Uneasy feeling after eating 1 week old raw beef

[rawdog]

I've been on a 50% raw meat diet (zero carb) for about a month now (breakfast cooked, dinner raw). I have some ribeye steaks in the fridge (never frozen) that I have been eating raw for dinner every night for 8 days or so. Yesterday on day 8 I woke up early in the morning with some stomach uneasiness but then fell back asleep. When I woke up later I thought the feeling was a dream until last night I had the feeling again after dinner (raw steak raw eggs) which lasted for about 5-6 hours until I went to sleep. When I woke up this morning I felt fine.

The feeling isn't very concentrated in my stomach, its mostly an overall uneasy feeling that resonates throughout my body, but its obvious its from food. Its not intense just a general uneasy feeling that's very noticeable.

I noticed the same thing happen before with ground beef from the same butcher. The first week while it was fresh it did not have this negative effect when I ate it raw, then after a week or so it starts to give me this uneasy feeling when I eat it raw. I ate it about 3 times with the negative effect just to confirm. When I cooked the same ground beef I did not have this feeling.

Raw liver from the same butcher I had in the fridge for 3 weeks and I was eating it every night with no such issues.

Not really sure what's happening. Why does eating the raw beef muscle meat give me this uneasy feeling after it sits in the fridge for a week? The first week of eating it raw I have no such feeling.

Any ideas? Thanks.

[dariorpl]

If you're new to raw, I suggest eating only fresh, until your body is well used to the higher bacteria count. If you're not 100% or close to 100% raw, or if you're not mainly meat based, I would avoid meat that isn't fresh.

It won't harm you, but it may not be the most pleasant on your digestion.

If possible, try buying smaller amounts so you finish it before it starts to rot.

There are other methods of preserving meat for longer periods without freezing it. Sabertooth, goodsamaritan and others hang it in the fridge so moisture is unable to collect and the surface is always dry. Doing that it should last longer. If your refrigerator can be set to a temperature of around 4C or 2C, or to lower humidity, this may also help.

Also, thicker cuts rot more slowly than thinly sliced pieces, since meat rots from the outside in.

Another method is to dry it out, turning it into raw jerky. Simply slice it thin (or make very thin plates from ground meat), set them on a rack and place a fan blowing air onto them. Sunlight or wind may also help. You might want to do something to keep flies away. This can turn meat into jerky in a matter of hours.

[rawdog]

If you're new to raw, I suggest eating only fresh, until your body is well used to the higher bacteria count. If you're not 100% or close to 100% raw, or if you're not mainly meat based, I would avoid meat that isn't fresh.

It won't harm you, but it may not be the most pleasant on your digestion.

If possible, try buying smaller amounts so you finish it before it starts to rot.

There are other methods of preserving meat for longer periods without freezing it. Sabertooth, goodsamaritan and others hang it in the fridge so moisture is unable to collect and the surface is always dry. Doing that it should last longer. If your refrigerator can be set to a temperature of around 4C or 2C, or to lower humidity, this may also help.

Also, thicker cuts rot more slowly than thinly sliced pieces, since meat rots from the outside in.

Another method is to dry it out, turning it into raw jerky. Simply slice it thin (or make very thin plates from ground meat), set them on a rack and place a fan blowing air onto them. Sunlight or wind may also help. You might want to do something to keep flies away. This can turn meat into jerky in a matter of hours.

Thanks for your reply. So this may be a common thing which is good to know. I was unaware of these methods to delay the bacteria. The part about the jerky, is that for converting the already "bad" meat I have in my fridge into something I can eat? Or just a method for keeping it longer from when its fresh?

Thanks again

[dariorpl]

The jerky is just for keeping it. It won't be the same as fresh, but it'll make sure your meat doesn't rot for a very long time, and can easily be kept at room temperature. Just make sure to drink liquids or eat other fresh foods when eating it.

I don't know of any methods to undo rotting, except letting it go high in a well airated glass jar so you can have it much later on. But I would make sure this is good quality meat before doing that.

I do wonder what would happen if making jerky out of rotten meat. It might make it more easily digestible for you. The flies will be all over it though, so make sure your fan is really powerful, or put a metal mesh screen around it to keep them out, unless you don't mind them being on your food.

There are also methods that use a combination of drying and controlled rotting to produce special products such as salami. But they usually call for heavy salting.

I would avoid cooking rotten meat, too. That might be dangerous. I know that meat that was cooked from fresh and then rots is dangerous, so it might be that having raw rotten meat that is later cooked also is dangerous.

[rawdog]

I don't know of any methods to undo rotting, except letting it go high in a well airated glass jar so you can have it much later on. But I would make sure this is good quality meat before doing that.

Much later on, you mean when I can handle higher bacteria counts?

I've cooked meat many times at this stage (1 week old) and I've never had any issues.

[van]

  Please try this.   take meat out of plastic anything when you get home.  Ideally, you can make or buy some stainless steel small hooks to hang pieces of meat from inside of fridge.   Until you figure out how to do this, another method is to hang the meat over the side of a perforated collander and set in fridge.  Or, if you have to lay it flat, turn it over at least once per day until eaten.   I assume you're buying grass fed.   I Never buy ground beef.  If you like ground beef, buy an inexpensive grinder and make your own.

[dariorpl]

Much later on, you mean when I can handle higher bacteria counts?

Yes, that's what I meant

I've cooked meat many times at this stage (1 week old) and I've never had any issues.

It may depend on the degree of rotting. The more it rots, the more likely it can be dangerous, I would think.

[dariorpl]

  I Never buy ground beef.  If you like ground beef, buy an inexpensive grinder and make your own.

I quickly discovered that making my own ground beef was safer after numerous experiences with some sort of nasty spices that butchers seem to sometimes add to ground beef. At first I would just tell them which cut I wanted and have them grind it up in front of me, but then I discovered that whatever was left in the grinding maching was enough to taint the whole batch.

[rawdog]

Just realized I mis-calculated everything. The meat that made me feel uneasy was only 4 days old. The batch before I ate it until 4 days old and felt fine.

I guess somewhere around the 4 day point is when it will start having that effect if I continue storing it like I have been (stacked up in the plastic bag and tied off).

[dariorpl]

There's no guarantee that the number of days since you bought it can predict how rotten a piece of meat will get, it would depend on several factors, like how fresh the meat was when you first got it, the level of moisture it had, how much of that moisture concentrated on the surface, the amount and types of bacteria and fungi it was exposed to, how cold the area of the fridge where you kept it was, etc. A 4 day old piece of meat can be more rotten than a 6 day old one. Also, not all rotting is the same. Depending on the type of bacteria and fungi that proliferate, the properties of the meat will also change.

Also, just because you felt uneasy at a certain time, doesn't necessarily mean it was the meat that did it. And even if it was, it's not necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes your body is detoxing and it uses the nutrients in the food to help detox, and if it wasn't for that meat, maybe it would've used something else. Or maybe not, but then you'd only delay the process, rather than preventing it, by avoiding said meat.

I had a period where I would get a particular type of stomach/intestine pain that would last for hours. It didn't seem to matter where I got the eggs from, as the same thing happened with eggs from 3-4 different suppliers. I'd never had pain like that, it was a sort of generalized pain, rather than focused on a particular area of my stomach or bowels. It also wasn't dose-dependent. It made no difference whether I ate 3 eggs or 8 eggs at a time, in both cases the intensity and duration of the pain would be the same. So eventually I stopped eating eggs for months. Eventually the same thing started happening with raw milk, whereas it had never happened before with milk. So I stopped drinking milk. Eventually the same thing started happening with beef, whereas it had never happened before with beef.

Then I realized that my body was just doing what it needed to do and the particular food was only the means to an end, so when I stopped consuming eggs, my body had to learn to do the same thing it was doing, with something else besides the eggs. So it learned to do it with the milk. When I eliminated that, it learned to do it with something else.
 
AV has talked about this type of detoxifications in detail in his books, talks and newsletters. Most forum members here don't agree with him. But I have to admit that many of the things I've experienced can't be explained in any other way than with his theories.

[ivanrk]

I use small peltie dehumidifier like this  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hH-8KqQtys   in the fridge and the results are great - the humidity drop from 90% to 60% - before everything in this fridge was wet - the fridge have auto defrost so i guess this is where all this moisture comes from but the mini dehumidifier is abe to reduce humidity while putting several kg of sea salt did nothing.

[ivanrk]

I think you can kill all the bacteria on the surface of meat by marinating it in vinegar - this is how they make a type of beef jerky called biltong - then dry it - in South Africa where the temp is above 30 degree celsius and the meat does not rott.

Just realized I mis-calculated everything. The meat that made me feel uneasy was only 4 days old. The batch before I ate it until 4 days old and felt fine.

I guess somewhere around the 4 day point is when it will start having that effect if I continue storing it like I have been (stacked up in the plastic bag and tied off).