New here and have some questions

[Tim]

This is not my first post, probably should have posted here first. Anyway, like many others here, im coming from a raw, mostly vegan diet, and started to obsess over food, feel weak, and low energy, always hungry, etc... I believe a raw paleo diet will help me. I havent had meat and years up until a couple weeks ago. I already feel better with the meat i have had.

i have a few questions though, and sorry if these seem really ignorant. Ive searched the site and have not completely found the info im looking for.

how come meat, and fat continually is linked to high blood pressure, cholesteral, stroke, cancer, etc??

I recently watched a video that showed a guy who need heart surgery because of a diet rich in ghee (even though im sure this isnt paleo and definitely not raw)

also on wikipedia i have read that inuit generally have great health while alive, but have short life span and often suffer stroke.

Alexander Ströhle, Maike Wolters and Andreas Hahn, with the Department of Food Science at the University of Hannover, rely on Bjerregaard et al. (2003)[6] to argue that hunters like the Inuit, who traditionally obtain most of their dietary energy from wild animals and therefore eat a low-carbohydrate diet, seem to have a high mortality from coronary heart disease.[7]

Stefansson is also a figure of considerable interest in dietary circles, especially those with an interest in very low-carbohydrate diets. Stefansson documented the fact that most Inuit lived on a diet of about 90% meat and fish, often going 6-9 months a year on nothing but meat and fish--essentially, a no-carbohydrate diet. He found that he and his fellow European-descent explorers were also perfectly healthy on such a diet. When medical authorities questioned him on this, he and a fellow explorer agreed to undertake a study under the auspices of the Journal of the American Medical Association to demonstrate that they could eat a 100% meat diet in a closely-observed laboratory setting for the first several weeks, with paid observers for the rest of an entire year. The results were published in the Journal of the AMA, and both men were perfectly healthy on such a diet, without vitamin supplementation or anything else in their diet except meat.[7] However, hunters like the Inuit, who traditionally obtain most of their dietary energy from wild animals and therefore eat a low-carbohydrate diet,[8] seem to have a high mortality from stroke.[9]

I believe the difference between meat being healthy or not, is the difference between it being raw or cooked, but didnt the inuit consume raw meat?

can someone please share references to how high meat diets do not cause diesease, cancer etc..




One more question i have about quality of meat.... I know with the holidays coming up ill be out to eat with the family. Does it matter the quality of meat when it eating it rare. I know the meat i find at restaurants will more than likely be less than ideal, but is is still alright to eat as rare as they'll go at place like say, outback steakhouse, etc..

any help i would greatly appreciate! just the past few weeks ive been reading threads here i have gained so much info. this is great site im grateful for!

[TylerDurden]

Grassfed is almost as important a factor as raw. It's not the end of the world if you, for social reasons, are forced to eat cooked-food, just make sure it's as healthy as you can(eg:- no additives/preservatives etc.)

Part of the trouble with vegan/vegetarian diets is the lack of nutrients leading to nutritional deficiencies. The trouble with cooked diets isn't so much the saturated-fat-issue but the fact that fats when heated create huge amounts of toxins(so do heated proteins and carbs, but not to the same extent):-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raw_foodism#Potential_harmful_effects_of_cooked_foods

As far as the coronary heart-disease claim, it's a highly dishonest one made by vegans as the Inuits actually increased their rate of heart-disease once they turned away from their traditional diets:-

http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2001/09/21/inuit_diet010921.html

I'm unsurprised as to the problems with heated ghee, as butter has been shown by 1 study to create huge amounts of toxins via heating(advanced glycation end products, to be precise). Heated dairy is about the worst kind of cooked-animal-food anyone can eat, and even raw dairy causes numerous health-problems(though not, usually, as severe as the pasteurised version).

[JaX]

Hi Tim. welcome.

I'm in the same position you are at. Just coming from a near raw vegan diet... Really didn't work, hungry all the time, restless.. Before going somewhere I would stuff myself with sweet fruits only to be hungry soon again craving fats.

I then read about paleo and started eating this way which really helped me.. now I'm reading more and more on raw paleo. I'm not eating everything raw yet as I'm transitioning to more raw slowly, but most of my fish I only heat it so it isn't cold from the fridge, and the animal meat I always leave rare and bloody in the middle. Reduce cooking temperatures and cooking times first that's my suggestion. Reduce them drastically and try steaming if you can. begin eating sashimi at sushi bars and raw ground beef. Then if you want to go all way, stop heating your food altogether. But I have to disagree that you need to be 100% raw meat in order to be healthy. Weston Price on his journey through the world found many tribes that ate cooked food and were in perfectly good health. But yes, minimally-cooked paleolithic high quality foods - not cooked pop tarts :p

And remember diet isn't everything! There is exercise, environment, and most importantly: your psychology outlook on things.

Think about the people that are surviving to 100+ years today.. I know a 102 year old woman who is capable of running a bicycle. Guess what she ate in her youth, growing up and during her life: mostly cooked foods. I asked her if she ate a lot of vegetables/meat and she said a little of both every day, but she has never eaten raw meat and vegetables were mostly cooked into vegetable soup. She did drink raw milk/eat raw cheese, but only occasionally, and she has not had any raw dairy for the last 30 years.

So according to theory what TylerDurden says is 100% correct (compounds A,B,C... are created when you heat fat) but in practical terms the body functions in a much more complex/inter-connected manner that we as humans will probably never be able to fully de-code and understand.

[wodgina]

You don't have to eat 100% raw to be healthy or to live to 100 years old you just need kick ass genes!

I would rather eat cooked food but I'm not blessed with good good genes and wasn't breast fed for long enough and was brought up on low fat, high carb.

So I eat close to 100% if I eat more than a couple of cooked meals I get tired and constipation.

Welcome Tim and Seeker.

[TylerDurden]

The trouble with the whole Weston-Price notion of native tribes supposedly being healthy is that it's false. First of all, many of the tribes he studied ate widely differing diets(varying from grain-filled diets to diets of seal-blubber etc.), so that it is ludicrously unlikely that they all had the same level of perfect health that Weston-Price tried to  claim. Secondly, a lot of his statements come apart, under examination. For example, he claimed that the Maoris thrived on their primitive ancestral diet, yet, according to NZ anthropologists who studied Maori bones, Maori health was pretty poor , and lifespan very short, prior to the arrival of the British. Then the British forced the Maoris onto poor land where they could only grow the grain-portion of their diet and had no access to animal-food, where they started to suffer even further, and then, only c.1900, did the Maori population start to recover, at which point they'd turned to a Western-style diet, ironically. Many other tribes he described have, instead, been shown to have led lives that were "nasty, brutish and short", according to other anthropologists.

(I don't deny that native tribes, as a whole, had far better levels of daily exercise than modern humans, so were fitter than modern humans, but that's about it, really).Oh, and the notion that Weston-Price's diet justifies cooking is false, as he pointed out that all the healthiest tribes ate at least some raw animal food - which implies, that the more RAF in the diet, the healthier they would have been.

As for the argument re centenarians, I disagree that diet is responsible for their living that long - though I agree that will-power (and modern medicine/surgery) can do wonders to keep people alive for far longer on cooked-processed diets than otherwise would be the case) . Turning to a raw diet would mean a much lower toxin-load(there'd still be air-pollution and the like) and therefore a much longer lifespan, provided that the environment wasn't too harsh. I wouldn't be at all surprised if  100% RAFers manage to live till 150-160+, if they started out rawpalaeo from birth  .(I won't likely live past 100, though, as my body's resources were so damaged and exhausted after years of eating cooked-foods that even turning to this diet wouldn't lead to the kind of health I could have experienced if I'd been rawpalaeo from birth).

[goodsamaritan]

As for the argument re centenarians, I disagree that diet is responsible for their living that long - though I agree that will-power (and modern medicine/surgery) can do wonders to keep people alive for far longer on cooked-processed diets than otherwise would be the case) . Turning to a raw diet would mean a much lower toxin-load(there'd still be air-pollution and the like) and therefore a much longer lifespan, provided that the environment wasn't too harsh. I wouldn't be at all surprised if  100% RAFers manage to live till 150-160+, if they started out rawpalaeo from birth  .(I won't likely live past 100, though, as my body's resources were so damaged and exhausted after years of eating cooked-foods that even turning to this diet wouldn't lead to the kind of health I could have experienced if I'd been rawpalaeo from birth).

Pair up with a raw paleo lady Tyler.  Let's see raw paleo children from conception. Maybe they'll live to 150.

[Sully]

I think the Eskimos lives might have been short for various reasons.

Smoking ( think some smoked out of pipes)
Tough Life
Burning Fuel While In their Huts or Igloos ( i think it was some sort of animal fat?)
And occasionally may have come under trichinosis from eating polar bear or arctic fox. (rare)

[Raw Kyle]

And occasionally may have come under trichinosis from eating polar bear or arctic fox. (rare)

That's scary, I wanted to try bear.

As for evidence that fat and meat do not correlate significantly with heart disease, cancer and stroke there are many resources towards that end. If you search around the forums, check the newbie section for starters, you'll find tons of scientific journal links and some videos with information that you are looking for. It's a little unorganized but the search function works well.