High meat risks?

[risrosen]

Several people on here have suggested high meat to my newbie self for my desperately bad digestion.  I was going to dive right in, but then I read this post:

http://www.rawpaleoforum.com/primal-diet/severe-digestion-problem-and-diarrhea/

So I'm wondering, have there been other reports of problems with high meat on here?  How risky is it?

I'm particularly concerned because I am without a spleen (I was born without one...no, wait...it was removed several years ago when a bullet happened to go through it).  Which apparently increases the risk of immune system problems, though I haven't experienced any yet.

[KD]

It takes 5-6 weeks to get anything really decent. all you got is minutes of your day to lose while you see if you respond better to the raw meats and eggs and things. if you are worried about immune stuff, i wouldn't be eating a mixed diet right now as indicated on other threads. While more or less safe (as in death causing), the high meat thing is not something to just mess around with or implement into any old diet routine. Even raw meats/eggs can cause problems for people this way, particulary with compromised systems. I've got the reactions sungazer describes coinciding with eating non 'high' chicken, eggs, oysters and yeah high meats. Who knows if they were the cause but I believe these are all strong stuff to the body. Healing is usually as much about removing problems as it is to implementing drastic substitutes.

[yon yonson]

you might be interested to read sungazer's other thread: http://www.rawpaleoforum.com/health/severe-diarrhea/

she claims to have recovered and sees it as a detox. but take that with a grain of salt.

i can tell you that i have never had an issue with high meat. i've made it from beef, chicken, and fish. no problems. and i got some digestive benefits

[TylerDurden]

That is pretty rare. The above is pretty much the only one I can recall. Other than that, I have heard of 1 woman complaining that she felt so wired with energy that she couldn't fall asleep but she solved that by not eating high-meat in the evenings or late at night.

The main thing is to make high-meat from healthy, grassfed meats. Using grainfed chicken like in the above link is a no-no. Remember our RVAF diet credo:- "it is the environment that is the key, not the pathogen."

[risrosen]

One more question about high meat.  Someone said it's not usually introduced into a rp diet for quite a while.  Is that for physical reasons or psychological (the ick factor)? 

[TylerDurden]

One more question about high meat.  Someone said it's not usually introduced into a rp diet for quite a while.  Is that for physical reasons or psychological (the ick factor)? 

This is solely because RVAF diet newbies usually need c.8-12 months in order to get used to eating raw, fresh raw meats. High-meat is considered more difficult to get used to than raw, fresh meats, so it is advised to be taken at a later stage.

[sabertooth]

So has anyone had any major negative effects from high meat that caused serious concerns?

because from my own experience it is without drawback. I had some lose movments the first couple of times I took it but I felt great afterward and now I eat a piece of completely rotted meat and have no stomach issues whatsoever, I do get some bad breath if I chew it any but I can usually bolt down a piece and chase it with a sip of water to avoid yuck mouth.

I have been impatient in waiting the full month for my beef highmeat to mature and my supperhigh lamb was about out so I mixed some fresh beef in with the old lamb and let it set out of the fridge airing three times a day and within two weeks it was wonderfully high and I once again have a good batch. Some of my beef batch's that are kept in the fridge stay kind of pasty and don't get strong enough for my liking. Even with all my reckless experimentation I have yet to be food poisoned on this diet, so to me it seems perfectly safe and effective medicine for people who have issues that nothing else seems to resolve.

I jumped right into high meat about the second month into the diet. It seemed to help me keep my up my apatite for raw meat and allowed for faster digestion and increased overall well being/energy.

I also had immune system issues and got food poisoning about three times a year on cooked foods.
I experienced gut pain after every meal, after my initial mono infection my spleen enlarged and my pancrease became inflamed liver became conjested, and for years I would have flare ups of gut pain, joint pain and constant sickness that would never go away completely. Within weeks of giving up all grains, vegtables, legumes,dairy, cooked foods,etc. and replaced it with a raw low carb paleo foods I found the relief I was looking for.  

[raw-al]

So I'm wondering, have there been other reports of problems with high meat on here?  How risky is it?

I'm particularly concerned because I am without a spleen (I was born without one...no, wait...it was removed several years ago when a bullet happened to go through it).  Which apparently increases the risk of immune system problems, though I haven't experienced any yet.

We consumed high meat within 1.5 months of starting on the raw diet with no problems. I noticed no real effect (except for a very small mood change) from it but then again we only consume small marble sized pieces. I tried larger amounts but had a hard time getting it down.

My understanding from Aajonus V. is that the bacteria in HM actually helps the digestive and immune system.

Have you noticed a predisposition for any particular illnesses?

From Wackipedia; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spleen

"A 28-year follow-up of 740 veterans of World War II who had their spleen removed on the battlefield found that those who had been splenectomised showed a significant excess of mortality from pneumonia (6 from an expected 1.3) and a significant excess of mortality from ischaemic heart disease (4.1 from an expected 3) but not from other conditions"

[donrad]

Eating high meat for a bad digestion is like hitting your head with a hammer to stop a headache.

In all lifestyle philosophies like this forum there will be weird extremest fanatics like the ones who promote eating rotting meat by bolting it down so you don't gag. There is no telling how many people they have killed because dead people don't make posts.

Please trust you senses. If it stinks and tastes bad, for goodness sake don't eat it.

If you have digestion problems learn about probiotic and symbiotic nutrition. Rotting meat has potential deadly pathogens. There are ways to age and tenderize meat safely that improve its taste, smell, and nutritional value.

Enjoy the ride.

[sabertooth]

I take no issue with being labled a weird fanatic, because I can see from the standard view of things ,what I do may seem insane, and I don't mind too much, Just remember that this is a raw paleo forrum and most people here assume that our ancestors scavenged and ate at least some rotten meat and had no issues with bacterial poisoning. People who come here are often desperate and I take the view that desperate times call for desperate measures. I don't wish to see anyone suffer because of bad advice, but I don't advise anything I haven't done myself and I am satisfied with the results I have had. So I may be bold and arrogant, but I am honest in what I believe and post here. You are free to believe and post differences. I believe in the power of the forrum to find a middle ground between the extremes of the individual members, and for the discerning newbie the decision on which path they should take will be made easier because of the experiences of the differing extremes

Eating high meat for a bad digestion is like hitting your head with a hammer to stop a headache

I beg to differ sir, If anyone dies here because of eattin high meat while following all the safety protocol and only eatting marble sized amounts then I would be the first to want to know because I eat it regularly, and concider it a health tonic. Rotten meat is just as safe to eat as rotten milk and far more safe than rotten grain(aka alcohol) High meat boast my mood without the hangover of alcohol and the constipation of cheese.

I have had digestive trouble and dairy based pro-biotics did nothing for me and from my own research I believe they are ineffective for the most part in correcting any serious digestive issues including yeast overgrowths and lactose intolerance's, they may make some milk products bearable for some with boarderline intolerance's, but for people who are truly damaged and are going to go paleo I suggest that all conventional pro-biotics are a waste of money and that high meat can offer the greater benefits paleo dieters seek.

That being said I am all for using your own judgment and am not suggesting that anyone gorge themselves on rotten meat before testing their own reactions. I do believe that someone who is a month or more into a raw paleo diet can begin to try aged meats and if they cause no adverse effects then they can try marble size pieces of high meat. Then IF there are no negative effects or the positive effects are mild they can chose to eat more or less of it based on their inclinations.

The reason some of us make extra fowl high meat and force it down is because of convenience and not taste, to get the stronger effects of high meat you would have to eat a whole stake that has been aged for weeks or you can do what I do and boltdown some extra primordial festering slimy high meat that is so potent with biologically active compounds that it overwhelms the taste buds, and then eat some really tasty fresh meat and fat right afterward, I have been doing this for 8 months and swear by it. It gives me great energy and vitality. The strong taste lets me know its good medicine.

[Hannibal]

Aging meat in an anaerobic conditions is not good, as there may develop Clostridium botulinum, which is very unhealthy.

[TylerDurden]

Eating high meat for a bad digestion is like hitting your head with a hammer to stop a headache.

In all lifestyle philosophies like this forum there will be weird extremest fanatics like the ones who promote eating rotting meat by bolting it down so you don't gag. There is no telling how many people they have killed because dead people don't make posts.

Please trust you senses. If it stinks and tastes bad, for goodness sake don't eat it.

If you have digestion problems learn about probiotic and symbiotic nutrition. Rotting meat has potential deadly pathogens. There are ways to age and tenderize meat safely that improve its taste, smell, and nutritional value.

Enjoy the ride.

Like sabertooth, I very strongly disagree with the above. High-meat is one of those raw foods that people virtually never complain about. The sole problem is the environment, not the bacteria as such. If one remembers to air the high-meat and uses grassfed meat, not grainfed, then that covers almost all issues. I suppose someone just transitioning should, ideally, wait  a bit before trying high-meat, but in some cases, people are so desperate for a quick cure, high-meat might even be OK for a newbie.

As for taste/instincts, these can be easily warped. In pre-RPD days, I would love the taste of dairy, but had to find out the hard way that it ruined my health.

[risrosen]

Have you noticed a predisposition for any particular illnesses?

From Wackipedia; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spleen

"A 28-year follow-up of 740 veterans of World War II who had their spleen removed on the battlefield found that those who had been splenectomised showed a significant excess of mortality from pneumonia (6 from an expected 1.3) and a significant excess of mortality from ischaemic heart disease (4.1 from an expected 3) but not from other conditions"

No, I rarely get sick, and nothing worse than colds or maybe mild flu that don't last long.  Of course I've been told by doctors that I should be immunized, though I don't listen to them.

[Iguana]

Please trust you senses. If it stinks and tastes bad, for goodness sake don't eat it.

Yes, of course! Would an animal or a pithecanthropus eat something that stinks for him?

As for taste/instincts, these can be easily warped. In pre-RPD days, I would love the taste of dairy, but had to find out the hard way that it ruined my health.

I love the taste of pastry, chocolate, cheese, butter, kefir, grilled meat and so on. Those things are not paleo, our ancestor had no regular access to such stuff, and hence there’s is of course no reason why our senses of smell and taste (instinct) would work properly with stuff that has never been available to any animal before the very recent (at the scale of the evolution) Neolithic era.

Etienne glycol (used in anti freeze) is the perfect example: it tastes sweet but is poisonous. Candy and pastries (and Neolithic food in general) go along the very same way: they are noxious, but as they don’t kill you in the near term their noxiousness is not immediately obvious and they remain accepted in standard diets.

[raw-al]

Eating high meat for a bad digestion is like hitting your head with a hammer to stop a headache.

In all lifestyle philosophies like this forum there will be weird extremest fanatics like the ones who promote eating rotting meat by bolting it down so you don't gag. There is no telling how many people they have killed because dead people don't make posts.

Please trust you senses. If it stinks and tastes bad, for goodness sake don't eat it.

If you have digestion problems learn about probiotic and symbiotic nutrition. Rotting meat has potential deadly pathogens. There are ways to age and tenderize meat safely that improve its taste, smell, and nutritional value.

Enjoy the ride.

Hi Donrad,
Saying dead men don't  make posts is an interesting statement. You could very well be accurate.

We have eaten HM many times with not the slightest issue. Drinking alcohol, taking antibiotics and any one of the numerous dishes that people have eaten down through the ages has not resulted in what you are suggesting.

If high meat is prepared with the cover being taken off periodically to allow oxygen in then it shouldn't be an issue.

Even though dead men don't make posts, I suspect that if any raw eaters died from what you are suggesting, it would be all over the news/internet faster than you can say salmonella.

[yuli]

...It gives me great energy and vitality. The strong taste lets me know its good medicine.

If its medicine (and it really is because people don't eat for the taste   ) then why would you need to take it if you are on a optimum raw paleo diet?

Yes, of course! Would an animal or a pithecanthropus eat something that stinks for him?

I love the taste of pastry, chocolate, cheese, butter, kefir, grilled meat and so on. Those things are not paleo, our ancestor had no regular access to such stuff, and hence there’s is of course no reason why our senses of smell and taste (instinct) would work properly with stuff that has never been available to any animal before the very recent (at the scale of the evolution) Neolithic era.
......

...yes, and rotten meat (I don't mean aged I mean the smelly slimy one)...does not taste good to people, even on raw paleo you have to eat it in tiny pieces and bolt it and eat fresh meat after...why? If its truly good shouldn't you be able to enjoy a meal of it like a meal of berries, or a meal of meat or liver?

....

I think its ok to eat aged meat all the time as long as it tastes good to you and you can eat it without having to bolt-or-gag,
however I believe eating really putrid meat should be only if you have a real problem, and if you have to force youself to eat it on a constant basis maybe your diet is lacking something?

Remember paleo people ate high meat sometimes for the same reason they cannibalized, out of desperation/when there was nothing else they could eat. We have more of a choice of what to eat which is not a bad thing sometimes.

[TylerDurden]

The whole point is that high-meat has stuff that fresh, raw meat of the highest quality can never have, namely huge amounts of bacteria which help boost serotonin in the brain, making you feel great, improving concentration and mood, and improving the digestion as well. It is the rawpalaeo equivalent of heroin, but without any of the negative effects such as withdrawal symptoms.


Also, high-meat is merely a question of habit re taste. If I had eaten high-meat from birth, I would now like 100s of different kinds of high-meat. After almost a decade, I now actually love the taste of 1 or 2 kinds of high-meat as they taste very much like an aged, smelly raw cheese(and I dare not touch real raw cheese given my raw-dairy-issues).

[KD]

In all lifestyle philosophies like this forum there will be weird extremest fanatics like the ones who promote eating rotting meat by bolting it down so you don't gag. There is no telling how many people they have killed because dead people don't make posts.

Enjoy the ride.

actionhereo seemed to disappear after his high meat undertaking...I think maybe just his dad got mad or something though...

Well I already gave somewhat of a disclaimer in regards to those newly on the diet or just in general that I can see the potential for HM to cause at least some uncomfortable symptoms if not serious problems. People have indeed got sick or died just eating fresh meat, so I can only guess it is not 100% safe.

So let me say I am pretty much am in line with sabertooth otherwise. I mean..I seemed to have made 0 progress on this diet until I started doing high meats aged over 2 months. After 3 months the taste even if bolting (usually i chewed a bit) was indescribable and volatile like eating acid as opposed to something just gross. I never experienced much of the emotional well being stuff but I think it helped alot with general digestion and assimilation and bowel function. If i had it together to make it consistently, I would probably do it although going on something I think TD implied once ..i've taken a break from it and finally just started another batch after 5 months or so. So I shall see in a few months if it has greater advantages to just my regular routine at a higher place in health.

when people talk about letting their meat 'get high' in the fridge or closet or something..I dunno to me this is just so totally different, even though I guess there is some advantages to this kind of aging. As for poor smell or taste indicating something being 'high'..well..particularly if I have store meat in plastic that expires..this is not either tasty or healthy. To me, my opinion is iif there is something I air out regularly for 6 weeks not being particulary high..the odds of randomly happening upon something that is high without trying is unlikely. In this case odds are if you arn't consciously engaging in this protocol and your meat stinks or tastes bad then its no good.

I don't tend to ascribe to the pleasure principle anyway and in very much a believer in little tricks and detoxes and stuff, so I guess take that into consideration.

[TylerDurden]

Couple of points:-   Many people , myself included, seem to need to eat quite large amounts of high-meat to get the full boost in mood etc. I needed 2 large mouthfuls of high-meat each day to get really booosted to the max.

I disagree re the raw meats/poisoning issues. In almost all such cases, they involve babies or old people with immune-systems already damaged beyond repair by decades on cooked diets.  If one is 100 percent raw, and has been doing rawpalaeo for at least a few weeks with grassfed meats etc., then it should not be aa problem.


As for the point KD mentioned re me, I think it was re my point about high-meat only benefitting me for a few months after taking it every day. I usually take a break of a few months inbetween, so as to get the same benefit again when I try high-meat the next time.

[sabertooth]

High meat works in mysterious ways, It gives me a feeling of clarity and well being unlike anything else.
I believe it primes the gut for optimal meat digestion, and I believe the larger your intake of meat the more you can benefit from high meat. Our digestive tract is very adaptable, but after years on grain rich, plant based diet the digestive tract can become inflexible to the change needed to adapt back to our evolutionary dietary roots. The genetic code expression has had to make radical changes to be able to tolerate neolithic food. The healing of damaged and sick tissues and glands isn't all that has to happen for healing on this diet to take place. I believe that epigenetic changes take place which allow the body to program and direct such a drastic metamorphosis in ones being. High meat can be seen as a catalyst for this adaption.

I hypothesis that the substances in rotten meat may trigger a chain reaction, beginning in the immune system and tramsmuted on down to the genetic level, with some undiscovered mechanism  stimulating the genetic re-adaption back to a more carnivorous metabolism . And it may be necessary to introduce high meats in order to jumpstart this process of re adaption, especially in people with past gut problems, antibiotic survivors, alcoholic,etc. When I started eatting High meat two months into the diet, I found that it increased my appetite and improved my metabolism.

 Caution should be used in people who are more severely damage, and it may be that there is a rare individual has lost the capability to digest large amounts of fat, or is geneticaly damaged beyond repair, I know such people are out there, But for the vast majority of those who Begin this paleo diet High Meat should be recommended as an option for attaining optimal health.

[the PresiDenT]

by increase metabolism is this higher or lower?

[raw-al]

Has anyone actually studied high meat to determine what happens?

[TylerDurden]

Has anyone actually studied high meat to determine what happens?

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/66840.php

[raw-al]

Excellent, thanks Tyler.

[andvanwyk]

How do we know that those particular bacteria are in high meat? It would be fascinating to look at it under a microscope and to see exactly what bacteria are present.