How do you make "Raw" Pemmican?

[goodsamaritan]

Can we settle this raw pemmican debate / clarification here?

The only info I know about how to make pemmican is in these 2 videos.  And it obviously is cooked pemmican.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywBwUiq5v4o
part 1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZi5thqBjQA
part 2

So William, this thread is for you.  Please post your how to make raw pemmican procedure.

[pc701]

I believe wikipedia defines raw food as any food not heated more than 46 degrees.

[alphagruis]

I believe wikipedia defines raw food as any food not heated more than 46 degrees.

Yeah...

That's why Willam's pemmican should be labeled "raw" pemmican rather than raw pemmican.

But there are good reasons to believe that this kind of "raw" pemmican doesn't contain much heat generated toxins if made as it is with fat that is essentially SFAs and MUFAs as suet rendered below boiling water temperature (< 212 °F or 100 °C as opposed to 250°F in GS's video above) and then carefully filtered and if the lean meat is gently dried at physiologic temperatures (< 104 °F or 40 °C and not over 60 °C as in GS's video above)

The protein is then absolutely raw and the fatty acids are essentially pure and stable (up to about boiling water temperatures) MUFAs and PUFAs obtained by phase separation. The main adverse effects one can imagine is some destruction of vitamins, but the vitamins in question are fat soluble A and D, fairly stable too.

The high quality of the meat and fat (grassfed) is also essential IMO.

[William]

I can't see the video, as I have dialup.
However, the question has always been tallow.
I consider that tallow is raw until it is changed by heat, at which point it is no longer edible for us, and can be considered to be cooked.

I don't know what that temperature is, but from the experience of the experienced pemmican makers, it is above 250°F.

Maybe someone here knows what the temperature is that would change tallow?

[goodsamaritan]

Just share your recipe of how you do your pemmican, no video needed.
I know pemmican keeps so it should be handy in emergencies.

[TylerDurden]

The big problem is this .- no one other than William would seriously view any food heated above 100 degrees celsius as remotely raw in any way, and even pro-cooked advocates would grudgingly admit that at least some changes are made at lower temperatures than that. And one only has to look at pictures of pemmican   to see that it has changed considerably re texture etc. from the raw suet etc. it came from, so that it is false to claim that it is totally unchanged after rendering.

 Referring to  pemmican which has been  heated to 200 degrees fahrenheit plus as  raw is without a doubt dishonest, at any rate, since the dictionary definition of raw is something that is not processed or refined. Rendered crap such as pemmican is indeed refined/processed food, and therefore has no place here on this board.

[Hannibal]

Even the boiling point of water is lower than the heating of fat by Lex or William.
Raw is usually up to 104 F or a little bit more - 118 F. And that's it.

[alphagruis]

Even the boiling point of water is lower than the heating of fat by Lex or William.
Raw is usually up to 104 F or a little bit more - 118 F. And that's it.

I don't think that "that's it".

The real important point is obviously not a problem of semantics namely a "raw" versus "not raw" label of the relevant food. I leave this question to those who like endless (and useless) arguing about the "gender of angels", as we put it here in France.

The real important thing is: How much harmful heat generated toxins are there in William's pemmican?

I contend the idea that there are most likely not much more than in raw meat and fat (please note that some such toxin form even at room temperature) and at any rate much less than in usual boiled  or a fortiori broiled , grilled etc fatty meat if the "raw" pemmican" is prepared as I recalled above. I'm a scientist and my conclusion is based on science:

The main point here is that it is important to not be fooled by simplistic ideology like: "Everything that has been heated above 104 or 118 °F becomes ipso facto toxic because of heat generated toxins". While this is generally indeed true for a whole piece of fatty meat or food if ones eats the whole thing after heating it is definitely not true for instance for distilled water in spite of having been heated up to 212 °F  because the water molecule H2O is perfectly stable at these temperatures and even much higher and phase separation takes place. Even if the distilled water is obtained from heated biological matter such as vegetables or fruits or meat during cooking or other wet mixtures because of the purification that accompanies phase separation (conversion into water vapor here). One can safely lick (please just wait until it's no longer to hot ) the water that condenses during cooking on top of the pot, its lid or on the kitchen's windows (if clean ).

Similarly to H2O behave SFA's and MUFAs the by far essential components of William's rendered fat from suet. Suet is the only component that has been heated above physiologic temperature in the "raw" pemmican preparation and the liquid that separates during the process is essentially pure stable SFAs and MUFAs. The heat generated toxins remain largely in the solid parts that are discarded. That's precisely why eating the whole thing as in cooked fatty meat is much much more toxic that eating only the rendered fat.

Of course if the initial fat is not suet but a fat much richer in PUFA's one has to expect more damage and rendering at lower temperatures seems the only way to avoid the formation of damaged PUFAs.

    

[TylerDurden]

1  of the 2 key problems with the above is that pemmican, not being   raw, is simply not remotely relevant to rawpaleoforum in the first place, along with similiar non-raw  foods that have no place here such as big macs, pizzas etc. Calling it "raw" in quotes is merely misleading in that regard. Either it is raw or it is cooked, depending on the temperature, as in the dictionary. Quibbling over how much damage is done to it via heating is quite another issue.

Now, I could  in a similiar way make, a very good case that cooked plant foods, are in some  ways " less unhealthy" than cooked animal foods, given the fact that heat-created toxins are more likely to be formed in quantity in cooked animal foods than in cooked plant food.  I could even cite myself and some others, as doing better on cooked plant foods than on cooked animal foods. But that wouldn`t alter the fact that many other RVAFers do rather badly on cooked plant foods, so it would be wrong for me to advocate eating cooked plant foods as being healthy, in the manner of William. In the case of pemmican, most RVAFers appear to do badly on even good-quality grassfed pemmican and report feeling worse if pemmican-consumption is continued long-term, if it`s increased in amount, or if the temperature for making the pemmican is increased. This does make it highly likely that plenty of heat-created toxins remain.

Interesting example re water. However, water is a compound with unusual properties, with a rather different , seemingly less complicated chemical make-up than animal fats. While I don`t think RPDers would frown on heated water by itself, most report not doing so well with teas which are just hot water with some heated herbs in diluted form. Perhaps comparing tea to rendered animal fats would be more appropriate given that rendering isn`t just a heating process.

Re SFAs:-  A long while back, I read all sorts of dodgy reports by Ray Peat and other low carb gurus claiming that foods very high in SFAs were the healthiest, with PUFA-rich foods being the least healthy, due to PUFAs supposedly being more affected by heating. On closer inspection, however, I found via reports that foods high in SFAs, such as butter, turned out to be the least healthy in terms of amounts of heat-created toxins present and that glycotoxins present in SFA-rich foods were responsible. Similarly, accusations were made by Ray Peat et al  that the Inuit on traditional diets were somehow very unhealthy, despite the fact that many of the foods recommended by the high SFA-diet gurus were far more processed and unnatural/non-paleo than the foods in the (rather PUFA-rich) Inuit diet. So I am understandably somewhat of a sceptic re pro-SFA/anti-PUFA  claims.

Of course, even if one takes the current SFA- claims at face-value, raw suet from which pemmican is made  does contain some PUFAs, albeit in rather small amounts.

[Hannibal]

So I am understandably somewhat of a sceptic re pro-SFA/anti-PUFA  claims.

It depends on the region where someone lives. The colder the region the more PUFA's content in animal foods. The hotter the region the less PUFA's content and higher SFA content in the animals. It's simply based on the basic biochemistry.

[goodsamaritan]

Alphagruis,

I will take your word for it that William's pemmican is a very good non raw paleo food.

What I'm curious is to how different is William's pemmican prepared from the above video?

Can we have the recipe of william's pemmican?  Step by step?

[TylerDurden]

It depends on the region where someone lives. The colder the region the more PUFA's content in animal foods. The hotter the region the less PUFA's content and higher SFA content in the animals. It's simply based on the basic biochemistry.

  Yes, I know, it`s to do with the temperature of a region. But my overall point was solely that a natural, unprocessed diet relatively high in pufas(from natural rpd foods, obviously) was much healthier than  a processed modern diet with next to no pufas at all.

[alphagruis]

Interesting example re water. However, water is a compound with unusual properties, with a rather different , seemingly less complicated chemical make-up than animal fats. While I don`t think RPDers would frown on heated water by itself, most report not doing so well with teas which are just hot water with some heated herbs in diluted form. Perhaps comparing tea to rendered animal fats would be more appropriate given that rendering isn`t just a heating process.

It is true that liquid water has unusual properties but these remarkable properties stem from weak hydrogen bonds between molecules in liquid and not from thermal stability of the molecule itself. The latter is due to the very strong covalent bonds inside of the molecule. And quite frankly the same is true for a typical SFA such as stearic acid which is indeed a much bigger molecule than H2O but also contains only very strong covalent bonds that cannot be thermally broken to any significant extent at boiling water temperature. The problem upon heating food is not that SFAs or MUFA's internal molecular structure is unstable by itself but that part these molecules react and combine with other molecules present in the food such as proteins to form toxic compounds. The unreacted part gets into the rendered fat by melting where it remains undamaged because there is no more anything to react with.
(Similarly pure water is quite stable at 100°C but if heated in presence of iron or other metals it reacts with them or oxides them)

As to the comparison with tea, I agree,  rendered fat probably contains some low molecular weight fat soluble toxins. However many heat generated toxins, in particular AGEs, formed during heating are as mentioned above the result of chemical bonding between fatty acids or carbohydrates and proteins and form big molecules neither water nor fat soluble so that they remain in the solid parts discarded in the rendering process.  

Re SFAs:-  A long while back, I read all sorts of dodgy reports by Ray Peat and other low carb gurus claiming that foods very high in SFAs were the healthiest, with PUFA-rich foods being the least healthy, due to PUFAs supposedly being more affected by heating. On closer inspection, however, I found via reports that foods high in SFAs, such as butter, turned out to be the least healthy in terms of amounts of heat-created toxins present and that glycotoxins present in SFA-rich foods were responsible. Similarly, accusations were made by Ray Peat et al  that the Inuit on traditional diets were somehow very unhealthy, despite the fact that many of the foods recommended by the high SFA-diet gurus were far more processed and unnatural/non-paleo than the foods in the (rather PUFA-rich) Inuit diet. So I am understandably somewhat of a sceptic re pro-SFA/anti-PUFA  claims.

Of course, even if one takes the current SFA- claims at face-value, raw suet from which pemmican is made  does contain some PUFAs, albeit in rather small amounts.

Yes, your point seems directly related to the fact that while PUFAs are indeed much less thermally stable in pure form than SFAs and MUFAs (because their molecules involve several more fragile double C=C bonds) this intrinsic unstability is not the only  way to form toxic compounds. As I mentioned above the main way to form toxic compounds is by chemical reactions with proteins or other compounds in particular oxidants always present in the food and in this respect SFAs and MUFAs react quite well.    

[alphagruis]

Alphagruis,

I will take your word for it that William's pemmican is a very good non raw paleo food.

What I'm curious is to how different is William's pemmican prepared from the above video?

Can we have the recipe of william's pemmican?  Step by step?

Hi Goodsamaritan,

 I do not claim it's "very good" and by far prefer to eat my meat and fat plain raw as it is. I just think that "raw" pemmican is a priori an acceptable food in case of travel or other special circumstances that we RPDieters should test .

With respect to the video just dry at 40°C or below and render the fat at less than about 100°C (the lower, the better but the difficulty is to get rid of moisture). I've not tried to do it, not eaten it yet myself.... As you do I intend to do so.




 

[TylerDurden]

Note that William`s notion of making pemmican involves much higher temperatures(ie more than 200, and up to 300 degrees fahrenheit, judging from past comments of his); But then William is making standard pemmican that is supposed to last. It seems that whenever one tries to extend a food`s shelf-life, the quality inevitably drops like a stone.

[Hannibal]

It seems that whenever one tries to extend a food`s shelf-life, the quality inevitably drops like a stone.

That's generally true. But you can dry meat below 104 F so thoroughly that its shelf-life would very long.

[William]

Alphagruis,

I will take your word for it that William's pemmican is a very good non raw paleo food.

What I'm curious is to how different is William's pemmican prepared from the above video?

Can we have the recipe of william's pemmican?  Step by step?

That would require the description of too many steps; for instance those steps to the woodshed and back to woodbox needed for wood to fuel the furnace which keeps the air in the house at the temperature needed to make use of my dryer possible. Then more steps to the unused bedroom in which I keep the dryer. And so forth.



goodsamaritan, you are asking for something as wordy as the Gallic philosophy of, for instance, Guy Debord, which makes my head hurt. Can't do that.


The recipe is in the archive, in response to the inquisitorial PaleoPhil, but there are some changes recently since I learned to make ghee. I apply the same cautions as ghee, most important is to depend on the action of boiling water to keep temperatures below those required for scorching. Makes it taste better, as the tallow then does not absorb the flavours of overheated connective tissue.

1- If you were to heat a stone from 20C to 200C, then cool it to 20C, would you then consider it to be cooked?
And if you were to compare that stone to an identical stone which has not been so heated, how would you know the difference?

Commercial tallow is extracted from beef parts by both rendering and centrifuging. I assume that extraction by centrifuge would be considered raw here, but there is no evidence that analysis has found any difference. Consumers of both have found no difference either, reference MacDonalds deep fried potato chips, which have been fried in a mixture of tallow and some other oil. If anyone had been injured by this tallow, we can be sure that people in the litigation-prone U.S.A. would have sued. Also used in baked foods.

2- In this forum, we eat raw because cooked meat contains heat-created toxins which prevent healing. This is confirmed by chemical analysis, and there is even a list here of the toxins found in cooked meat.
There is no such list of toxins found in rendered tallow, most likely because there aren't any.

    We can all make tallow toxic by heating it to a temperature at which toxins are created; I call this cooked, and I don't do it. Neither does anyone else who eats pemmican.

If it's not cooked, it's raw.

[goodsamaritan]

The recipe is in the archive, in response to the inquisitorial PaleoPhil, but there are some changes recently since I learned to make ghee.

Link please?

Can I order some William pemmican?
Please compute shipping to Manila.
10 lbs?

[TylerDurden]

Wrong, if it`s not raw , then it`s cooked.

And comparing rendered fat to stones is  a ridiculous analogy given that they have nothing in common re composition-  it`s  plain moronic. But I suppose you had no option to make such an absurd comparison given that you had to grudgingly admit that your own pemmican was heated to 200 plus degrees fahrenheit given past posts of yours on the subject.

What is telling is the large number of RVAFers who have  unpleasant health problems after eating pemmican. This indicates without a doubt that there are some toxins created by rendering. It should also be noted that claims re the absence of advanced glycation end products are not solid evidence given the decided near total lack of studies done on rendered fats in general, and that there are other types of heat-created toxins other than AGEs such as heterocyclic amines, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons etc. which apply as well.

And the reason why we avoid cooked foods and eat raw is not solely due to the presence of, or  lack of heat-created toxins(after all there are various ingenious cooking methods which reduce levels of those toxins somewhat but we naturally still don`t recommend them for a number of reasons). There are other reasons such as the presence of enzymes in raw foods, generally better bioavailability of raw foods and the lack of additives and preservatives in raw foods.

The precautions that William mentions re ghee are , of course, utterly meaningless as RVAFers have mentioned getting nasty reactions to the minimal levels of lactose/casein found in ghee due to some sensitivity to dairy.

I also know for a fact that suing people for health-problems caused by cooked foods over the long-term would never work. Which is a great pity, as I would love to be able to sue William for massive damages for any subsequent damage to my health caused by my pemmican experiment some months later.

[Hannibal]

And the reason why we avoid cooked foods and eat raw is not solely due to the presence of, or  lack of heat-created toxins(after all there are various ingenious cooking methods which reduce levels of those toxins somewhat but we naturally still don`t recommend them for a number of reasons). There are other reasons such as the presence of enzymes in raw foods, generally better bioavailability of raw foods and the lack of additives and preservatives in raw foods.

Exactly.
Additionally there is lack of baneficial bacteria in cooked food. Cooked foods are very prone to devolop hostile bacteria.
Cooking alters the protein molecules, denaturates them, which is different from denaturation in human stomach.
Cooking destroys all the coenzymes (e.g. L-carnityne, Q-10), vitamins and trace elements to some extent. For example vitamin C is anihilated almost completely and folic acid 30-70%.

[aunaturale]

Hey Will,
What's the highest temperature you're reaching in your tallow-making?

[William]

Link please?

Can't find it, but it's not that different from Lex's pemmican manual. The difference is that I dry meat at 35°C, render ground back fat at oven setting of 225°F, but note that the water boiling off keeps the temperature at no more than 100°C until dry. I'm still learning to judge when it's dry- the smell changes from DPW to roast beef but that's not accurate enough for this nitpicker.
An electronic thermometer with an alarm might do, but haven't seen one I like yet.
In my big enamel pot it takes about 7½ hours.
Grind jerky to powder, mix with tallow at <104°F. I'm presently using a ratio of tallow 1.5:1 jerky by weight for taste reasons, and always add a spoonful of ghee and one of tallow when I eat it to get to at least 80% "fat".
I use a different dryer too, and people are saying that a Lex dryer makes better tasting jerky.

An interesting note - I finally proved AV right when he wrote that fat is a lubricant - it just takes more than 80%.


 

Can I order some William pemmican?
Please compute shipping to Manila.
10 lbs?

You can get the right fat where you are, mine is from grain-finished animals. No choice.
Better to get it from one of the pemmicaneers in the the U.S.A., where they can get grassfed fat.
Out of curiousity, I asked the postmistress how much shipping, she says at least $64.20CDN!

[goodsamaritan]

I can afford 64 CDN.
How much for 10 pounds William made pemmican?
This could be a good start... food tasting exchanges!
You can PM me and I'll PM you my exact address.
I can pay you via Paypal?

We are earthquake prone, just like Chile and Japan, we need emergency food supplies.

How do you eat pemmican as a survival food?

How much should a person consume in a day to live?

[William]

How do you eat pemmican as a survival food?

How much should a person consume in a day to live?

I just eat it after noon, and if there is nothing else I chase it with a raw egg yolk or two.
From Phinney's work, 100g protein/day to prevent muscle wasting is about right, so about 300g pemmican, more if physically active.
I never measure how much I eat.

[wodgina]

Pemmican is dehydrating GS!

I think the main reason I struggle with my 'raw' pemmican is the fact that it is really tasty and compact. I overeat (as If addicted) I then feel sick and get a headache. The 'stop' is blurred by the processed nature of this food.

No other carnivore eats such a highly processed/compact/bacteria free/dehydrating food.

It's still a great emergency food, especially for catastrophes etc but for us who come from serious illness it's always going to cause problems. I'm going to make some 'cold' pemmican with cold ground suet and jerky powder mixed in. I'll keep this in the freezer and see how I feel after eating it.