Aajonus etc.

[PaleoPhil]

Plainfield, VT? Too bad I didn't know about this one. Is there an archive of the interview?

[majormark]

yes

[TylerDurden]

I think I just got GS to post a link to the mp3 of that show re Tonio/AV just a couple of days ago.

[PaleoPhil]

I searched GoodSamaritan's last 20 posts and don't see a link to an Aajonus mp3. Does anyone have it?

[RawZi]

I searched GoodSamaritan's last 20 posts and don't see a link to an Aajonus mp3. Does anyone have it?

    It was good for seven days.  I think tomorrow it will no longer be available.

    Here:

    http://www.rawpaleoforum.com/infonews-items/aajonus'-radio-interview-in-the-uk/

    Oh, excuse me, here it is:

    http://www.rawpaleoforum.com/primal-diet/download-mp3-of-aajonus'-most-recent-interview/

[PaleoPhil]

Yes, thanks. I got the link to the MP3 from Rosy.

It had hosts Tonio Epstein and dentist Mark Harmon.

Some highlights of stuff Aajonus covered:

Something that Tyler won't like -- AV claimed in the interview that humans are carnivores, which is a view I didn't realize he held.

He views allegedly "allergic" reactions to raw milk (vomiting, diarrhea, nausea) as detoxes that will eventually pass (this is something Tyler has reported on, but the so-called detoxes did not pass for Tyler).

As evidence he pointed to the Filani (or Fulani?), Samburu and Masai tribes. He claimed the Samburu and Masai "have absolutely no disease whatsoever," which I seriously doubt.

Both hosts attested that raw meat is easier to digest for them than cooked. I can also attest to that.

AV mentioned the remote tribe in the Philippines again. He said they ate raw fish, coconut, raw pork, mango and banana. He claimed there were three interpreters. (Strange that with all these people visiting them, no one has revealed who this secret tribe with the amazing health is, AFAIK.)

Mark Harmon, who is a prison dentist, said his patients' teeth have been healing since he has been treating them (he didn't say how, but he indicated that he eats like Aajonus, so he may be using Aajonus' diet as one of his therapies).

AV: "The body is 99% bacteria." (I've seen reports of 90% total microbes, not 99% bacteria. He didn't provide a source.)

Raw butter is the main fat he recommends. He eats it year round and disagrees with Weston Price about the "x factor" (vitamin K2) in butter being important. He said has seen people have no better improvements on x-factor-rich raw butter than raw butter that is not rich in it. (Stephan Guyunet and Richard Nikoley would disagree strongly with this.)

AV also disagrees with Sally Fallon about freezing meats to kill bacteria and parasites being OK. He said he did an experiment on animals that showed that freezing meat produced worse results than unfrozen meat.

AV: Grinding meat makes it easier to digest (Aajonus grinds or finely chews all his meat--another issue on which Tyler disagrees with him).

[Paleo Donk]

Thanks for the summary.

Aajonus saying that the body is 99% bacteria is taken horribly out of context. True, bacteria could outnumber non-bacterial human cells 100:1, but this does not make the body 99% bacteria. Almost all bacteria is contained in the intestines is it not? They are much smaller than normal human cells and thus can manage much larger numbers.

[majormark]

AV: Grinding meat makes it easier to digest (Aajonus grinds or finely chews all his meat--another issue on which Tyler disagrees with him).

He does this because he said his stomach does not secrete enough acid and said that 'normal' people may not need to do that.

I think they could could have skipped the part where he talks about his past, since this was supposed to be more advanced.

[TylerDurden]

Something that Tyler won't like -- AV claimed in the interview that humans are carnivores, which is a view I didn't realize he held.

He never mentioned this before.  AV originally came to raw-meat diets via Natural Hygiene and related raw vegan practices so this is odd. It's even odder when one considers that his actual dietary recommendations in the books are far, far off any carnivorous ideals, with huge amounts of raw veggie-juice, raw nuts and raw honey and 5% fruit being recommended on a Primal Diet(30%+ of diet, as an absolute  minimum). I suspect the raw carnivore claims he makes in that interview are solely aimed at wooing raw vegans to his camp, as otherwise he would be being hypocritical.

He views allegedly "allergic" reactions to raw milk (vomiting, diarrhea, nausea) as detoxes that will eventually pass (this is something Tyler has reported on, but the so-called detoxes did not pass for Tyler).

Well, it seems I was right after all in thinking that AV is sticking to the dairy-allergy always=detox myth, despite claims from a few others.

As evidence he pointed to the Filani (or Fulani?), Samburu and Masai tribes. He claimed the Samburu and Masai "have absolutely no disease whatsoever," which I seriously doubt.

Exactly. He's just making the same silly claims Weston-Price made re such tribes. I don't deny that they are healthier than modern settled peoples, but that doesn't mean they are free of atherosclerosis and other problems associated with cooked diets.

AV mentioned the remote tribe in the Philippines again. He said they ate raw fish, coconut, raw pork, mango and banana. He claimed there were three interpreters. (Strange that with all these people visiting them, no one has revealed who this secret tribe with the amazing health is, AFAIK.)

I'd like GS to check up on this  so-called "fact" as I suspect it's one of Aajonus' rather unlikely tall tales.

AV: Grinding meat makes it easier to digest (Aajonus grinds or finely chews all his meat--another issue on which Tyler disagrees with him).

 Again, there are plenty of RPDers whose experience goes directly against that.

[William]

 AV originally came to raw-meat diets via Natural Hygiene

AV originally came to raw-meat via coyote.
He was wise or desperate enough to learn from nature (Natural Science!), not some blowhard.

[PaleoPhil]

He does this because he said his stomach does not secrete enough acid and said that 'normal' people may not need to do that.

I think they could could have skipped the part where he talks about his past, since this was supposed to be more advanced.

Yes, I know, thanks. Tyler doesn't agree with him that grinding meat makes it easier to digest.

AV originally came to raw-meat via coyote.
He was wise or desperate enough to learn from nature (Natural Science!), not some blowhard.

William, why not apply similar standards of skepticism to AV as well as Cordain? Maybe the coyote story is true, maybe not. AV has other stories too for explaining his enlightenment beyond the coyote and many of his ideas do come from natural hygiene.

[KD]

He views allegedly "allergic" reactions to raw milk (vomiting, diarrhea, nausea) as detoxes that will eventually pass (this is something Tyler has reported on, but the so-called detoxes did not pass for Tyler).

I think this makes it sound more dubious that what he specifically said, which is [paraphrasing from memory] that casein builds up from years of pasteurized dairy, and that raw dairy has a knack for this stuff releasing and causing symptoms. This could be equally dubious, but I think its a huge difference in interpretation, especially if one goes on his record of 'conversions' of dairy intolerant people.  Unless people have never taken in pasteurized dairy, I don't see how they can definitively deny that this could possibly have merit, other than to quote the conceptual ideas about eating another animals milk etc...of which he also covered. Especially when you consider the increasing rates of lactose intolerance, which isn't exactly correlating with an increase in the populace' health. If someone is getting these symptoms (vomiting, diarrhea, nausea) from raw dairy, and only got intestinal discomfort from pasteurized dairy, then this seems to be even more true.

[TylerDurden]

I think this makes it sound more dubious that what he specifically said, which is [paraphrasing from memory] that casein builds up from years of pasteurized dairy, and that raw dairy has a knack for this stuff releasing and causing symptoms. This could be equally dubious, but I think its a huge difference in interpretation, especially if one goes on his record of 'conversions' of dairy intolerant people.  Unless people have never taken in pasteurized dairy, I don't see how they can definitively deny that this could possibly have merit, other than to quote the conceptual ideas about eating another animals milk etc...of which he also covered. Especially when you consider the increasing rates of lactose intolerance, which isn't exactly correlating with an increase in the populace' health. If someone is getting these symptoms (vomiting, diarrhea, nausea) from raw dairy, and only got intestinal discomfort from pasteurized dairy, then this seems to be even more true.

  I'm afraid this other explanation doesn't remotely convince either. You see, the body cannot possibly contain all this casein you mention over long periods. Besides, there are people like me who've gone several years doing raw vegan(ie no dairy at all) before trying the primal diet and then  going rawpalaeo. More to the point, people generally experience far worse symptoms with pasteurised dairy re allergies than with raw dairy.

[KD]

Its still a dubious claim without serious proof, but I think its unfair how it was characterized as 'just another detox' type excuse was my comment. I don't see why the body can't contain casein, how would one know what amounts are stored, how they get released and how much cause symptoms? If one is speaking of mercury, its not like they have huge rocks of the stuff in their bodies.  I don't see how going without dairy (as many lactose intolerant and vegans would be doing before trying raw dairy) would matter if this also doesn't remove the casein according to this hypothesis. As for pasteurized dairy, exactly, one would think peoples symptoms would be way worse, so if you have people vomiting and so forth from raw dairy, and they have no memory of growing up vomiting from dairy, it seems to be more proof of this.

[TylerDurden]

Well, many people find the mercury-claims to be completely bogus such as the notion of mercury-in-fish which has no decent proof in favour of it. it should be noted that all humans have microtraces of uranium in their body just like with mercury or pretty much any other element, but no one makes an issue of that.

The point is, though, that all toxins, even allergens, are gradually removed by the body over time. I, for example, experienced a very runny nose after consuming any dairy in childhood(unfortunately, I didn't think of it as a bad thing as I'd been assured by a multitude of people that dairy was super-healthy, especially for children). The mucus in the runny nose apparently resulted from all the casein I was ingesting at the time from dairy. So, once the toxins stop coming in, there's less and less of it in the body until it's eventually gotten rid of.

[KD]

I'm really hoping you are right about mercury/fish as I have read this info, but thats besides the point as even if we could equally argue about the severity of mercury, many people DO have measurable amounts (not just trace) of things like mercury and other heavy metals - by medical detection and not just by quacks. My point was, in response to "the body cannot possibly contain all this casein" was that maybe it isn't a whole lot on physical observation but that it may remain in tissue nonetheless. I don't know about casein specifically But these types of things do stay in the body, even distributed over the cellular level.

Ajonous's main shtick is very anti-hygiene in that is that certain foods are necessary to pull various material from the cells, or to replace or absorb such things with animal fats and other protocols.

The point is, though, that all toxins, even allergens, are gradually removed by the body over time. I, for example, experienced a very runny nose after consuming any dairy in childhood(unfortunately, I didn't think of it as a bad thing as I'd been assured by a multitude of people that dairy was super-healthy, especially for children). The mucus in the runny nose apparently resulted from all the casein I was ingesting at the time from dairy. So, once the toxins stop coming in, there's less and less of it in the body until it's eventually gotten rid of.

this is the typical hygiene hypothesis. If all dairy is toxic, this would me Aajonus either would have 0% success rate at least with lactose-intolerant people and dairy, or that these people merely handled dairy better because they became more toxic, which is precisely what many hygienists say about all animal foods. I personally think there could be truth to the fact that pasteurized dairy leaves some kind of residue in tissue, that raw dairy might aggravate/ameliorate. I'm not convinced of this of course, but I think just the anecdotal evidence is enough to make me open to it.

[TylerDurden]

Actually, it isn't just the mercury-in-fish notion that has been debunked. The mercury-amalagam notions have also been conclusively debunked:-
 
http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/mercury.html
 At least, it's only the quack-doctors like Dr Wakefield who support such notions. And the only ones to have been shown to have genuinely suffered from mercury are those who've been exposed to truly massive doses of mercury, usually from spillage from industrial sites(Minamata Bay and a more  recent incident in Romania near a mercury-using gold mine come to mind).

[William]

http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/mercury.html
 

Quackwatch is the junkiest of junk science.

[KD]

I'm not aruging that one can dispute the damage of these things, just that they DO build up in the body. In the organs, fatty tissue, and cells. If this was not true, many modern diseases would probably not exist. Not to mention the reasons for not consuming grain-fed meats, if one believes their toxins do not get built up in such tissues. Are you saying you would eat factory farmed meats, if they were hijacked mid-life and fed a 100% natural diet for a number of years? And in this case we are talking merely grains, and not the chemicals of modern diets like acrylamide and formaldehyde and other massive quanitities of cooked non-biological foods and stress in modern humans.

[TylerDurden]

I would of course be prepared to eat raw meats from 100% grassfed cattle even if they'd been grainfed up to 2 years before the grassfeeding period. This is, after all, plenty of enough time to get rid of all toxins from unhealthy diets.

[TylerDurden]

Quackwatch is the junkiest of junk science.

Quackwatch is great for exposing quacks. Of course, quackwatch is anathema to creationists like you since it focuses on reason, not mythology.

[goodsamaritan]

Quackwatch is great for exposing quacks. Of course, quackwatch is anathema to creationists like you since it focuses on reason, not mythology.

In my opinion, Quack Watch is an agent of Western Medicine.  Quack Watch IS the ENEMY.  If quack watch reviews Raw Paleo Diet.com and Raw Paleo Forum.  I perfectly know what those paid hacks will write about us.

[cherimoya_kid]

In my opinion, Quack Watch is an agent of Western Medicine.  Quack Watch IS the ENEMY.  If quack watch reviews Raw Paleo Diet.com and Raw Paleo Forum.  I perfectly know what those paid hacks will write about us.

They didn't even notice that Dr. Price was right about crooked teeth.  That's like noticing that Isaac Newton was a weirdo, and missing the fact that he was one of the greatest scientists ever.

They miss the point. If you want to know the deeper truth of the Universe, you can't just ask conventional science.  You'll get conventional answers.  To know more, you must look more deeply. It takes work, which is the thing that most skeptics are deeply allergic to.

[wodgina]

I highly doubt TD has read these quackwatch articles. The WAP article he has referenced in the past was so unbelievably ridiculous it's the only conclusion I could come to.

To GS I wouldn't be suprised, they seem to be written in rush.

[TylerDurden]

I highly doubt TD has read these quackwatch articles. The WAP article he has referenced in the past was so unbelievably ridiculous it's the only conclusion I could come to.

To GS I wouldn't be suprised, they seem to be written in rush.

On the contrary I did read a number of those quackwatch articles. There is a burning need in the face of ludicrous claims by WP and others for a James-Randi-type to step in and provide a more sceptical viewpoint. I don't view Quackwatch  as always(or even mostly) correct of course, but given that many in the RVAF diet movement view WP with unquestioned religious-like devotion, along with believing in silly  conspiracy theories re mercury etc., quackwatch is a useful debunking site.