Experiment

[SkinnyDevil]

Over-simplifying, but....

Last month was very little veggie & fruit (except for 4 or 5 binges on fruit) and mostly eating meats.

This month (so far, anyway) is no meat at all and 100% raw vegan.

I'm wondering how I'll feel after 30 days. My typical diet is lots of green veggies, some fruit, lots of sashimi, and the occasional binges on red meats & such. No dairy, no eggs, no grains, blah, blah.

I'm also wondering if I can go 30 days with no meat of any kind, I usually get serious cravings.

[reyyzl]

Over-simplifying, but....

Last month was very little veggie & fruit (except for 4 or 5 binges on fruit) and mostly eating meats.

This month (so far, anyway) is no meat at all and 100% raw vegan...

I'm wondering how I'll feel after 30 days. My typical diet is lots of green veggies, some fruit, lots of sashimi, and the occasional binges on red meats & such. .., no grains, blah, blah.

I'm also wondering if I can go 30 days with no meat of any kind, I usually get serious cravings.

    It's early August now, this makes sense.

    Tibetans eat white colored food or dairy in Summer, red or meat in Winter.  Early Pioneers and farmers ate more vegetarian in Summer, had to eat their livestock in Winter.  Bees kill the drones in Winter.  Many people eat heavy food in Winter, fruit in Summer.  Jewish kashrut laws specify to not eat meat with certain foods and the other way round.  In Summer lots of fruit grow.  In macrobiotics menus are changed according to season, small farmers do this as well.  It's natural to eat less meat in Summer.  Maybe you weren't asking that.

    I wish you all the best with your experiment.  Let us know how it goes.  Thanks for sharing.

[SkinnyDevil]

Thanx.

Mild cravings for meats already (only 10 days in). I will probably work thru it anyway, but will resort to fish if it seems to become problematic.

[SkinnyDevil]

Well over half-way thru the month...no problems.

Rockin' strong.

[PaleoPhil]

You don't find you have to brush your teeth any more on 100% raw vegan than on 100% raw meat and nondairy animal fat? You're skin isn't any drier or oilier? You're sleeping exactly equally?

[SkinnyDevil]

You don't find you have to brush your teeth any more on 100% raw vegan than on 100% raw meat and nondairy animal fat? You're skin isn't any drier or oilier? You're sleeping exactly equally?

All is the same, close as I can tell (I have a bizarre schedule, so it's sometimes hard to monitor sleep).

I suspect it's because I've eaten high-raw for so long, and raw meat longer. I suspect the real change would come if I decided to eat spaghetti or a Big Mac & a coke (hahaha!).

[PaleoPhil]

Interesting. Maybe that bodes well for me being able to tolerate some fruits in the future, thanks.

[SkinnyDevil]

I should note, Phil, that I've never had any health problems. I don't know if that is relevant, but eating tropical fruit for a month or nothing but greens for a month has never been an issue, any more than eating mostly meat for a month.

[PaleoPhil]

Wow! Did your mother eat real healthy when you were in the womb? Epigenetic effects on the fetus in the womb have become an area of increasing scientific research interest.

[SkinnyDevil]

I don't know - never thought to ask her.

I suspect she ate better than average, as she's never (so far as I know) been into junk foods. Of course, I'm also in my 40s - it was a different world when I was born.

[PaleoPhil]

Yes, I suspect she did as well. My brother had the best early health among my siblings. My parents were poor at the time and ate a lot of wild meats like rabbit that hunters gave them. Little did they know that wild meats are the healthiest foods on earth and my brother was benefiting from them in the womb. Later, when my mother was trying to fatten the rest of us who were sickly children (probably because she was eating less wild meats and more carbs while pregnant with us), she stuffed us with cookies, pies, malted milkshakes and the like to try to fatten us and make us look "healthy." Little did she know that she was actually making the problem worse.

I've never heard of anyone, from carnivore to vegetarian, make the claim that a whole month of radical dietary change had no effect whatsoever on them--haven't you noticed any changes at all, positive or negative or indeterminate? Have you been measuring any of your health stats like Lex does?

[SkinnyDevil]

I don't know how radical my change is, Phil. I've eaten raw meat since I was a kid and when I cooked meat, I always ate it VERY rare. I've never liked well-done or even medium rare meats. Similarly, I've always preferred raw fruits & veggies to cooked.

I had a splurge of junk food (sodas, candy bars, etc.) when I was a kid, but it was never a daily thing.

Less than a decade ago I gave up breads and such, as well as low quality foods, and started eating primarily organic - and that is where I noticed big differences. RAW food in general made the big difference, though I notice than even if I eat some cooked food it's no big deal as long as I follow one rule:

If it can't be eaten raw, then don't eat it.

That's about the only advice I give to people who ask about my dietary habits. I tell them that even if they cook their food, simply avoid anything that HAS to be cooked to be eaten. Cuts out all sorts of crap right away!

So anyway, leaning heavy on the meats like I did last month to heavy on the fruits & veggies like this month I think only SEEMS like a radical change. But given my normal dietary habits which include both (to the exclusion of all else), it starts to seem otherwise. There have been mild changes (the bathroom calls less on a meat-heavy diet, for example), but nothing unexpected. Certainly no real difference in the facets of my daily life (workouts, sleep habits, sex drive, cognitive skills, energy levels, psychological outlook, etc.).

[PaleoPhil]

You have the same rule that Ray Audette proposed in NeanderThin. It's one thing that got me to cut out the winter squashes and nightshades (the former are still basically inedible raw and the latter had to be detoxified through selection by Native Americans and others to make them edible--and some of them are still inedible, such as deadly nightshade).

Your experience has been fascinating, thanks. I have no explanation for why raw meats and animal fats should make no difference to your health over plants. For example, raw meats clean and polish my teeth whereas fruits and nuts gunk them up and quickly generate plaque. Maybe you have some additional enzyme or a larger quantity of enzyme or an extra gene that allows you to neutralize the negative dental effects of carbs?

[SkinnyDevil]

You have the same rule that Ray Audette proposed in NeanderThin. ... Maybe you have some additional enzyme or a larger quantity of enzyme or an extra gene that allows you to neutralize the negative dental effects of carbs?

Re: Ray Audette - I was unaware of that. What is "NeanderThin"? A diet book?

Re: Teeth - I eat lots of greens, which are not particularly high in carbs. I suspect of I ate sweet fruits for an extended period of time, I'd have some dental issues.

As an aside, I noticed relatively recently that cooked meat can stick between my teeth, requiring floss, but raw meat almost never does. I found that interesting. I noticed when I had a steak at a restaurant a few months back. They had to cook it, of course, but they did a superb job of only searing it for a few seconds. But even with it almost completely raw, the cooked portion is what caught between my teeth.

[PaleoPhil]

Re: Ray Audette - I was unaware of that. What is "NeanderThin"? A diet book?

Re: Teeth - I eat lots of greens, which are not particularly high in carbs. I suspect of I ate sweet fruits for an extended period of time, I'd have some dental issues.

Yes, I wondered about greens after I had written that question. They don't have the bad dental effects that fruits and nuts seem to.

Nonhuman primates that eat a lot of greens also eat clay and other detoxicants to neutralize the toxic antinutrients in greens. Do you do anything like that? I've noticed that others here have mentioned doing that--I think GoodSamaritan was one.

Another interesting thing about meat is, even when it gets stuck in between the teeth and I don't notice it for a while, it doesn't seem to coat the actual teeth at all or cause any dental problems the way the white stuff from carbs does.

[SkinnyDevil]

No, I don't eat clay. I don't wash my organic lettuce, though (hahaha!) - does that count?

I don't put a lot of stock in the notion that anti-nutrients are by default a bad thing when they are in low amounts like is found in many nuts as well as most fruits & veggies. I don't eat legumes (which are full of anti-nutrients).

It's worth noting that the tannins, for example, are not harmful in low doses, and there is evidence they are helpful. They also flush right thru your system, so eating a salad at one meal and a steak at the next will have no effect on your body's ability to up-take all the nutrients in the meat. In fact, eating a salad & steak in the same meal doesn't hinder your body's ability to up-take nutrients in the meat (or the salad).

Now, eating a salad with a pile of red beans on top will cause problems in nutrient up-take, because red beans are very high (though not toxically high) in tannins. Remember, many of the anti-nutrients (like tannin, since I've been using that as an example) require HIGH doses before they really interfere with nutrient absorption.

That said, remember also that tannin (continuing the above example) is a metal chelator, so they are actually helpful when you need to get rid of metals in your system, and also reduces inflammation in the GI tract, kills infection in the body, and protects the kidneys.

Other anti-nutrients, like phytic acid, are present in food I don't eat very often (and are in low quantities). But again, their toxicity rests on dosage, and most foods don't have excess amounts. The anti-nutrient effect is often balanced by a positive effect (like those mentioned above for tannins).

Nature, in my view, won't steer you wrong.

[PaleoPhil]

Good one. Well, I guess nature is steering us in different directions, which is OK, though I do envy your ability to tolerate high levels of plant foods. I get cramps when I eat relatively small amounts of plant food, which are alleviated by either raw meat or potassium supplements. I got the cramps again after I drank some red wine recently. I have a feeling that the plant foods--especially the carby ones like fruits and the wine--are somehow having an antinutrient effect on the potassium in my system. It's surprising to me, because many plant foods are high in potassium. Apparently my body is not good at absorbing the potassium in plants. For example, high-potassium bananas have never worked to alleviate my cramps.

When I learned that not just grains and legumes, but all plants, contain antinutrients (they have to in order to protect themselves from insects and other predators), I figured that the lower levels of antinutrients in fruits, nuts and veggies would not affect me negatively. It's been very disappointing to find that that doesn't seem to be the case for me. I guess I must be especially sensitive to the antinutrients and sugars in them. High sensitivity to carbs runs in both sides of my family, which has manifested as insulin resistance, type II diabetes, peripheral neuropathy, type I diabetes, carb addiction (aka "junk food junkyism"), alcoholism, arthritis, etc.

[SkinnyDevil]

Ouch!

Yeah, I'd definitely limit the plant-based intake, then.

How do you do on greens? Are you normally zero carb? If not, what is the primary source of your carbs, and how much plant food do you normally eat?

Only a few days to go...then I'm having some sashimi and a STEAK!!!

[TylerDurden]

While plant-foods contain some antinutrients(most though nowhere near as high as grains), it should be noted that an alternative view of such substances is that they are "phytonutrients" which boost the body's health in various ways. For example, much of the beneficial effect of herbs in herbal medicine is directly due to such phytonutrients. In short, they may well be unhelpful in large quantities, but very useful in smaller amounts.

[SkinnyDevil]

Still going strong. Workouts have been intense and I'm feeling great (though the legs are a bit sore today after running 550 stairs up and 550 stairs down yesterday!).

Only a few days to go....

[wodgina]

What phytonutrients do you you recommend?

[TylerDurden]

What phytonutrients do you you recommend?

There are so many:-
http://blog.worldvillage.com/health/phytonutrients_in_preventing_cancer.html

My own preference is for herbs like garlic or cayenne pepper, as I've found them, especially the latter, to be very helpful in the past.

[SkinnyDevil]

Or you could just eat salads (lots of greens) along with your meats.

[Raw Kyle]

Or you could just eat salads (lots of greens) along with your meats.

I heard greens eaten with meat retards the digestion of the meat. Something about pH differences.

[SkinnyDevil]

I've never had problems with it, but I can't speak for others' experience.

Last day.

Tomorrow - sashimi!!!