I have a friend who is vegan, mostly starchivore, and his food bill is almost nonexistent. He does it not because it's super cheap, which it is, but because he believes it's healthier for him to do that.

Even then, however, being charged by an elephant, rhino or mammoth could be lethal, since they're faster than us and there is little your fellow hunt pack members can do to stop or misdirect one of those beasts which is charging you.

Although it might be true what was said, that in the tropical forests, there are plenty of insects and grubs to just pick up under a rock or whatever, and since a tropical forest diet would consist of plenty of fruits, having some protein and fats in the form of insects and grubs could certainly balance it.

It's very different to eat bugs accidentally, than to seek them out and eat them in large quantities as a main staple of your diet.

I think insects are overrated. Aside from bees and other pollinators, we don't have much use for them.

However, if the reason they are dying out is because of pesticides, this could be a warning that we're poisoning our air, water and food. Even if those pesticides don't immediately kill us, they will have long lasting negative health effects, and it could be decades or more before science realizes what those are.

Plenty of people eat raw fish without marinating them in acid, notably the japanese and to a certain extent all western countries where sushi has become widely popular. Personally, I think most raw fish tastes way too bland or simply unappetizing without marinating it in lemon juice first.

About the internal organs, I suggest removing all of them except the eyes, or simply taste for yourself and see what tastes good and what doesn't. A warning though, most internal organs will taste horribly bitter. And you are likely to find very small, barely visible, live intestinal parasites as well. The eyes can be really tasty once you get over the initial shock of the fact that they seem to be staring at you while you poke them out with a fork, and once you learn hot to prevent squirting eye fluid all over the place in the process.

About cleaning the fish, water alone is used, if you want. I usually do this to partially remove any potential chemical that may be used to keep them fresh, and to remove the bitter taste from the insides if I punctured some internal organ in the butchering process, which I always seem to do.

Yes I have had the same happen to me. Approximately 3 years into RPD my blood ferritin level was 332 ug/L. 4.5 yrs later (7.5 yrs after starting RPD) it is 480 ug/L.

I have pondered the issue of iron for some time. A few thoughts that have crossed my mind, but I am in no way saying are facts are:
- humans in the palaeolithic were actually fativores and would have instinctively chosen to prioritize consumption of animal fat. Once satiated on fat they would then only eat a small amount of flesh, therefore iron intake would be relatively lower than if one gorged oneself on flesh.
- regarding organ meats; I have come to believe that one can easily over-consume them. They are so nutrient-dense (including very high in iron) that a little goes along way.
- I have read in past threads about suggestions of drinking blood being paleo and that it would be a good source of electrolytes etc. I can't help thinking it would probably lead to iron overdose too. In the stoneage I doubt that drinking blood was common place. I imagine most animals die by bleeding out from wounds made by the hunter. By the time the hunter catches up with the animal there would be very little blood left in it. Plus they wouldn't have had much available to them in the way of drinking vessels to collect blood.
- perhaps so-called high iron levels are actually the norm and the reference range is based on a human population who follows a standard western diet and who could be chronically deficient in iron.

All interesting points.

Also, if too high iron levels are correlated with health problems, it could be that this iron is coming from supplements, rather than dietary intake.

To me it seems like humans aren't meant to eat insects or worms unless in a starvation situation. I did listen to the podcast and it's interesting what's mentioned about marine arthropods like crabs, lobsters and shrimp. I was surprised to hear that some people are willing to pay more for the same weight of insects than beef.

I am however interested in breeding insects and worms as feed for chicken, for example.

. Indeed, scientists theorise that, if humans disappeared, and dogs were left to themselves, almost all domesticated breeds  would quickly die out, with the remainder gradually reverting back to wolf form due to natural selection.

All domesticated breeds would eventually revert or die out without humans. They're been selected naturally to do better in captivity, and they're been bred selectively to better benefit us humans. So they are better for us, and they are better with us. Just like bees would die out without the flowers, and the flowering plants would die out without the bees, that doesn't mean that they're unfit, it just means that their fitness is dependent on each other.

Without domesticated animals, I suspect we too would be screwed, as wild animals, while they may have meat that is more health giving, are not as effective as turning wild plants into meat as our domesticated types are.

  Wild cattle would be at risk from predators so would have gotten more exercise.

That would be a rare occurrence. Grass-fed cattle are typically forced to move very frequently to maximize the efficiency with regards to the amount of energy that can be derived from the grass growing in a piece of land.

Plus, the genetically-unfit, unhealthy types in the wild populations would routinely get killed off as predators prefer targetting the weaker members of a herd, for obvious reasons.

And the genetically unfit, unhealthy types are also not the ones that farmers would choose to allow breeding from.

That said, if predators always target the weaker, then in a way it makes sense that we as predators should also prefer to eat the weakest members of the herd, but since we eat mostly all of them, having a herd that is weaker overall might be to our advantage health-wise?

Read up online about permaculture farming re the best way to farm/feed animals etc.

The problem is that most permaculture literature I've seen is about growing plants, usually associated with a vegan lifestyle.

Hay might be a minor part of their diet, but highly unlikely to be any more than that.

I think that, just as sabertooth likes to eat his meat at varying degrees of dryness, so too herbivores in the wild may be exposed to eating grass at varying degrees of dryness during those times where there is little rain and fresh grass is scarce. I'm talking about unsalted hay, of course. I think the salting of hay to facilitate drying large rolls and simultaneously prevent molding, may be part of the problem with most heavily hay-fed meat.

Re dysgenics:- Yes, farmers select the strongest/healthiest bulls but they do not necessarily eugenically select the females.

They do select the females also.

This 1 bull: 30000 male:female ratio  results in very severe inbreeding.

Yes, but this can only come about with very modern, highly tech assisted artificial insemination practices.

Also, selective breeding by humans since the Neolithic era has been a disaster for  domestic animals. For example, dogs are bred to be less intelligent than their wild counterparts, wolves,  and cows have overly large udders. Modern breeding has also resulted in chickens having way too large body parts so that they often die early.

Part of this may be true, but part is also dependant on how you look at it.

From the article you cited:

“Wolves seem to be a little bit more persistent than dogs in solving simple problems like how to open a box or navigate a detour,” Hare says. “Wolves persevere when dogs readily give up.” On the flip side, dogs leave wolves in the dust when it comes to tracking the gaze and gestures of their masters—or as Hare puts it, “They are very good at using humans as tools to solve problems for them.”[quote/]

Quote

Humans have also domesticated themselves since the Neolithic era got started, resulting in lower intelligence/smaller brains:-
http://discovermagazine.com/2010/sep/25-modern-humans-smart-why-brain-shrinking

That appears to be the case, and it's likely that cooked foods have played a part. However, like the same article says:

Quote

When anthropologist Richard Jantz of the University of Tennessee measured the craniums of Americans of European and African descent from colonial times up to the late 20th century, he found that brain volume was once again moving upward.

Raw wild game is far superior to anything else. Very, very few grassfed/domesticated meat/seafood even compares to genuine wildcaught meat/seafood. First of all, wild game/wild  fish/shellfish  all have access to far superior nutrition in the wild. Domesticated animals, even the grassfed ones, generally have access to grassy fields, but not necessarily fields with lots of herbal varieties as wild aurochs/palaeo-cattle  would have had access to in palaeo times. Farmers, nowadays, rely too much on monocultures. Then, many cattle , outside warmer climes, only get fed on hay and sileage in winter. I presume wild cattle migrated to grassier, warmer climates in winter months... Another point is that most domesticated animals  are heavily inbred  due to recent idiocies re having the semen from 1 bull artificially inseminate  thousands of cows, and have had millenia of dysgenics applied to them since the Neolithic era, plus most domesticated animals have far less access to daily exercise as wild animals do. Some farmers have understood some of this a tiny bit and have started to farm wild animals such as deer or wild boar, albeit not in ideal circumstances.

How would you suggest one go about breeding healthy grass fed animals?

Also I'd consider that that some hay might be part of the wild animals diet, even if they migrated, right?

Re: dysgenics, don't farmers select the best genes (from the point of view of the farmer and consumer), and would this not mean that the animals are in some way better for us?

Of course this may mean that the meats are better for cooking, for example, or that they are less firm which may be preferable for delicate palates without improving the health giving properties, or even being detrimental to them; in the same way that many fruits have been bred for sweetness with little regard to how they affect our health. But I think we shouldn't assume that all selective breeding is negative.

I do agree that too little genetic variation may become a problem if the same bull is used to inseminate subsequent generations, but this has really only become possible in recent times, up until 50 or 100 years ago, while breeding was selected, it was done in the traditional way through mating.

On the other hand, we should also recognize that nature doesn't necessarily select for the best health giving properties of the meat, but rather for the best fitness of the animals, and a large part of this fitness may have little to do with health itself, but rather with sexual competition. If the strongest bull is the one which breeds, that may or may not produce offspring with meat that is of better quality for us humans.