Tongue

[Felicie]

I bought some veal tongue the other day but was unable to eat it raw. It was just too tough. I physically couldn't chew.

This brings me to my question about organs. I love all organs when they are cooked. I love both the taste and the texture. But how can one adopt organ meat to this diet? Some organs are just too tough to chew when raw, such as tongue. Others you need to boil a couple of times before cooking in order to eliminate an unpleasant taste or smell (such as kidneys - to rid of the urine aftertaste). Another thing I miss is "non-choice" cuts of meat, such as legs, which are also too tough when raw. I used to love to cook things like beef shanks or ox tail. They have so much collagen. I felt that eating these parts of collagen-rich meat literally rejuvenated my skin. Now I no longer know how to prepare and eat them.

Any advice? Thanks.

[TylerDurden]

Quite frankly, most of us don't bother chewing much. In the case of tongue, all I do is cut up the tongue into pieces small enough to be chewed once/twice and then bolted down. It's been claimed, anecdotally, that you MUST chew cooked-meats for better digestion but that we should more or less bolt down raw meats just as carnivores, like dogs, do, as that is better digested than if chewed repeatedly.

When I first started this diet, I didn't like the darker, purplier stringy parts on the lower side of the tongue and simply removed them with a meat-knife, but now I'm used to the taste of the latter and eat it as well. I love eating the tip, even though it's the hardest part of the tongue.

As regards organ-meats which are soft but smelly, just buy them fresh and eat them immediately. They only get a urea-like smell once they start aging in the fridge for days. Make sure all organs are from 100% organic, grassfed animals - the taste of grainfed, intensively-farmed organs is foul, and there are too many toxis collected in such organs.

I never bother with bone-broths, and most RPDers don't feel the need - only those doing partially-raw diets a la weston-price ever do them.

Same goes for flesh from legs, just cut off the major pieces with a meat-knife. The remainder, difficult to cut off with a knife, I simply use my teeth to tear from the bone.

[Nicola]

It's been claimed, anecdotally, that you MUST chew cooked-meats for better digestion but that we should more or less bolt down raw meats just as carnivores, like dogs, do, as that is better digested than if chewed repeatedly.

Geoff, do we digest raw better by not chewing repeatedly? How/why?

Nicola

[TylerDurden]

Geoff, do we digest raw better by not chewing repeatedly? How/why?

Nicola

I believe the idea is that cooked-food contains no enzymes so it needs to be broekn up by chewing so as to allow a great surface-area, and therefore greater contact with the hydrochloric acid in the human stomach.With rawists, the enzymes are already within the food, so chewing is unnecessary. I'm not sure of the exact mechanism, I can only go by what myself and others state, which is that we find we digest  raw animal food better if we just bolt it down with minimal chewing.

[Raw Kyle]

I believe the idea is that cooked-food contains no enzymes so it needs to be broekn up by chewing so as to allow a great surface-area, and therefore greater contact with the hydrochloric acid in the human stomach.With rawists, the enzymes are already within the food, so chewing is unnecessary. I'm not sure of the exact mechanism, I can only go by what myself and others state, which is that we find we digest  raw animal food better if we just bolt it down with minimal chewing.

Also AV says that the ptyalin in your saliva retards the action of protein digesting enzymes so you should expose the least amount of surface area of your food to saliva in your mouth for optimum digestion, which translates to minimal chewing.

[TylerDurden]

Very intersting Thanks.

[Felicie]

Thank you. So you basically swallow very tiny pieces of the food that is hard/impossible to chew. I could try it next time. It's to bad for me though, because I like chewing the food. That's how I enjoy the taste and texture of what I'm eating. Swallowing without chewing is sort of like taking vitamins.

Getting really fresh kidneys and other parts is a problem. I'll need to be inventive and try to find access to fresh meat. Ask around to see if anyone knows a farmer.

Nicola, forgive me for being personal, but you look absolutely glowing on your avatar. Whatever you are eating must be agreeing with you.

[TylerDurden]

Thank you. So you basically swallow very tiny pieces of the food that is hard/impossible to chew. I could try it next time. It's to bad for me though, because I like chewing the food. That's how I enjoy the taste and texture of what I'm eating. Swallowing without chewing is sort of like taking vitamins.

Getting really fresh kidneys and other parts is a problem. I'll need to be inventive and try to find access to fresh meat. Ask around to see if anyone knows a farmer.

Nicola, forgive me for being personal, but you look absolutely glowing on your avatar. Whatever you are eating must be agreeing with you.

Sorry, correction, I personally cut out rather big pieces(just small enough to still fit in the mouth and swallow without too much hassle, after 0, 1 or 2 quick 1-second chomps/chews with the teeth). newbies, though, find that, to get used to more unusual items like raw organ-meats, one has to start off with tiny slivers, and chase them down with a gulp of mineral-water each time. I recommend alkaline(Ph 7+) mineral-water for taste-reasons.

[Nicola]

Also AV says that the ptyalin in your saliva retards the action of protein digesting enzymes so you should expose the least amount of surface area of your food to saliva in your mouth for optimum digestion, which translates to minimal chewing.

I have never not chewed my meat & fat; I have a problem in my brain, which just does not let me bolt meat & fat! It would be interesting to do a poll about chew vs. bolt and metabolism.

Nicola

[Satya]

I have never not chewed my meat & fat; I have a problem in my brain, which just does not let me bolt meat & fat! It would be interesting to do a poll about chew vs. bolt and metabolism.

Nicola

Maybe it is a guy thing?  Men bolt, women are lingering over their food more?  I do NOT mean to sound sexist at all here.  There are some differences between men and women after all, yet some generalizations are flat out wrong.  I say this as a woman who is an analytical left-brain person who finished tops above men in university classes for engineering and cannot stand being categorized as a certain way because I am a woman!  (Men often hate a woman who can beat them at subjects like math(s) in which they are supposed to be superior.  Trust me, I have loads of experience with this).  But maybe in this instance ... who knows?  My husband chews carpaccio and spits out grissle, but then, he is an engineer too!

I have not eaten tongue raw yet, btw.

[boxcarguy07]

Maybe it is a guy thing?  Men bolt, women are lingering over their food more?  I do NOT mean to sound sexist at all here.  There are some differences between men and women after all, yet some generalizations are flat out wrong.  I say this as a woman who is an analytical left-brain person who finished tops above men in university classes for engineering and cannot stand being categorized as a certain way because I am a woman!  (Men often hate a woman who can beat them at subjects like math(s) in which they are supposed to be superior.  Trust me, I have loads of experience with this).  But maybe in this instance ... who knows?  My husband chews carpaccio and spits out grissle, but then, he is an engineer too!

I have not eaten tongue raw yet, btw.

I dunno about it being a guy thing... I personally believe it to be very important to thoroughly chew food. I subscribe to the old Taoist principle "Drink your food and chew your water." It means to basically chew your food to a liquid consistency, and when you drink water, to chew it so as to imbue it with your chi, or life energy, in this case the enzymes in your saliva. This makes it more acceptable to your body.

I'd like to see where AV got his information from.

[wodgina]

I had trouble swallowing tablets years ago, just a mental thing and the fact that I mainly ate cooked mush. Now a can bolt the biggest chunks which I would of choked on years ago, I can even bolt a large whole garlic clove now without freaking.

I doubt there's a need to chew too much, if a all and if your bolting 'high meat' it stands to reason that large unchewed pieces of high meat would be more likely to get further into your body.

[Raw Kyle]

I dunno about it being a guy thing... I personally believe it to be very important to thoroughly chew food. I subscribe to the old Taoist principle "Drink your food and chew your water." It means to basically chew your food to a liquid consistency, and when you drink water, to chew it so as to imbue it with your chi, or life energy, in this case the enzymes in your saliva. This makes it more acceptable to your body.

I'd like to see where AV got his information from.

It's common knowledge that ptyalin is in the mouth and also that carnivores don't chew much. That Taoist principle no doubt comes from their long heritage of eating plants and cooked meat and never raw meat. I tried Taoism for a while so I know a little bit about it and never did I ever hear mention of raw meat; in fact they tend to shy away from too much raw plants because it can dampen the "digestive fire" that needs cooking to keep it going.

[boxcarguy07]

Yeah, I know it's common knowledge that ptyalin exists, but I don't it's as common knowledge that it inhibits protein digestion. Nothing I could find when I searched said anything like that at all.

Anyway, I guess regarding chewing to each his own.

[Felicie]

I personally cut out rather big pieces(just small enough to still fit in the mouth and swallow without too much hassle, after 0, 1 or 2 quick 1-second chomps/chews with the teeth

But how do you manage to swallow large pieces? Don't you choke on them?

Chewing tongue (the kind of tongue that I bought) a couple of times wuld not have made any difference. That meat was quite literally unchewable. Perhaps a younger person would have had sharper teeth, I don't know...

[TylerDurden]

 I find I can more easily bolt down larger pieces than when I was on cooked-diets. Anyway, I cut the pieces of tongue so that they fit into my mouth easily, so it's not an issue. With tongue, I'll just chew twice very quickly, and bolt it down.

When I first started the diet, I had extremely loose teeth(they'd been about to fall out, as a result of years of dairy-consumption, SAD diet, raw vegan diets etc.), so couldn't even chew raw, fresh tongue without experiencing some pain in my teeth, so my solution was to cut the tongue into much smaller pieces than I do now, not chew at all, just bolt them down - I also had to leave the tongue out(under plastic) outside, for a day or three, so that it would soften enough to be more manageable. My teeth became extremely strong aftera year or so on the diet, so that the above methods were no longer necessary.

*Some newbies prefer to use alternative methods such as pulverising foods like liver into a liquid mush etc. using food-mixers/blenders etc. I suppose some such products might even be able to handle raw tongue?*

[Felicie]

When I first started the diet, I had extremely loose teeth(they'd been about to fall out, as a result of years of dairy-consumption, SAD diet, raw vegan diets etc.)
...
My teeth became extremely strong aftera year or so on the diet, so that the above methods were no longer necessary.

My gums bleed and recede. I do hope that they will become stronger eventually.

[TylerDurden]

My gums bleed and recede. I do hope that they will become stronger eventually.

My own teeth developed problems primarily because of dairy-consumption which led to magnesium-deficiency. If you've been drinking dairy a lot, consider eating some pumpkin seeds regularly as they have a very high magnesium to calcium ratio. Other than removing dairy, adding in  raw organ-meats in general really helped my teeth. Though, it was a real problem trying to avoid chewing raw muscle-meats and the tougher organ-meats  prior to the point where my teeth finally recovered on this diet - my teeth would move very slightly out of their sockets with each chew, making me terrified that they would drop off, any time.
Other than magnesium, vitamin D, manganese and phosophorus are also required for good bones/teeth(everybody gets enough calcium in the diet, it's virtually impossible not to get enough calcium, and too easy to get too much if you consume dairy)

[Nicola]

Hello Dr. Groves
 
Is this right?
 
I believe the idea is that cooked-food contains no enzymes so it needs to be broekn up by chewing so as to allow a great surface-area, and therefore greater contact with the hydrochloric acid in the human stomach.With rawists, the enzymes are already within the food, so chewing is unnecessary. I'm not sure of the exact mechanism, I can only go by what myself and others state, which is that we find we digest  raw animal food better if we just bolt it down with minimal chewing;
ptyalin in your saliva retards the action of protein digesting enzymes so you should expose the least amount of surface area of your food to saliva in your mouth for optimum digestion, which translates to minimal chewing.

Dr. Groves:

The 'enzymes' question is actually really simple. All enzymes are proteins. The hydrochloric acid and proteases in the stomach are there to break down proteins. So I doubt that any enzymes in foods make it through the stomach. The only possible exception to this would be enzymes within plant cells. We have no way to break down plant cell walls to release the nutrients within, other than chewing, which is extremely inefficient. Even juicing leaves 50% or more of plant cells intact. So enzymes within these cells would survive - but only to finish up in  the toilet.
 
Ptyalin (better known as amylase) is an enzyme used to break down amylose (starch). As this amylase is produced in the mouth, it has a very short life (It's neutralised in the stomach). The pancreas produces another form of amylase to break down starches in the small intestine. This is where most of the digestion of starch takes place.
 
I find that lack of salt is more likely to cause muscle cramps than too much.
 

[TylerDurden]

According to Weston-Price, they point out that enzymes survive for c.30 minutes in the upper stomach(the upper stomach secretes no digestive juices), where they do their work on the raw food, before reaching the lower stomach and being destroyed:-

http://www.realmilk.com/enzyme.html