A day in the life of TylerDurden

[TylerDurden]

Paleoman would have had the same problem, and used foresight to solve it with pemmican.

  Sure, but if I consumed pemmican, then I would feel rather ill, just as with any other cooked animal fat. Far better for me to eat raw fish or just fast until I can get hold of decent raw flesh.

[TylerDurden]

Hmm, in the feedback from readers in my Q&A section, there was an objection by the company  us wellness meats. I had written an answer to a pemmican-related question, explaining the various reasons why coconut oil/lard/berries/salt weren't ideal for making pemmican(lard often being grainfed(sometimes hydrogenated even!), and mentioned reports re use of berries shortening pemmican shelf-life), and mentioned how unhealthy pemmican was in general etc.. They mentioned that their meat was grassfed(though I've heard 1 or 2 claims by  a couple of other US-based RPDers that that their meat might not be 100% grassfed - haven't tried it myself being 1000s of miles away, of course); and they also mentioned that they used salt and berries for taste reasons(well, berries are undoubtedly necessary given the the sawdust-like reputation pemmican has re taste. Oh, and they mentioned their tallow was only made at low heat.

I was a bit surprised at this comment. Perhaps rawpalaeos form a bigger customer-base at the big US agricombines  like us wellness meats/slanker's than I'd thought. Personally, I would far rather US-based RVAFers bought their meats from more small-time farmers for reasons of quality/price/variety etc., but not everyone has farms/farmers' markets in their immediate neighbourhood, and smaller farms can have problems re availability of specific organs etc.

[carnivore]

Minor notes:- usually when I eat cooked animal foods of any kind, I start coughing up very unpleasant oily stuff which I have to expel. I also get heavy amounts of yellow dust in the eyes the morning after and tend to feel more sleepy. Of course, I could avoid these issues if I always had "high-meat" prepared and ready but I can't always do "high-meat" all the time for various reasons(people object to the smell which so easily gets spread around, and my own sense of smell has never been the greatest).

Do you mean that "high meat" would minimize the nasty effects you experience from cooked meat ?
What is your experience "high meat against cooked meat" ?
How do you explain this phenomena (enzymes, bacteria, boost effect, etc.) ?

[TylerDurden]

Do you mean that "high meat" would minimize the nasty effects you experience from cooked meat ?
What is your experience "high meat against cooked meat" ?
How do you explain this phenomena (enzymes, bacteria, boost effect, etc.) ?

  Well, I started the "high-meat" consumption because another rawpalaeodieter from the rawpaleodiet yahoo group swore by it, claiming that the enzymes in the "high-meat" compensated for the lack of enzymes in cooked foods, so that digestion of cooked foods at around the same time would be harmless. It worked so well, I've used that method often since that discovery. Also, cooked foods seem to give a sort of hangover, depressive effect, IMO, re bloating etc. and the bacteria in "high-meat" appear to negate this effect by boosting mod, apparently by boosting serotonin levels by stimulating the immune system:-

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1547346/Getting-dirty-could-prevent-depression.html

[TylerDurden]

Well, I'm going to try pemmican in a couple of months or so. More just to confirm others' negative experiences re pemmican. Obviously, there's no way I'm going to waste time preparing my own pemmican as  one of the benefits of being raw is not spending time preparing/cooking food,
 so I'm going to have to buy it from some UK source. And I can't do a pemmican-only diet as zero-carb, raw or otherwise, is extremely harmful to my health. So, I'll just eat pemmican and some berries for a week or more. If I start getting heart-palpitations etc.
(a common reaction on my part to cooked tallow I won't be surprised).

[jessica]

i think the reason white people or more civilized folk had to eat berries with pemmican was because they were enzyme/bacteria deficient and because the berries have natural yeasts and bacteria on their skin that helps to digest these foods (plums are a good example, even farmed organic ones still have a whiteish coat of yeast, you see this on nonsterile cabbage as well)

wild berries, choke cherries, rose hips and apples that have spent a winter on a bush or tree or on the ground have bacterias that are even more abundant and the fruit must better tasting...early spring, before the final thaw is the best time to gather (not harvest) these....i think natives probably made some crazy hooch for spring solstice with this fruit and bacteria

so possibly when you add berries they are not some highly cultivated sterilized farmed bullshit, or ferment them yourself a bit

[William]

Well, I'm going to try pemmican in a couple of months or so. More just to confirm others' negative experiences re pemmican. Obviously, there's no way I'm going to waste time preparing my own pemmican as  one of the benefits of being raw is not spending time preparing/cooking food,
 so I'm going to have to buy it from some UK source. And I can't do a pemmican-only diet as zero-carb, raw or otherwise, is extremely harmful to my health. So, I'll just eat pemmican and some berries for a week or more. If I start getting heart-palpitations etc.
(a common reaction on my part to cooked tallow I won't be surprised).

I wish you good luck with that experiment, but:
The failed ww2 Canadian army experiment with pemmican resulted in such lethargy that it was stopped in only two weeks. Symptoms like that are expected. Such a great change in the way a human body works seems to require heroic persistence for some time.
There is good evidence that heart palpitations are caused mostly by mineral deficiency(www.afibbers.org), and for me the palpitations were cured IMO by the bio-available minerals in raw grass-finshed beef.
It is a mystery as to why anyone could get palpitations with adequate minerals, the only guess I can make is that they ate something that contained a nutrient blocker. Unless they confused palpitations, which is a strong arrhythmia, with tachycardia which is a strong rapid heartbeat. I still notice a faster heartbeat sometimes, and it's always been harmless.
I would not trust anyone to make my pemmican ( except maybe someone who feeds the same stuff to his children);
 it's like Rubik's cube, in that while there are a lot of ways to make it right, there are even more ways to make it wrong.

Jessica has a good point, and it might be why wild unwashed blueberries were OK, but I tried mature rose hips picked from the bush and they gave me diarrhea.

[TylerDurden]

Except that you frequently mention only having access to raw grainfed meat for your pemmican and other meats.

Well, I could try for 3 weeks, but even with decent raw berries, 3 weeks is about the point where I start deteriorating rapidly, healthwise, from raw zero-carb.

[William]

Except that you frequently mention only having access to raw grainfed meat for your pemmican and other meats.

If you check in the archives you'll find that it is the fat that I complain about. The meat is right.

[van]

can't imagine
td that you're going to find quality pemican in the uk, or for that matter anywhere short of buying it from William or Delfuego.

[Paleo Donk]

William, maybe you can make the pemmican for TD with grass-fed meat and fat so we know its of good quality.

[William]

William, maybe you can make the pemmican for TD with grass-fed meat and fat so we know its of good quality.

Only if he can't find the real stuff - the fat I use is not right.

[PaleoPhil]

Well, I'm going to try pemmican in a couple of months or so. More just to confirm others' negative experiences re pemmican. ...

Why bother? It sounds like you've made your mind up a priori, so what would be the point?

[djr_81]

Why bother? It sounds like you've made your mind up a priori, so what would be the point?

Personal anecdotal conviction when arguing against it.
I agree with you though Phil; what's the point if Tyler's decided on the subject. That's setting yourself up to definitely fail.

[TylerDurden]

My views re pemmican are based on the unpleasant ill-health I got as a result of eating cooked animal foods/fats and the fact that so many people report doing badly on pemmican, one way or another, plus there's the distinct lack of logic in the claim that pemmican isn't significantly changed from its raw state.

Also, I'm always curious re trying other things and have on occasion tried some non-RPD things that I'd never gone in for in pre-RPD days, purely so that I could say that I'd tried those things once in my life, even if I didn't continue with eating them. And believing some new food or diet will succeed or fail doesn't work for me anyway as I've variously wanted strongly to succeed or fail on various foods/diets in my pre-rawpalaeo past without it making one bit of difference to the eventual result - the placebo theory(or rather its reverse) doesn't apply to me in this case.

[TylerDurden]

Perhaps I should explain myself a bit more re the above post. When I consumed raw dairy before going properly rawpalaeo, I was absolutely addicted to the taste and feelings associated with it(I'd get a drugged-like feeling of euphoria for the first half hour after consuming it etc.). Yet no matter how much I desired it above all other foods, I was eventually forced to give it up or end up in the morgue. Similiarly, in pre-RPD days, I was highly sceptical of vegetarianism and from the start fully expected/wanted that experiment to fail so that I would try something else like cooked-palaeo, yet I stayed with vegetarianism and related diets such as raw veganism/fruitarianism for years simply because it was far healthier for me, symptom-wise than cooked-palaeolithic diets(experiments with cooked-palaeo would last only a few weeks before I had to give up).

[djr_81]

Well I'm curious to see your observations on pemmican when you do try it.
I've had bad experiences in the past with it but still plan on giving both Lex's mix and a "low and slow" rendered fat batch a shot to see if I can isolate why I had issues or if it's a problem across the board.

[Ioanna]

Why bother? It sounds like you've made your mind up a priori, so what would be the point?

don't say that!  there's nothing unnatural about applying past experience(s) to a current situation.. is there?!

i have plenty of times thought a food would hurt me or help me and found the complete opposite to be true. Coincidentally, pemmican is one of them!  If he weren't open-minded about the idea, he wouldn't have proposed it in the first place.  I'm curious to your experience Tyler. 

[cherimoya_kid]

  I'm curious to your experience Tyler. 

Me too.

[William]

If he does this, TD's experience results cannot be comparable to mine because my objective was to test raw zero carb, not to test pemmican which was incidental.
Pemmican was just a do-able way to experiment.

TD has no intention of trying ZC, which is a pity, as I believe that it is the secret of the health of paleolithic man, and raw ZC is the true paleolithic diet. I'm assuming that he has not done this because he can't get enough of the right fat, or is reacting badly to something in what he has tried.
For me, that seems to be the connective tissure/solid bits discarded from rendered, or something in those solids.

IMO we still don't know enough about fat and the way our bodies digest and use it.

We do read that carb consumption/blood glucose interferes with our bodies use of fat, so it looks to me like TD's proposed experiment is flawed.

[TylerDurden]

Utter nonsense of course. I've already done several raw zero carb experiments which all failed as they did a huge amount of harm to my health so that I always had to give them up. Simply put, many people do badly on zero-carb. Including more pemmican in the trial isn't necessary, either ,as previous experiments with cooked animal fats had a very quick negative reaction on me, so it'll be quickly clear as to whether the pemmican is harmful or not.

[PaleoPhil]

don't say that!  there's nothing unnatural about applying past experience(s) to a current situation.. is there?!

i have plenty of times thought a food would hurt me or help me and found the complete opposite to be true. Coincidentally, pemmican is one of them!  If he weren't open-minded about the idea, he wouldn't have proposed it in the first place.  I'm curious to your experience Tyler.  

Let's put it this way. I guarantee that Tyler will find that pemmican is not a good food for him. The chances of him finding it to be healthful are between zero and zero. Tyler has already decided a priori that pemmican will not work. His only reason for doing it, obviously, is to provide further evidence to support his assumption. Of course, none of this will persuade William or anyone else, so it's all futile.

[cherimoya_kid]

Let's put it this way. I guarantee that Tyler will find that pemmican is not a good food for him. The chances of him finding it to be healthful are between zero and zero. Tyler has already decided a priori that pemmican will not work. His only reason for doing it, obviously, is to provide further evidence to support his assumption. Of course, none of this will persuade William or anyone else, so it's all futile.

I trust his experimental integrity.  I don't require you to. However, I've never found him one to conceal dietary truth. 

[TylerDurden]

Let's put it this way. I guarantee that Tyler will find that pemmican is not a good food for him. The chances of him finding it to be healthful are between zero and zero. Tyler has already decided a priori that pemmican will not work. His only reason for doing it, obviously, is to provide further evidence to support his assumption. Of course, none of this will persuade William or anyone else, so it's all futile.

  You're missing the point. Obviously there is no point in trying to convince William or other pemmican-eater, they would  simply make excuses such as "it was the wrong kind of pemmican etc.". I'm purely doing this for myself to see what effects it has on me, if any, and if any symptoms are the same or better or worse than other types of cooked animal foods. As for my deciding in advance that's just ridiculous.

[William]

It's not only that there is no standardized pemmican, so results of such a test are sure to be anecdotal, but it is also that we all carry a differing burden of polluting chemicals, making results even less meaningful for anyone other  than the experimenter.
Being as science must be repeatable by anyone competent, this is not science.