When I started this, I tried straight, raw beef.  From a taste and textural perspective, I just couldn't get into it.  I admit, I didn't try for very long, because I found the instructions for Lex Rooker's jerky drier.  Now virtually all the meat I eat dries in it, anywhere from 12 to 48 hours depending on how dry I like it, or how easily I want to transport it or how long I want it to keep.

Personally, I find it very palatable most of the time! And I like that it's not really "cooked", just dried, because the temperature is so low.  I go through the dry weight equivalent of anywhere from 1 to 2 pounds of fresh beef on an average day (which I've found weighs roughly 120 grams dry from each pound of fresh, if it's fully dried). The seasoning is simple but tasty, and I can fit most of my daily food in a brown paper bag and keep it in my backpack.

I also enjoy the way that fat gets in the jerky drier - easier to chew through with a textural combination of thick and soft with just a little bite to it.  I just put a steak roast in there which had a good layer of nice fat on top, from a grass fed/hay finished cow, and the fat was enough to cut almost a whole skewer's worth of strips.

I don't know if everyone agrees with jerky most of the time, but I've found it's working quite well for me.  I tend to digest it well and my tolerance for other food is better, too.  Today I ate jerky shortly after a piece of fruit, which months ago would have resulted in lots of skin itching, but it was no problem.

Months ago I was having major bad reactions to any food whatsoever, which is what prompted me to move in this diet's direction.  I admit that I also started with a lot of coconut oil because I likely had a bad yeast flareup, and did take l-glutamine to heal the lining of my gut.  I was under a lot of stress at the time, and that can play havoc with digestion.

I find I do better and am less sluggish with a few plant carbs, like fresh fruit - though hopefully later on I can get my hands on some quality grass fed/finished fat, and would like to try incorporating more of that for energy. 

All the best with your health! I'm still working on things, but have made improvements, unquestionably, and am thankful to have found this place.

Cheers

Hello everyone,

First I'd like to say thanks again to all of you who helped my in my first newbie thread about wishing to improve my health.  It can be found in the welcoming forum.

To update very quickly:

I'm doing better.  The skin reactions to food have minimized considerably.  I'm still completely off grains and beans, which I intend to keep doing, as I think it's doing me good.  I still get itchiness and redness on occasion, but not like I did at the peak of it.

There's still some fatigue, like today, but seems to be improving, more often than not.  Less racing heart/adrenal type symptoms.

I had beef fresh/raw several times.  The first couple were hard for me, getting used to the taste/texture.  Now I'm mostly having it raw, but as jerky, a la Lex Rooker low heat jerky maker, often fully dried, or partly dried, both of which I find most palatable.  I still eat some fish, and am a lot lower carb than before (only fresh fruit and a bit of veg).

Thanks to two forum members, I've tried pemmican once, made with muscle/back fat, which was wonderful, and will be seeing how I do with the all-suet version.  I think I'd like to make my own pemmican.

I'm, soon, hopefully, going to have a source of grass fed/finished beef - what I've been getting 80 percent of the time til now has been 70-75 percent grass, and finished on grain or organic grain, no hormones/antibiotics.  Not ideal, but that's what's been around.  I'm very interested to see how I feel with grass finished on a regular basis.

What's harder to find is the fat; I'm in Ontario, Canada.  I've not yet contacted all sources, but ideally if I made pemmican in larger amounts, regularly, I'd like it from grass fed and finished animals.  I phoned up a local butcher, a "better" butcher, last night, to ask if they had fat.

He said he'd just give it to me if I wanted, maybe a pound or two per day, on average.  Sounds great.  The beef they get is from grass fed, antibiotic and hormone free cows, BUT - they're corn finished.  He didn't know if the corn they get is genetically modified, though he can find out after this weekend.

If it wasn't genetically modified (assuming his honesty and that of the producers), would using fat from these animals for pemmican be a good, or bad, idea? I know grass finished is best, and I strive to get that, but in the meantime...?

Speaking of which, would any other Ontarians/Canadians on this board care to chime in (sorry if I've missed it somewhere) on where they source (if they make pemmican) grass fed/finished suet or muscle fat?

Thanks all for your help.

Hello everyone,

I found this forum, oh I don't know, roughly a week ago; I'm not sure at this point what led me to it exactly, but I've been coming back to it again and again, because the more I read it, the more it makes sense.  So before delving into what I'd like to say and asking for advice I'd like to seek, I'll say, "hello!".  I'm glad to have found this place.

I'm a nearly twenty eight year old guy; I've dealt with health related issues for much of my life, despite being in a healthy home with caring, holistically minded parents, bottles of supplements everywhere, and with some obvious mistakes along the way, eating what most people would consider an above average, "healthy" diet.

I won't go into the full details of all the health problems I've been dealing with here.  I'll summarize them, though for anyone interested, I had recently started a thread on the famous (or infamous) Cure Zone website; I'm the original poster of the topic, going by the same username as I am here.

My issues, while varied, are from what I can gather, all related in the end to one another.  Possibly I'm dealing with:

-Adrenal fatigue or some imbalance
-Candida
-Food Sensitivities/Skin irritations upon eating many things/maybe leaky gut
-Environmental Sensitivities
-Anxiety
-Some depression

Actually, those sound like some of the issues that I've read of some of the people around here dealing with, too!
The Cure Zone thread can be found here, for those interested in greater detail:

http://www.curezone.com/forums/am.asp?i=1575140&s=1#i1



A few key points I'd like to mention here in case some respondents don't read the contents of the above link, a summary I suppose:

-I was likely born quite gluten sensitive; I didn't know, and ate it until 3-4 years ago; when I developed psoriasis (or flaky dermatitis?) on my elbows, I had a lab stool test; they found lots of gluten antibodies.  I cut it and all dairy except butter out entirely.  The psoriasis vanished - though damage to the gut may remain...?

-In my late teen years and early twenties, I abused numerous drugs: -Pot -Speed -Meth -MDMA -Mushrooms; if I had a time machine, I'd go back and whoop my butt, though it's in the past now, though not without some repercussions.  Later I developed a sporadic penchant for high quantities of caffeinated beverages.  None of this, nor my negative emotions I'm working on changing did my adrenal glands any good.

-I've often reacted to foods in one way or another; even gluten free grains - sometimes the highly "hypoallergenic" millet has given me headaches.  Beans have often made me feel yucky.  Seeds, too.  And some nuts, though I love eating them.  (I don't need anyone here to tell me that grains and legumes, and for the most part nuts and seeds aren't really the health-foods people make them out to be! - though I sure thought they were at the time).

-I used to be practically vegetarian; I did a bad job of it: lots of grains and breads and honey and beans, without much other protein, or actual vegetables.

-In the last few weeks, especially since catching a nasty 24 hour Noro-Virus puke-a-thon bug   - my symptoms have really flared up (that, I think, plus being under stress about many things has resulted in a culmination of health issues that have been brewing for years).  Anyone who clicks the Cure Zone link can see the lovely skin rashes that were flaring up after I showered, they developed after eating almost anything, and the water brought 'em to to surface.  Maybe old toxins coming though, or too much histamine from adrenals without enough cortisol to counteract it.  The things that gave me the worst rashes? Steamed broccoli and raw almonds.  And the almonds gave me gas that would clear a house, no joke.  Horrible.  Clearly, something's up in my guts, and my body's immune/glandular system has been in an overly responsive state.

__________________

Fast forward to now:
I've been monitoring how everything I eat makes me feel.  I've been eating mono-meals of one food at a time, with very little in the way of condiments (maybe a touch of black pepper, perhaps a dried herb, and sea salt).  I've already cut out all concentrated sugars (dried fruits, on which I've been known to gorge, as well as honey and maple syrup), all grains, gluten free or not, eggs (I ate four per day, scrambled, every morning for years, and now wonder if I was/became allergic to them).  No dairy at all.  And now, no nuts/seeds.  No vinegar.  No junk foods.  Only water to drink.

I seem to be slowly improving in the itchy skin department.  Unfortunately I've lost between 5 and 10 pounds in the last few weeks with all this going on, which sucks for me because I've always been thin and work hard to gain weight and muscle.

The foods I've noticed which have caused me the least reactions are:

-Wild Salmon, either canned or frozen and then cooked
-Fresh Fruit (organic apples, wild frozen blueberries), though more than a few pieces seem to make me itch, too

This makes me think (apart from the rationale presented through and through again on this forum by various posters) that, yes, there is something to this, 'specially since the two foods I am doing best with are: fruit and animal protein.
Oh, I should mention that I've taken large amounts of high quality coconut oil, too; I know this may not work for/be approved of by most here, but I wanted a different fat source for energy and to hopefully help kill candida.  I generally feel good when I eat it, though have gone through almost half a liter in about a week.

When I first found this place, I was like, "what? Raw meat? That's pretty extreme; I mean, good for them if they like it, but hell, I couldn't do that!".  Yet I came back.  And again, and again.  I kept reading, and the more I read and thought about it and how I feel, the less I was put off by it - and the more I seemed to understand that "healthy, vegetarian foods" (grains, beans, and some nuts/seeds) may not be so good for anyone, and perhaps downright bad for others - foods that I'd eaten in quantity for years.

So! Here I am, more and more interested in delving into this.  Health wise, I am taking a herbal liver and kidney flush; probiotics (I know not everyone here agrees with them), and will do a colon cleanse, 'cause God knows what's in there after all this time - that could be part of it, my body's just like "alright, somethin's gotta go, and I'll let you know by showing it through my skin".

I think I'd like to transition into a relatively low carb, omnivorous, raw paleo diet, carbs from fresh fruit, some vegetables - just about everything else from raw meat and animal fat.  I'm hoping it's possible to maintain a reasonably high intake of protein; I'm in my late twenties, and like to work out - since I've always been small framed, I enjoy whatever gains in strength and muscle I can get, but it has taken a fair bit of food to do that, and losing the weight I have recently shows me that I must burn through stuff fast.

So onto food ideas.  I think I can get into eating beef raw.  That seems to be most people's choice around here, anyway.  I know some use ground beef, but I think that to start with, I'm more comfortable with whole cuts.

I have some questions.  Please forgive me if some of these have been asked before - I've spent so much time reading that I've lost track of things a bit.  I should also mention that in the past when it came to meat, I was/still am a complete newbie, and whenever I cooked meat I was hyperparanoid about getting sick from it and always overcooked it - so I'm virtually clueless about how to handle meat.

1. If I don't use ground beef, are any solid cuts okay to use? Since I'm not planning to grill burgers or make steaks here, I'm assuming anything goes, but want to be sure.

2. I'm assuming that most of the meat I'd get will come frozen.  What's the best, safest way to thaw it - in the fridge, or covered on the counter? (And if it wasn't in the fridge, is it bad to thaw it in summery temperatures? I sometimes spend time on farms in my old trailer, and the climate in there is about the same as whatever the weather's doing outside.  It's got a propane fridge, but it's not large and can't hold tons of food - though the small freezer works excellently).

3. Do I need to rinse the meat off with water before eating? Would there be a problem doing so?

4. Fattier cuts are better - is that correct?

5. Will freezing really kill parasites? (I know what the general view about parasites is here, I just need some reassurance as a newbie).

6. I'm really interested in Lex's Beef Jerky; if I make the dryer and get the cuts of meat, I'd like to make some, as I always want to have food on hand in my backpack - though I guess that all those dried fruit Lara Bars and Vega bars can't be it anymore.  If I'm eating the jerky in a fair quantity, do I need to "supplement" it with another fat source? And (this is a daft question) as far as it's weight goes: If I made jerky using, say, four pounds of fresh meat, and it weighed X-amount when it was dried, I could still divide that weight by four, and that number would still be the equivalent of one pound of fresh meat, because all that'd be missing is water-weight, right? I mean, it would still have the same amount of fat and protein, correct?

6. b) How long will the jerky keep good for? Is it feasible to consider making enough to sit in jars and last a number of months without spoiling?

7. What about seafood? I really like fish, though don't have easy access to a fishmarket (and am more concerned about pathogens in fresh fish than beef) - can I get away with eating cooked (from frozen) fish sometimes, or is there any other way I can prepare it? If I get it fresh, can it dried/salted or something so it lasts longer and isn't quite raw?

8. Fat.  I keep reading about suet.  Is there anything else I can use, or should I just go for that - and how do you incorporate into your daily meat?

9. Marinading: I searched and couldn't really find much about this.  For the sake of reassuring myself about safety and also for flavor until getting used to raw, what are everyone's thoughts on using acidic marinade on cuts of raw meat (be it fresh, or thawed out from frozen)? I'm not using vinegar right now, nor dairy (so no whey), so I guess that leaves lemon or lime juice.  What'd be the best way to go about it, or is it just not worth it?

10. Transitioning: First, before going and buying a quarter of a cow or something, I'd like to make sure I do well with beef.  Like I said earlier, the least reaction-causing protein I've had (other than grains, beans, nuts or seeds) has been cooked fish, so that makes me think I'll be good with meat if I don't combine it with the wrong things - but I don't know if I can immediately jump into it raw (though one never knows)...

...if I start by eating cooked beef, are there ways of heating/cooking it that are less damaging, still easy for the body to tolerate, and safe (ie, is it even safe to eat partly cooked meat, or should it either be totally cooked, or totally raw)? What about, say, boiling it instead of exposing it to the searingly hot heat of a frying pan?

11. Poultry: I'll admit it; the thought of eating raw poultry just makes me shudder.  I've helped kill and prepare turkeys and chickens before but that doesn't change my reaction to the thought of eating their meat raw.  Should I then just not consider it, or is there any other way of preparing their meat to make it more palatable without degrading it.

12.  Are there any special rules which apply to eating/preparing organs? (I already know that I think I don't want to eat: kidneys, brains, lungs, or testicles, and perhaps not tongue).

13. Dried Fruits: Are they absolutely, one hundred percent the devil? I admit that they're addictive; I've gone through considerable amounts of raisins, dates, apricots, you name it, all dried before, and no doubt that's a lot of sugar which sure didn't help my gut of the yeast situation.  But I am enjoying a bit of fresh fruit.  If it's not always around, would it be truly bad (later in the game when hopefully I'm doing better) to eat *small* quantities of dried berries or apple slices?

Wow, lucky number thirteen.  Okay, that's more than a few questions.  I do apologize for the length of this.  I'd like to go about things the right way, and sincerely hope that changing to a different way of eating will be of great help to me.  Thank you all so much for taking the time to read this, and for anyone who can help, and let me know if you think at this point in my health it's too much to jump into raw of if I should just go ahead.

Oh - before I forget: I have some meat in the freezer.  My dad picked up the last bits that a local biodynamic farmer had on hand (these wouldn't be regular fare since they're so expensive from that kind of farm!): I have: a bit of stewing beef (chunks, I imagine), and a decent sized Short Rib Roast.

Are either of these good candidates for trying raw (or cooked gently if anyone has ideas on how to try that)?

Again, many thanks.  I guess this is the right forum since it's my first post, but if anyone feels it's better moved to another one, please do.

Cheers!