I have been eating raw chicken livers for the past three days along with a paleo mostly meat cooked diet. Last night and this morning Ive had terrible diahrea and stomach cramps and a headaches. Could it be from livers? I realized that they weren't 100% pasture - could that be the reason? Is it normal to have diarrhea in the beginning? Also I've been paleo 100% for 4 weeks now. Thanks.

I read the sticky about the dangers of freezing meat. I am so glad for that, I didn't realize how much freezing damages meat. If I'm buying fresh, not previously frozen meat, and I don't want to freeze it, how long will it stay good in the refrigerator? 

My main goal right now is to raise my stores of iron, so I will eat almost excusively red meat, and beef liver daily. I've read online that it's not safe to eat too much liver due to the high levels of vitamin A found. I'm not sure how much this applies to me now that I'm not eating grains and such. How much liver do people who eat raw paleo normally, or safely eat daily?

The other thing that I'm curious about, how are people handling the high cost of grass fed beef? I know what's normally said in response to this is that it's much cheaper than buying the processed foods (true) and that you can't put a price on good health (true). I'm struggling with another issue - being broke. My husband is unemployed, we have 4 kids, and can barely afford $100 week for our whole family for food. Unfortunately, I just can't switch the whole family to Paleo (hubby not interested right now) and definately not raw unfortunately, so I am trying to keep my food costs as low as possible so I can still cook the healthiest meals I can for them (even though it's not paleo) and keep the processed stuff to a minimum. I can get grass fed beef liver for $3/lb, but I'm not sure how often I should eat it. I can get Organic ground beef at Costco (not grass fed) for $4.5/lb. I am just wondering, until I can truly afford only grass fed all the time, is there anyway to choose the best of the choices I have? What I mean is, if I cannot afford grass fed beef (other than liver), is eating the traditional beef but avoiding the fat (where the toxins are carried) better? Or should I just stick to the liver only since I can afford that?

Thanks!

Hi! Like the subject said, I'm a real newbie. I've been reading up on Paleo/Primal for a little while now. I've been working on changing my eating also, with a little difficulty. Although I read about a primal blogger who also ate mostly raw meat, I didn't realize until just this weekend (after finding this forum) just how many people were doing it. I've done a little reading about it, and it's very intriguing to me. I have done an all (cooked) meat diet for a short amount of time previously and felt pretty good on it.

I know that a mainly meat diet is what I need now, in fact mostly red meat. I recently found out my ferritin (iron stores) are extremely low. I am looking in to the medical reason that they are so low. In the mean time I do need to raise the numbers because it's leaving me very fatigued and cold (among other things). After trying to fix it with iron supplements and feeling like crap from them, I've decided to try and do it with food. I'm not quite sure if raw is better, but I am willing to try it to see how I feel.

So right now I am trying to ease in to it a little. I am definitely cutting out all non-Paleo things (wheat, other grains), but I am not 100% raw yet. I tried some raw beef liver this weekend. I chewed the first piece. It didn't make me gag initially, but the after taste was pretty bad. Then I cut some up in to small pieces and swallowed it. Not as bad tasting, but very time consuming. I also tried a thick steak super rare (just seared each side for a minute). It was pretty good, although the contrasting temperatures (warm outside and cold inside) wasn't very pleasant.

I look forward to learning more about this way of life and getting advice from everyone.