Paleo Diet: Raw Paleo Diet and Lifestyle Forum
Raw Paleo Diet Forums => Health => Topic started by: White shark on December 27, 2011, 04:20:20 am
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Hi. I have been eating cooked paleo for 2 years now. But now I have read that eating raw meat is healthier and I believe that, but as many other people, I'm afraid of parasites and bacteria. So I found out that freezing the meat for 2 weeks kills most of the parasites, and the meat I buy should be pretty safe, when it comes to parasites. Do you think freezing kills the good enzymes and bacteria too?
I am buying ground beef, its organic, mostly grass fed. Its the best I can get here.
I'm not that scared of bacteria, except salmonella. Especially one named salmonella dublin sounds really dangerous, and its mostly found in beef. But isn't it old and weak people who dies from that? I sometimes think that they exaggerate to scare people from being healthy. I have heard of many people who eats medium raw meat every day and they are still alive, though is sounds like you will drop dead if you look at a raw beef. What do you think?
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Deep freezing for 2 weeks does kill some parasites, and it also harms some bacteria and degrades some enzymes. If you're sourcing your meat from a place that butchers cleanly and you're eating animals that are fit to eat raw to begin with (i.e. herbivorous mammals, wild fowl, etc.) then there really isn't much to worry about.
Something you should realize is that the food you eat will give you parasites, whether you're eating plants or animals, raw or cooked. You have parasites right now from your cooked Paleo Diet, I promise. And you also have parasites from your pre-Paleo diet too, even if you were a vegan. There are parasitic nematodes that lay their eggs on and in carrots, for example, so whenever you eat a raw carrot you are getting parasites.
Our bodies have evolved for millennia to handle a modest parasite burden. Some parasites are probably better thought of as symbionts; we benefit from their consumption of dead or damaged tissue and undigested food. Same is true for bacteria - most of them aren't harmful at all and many are even beneficial. The bacteria that ferment milk to make yogurt, for example, are known for their beneficial effects in the human gut and many hold them high as 'pro-biotics'. An entire industry is emerging around the commercialization of pro-biotics, basically the introduction of beneficial bacteria in (usually fermented) foods.
I personally think that modern man's phobia of parasites and bacteria and overwhelming dependence on cooked and otherwise processed foods plays an important role in our degenerating health.
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Raw-animal foodists haven't just been eating raw, fresh meats for decades without incident, but many long-termers have also gone in for eating aged, raw meats/rotten meats for years and years without any incidents, either. So forget about salmonella and similiar issues, they are all bogus. Indeed, Aajonus Vonderplanitz once cited a study which showed that 38% of all american households contained the salmonella so-called "pathogen" and were unharmed by it, so it can't be anything to worry about.
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Millions of Japanese toddlers, elderly, and healthy adults eat raw sashimi meat and fish every day. They have for centuries. Case closed.
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Thanks for the answers. You're right, there's probably nothing to worry about, so I think I'll just do it.