) is to at least stop the onslaught of damaging foods.

This is the FIRST time I have had good raw eggs, raw grass-fed fermented milk and grass-fed/pastured meats available and the first time I ever heard that these things could and should be eaten raw. I was all on my own eating all raw produce - but it was not taboo. See?

I did the best that I could with the information and resources I had and had superior health because of it. Now, I have new information and new resources to work with and it is going to be extremely interesting for me to see how it pans out. I would not be stepping out of my comfortable healthy peaceful zone for myself though if I didn't need to do figure things out for another - that is the honest truth. The comfort zone for me is plain old cooked whole-food vegan. I feel better than just about anyone I have ever met eating just that. If I wanted to be just really healthy, grounded, flexible, strong and have stamina and never get sick just for me and not try to explore the feelings of outrageous super health or help others -  I would simply eat cooked whole-food vegan.

One of the issues for me to work through, and hence a big part of this discussion, however, is the idea in my mind that one should not eat anything that one is not prepared to kill for oneself. I've been thinking about this. If I were in a natural human tribe - as a woman - I probably would not do the hunting! I would be foraging and preparing. I have been thinking lately that I might have been thinking in a way that is too based on our modern individualistic society framework. If I were eating my species-specific diet, my species procures its food in tribes, not as individuals. My diet perhaps should NOT be based only on what I would do for myself, but on what the tribe would do together. Just because men would be hunting, would that mean that they wouldn't eat the berries that the women picked too - even though they might prefer to hunt, or eat a larger amount of the meat?

What is right for an 18 year old guy - that I have not a clue about. I would assume that it partly would depend on the guy, what's available, their health history and how they perceived things. Same with people in general I suppose.

Anywho - these are where my thoughts are going a bit lately. It's good to talk to you about them. I enjoy your viewpoints and they make me think.

During my 100% raw stretches, if I did it until my body was really happy, when I ate my first cooked food - out it would come - projectile style. Either that or I'd be holding my stomach and feeling really sick and not being a very good guest at all.

So, being more of a bunny than a carnivore anyway, all I had to was gently say that I had a special diet that I needed to eat for health reasons.    This usually would get me much sympathy, compassion and people real conversation if any. I wasn't telling anyone else that what I was eating was better or right, not even thinking it, just that poor little me had to eat it - and that was the truth because truth be told I'd much rather be able to eat nothing but chocolate cake and feel good. I would make a big deal about how yummy the greenery that was used as decorations was - or the tiny salad at the beginning. I got lots of giggles. American restaurants all have salads and it's customary to bring a dish usually if you are going to someone's home and I would always bring something I could eat some of.

What would usually happen is that I would bring with me on outings a big basket of all sorts of raw goodies because inevitably everyone would want to taste what I had because it looked so interesting and yummy - and I had to bring lots and lots just to get a little for myself.

It is my opinion that what other people really want from me is my attention, my good will, my positive energy, my loving thoughts - and these all flow so much more easily when I don't block that with bad food. People really don't care what I eat I find. They care much more what I think towards them.

FYI Denise Minger is also on the speaker list for the annual Weston A. Price symposium - this year to be held in Texas. Go Denise! 

Thank you Zi. I guess I was lucky that I've always slept like a baby. Vegan sleep was actually some of the best. The thing with raw vegan is that I would feel unbelievably great for the first 3 - 6 months, and even then I felt amazing, just not able to continue, like there was something wrong with my ability to "accept" feeling so much energy. It wasn't until I saw so many raw vegans talking/acting manic and people talking about being too "sattvic"  etc. that I finally was able to see that maybe I was just taking care of myself going back to eating cooked vegan and then vegetarian when the energy got too intense.

Sleep though - that I have always been a pro at.  I can't imagine not being able to sleep soundly and how hard that must be on a system. Hubbie has that problem and I feel so bad for him.    I'm glad you figured out how to solve that. 

Oh Phil - I am not nearly that flexible. Even if I become closer to family members by killing them and eating them - I am just not capable. I'm far from saying that how I feel is "right" or "good". I'm just never going to be able to kill and eat the animals I feel so connected to and I'm never going to be able to hunt. The only way that I would do it is if my husband or pets were starving. I for myself would not kill or eat a chicken and for myself I would not kill a cow or deer etc. To feed myself I would steal eggs, kill bugs, fish and milk an animal and take honey from bees. That much I know I would do for myself. Killing anything higher up on the food chain than a fish (and that might not be easy) is not for me. I guess I can't honestly say what I would do until I was actually starving, but brain damage for instance (what someone here said that vegetarians get) for me wouldn't be a reason to eat higher up on the food chain. If that sounds crazy - maybe it's because I'm already brain damaged?  Preventing brain damage for someone I love though - that's a different thing for me. I'm just incredibly grateful that I don't have to hunt or kill. I consider that one of the gifts of my life.

Again, I would surely not say that others should not hunt for their food and how the real people live with the natural world impresses me. I'm just either out of touch or just different. I seem to fit vegetarianism very well but somehow never got the memo that I was supposed to think everyone else - or anyone else for that matter - should also be one. I'm willing to go out of that comfort zone for those I love, but not for myself.

I wish these articles would use the words "sodium chloride" if they mean the crap that is called "table salt". It's just not the same thing as whole salt without all the minerals stolen from it - which is what they usually do - to sell in pills - and then sell with the label "salt" or "sea salt". "Whole salt" can lower blood pressure and make the heart function better because of the balance of minerals including all those trace minerals. Sodium chloride and what is usually sold as sea salt is not salt to me. They are examples those man-made mutant horror foods.... no different than white vinegar, mineral oil, saccharin etc.  .   

Oopsy - I guess I felt welcomed immediately already?

How I started eating RAFs. Well, I was into raw for very long time and then not very long ago I landed in Texas where a neighbor said, "Hey, did you know you could have chickens in your backyard?" Ooooo. Open door - in comes thought - life suddenly different. The welcome message made me laugh because I use "fowl" language all the time because I love talking about fowl - chickens, ducks etc. hee hee. I love me my raw egg yolks. Cluck, cluck, cluck!

Then my doggie got cancer and I had heard about the Budwig cure and  one thing led to the next and here in Texas I was able to get super high quality raw milk! In NYC 20 years earlier I tried that and nearly had my head handed to me.

Sushi I knew about and indulged in occasionally. There was about a decade in there somewhere that I was totally vegan. But I never thought it even possible to eat other raw meat than fish. When I heard about it I was delighted that maybe I could get hubbie to eat raw too! The guy just aint a vegetarian. I was always extremely healthy (unless I was in denial or something) the whole time I was vegan and vegetarian.

PaleoPhil then told me on another forum (first exposure to other raw foodists - just did it on my own for about 30 years) that the way I eat now in Texas is paleo. I eat raw animal foods (I eat raw eggs and fishes... and milk is sorta kinda maybe included in paleo?) and other whole raw natural stuff - whatever feels good. He says that makes me paleo. I hope so because I like the idea. I have a great deal to learn if I am going to help my hubbie to transition to eating a raw food diet. I will do anything I need to to help him with it. I've already learned a great deal here and I just arrived!

Sometimes I'm all raw - sometimes I'm not. Here's what would happen over and over. I would go from almost raw to all raw and about 3 months into being 100% raw I would get so much energy that I would feel like I was going to jump out of my skin until I couldn't take it any more and then eat some cooked foods. I would do these 3 to 6 months cycles over and over - FOR THIRTY YEARS!

I'm hoping that when I try 100% raw with RAF included that I might be able to have more solid, steady, tolerable energy that will be maintainable. Fingers crossed.

I'm looking forward to get to know you. I'm looking forward to learning from you. I'm hoping I can contribute something useful. 

LUCKY! RawZi.

The only thing that gives me pause is that they feed the chickens alfalfa hay. Is that it? No other seeds or grain? They must have fertile land where their chickens have room to forage and can catch enough bugs and eat enough weeds and naturally occurring seeds - which is perfect. You can't get better than that.

They probably have to wipe off the eggs because they are afraid of anyone reporting them. Every tiny home-grower or farmer fears being set-up or fined. Maybe after they know you longer they can put some away for you that are not wiped - but they might never get to be that trusting. It's a hard world for people growing real food out there.

The large agri-business farmers have automatic systems that wash the eggs and then spray on a replacement for the bloom. It's just the way it works. The best ones spray on soy-based waxes - but even those eggs taste horrible to me. Eggshells are permeable. The chick needs to be able to breath.