*Like PP said, I have no objection to people stating that they are consuming pemmican or some other cooked cr*p due to not being able to access higher quality foods or because they're just then transitioning to raw, or because they don't feel their health is that much ruined by its consumption by comparison to other foods so that they eat it for travel purposes/social reasons or whatever, as long as the reason is mentioned. But it is absolutely unacceptable to actively promote pemmican on this forum, since this is not a cooked-palaeo forum and especially since others have had major issues with cooked animal fat in the past..Given the unnecessary trollish nature of past postings about pemmican(such as a recent, irrelevant post promoting pemmican on my own journal, I think I'll just delete any such nonsense in future, if this continues. It's simply childish and immature).
Tyler, I'm afraid it is just your reaction that is childish and immature. I would like to discuss quietly the pemmican issue and find out why this food has cured the ailments William suffered from and why he does fairly well with it. Because this is of high scientific interest and your dogmatic position is just ridiculous and highly sterile. If you don't mind.
I notice the following features:
-William tells us that the meat is dried at 95°F (35°C). No problem this is perfectly raw non denaturated protein. Moreover this "aging" of the meat during 4 days produces a lot of interesting probiotic fungi and bacteria.
-William tells us that he uses beef fat rendered at 200°F (94°C). Beef fat is typically 97% saturated and monounsaturated fatty acids. Theses fatty acids are perfectly stable upon heating up to 150- 200°C. No problem with them. Only the 3% polyunsaturated fatty acids are less stable above about 100°C and so here generate only a very tiny quantity of degradation products.
-Enzymes are proteins and proteins are made inactive by denaturation in stomacal acidic environment anyway so their denaturation upon rendering is essentially irrelevant. Fat is necessarily digested by means of our own enzyme production even if raw.
-Preformed vitamin A, vitamin D and other fat soluble nutriments are fairly stable as compared to other vitamins but some degradation and destruction is expected around 94°C.
Obviously it is quite absurd and pure non-sense to compare in terms of toxicity pemmican prepared according to William's recipe to grilled, broiled, boiled etc...cooked meat, as Tyler does, where the amount of heat generated toxins is tremendously higher (both protein and fat with usually much more PUFAs heated at or above 100°C). Nothing to do a priori re toxicity.
So I'm not so surprised from a scientific point of view that William does well with it and has cured his ailments.
I've never eaten pemmican and enjoy my meat and fat as it is without any processing or heating. But I am not reluctant to consider this food as quite acceptable on travel because it's dry and keeps so well. I would however try to render the fat at even lower temperature (50°C might work even if drying is then a lengthier process).
