1. are the claims in AVs books over the top?
-I've seen people say that on there
2. If so which ones should I be aware of?
1) Aajonus appealed to a mainly Liberal, New-Agey crowd in the Malibu, Los Angeles area. Such types have conditions such as Cherokee Grandmother Syndrome and an absurd belief in the Noble-Savage theory, so were inevitably the kind foolish enough to believe in Aajonus' tall tales about his Native-American Chieftain "friend". Aajonus also peddled the absurd tale of how he came to eat raw meat, his 40-days-and-40-nights in the desert story with him ending up being fed raw meat by some wild coyotes. You can see traces of ancient mythology in the latter tale(ie Jesus' own 40-day/40-nights in the wilderness, and the feral child/Romulus-and-Remus myth). He needed followers and diets are often cultish/religious in tone(just look at the vegan movement for comparison).So, nothing to worry about, just a bit of PR.
His claims re diet are mostly correct. His points re enzymes , raw vs cooked are correct. I would disagree re his view that prefrozen food is 25% damaged compared to nonfrozen food, but would agree, however, that some slight damage is done, with increasing damage done over time. His stance re "high-meat" was 100% correct, too, and proven by science, so I was a fool to doubt him on this issue in the 1st 3 years of going rawpalaeo. The trouble with Aajonus is that he wanted a wider audience so included a lot of raw foods in his diet which were more palatable to former cooked-foodists starting a RVAF diet, but which often caused issues such as raw dairy, raw veggie-juice, raw coconut cream/oil and similiar processed raw foods which were not available to humans in palaeolithic times.
3:- Benefits of raw vs cooked are:-
a) Cooking creates heat-derived toxins of many kinds, such as AGEs/advanced glycation end products etc., which are heavily implicated in all sorts of age-related health-problems such as arthritis/alzheimer's/dementia as well as auto-immune diseases such as diabetes, multiple sclerosis, among many other kinds of conditions.Basically, such heat-derived toxins cause inflammation and inflammation is the key condition behind many/most human health-problems.
b) Enzymes. Cooked-foodists scream that enzymes in raw foods anyway get destroyed in the stomach so that they are useless and that the human body anyway produces enough enzymes to digest the cooked foods it absorbs. Not quite correct, or "nearly right" as American teachers like to say. According to the WAPF, enzymes present in raw foods predigest the raw foods for the 30 minutes or so that the raw food stays in the upper stomach - naturally, once the raw food enters the lower stomach, the enzymes are destroyed. One thing that cooked-foodists cannot easily explain away is that many older people on long-term cooked food diets often need extra enzyme supplements as their own organs are by then far too depleted after years of unhealthy cooked diets to produce enough enzymes to digest their cooked food properly.
c) Proteins/fats/carbs are not altered. Cooking also produces traces of trans-fats which cause further problems. Industrial cooking produces even higher amounts of such trans-fats.
d) Bacteria. Bacteria are critical to things like mood-levels in the brain, which is why "high-meat" is so useful. Bacteria are critical to digestion as well, among many other functions. Animals in the wild eat far more bacteria-rich foods than even many RVAFers do, which is a good thing.
4) Oats are NOT OK, being grains. Weston-Price had some useful things to say, and undoubtedly his subjects were healthier than the city-folk of his day, but he exaggerated the Noble-Savage theory theme far too much.
5) Like most Internet-users, I chose a username of someone I would like to be but, sadly, am quite the opposite of in some ways!
6) Unless you are sure you have no issues with raw dairy, don't touch it. Issues with raw dairy are THE No1 issue RVAFers have when starting such a diet. Raw veggie-juice is the No-2. Then there are other potentially a myriad other possible issues depending on individual factors. For example, I always get appalling stomach-aches if I eat any raw coconut oil, and soon get yellow
diarrhea if I eat any raw suet.
7) Ignore issues re parasites and bacteria. Parasites are very rare in the West because farmers, even organic farmers, routinely feed their animals on deworming medicines. I got parasites(tapeworms) once in the 15+ years I've been going RVAF(from horsemeat).These were harmless and I only got rid of them after some months because of they were detaching themselves in bits from my arse and were quite smelly. By contrast, I have been mostly eating raw wild game/raw wildcaught seafood for my animal-food-intake most years of being RVAF and never once had an issue with parasites from them.
Bacteria are essential to health:-
https://qz.com/993258/dirt-has-a-microbiome-and-it-may-double-as-an-antidepressant/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene_hypothesisOther major RVAF diet-related concepts are :-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hormesishttp://jamesclear.com/the-beginners-guide-to-intermittent-fasting
