Variety?

[LePatron7]

Hello everyone.

Does anyone have any recommendations for variety? The main foods I find available and of appropriate quality are grass fed beef, grass fed lamb, and pastured eggs. Not including seafood, what other foods do most of you eat?

[surfsteve]

Variety is said to be the spice of life but I think that spices are the variety of food preparation. Not to mention that when you count organs there many different types of meat even on the same animal. Adding different spices and vegetables will greatly increase the combinations. Also cutting, grinding, drying and chilling the same food also gives variety. Don't overlook all of those.

I have to laugh when I think of the exact same pasta being made into dozens of different shapes as if it's all something unique and different but I suppose there's something to be said for that type of thinking. Why not apply it to raw meat?

Also don't forget about adding vegetables and even pineapple to your recipes. And don't forget about sauces! There's vegetable sauces, fruit sauces and meat sauces. There's tomato sauces, egg sauces and hot sauces!

And then there's dressings! Home made mayo is my favorite base to make all kinds of dressings!

[van]

this brings me to the idea of eating foods as they are by how they taste.  All the mentioned options for food combining and prep methods Can disguise food to the point of misleading your body to what it wants.   Having written this I have a background of instinctual eating, hence my preference exposed in this post.   The basic premise is that if a food doesn't taste and smell good enough to eat just as it is, then you're either simply not hungry, or just as importantly not hungry for the nutrients that that food has to offer in this moment. 
   It is very easy to over eat or under eat when play chef in the kitchen by mixing, blending,etc.    I write this especially for beginners to this way of eating to help them find their way/balance.  I relish each simple meal I eat, and how fortunate I am to be able to select from such amazing foods for that to happen. 

[surfsteve]

Hmm. Maybe you are right. But us beginners gotta start somewhere. (Though in reality I'm probably an intermediate.) Maybe my tastes will change as time on a raw diet progresses. I have a theory that the vinegar I crave so much on meat is instinctual because when meat goes bad it begins to get sour. But that theory doesn't explain the salt and spices I also relish!

So basically you're saying that variety shouldn't extend to herbs and spices and that my craving for them is artificial? I don't know what to think about that. I been drinking raw meat smoothies on a regular basis for well over a year and usually have them plain with only enough water to process them in the blender. But when I chew something I like it much better if it's spiced. That could be a learned behavior but then most of the herbs and spices I put on it are considered by most to be very healthy so for now I'm content and feel fortunate to be able to use them and combine foods for unique flavors.

I'll be 60 in a few months and I don't look anywhere even near my age. I don't feel it either and can move faster than most 20 year old's so I figure I must be doing something right. I guess there's always room for improvement but I'd rather be content with my diet now than force myself to do something I don't want to and go back to eating the way I used to cause I got sick and tired of eating the same plain old raw food, over and over!

[the6step]

I disagree with you van for the same reasons as surfsteve. It was said that AV's recipes were mainly to get people used to the taste of eating raw meats. I think in general, people that have fully embraced eating raw palaeo and offal will generally gravitate to minimalism naturally (e.g. eating everything in it's natural state).

However we have to recognize that we don't need to speak to those people... we need to speak for the people whose taste betrays them in the first place. When is the beginners taste going to gravitate them towards nutrient dense foods they've never liked the taste of?

I have never, ever liked liver, even in a cooked capacity. After maybe what...2 months on raw palaeo, I'm finally sitting here eating raw liver without any seasoning whatsoever. Why? because I've gotten accustomed to liking the taste, but that only happened when I put tons of seasonings on it.... and I don't think that would have happened easily otherwise as my brain would have constantly been in the "I hate the taste of this" frame of mind had I not used those. But here I am, gravitating towards minimalism naturally.

I think we just have to understand that primary objective number 1 is getting raw foods in people's bodies, and start getting them accustomed to the taste. Minimalism and mono eating will come naturally after that, as a result of comfort and laziness, as those are a humans default modus operandi. With that in mind, variety is extremely important if that is the olive branch you need to be eating the right types of things. The idea of using the natural taste of things as a gauge for whether you should be eating it is smart but that's not the most important hurdle for beginners IMO... it's getting over the taste... so time seems it'd be better spent doing that.

[surfsteve]

Herbs and spices are more than just for taste. They are packed full of nutrition and even prevent and cure disease. Wild meat has it's own gamy taste but domesticated and even purely grass fed animals aren't brought up on eating a variety of herbs and spices that naturally flavor their meat.  So maybe this isn't as cut and dried after all.

[goodsamaritan]

I discovered I need salt.  Himalayan salt works for me.

I had fungus / mold issues so I discovered Italian Seasoning.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_seasoning

These are dried herbs and really do the job of helping kill of fungus and parasites.

As for variety of meats, hell yeah I went around and did my exploration with sources for horse, goat, various sea food like fish, clams, oysters, crabs, squid, sea weed (I live in an archipelago)... different fruts, different raw starches, different raw veggies. 

I dislike the taste of freshwater farmed fish, totally yuck tilapia / milkfish... too gross.

[van]

Like most things in life there are degrees to everything.   Salt and spices are not what I was referring to.  But more to taking a food that  one doesn't like the taste of ( respecting that simple  notion I believe is very important ) and blending it with one or several other foods to make the taste or texture more agreeable, will, in my opinion, leave you in your head for determining what you are going to eat.  That process will further strengthen the mind's believe that it knows best, and lessen the trust or reblossoming of one's instinct ( letting the body inform as to what nutrients and what QUANTITIES it needs ).  It will certainly abort any chance of detecting the natural 'stop' one can have with any single food. 
    I'm not saying that this notion of instinctive feeding is better than creating blended recipes.  I am saying that there is a whole lifetime of developing that instinct is one is interested.  But it does take sensitivity, experimentation and mostly trust.
  As to not liking liver or not:  my guess is that with time, and trusting one's instinct that most will eventually find a taste for it, and that is if the body needs it, and past ideas aren't still getting in the way.   Eating only when hungry is paramount though to engage instinct. 
   It really helps for 'newbies' to be able to share meals with others who have been eating this way for some time.   It so helps alleviate fears and doubts.   

[surfsteve]

I discovered I need salt.  Himalayan salt works for me.

I had fungus / mold issues so I discovered Italian Seasoning.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_seasoning

These are dried herbs and really do the job of helping kill of fungus and parasites.

As for variety of meats, hell yeah I went around and did my exploration with sources for horse, goat, various sea food like fish, clams, oysters, crabs, squid, sea weed (I live in an archipelago)... different fruts, different raw starches, different raw veggies. 

I dislike the taste of freshwater farmed fish, totally yuck tilapia / milkfish... too gross.

The last two times I tried farmed fish it made me sick and I quit eating it.

I've always been of the opinion that Celtic sea salt is better than Himalayan rock salt. It is my understanding that Celtic salt comes from the sea and is a living salt while Himalayan salt has been dried for millions of years and has had minerals leached out of it and had other minerals deposited into it. It also contains more sodium chloride and less trace minerals than Celtic salt does.

[goodsamaritan]

Van is correct about instinctive eating.
I myself do not season flavorings into food and learned that instinctive eating thing.
It is really helpful.

For example, instinctively I craved for raw starch, you can look it up here in this forum.

The seasonings I used were a curative thing for fungus mold

[surfsteve]

Interesting comment Goodsamaratin. I kind of crave raw starch too!

When I was a kid I loved taking a piece of raw potato while my mom was cutting them up. I would always get my fingers slapped if she saw me. I never liked potatoes cooked unless they were smother with gravy or butter or something to disguise their taste and texture.

Do you consider raw potatoes to be good for you? (My mom sure didn't!)

A couple of years ago I was juicing raw carrots or potatoes nearly every day. I was also eating a lot of cooked foods and put on a lot of weight. I blamed the sugar in the carrots and the starch in the potatoes for that. I mainly juiced them because they were cheap and thought they were just as good for you as other more expensive vegetables.

My instincts are telling me that it wasn't the starch from the potatoes. I've read about people even taking resistant starch to loose weight but that has been cooked (and cooled).

What are your thoughts on eating raw potatoes and juicing them? I bet I could whip up a tasty version of raw beef hash!

What about carrots? I quit eating them too too but a tiny package of organic “baby” carrots caught my eye and I bought and put some on a salad the day before yesterday and found them to be very good!

[TylerDurden]

Food-groups  I have eaten:-

Raw shellfish
Raw fish
Raw eggs
Raw wild game and their raw organ-meats
Raw grassfed meats and raw grassfed organ meats
Unusual raw fruits such as medlars
Some raw vegetables such as radishes and carrots but rather few for various reasons.


There is a huge variety of foods within such food-groups, eg:-  raw swordfish, raw brains, pink bananas, live lobsters, live octopus, raw crabs, raw moufflo, raw wild boar, raw deer marrow etc. etc.