Thanks Lex,

I did the mix at 80/20 - and I replicated your experience: I felt lethargic within 40mins of eating the mix. I felt literally awful and queasy for the next 6hrs. Whats interesting is that I only ate one meal the whole day, without desire to eat again.

Not such a fun thing to do. I reckon caloric value was below daily maintenance level. Interesting one day experience.

..... I hold a rendering party and others that are interested come over and we render away.  I have 3 induction hobs with 60 qt stainless steel pots that I set up in my garage, each of which can render 50 lbs of fat every 4 hours.   I then store the rendered fat in 12 to 24 quart plastic containers that I put into insulated ice chests and store in the garage.  The ice chests protect the fat from excess heat, light, and moisture.  I use the fat for my own consumption as well as making pemmican to send out as samples.  Last year I sent out over 100 lbs of pemmican samples all over the world.

Lex

If a "fat rendering party" doesn't fly in the face of conventional wisdom and the old "low fat, high carbs" dogma, then I'm not sure what does! 

Actually this is not true.  Danny and I get together on a regular basis and he battled the rashes even while eating only pemmican.  We discussed the problem several times.  So, a diet of pemmican is not the cure for whatever was causing that particular problem. 

Oh wow. I was directed to his site by Mark Sisson (Marks Daily Apple) and there was apparently a post there on his own site where he said that he cured the problem by eating more pemmican. Crikey - what to believe! Thanks for setting the record straight.

I really have no idea about the nutritional quality of the meat except that it appears to be just another form of jerky made with muscle meats.  To me it is not the quality of the biltong (or jerky, or other dried meat), but the missing organ meats that are the problem if this to be the major part of your diet.  Dried muscle meats are all about the same nutrition wise as long as they are dried at about the same temperature.  The seasonings have little effect in my experience, but then again, this is only my experience and I have no authoritative study to back it up.

Lex

Thanks Lex - this makes complete sense to me. I'll have to see what I can do about learning more about the organ meats nutritional qualities - as well as the dried muscle meats. Will post something here if I find anything of value. Appreciate your input.

There are some that have tried a pemmican-only diet long term and they claim success (Delfeugo on ZIOH comes to mind), but, then again, I don’t know the specific circumstances.  One person that I do know about is Danny Roddy.  He ate a pemmican-only diet for two years.  At first things seemed to improve, but over the long term he got strange rashes on his legs and I believe some cravings.  I’ve never gotten any symptoms of any kind eating mostly raw meat with organ meats included through the pet food in my mix.  Is it the small amount of organ meats I eat that make everything work?  I have no idea, but I’ll continue eating them.  Why mess with success?

Absolutely - no reason to mess with success. However, I also know that Danny Roddy chose to eat more pemmican (only) and all his symptoms (including the bruise/ rashes) disappeared quickly.

Your prep seems fine but is more work than I wish to do for daily meals.  I want to spend as little time as possible messing with food.  This is probably another reason I don’t eat much pemmican.  

Hope this helps,

Lex

Sure does Lex - thanks again. However, I was more concerned with your view on the nutritional quality of the meat that I am prepping. (The post is just above this one for reference)

Your insights there would be most appreciated.

Thanks, ILM

... This is why I continue to eat a good measure of mixed organ meats in the form of Slanker’s pet food as part of my daily food mix, and only eat pemmican when fresh meats that meet my criteria are unavailable.  Pemmican is a marvelous food when fresh meat is scarce, but I suspect it has its problems if you attempt to eat it to the total exclusion of fresh meat.  Do we need organ meats?  I have no idea.  All I know is that what I’m doing has served me well for these many years and I have no interest in changing something that is working well just to see if I can create a problem.

....

Lex

Hi Lex! I joined this forum on the strength of your posts. Last Sunday, I spent half a day.... reading your posts. I've read about 80 pages of this thread, and understand what you do, how you do, what ratios you do, and the results from your experimentation.

Its been an insanely valuable read and I applaud and respect your dedication to critical thinking. I get a thrill from doing the same thing.

So, without further ado, I'd like to ask you to clarify the portion on the pemmican above. I made quite a bit, and learned that my use of bacon fat as the "binder" was too high in Omega 6's and so that cancelled that. I have yet to source good tallow/suet.

In the meantime, I've begun to acquaint my taste buds with rawer meat in the drive to become a raw food eater. In Africa, they make "biltong" which is meat that is prepared with vinegar, salt, spices like coriander and salt, and then dried through various measures. The meat lasts a long time, and is simply delicious. I douse my "biltong" - thinly cut strips of beef - with a splash of vinegar to give some flavor, and then after one hour, start drying it.

One chap (Phil I believe) wrote that no breakdown of meat enzymes can occur if the temp is lower than 104degF. With the above drive to raw meat, I've taken to "cooking"  - or more accurately - "drying" my meat with temps under that over several days.

With your take on pemmican perhaps not being suited long term, I'd like to know why - and what your take is on my meat prep. I'd appreciate it!

Best, ILM